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There is a member of our club who has not lost a single unit in 6 weeks! He's faced space wolves, tau, imperial guard, chaos marines, necron, and orks (6 battles)... only army we have that he hasn't fought yet is Eldar. No matter what the game type is (we roll), he plays likes its annihilation. He's had quite a few units taken down to one or two models, but still has yet to lose a single kill point (not even lost a combat squad yet). He plays codex marines and one time fielded 7 drop pods, next time 2 Land Raiders, most time 2-3 drops and a transport or two (yet to field the same list twice, even "type" is usually different). He usually says nice things, like the dice turned on his opponent or what not. This past game he elected to go second (and claimed he knew he wanted to go second before the game started). We all show up with made lists and then randomly are assigned maps and opponents, so its not like he's building for a certain foe.

Finally to the point: When asked about how he wins, he always says its deployment. By turn 2 he has had every game in the bag and his foe dead to rights, and usually has torn the enemy to pieces by the end of turn 1. One game went to turn 4 (he had two drop pods to destroy) otherwise he's mopped up his foes completely by turn 3. He says you have to deploy every unit to where it does something harmful to the enemy the first turn its out. He's not even lost a Rhino or a drop pod yet!

So what say you? is the rest of the club just that bad... or is he right, proper and purposeful deployment can make the rest of the game an exercise in dice rolling. At first it was kinda fun, he was the vet to call out and make your mark on... now he's just an auto loss for club members, he even offered to sit out and paint next time.

Yeaahh I think something is wrong here.

The fact that he can beat any opponent by turn due blatantly shows this.

Whilst deployment could give you a tactical advantage, it certainly won't result in marines becoming bulletproof.



So it's either -

a) He's cheating (which is unlikely.)

b) Your armies really suck. (Which is probable)

How many points are each game?

What the hell kind of lists are you guys running? Even with good deployment he shouldn't be tabling you guys so reliably.

In my experience, deployment is important and is more or less severe depending on what sort of list you're running. If you're a footslogging horde of Ork boyz and the other guy deploys as far away from you with as many guns as possible, you're pretty much screwed. If you've got an Eldar army mounted on jetbikes and in Wave Serpents, you can redeploy and get somewhere else in the span of a turn.

I'd say overall deployment is very important, but having a mobile army can really mitigate the damage from a bad deployment.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
How many points are each game?

1500 points the last two games... it was 2000 before that... he is taking loses (two games ago lost 22 marines, but still didn't lose a single unit and tabled the IG in 3 turns)

We even play open lists using AB to verify all builds and give an item by item run down before turn 1.

Our Ork player and Space Wolf player finished 4th and 5th at our local Ard Boyz (out of 16 players), so they're hardly slouches. We've all been playing at least 2-3 games a month for almost a year, both at the FLGS and at our own little club. He just constantly turns the flank on every army with his deployments (and has had some crazy luck with broken squads and sweeping advances... even ran Njal off the board ).

I put the second option cos I'm assuming that better players, and once I become a better player, that it's easier to recover from a poor deployment choice. At the moment however, in the few games I've played, in most of them deployment has been make or break.

Lobukia wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
How many points are each game?

1500 points the last two games... it was 2000 before that... he is taking loses (two games ago lost 22 marines, but still didn't lose a single unit and tabled the IG in 3 turns)

We even play open lists using AB to verify all builds and give an item by item run down before turn 1.

Our Ork player and Space Wolf player finished 4th and 5th at our local Ard Boyz (out of 16 players), so they're hardly slouches. We've all been playing at least 2-3 games a month for almost a year, both at the FLGS and at our own little club. He just constantly turns the flank on every army with his deployments (and has had some crazy luck with broken squads and sweeping advances... even ran Njal off the board ).

What do all his armies have in common? Speed, Armor, DS, CC, Shooting?

Deployment and turn are very important. Deploying second then stealing the initiative is *deadly*.
If you're able to deploy your tanks out of LOS of enemy's anti-tank, and give all your troops cover, then yeah it can be deadly, but not unbeatable. I'd autit his lists if i were you, just to be sure he's not made any mistakes.

Deployment is one of those subtle nuances of 40k that aren't obviously important and requires extreme foresight to plan out properly.
Most people just deploy things going "I want to be able to shoot that on turn one" or "I don't want that to shoot me on turn one"

I think the gambling high you get from 40k overrides one's ability to really analyze the situation considering how one good roll can make the game for you and one bad roll can screw up everything.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

What do all his armies have in common? Speed, Armor, DS, CC, Shooting?

Always has something that helps with morale (once it was Calgar, when we dropped to 1500 it was Sicarius). Always has a drop pod of Melta/combi melta Sternguard and usually an assault squad with at least a plasma pistol. Usually has a Melta dread in a drop pod, and ALWAYS has a tactical squad with melta/multimelta and a sarg with meltabombs and powersword (sometimes drop pods, once in a LRaider, once in Rhino). Usually has a scout squad too... so roughly 1100 points is the same. Then its all over the board with the last 400. Predators, Terminators, Land Raiders, another Sternguard squad, Devastators, who knows?!

