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Hi guys, I decided to post this after playing my 1500 point Blood Angel army with a bit of a twist, instead of getting into close combat as quickly as possible, as most Blood Angels Should, I hung back for 3 turns shooting before getting into close combat. This failed badly as my opponent was a heavy SoB Army that tore up my Marines with Heavy Bolter Fire before I got into Assault Range. but before finishing the match, Mephiston obliterated up 4 Squads, and a Heavy weapon Tactical Squad took down 2 squads before dying, basically, If I had employed the basic Blood Angel tactic of "I know they outnumber us 80 to 1 , but were Insane, so charge my Bloodthirsty Brothers!" I would have tabled him turn 5.

After that rather long ramble, I come to my question ; Have you ever Experimented with your Army, making them do something they are not usually supposed to do? And how did the tactic work out on the Battlefield? Did your eccentricity pay off, bringing you victory? Or did the tactic fall flat on its face, bringing you an embarrassing loss?

A 4000pt battle with my guard against necrons. We had a centre killzone on the board where the tree line made a corridor about 9'' wide and about 18'' long. My idea was to concentrate fire on it and make their numbers count for nothing. Unfortunatly this didn't work out too well because they were coming through this gap too fast. My reaction was that I needed to hold them up for another turn or two. CHARGE!!!! over 100 guard charged at the necron advance. This was before I was sold on the idea of powerblobs and the infantry had some valuable heavy weapons. I needed to buy time for my tanks to clear up the larger threats. Slowly but surely I watched my numbers dwindled and eventually the necrons broke through. The tanks were now able to concentrate fire on the necron infantry but alas, it wasn't enough. They went from tank to tank and I watched my once mighty force crumble....

As a Blood Angels player I take offence to that

Shooty foot army? Pfft... well we do got all the tools for it. Oh I almost forgot, our devastators are cheaper then the other marine codexes, I always run 3 devastators and 2 RAS (all SG, Stern, DC-bolters, attack bikes etc w/e tickles my fancy)

I can understand trying to out shoot a army with all jumppacks, but BA is definitely made to shoot, we actually do it better then other armies too

Your first mistake was sitting back shooting at SoB. Get those girls in combat as fast as possible. They suck in hand to hand. Against another army, that tactic may have been valuable but against SoB you need to stick to your forte.

i tend to run a shooty chaos force with lots of noise marines its rather good against other elite armys like SM GK Eldar etc and can even put some serious hurt on hordes once their within 24in they take 54 str4 ap5 shots as well as 2 str8 ap3 blasts and when they are within charge range they take 4 str5 ap3 templates on overwatch aswell as the 54 shots i also have a unit of havocs and a dakka pred and an aegis line with a sorceror with divination

I don't think I've ever seen an "unorthodox" tactic that actually worked.

I think the trick is odd lists.
To a point every force has a strength and weakness. Most have a small number ofunits to make up for their lacking.
Kroot for tau and the like.

Maximizing as much as you can that's shooting in a combat style army can be a really odd force to fight
It works really well with nids. If you think of them like I do, as a combat nightmare with a few guns for back up.

It terms of sitting back. Fabian wars work well against certain armies.

Elite GK lists in particular, really need you to engage them. You can refuse them battle and then rush onto objectives.

Late in 5th edition, I did something similar - but as Doner mentions, it was in the list. I ran a Tyranid army with nothing but Devilgants and Hive Guard at 700 points(Ihad a Prime too to keep it legal). Both the Eldar and the Chaos marines I played that night realized too late that they were actually outgunned, and should have been charging ME from the beginning instead of hanging back. I moved forward to 18 inch range, and then walked backwards and tabled everything once they realized they needed to come to me!

Today, I played a 1500 match with my CSM vs tyranids. I lost 9-5 on kp mission ( I think it's the 2nd ).
Apart from my list wasn't familiar with anything competitive, I tried to go into close combat as much as possible.
( don't ask why I did it vs nods please ). Haha
In otherworlds i ve been bored of playing the same lists with my chaos.
I used today for he first time on 6th raptors and a bike squad.
They got chopped by ymgarl and trogon round 3.

