Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

There are a lot of “old reliable” tactics and army builds out there. But anytime your opponent expects something (even if it is effective) it can be countered. What are some unexpected tactics you have seen, or used, to win a game?

depends on what you mean by that since this could involve alot of just random dice rolling and or crazy lucky chances taken that paid off.

My personal one has been to fly a single storm raven and in another game, a valk falt out with just it's 4+ save and managed to survive an entire army's shooting (well more like 2 seperate armies) that let the rest of my units move up unmolested and gun down everything with meltas as they wasted alot of shots at the fast mover.

And of course many another time I tried that and the bird died on the first shots into it....

You looking for other advice like runnin away to hide TLOS for depleted units? How about all warpquakes to auto kill daemons?

Not exactly sure what other ways there are to win besides the regular contest, congo line to hold 2 objectives, and kill points/hide kill points from depleted units.

I've had a single, weaponless Fire Prism tank shock 3 Ld 9 units and 1 Ld10 unit off of the table in a kill points game before.

Pretty unlucky for him.

Iranna.

My one is spamming elite troops, Furious Charge and Power Weapons. Plus lots of Inf Pistols :3

Plasma Cannon Armored Sentinels.

Doesn't seem like the most effective use of 75 points, but time and again, plenty of opponents have gotten frustrated at them sniping at their high value squads of MEQ/Monstrous Creatures/2+ Sv troops.
They're easily ignored, and thus don't get shot at; but even if they are shot at, they end up soaking up fire my chimeras would get. Also, let me tell you, seeing a squad of anything without a Power Fist get tied up by one is hilarious.

Once, I charged a squad of Chaos Marines, killed 1, won combat, and when they failed their Ld and Initiative tests, wiped them out. Rare, but the look on your opponents face is worth the 75 points.

Also Hellhounds. These guys quite literally wreak vehicles with a Multi-Melta on their hull.
While it doesn't always hit, its still very amusing to catch a tank in range, hit, and cause some damage.

Gotta say I always feel going all reserves is a big gamble but time and again it works and feels great.

I reckon that counts as unorthadox.

Hiding.

If you wanna play a boring game against a shooty and well castled opponant, then you can often win by locking down your army behind terrain so he's got no tlos. And then force him to come to you for the next three turns rather than you having to run across the field of death.

Of course, in capture and control or seize ground, this ain't so hot

Bitches can't handle the Dreadnaught wall.

It's three Venerable dreads in front of two Razorbacks and Bjorn. It's amazing to see how much firepower they can soak up.

Also, with all the firepower in one area, it's easy to miss 160 points of Fenrisian Wolves running down the flanks and glancing everything to death.

I know what I really want to do!

As many BA Libbies as I can cram in (Dreads included!)

OR

Dreadnought Spam (11 Dreadnoughts? Blood Talons? Awesome)

Shadelkan wrote:Plasma Cannon Armored Sentinels.

Doesn't seem like the most effective use of 75 points, but time and again, plenty of opponents have gotten frustrated at them sniping at their high value squads of MEQ/Monstrous Creatures/2+ Sv troops.
They're easily ignored, and thus don't get shot at; but even if they are shot at, they end up soaking up fire my chimeras would get. Also, let me tell you, seeing a squad of anything without a Power Fist get tied up by one is hilarious.

Once, I charged a squad of Chaos Marines, killed 1, won combat, and when they failed their Ld and Initiative tests, wiped them out. Rare, but the look on your opponents face is worth the 75 points.

Also Hellhounds. These guys quite literally wreak vehicles with a Multi-Melta on their hull.
While it doesn't always hit, its still very amusing to catch a tank in range, hit, and cause some damage.

sentinels never get love but i love the ish out of em. armored sentinel? hell yeah, ever see a unit of 30 boys get stuck in place for 3+ turns? every time i see my opponents army, i pick out the unit that cant hurt them. best thing is you are NOT locked in combat and can walk away any time you want to blow their heads off. also had one with a hunter killer missile take out a battle wagon turn 1 the other day in the same game, kept his nobs waaaay in the back.

if you take scout sents, you can come in outflank on side armor, scout move into better positions and not worry about sitting in cover.

not very many people use these guys which is good, it always seems like my sentinels come in and everyone forgets the rest of my army and just lights them up. i dont know what it is but its hilarious to see opponents be like "oh ish, sentinels! take em out" on a 55+ pt unit lol.

