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As many of you know already. Artillery units are very frail, typically 10 armour and any glance /pen = dead, regardless of the result.

Naturally to make up for the frailty of these units we often hide them in cover for cover saves. This tactic takes protecting my TFC to the next level, by making it hard to even target with ranged attacks, by blocking LoS every enemy turn. It's a tactic I've been using since 5th ed's "true line of sight" shooting rules came into effect and no one's called me ut on it yet (except when I botched the placement and there are huge sight holes in my chump unit)

Step 1: Find a wall, or any appropriately shaped terrain piece. One that both the Gunner and weapon can see over to shoot from behind (yay cover save!)
I built a small wall to use as an example:


Step 2: Position a chump squad or low target priority target, like a baseline 5 Boltgun marine squad, on the wall blocking Line of sight to the Gun and Crew


Step 3: In the movement phase of your turn, Move the marine squad down in front of the wall (in this example only a snake eye on the difficult terrain would fail to hop down)
Now your gun and crew have clear Line of sight to shoot


Step 4: FIRE AWAYwith your gun! then have the chump squad Run back up the wall to block LOS
Next 3 pics show angled views and a frontal view from typical MC height




This tactic can be transferred to pretty much any other unit that one would want to keep still and at range.

Thanks for reading and Good games to you all!

Thankfully, every table has a wall that is exactly that height and thickness .

Never thought of that...
Nice I'll have to try it out!

Sgt_Scruffy wrote:Thankfully, every table has a wall that is exactly that height and thickness .

not sure, but i think the larger GW made Craters are deep enough for this to work. I'll need to test it on my friends table sometime.

Not too sure what you're doing with the squad. If you can still see a piece of the cannon or gunner you may fire at it.

Placing it in cover/area terrain does work nicely though, especially with a HQ that bolsters defenses

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:Not too sure what you're doing with the squad. If you can still see a piece of the cannon or gunner you may fire at it.

Placing it in cover/area terrain does work nicely though, especially with a HQ that bolsters defenses

You don't need an HQ that bolsters defences. The techmarine itself can bolster defences.

heartserenade wrote:

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:Not too sure what you're doing with the squad. If you can still see a piece of the cannon or gunner you may fire at it.

Placing it in cover/area terrain does work nicely though, especially with a HQ that bolsters defenses

You don't need an HQ that bolsters defences. The techmarine itself can bolster defences.

Wasn't aware that the TF cannon Techie had Bolster Defenses, I see that now.

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:Not too sure what you're doing with the squad. If you can still see a piece of the cannon or gunner you may fire at it.

Placing it in cover/area terrain does work nicely though, especially with a HQ that bolsters defenses

It's debatable since there is such a tiny ammount of TFC visible. LOS rules state you need clear LOS to the body/head of the model, when 90% of it is obscurred its hard to tell.

but if my tac marines dont cut it in your oppinion I can do the same thing with 5 Camo cloaked Scouts for the same points cost. You can see squat through them.

Karnac wrote:

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:Not too sure what you're doing with the squad. If you can still see a piece of the cannon or gunner you may fire at it.

Placing it in cover/area terrain does work nicely though, especially with a HQ that bolsters defenses

It's debatable since there is such a tiny ammount of TFC visible. LOS rules state you need clear LOS to the body/head of the model, when 90% of it is obscurred its hard to tell.

but if my tac marines dont cut it in your oppinion I can do the same thing with 5 Camo cloaked Scouts for the same points cost. You can see squat through them.

Actually the rules are pretty clear on that. Unless the cannon is not visible at all, you may shoot it, and it's perfectly visible on your pictures. Just bring a laser pointer to your games, it solves a lot of those arguments, you can put a red dot on your target, you may shoot it.

I like it. As far as having appropriate terrain: build terrain that suits your needs perfectly, then build a second one or 3 more. Then when setting up terrain before the game, make sure both sides have an equal number of those terrain pieces. 4 would be ideal for table Quarter games. Set 1 in each table quarter. It allows your opponent to use the exact same tactic.

If you can see an part of the cannon at all you can shoot it. So in this case, it already has cover so the troops aren't doing anything there. If you can see any part of the enemy from the tech marine's head then you can shoot them- probably no need to move the troops around.

BUT, they may forget it is there.
Not a big point, but still. The opponent might miss it.