His points are dead on. Every week are lists our saved in Army build so anyone can look at them afterward.

Deployment can be very important. It's entirely possible that this guy is just having a good run of things, and I am not going to accuse someone of cheating just because he's having enjoying a good record. Do you have any reason to suspect foul play?

I think it's entirely possible that he's that good at deployment.

Playing one of my mates a while back. My b/f being the 'neutral' set up the terrain (we always get the person not playing to set up the terrain). Whilst my friend was chatting away, fiddling with things, getting a drink and essentially not looking at the table, I did what I always do and closely watched as the terrain was set up, then circled the table a few times, seeing it from different angles. My mate got the initiative, it was a take and hold victory condition. Barely looking at the table he chose the corner closest to him that looked like it had the best terrain.

So I deployed my IG on TOP of the three objectives in my quarter.

....then he wondered why I sat and didn't move all game.

Yeah...deployment can be critical

Lobukia wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

What do all his armies have in common? Speed, Armor, DS, CC, Shooting?

Always has something that helps with morale (once it was Calgar, when we dropped to 1500 it was Sicarius). Always has a drop pod of Melta/combi melta Sternguard and usually an assault squad with at least a plasma pistol. Usually has a Melta dread in a drop pod, and ALWAYS has a tactical squad with melta/multimelta and a sarg with meltabombs and powersword (sometimes drop pods, once in a LRaider, once in Rhino). Usually has a scout squad too... so roughly 1100 points is the same. Then its all over the board with the last 400. Predators, Terminators, Land Raiders, another Sternguard squad, Devastators, who knows?!

His points are dead on. Every week are lists our saved in Army build so anyone can look at them afterward.

Well, do you have anything to counter this? You know what to expect, perhaps you could try to plan accordingly?
Like using lots of infantry, since he has such heavy anti-vehicle?

With drop pod armies i reserve everything. let them chose where they're coming, and use that as your advantage. sounds like all of his pods ave melta, so reserving makes it so you can stay out of range of the melta.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Well, do you have anything to counter this? You know what to expect, perhaps you could try to plan accordingly?
Like using lots of infantry, since he has such heavy anti-vehicle?

This is where he's crazy like a fox. Since he knows what he showed everyone last time, he makes a force they will screw anyone who comes to beat the last army... if it was drop pods, now its rhinos and landraiders... if it was Sternguard heavy, now its assault marines and scouts... yet he always keeps 1 drop pod, 1 heavy hitter, 1 assault, and one long range threat, so its like fighting a combined arms master whose emphasized exactly what your not ready for (the mind games are to the point where the club just builds a solid force and prays you don't draw him). A while back he played a Rhino/Tactical spam list and then the next week a MotF force with 4 Dreads and a Terminator squad... so all of those are looming in the back ground. Not to mention, you never know when you're going to play him, so even if you wanted to, you can't build a list for his army, since its just as likely that you get Orks or Necrons instead.

I hate to ask this here, but does anyone have a solid 1500 IG, Ork, or SW list that can counter the stuff he's normally throwing out yet still not be blind sided by a horde? I'd like to give some of the club members some strong pointers on beating his standard ish list and maybe a list to build around.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Abyssel wrote:With drop pod armies i reserve everything. let them chose where they're coming, and use that as your advantage. sounds like all of his pods ave melta, so reserving makes it so you can stay out of range of the melta.

Yeah, that was the plan this week, so he called deploying second and just reserved most of his whole army too... with a predator, scouts, and a 4 ML dev squad on the table to tear things up as they came in... another 3-4 turn tabling... so the SW player had to put his pods down first and then the Sternguard starting ripping through grey hunters at range 30' and the tactical squad landed on top of pack and shot it to bits (along with DS assault marines coming in to help too).

It takes a lot though, it doesn't make or brake the game, but it can effect if the game is going to be harder or easier to win.

Deployment gets more important the less agile your army is.

Generally it's a good idea to take advantage of it as much as you can.

Also the only thing I can suggest is: Fire discipline. You won't kill anything if you spread your firepower out too wide. Concentrate on units before moving onto the next. That's a tactic I use well with my fragile eldar.
Might turn the tables a bit.

Okay, so that's the start of a list of ways to counter a strong opponent with better deployment than you...

A) Fire Discipline
B) Reserve if a DP army is going first
C) Know the terrain before deployment even begins
D) Play the mission (sort of, if he's gonna kill the entire opponent force first, what's it matter?)
E)?
F)?

EDIT: I will note that the club members are pretty solid list builders (if they'd just stop putting multiple named figures into the same 1.5k force... grrr). If they can just kick that habit, follow the above advice (plus any other you guys can give them), maybe they'll stand a chance next time