Not sure if its unorthodox, but I played a game where an IG player Marbo'd me in such a way that anytime someone takes him I will always be thoughtful of how Marbo can turn the tide.

BTW he managed to kill 6 outa 10 tac termies with one satchel charge. I was shocked to say the least.

assault with flamers of tzeentch after burninating. Keeps anything short of a death star tied up for a couple turns. I had an immobilized & weaponless SG close to some fire dragons in a KP mission. Flamers burned all but the exarch, who they assaulted. Kp denied!

Deathshead420 wrote:Not sure if its unorthodox, but I played a game where an IG player Marbo'd me in such a way that anytime someone takes him I will always be thoughtful of how Marbo can turn the tide.

BTW he managed to kill 6 outa 10 tac termies with one satchel charge. I was shocked to say the least.

Wow only 6 marines? Thats nothing I've had him wipe out entire terminator squads. (of 5)

funniest/most bizarre tactic I've used though would have to be from the first tourney I ever played. One of the missions had a special rule where any troops unit could deepstrike. I play IG, with power blobs (on this day, I had two 30 man platoons with melta and PW's) My opponent was playing a vets/ stormtrooper heavy chimera list. He spreads out, and starts wailing on my tanks, and I was in deep trouble. Turn 2, the fun began. All my reserves came in, including both my platoons, their PCS's, and my straken CCS and marbo. My opponent laughs, expecting me to mishap and lose all my guardsmen (he had most of the board covered). I roll scatter, 1sr blob, direct hit, in between two chimeras and a manticore. Second one scatters and narrowly misses a tank. I had deepstriked 60+ guardsmen without a single mishap then straken and a PCS land on target. The only mishap was the second PCS, but at that point i was laughing too hard to care.

After doing a good chunk of damage, he wiped me turn 3, but man that was funny. Had i prioritized my targets better, I may have been able to get a draw, but oh well, that game was a ton of fun

I've used an empty, weaponless trukk to ram, and consequently explode a battlewagon and it's contents to smithereens.

And the trukk survived, ran into the survivors, who failed their moral, and ran off the table

I also totally intentionally plan to accidentally intentionally scatter my templates onto my trukks, thus penetrating them, and thus seeing them randomly intentionally directed to flip into the enemy lines to explode and cause such casualties that my otherwise poor round of shooting is made up for!

Run space pope and ethereal, then run 9 battlesuits with flamers, fusion guns and gun drones Plus some other FW and such.

Kill space pope, re-roll necessary leadership tests, have str 6 battlesuits with preferred enemy on the charge. It worked.

Having an antire army of slugga/choppa orks in trukks running away from combat so i can get a few more turns of shooting in before charging.

Glancing av 13 tanks with a full squad of lootas to death

or

Rolling 3 out of 6 "12"s on my big meks SAG.

Now you see Nids... Now you don't!

lordsolarkodiak wrote:

Shadelkan wrote:Plasma Cannon Armored Sentinels.

Doesn't seem like the most effective use of 75 points, but time and again, plenty of opponents have gotten frustrated at them sniping at their high value squads of MEQ/Monstrous Creatures/2+ Sv troops.
They're easily ignored, and thus don't get shot at; but even if they are shot at, they end up soaking up fire my chimeras would get. Also, let me tell you, seeing a squad of anything without a Power Fist get tied up by one is hilarious.

Once, I charged a squad of Chaos Marines, killed 1, won combat, and when they failed their Ld and Initiative tests, wiped them out. Rare, but the look on your opponents face is worth the 75 points.

Also Hellhounds. These guys quite literally wreak vehicles with a Multi-Melta on their hull.
While it doesn't always hit, its still very amusing to catch a tank in range, hit, and cause some damage.

sentinels never get love but i love the ish out of em. armored sentinel? hell yeah, ever see a unit of 30 boys get stuck in place for 3+ turns? every time i see my opponents army, i pick out the unit that cant hurt them. best thing is you are NOT locked in combat and can walk away any time you want to blow their heads off. also had one with a hunter killer missile take out a battle wagon turn 1 the other day in the same game, kept his nobs waaaay in the back.

if you take scout sents, you can come in outflank on side armor, scout move into better positions and not worry about sitting in cover.

not very many people use these guys which is good, it always seems like my sentinels come in and everyone forgets the rest of my army and just lights them up. i dont know what it is but its hilarious to see opponents be like "oh ish, sentinels! take em out" on a 55+ pt unit lol.

Setinels are walkers. You do get locked in combat.

Next time I play a horde player, I'm going to bring out 2 squads of minned out Scouts and a Libby. I'm then going to bring along 3 Furiosos with Blood Talons.

Scratch the scouts, take 25 DC. Then I get 8 sets of Blood Talons.

This one time, I used Razorbacks to advance my guys to the enemy. It was a wondrous sight

Ran wrote:This one time, I used Razorbacks to advance my guys to the enemy. It was a wondrous sight

I admit, I chuckled.

Flipping over the table. Gets me kicked out, but man, I totally win everytime! (JK)

The most unorthodox thing a lot of people scratch their heads at is me intentionally charging my Horror squads into combat sometimes. That 4++ can really lock down opponents!

Oh! Oh!

I must be the only Guard player on this Earth to use Flamer Vets (and to an extend Flamer Sentinels).

I've forced more scoring units off objectives with Flamer Vets than just wailing on them with blast weapons and melta fire...

It works more candidly against Space Marines than I could've imagined...

I once did a horde Fire Warrior (EMp grenades and Carbines for everyone) army, supported with Pathfinders and Sniper Teams. It was suprisingly effective !

I've also taken a BA army with Tactical marines running about in Rhinos. Good fun was dat.

Instead of scooting back and shooting, I went balls to the wall into 45 TH/SS assault terminators.

3 devastator squads of 5, 2 PCs and 2 HBs. 2 scout squads with rifles and a ML.

This worked extremely well against my enemy with 6 tac squads and 6 razorbacks....
Glanced my sniper rifles with triple 6s! (one to glance with,another d3 for the rending,and another to immobilize)
same with HBs glancing those tanks and such hehe.

Once I used an empty chimera to block off a landraider filled with terminators. The look on my opponent's face was priceless, because he immediately realized he lost the game just now. The terminators disembarked and ripped up the chimera but it was too late to claim a critical objective. He lost the game.

Weirdboy Warphead in a unit of FlashGits!
Fast becoming my favourite unit of all time. It's dangerous for 2 reasons:
1). My opponent never knows what it'll do next.
2). Neither do I.

War Walkers charging into marines. Yeah, they can be hurt, but they get 3 S6 attacks each on the charge, and marines need 6s then 4s with a single attack, or 3s and then 6s with others, so it often balances out and you manage to lock the unit down, especially if it's just eaten a crapton of S6 shooting from them and isn't at full fighting capacity.

I guarantee it'll be the last time they decide against putting a powerfist in their squads, but even then I can just charge the squad without it if they combat squad.

Tank Shocking can also be pretty effective, as can ramming (unless you're me, when I roll a 6 to penetrate and a 1-2 to shake/stun and then the return attack against my Wave Serpent is a 2 to glance and a 6 to immobilise, wrecking it since it had to move flat out for the S10 hit, or a 4+4, 4+5, 4+6, 5+5, 5+6, 6+6 to Immobilise/Wreck/Blow Up my Holofielded Prism/Warp Hunter).

I've also charged with Eldrad to great effect, and he took down two Wolf Lords by himself in a single game, each in the first round of their respective combats, and a Callidus Assassin and a GK Dreadnought in another. People don't realise just how effective he can be in assaults, especially when Fortuned; hitting most things on 3s and wounding them on 2s whilst ignoring saves at I5 can be quite deadly, and he also has his Witchblade for when a Dreadnought comes along; if they survive to attack hit back, they need to break through a re-rollable 3+ save, plus people expect him to be T3, when he's actually T4.