I was playing Necrons vs Necrons and i thought to use Imotekh ability to mark a target for the Flayed Ones, and to use a big group of flayed ones to try to melle my enemy. I charged his destroyer lord and praetorians, they were horrible in the combat and only won by sheer numbers and dumb luck.

But i also have a good melee experiance with Necrons.

I was playing against my friend using GK. I deepstruck in my deathmarks and targeted some unit i believe it was just a normal grey knight (or as normal as a gk unit can be) unit I destroyed them with some great fire but then my enemy assulted my deathmarks with another unit of grey knights. My deathmarks held their ground for three turns and finally won the combat for me. They were amazing and I couldn;t believe they didn't die right away.

Those are my weird stories.

Weirdest tactic i have ever used was in 5th ed.
Me and my friend were playing with the units out of AoBR, me playing SM and him orcs.
Sense i had nothing to use as cover, to balance out the game i just charged and used m bolt pistol. It ended up in a one on one duel between a squad Sergent and the Warboss.
Somehow the Sergent won.

Back when I played vanilla marines, I would run a pretty balanced force (tac squads, some predators, nothing odd or notable. Made a maximum dreadnought list one, and tabled the most experienced member of our group (Eldar). He had no clue what hit him.


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Also, used tank shock to cause a squad to retreat into a line of tac marines, wiping the squad (big IG blob).

Back when I played Nilla Marines, I brought a large squad of Legion of the Damned against a 2500pnt Ork list complete with Ghazzy the Green. I Deep Striked the unit, hoping to use it as a speed bump on Ghazzy's way. It worked... somewhat. A unit that was nearly 350pnt just got chewed up in 2 turns of combat. T.T

I remember a game that featured a wooded hill midfield (5th, my SW vs IG).

One objective on either side, one on my left flank of the hill and one on the hill. I put my longfangs in a building covering the hill and his objectives, and all my GH behind the hill in rhino's.
His first turn, his entire army blasted the only target presented- the longfangs. 5 marines do not last long vs an IG gunline!
I responded by dropping my dreads on his bassy and assaultcannoning it- i blew the cannon off and stunned it. My GH shuffled their rhino's to touch the hill.
He called me a mook and blew my dreads apart again with his whole gunline.
I responded by shuffling my rhinos and doing a donut with one.
He looked at me funny, looked at the board, and went "oh."

It's now his 3rd turn. He is still in his deployment.
I am sitting in prime position to scoot onto my objective behind the hill, the one to the side of the hill and the one on the hill. He hadn't even stepped up to his home objective behind the hill.
His mainly foot guard had to step up into a wooded hill to prevent me from winning the game. my rhino's were so well hidden behind this hill that his russ's would have to move into melta range to actually target me, or sit back and target me once i got on the hill/the flank
So his blob of guardsmen had to step up into the woods to be ambushed by 30 GH. Would you as a guardsmen want to walk into the bushes that's hiding 30 GH? I wouldn't want to be that guardsmen!
Of course he stepped up, and kept his russes hoping to shoot me as i stepped up onto the hill. Of course i made cover saves like a boss/he scattered almost onto himself with the russ. The lasguns did a decent amount of work on them, but really after being rapid fired by 30 marines he needed those russes to perform well to even the odds in his favour.

My unusual tactic here was not rushing with my rhino rush, but waiting patiently instead does that count? It's hard to use "unusual" or "unorthodox" tactics. I think the only way to really get that going is to have 2 players from very different meta's.

To be fully honest, the most success I've seen from "unorthadox use of units" has been using units in an inefficient role to take advantage of the fact that the enemy is worse in that role that you are. I've seen Devastators run instead of snap firing to get themselves into cover so they could hopefully assault a fire warrior squad the next turn. I've also seen Slugga Boyz "tactically retreat" behind area terrain so that another Ork Squad could get another turn of shooting in before the Hormogaunts got into combat. With some armies, particularly mixed arms armies and take all comers lists, it isn't always about playing to your strengths but to your opponents weaknesses.

Although moving beyond that, I have seen a Biker army maneuver themselves in such a way that all of the Fliers from a Necron Army were forced off the table, and then use the next turn to table the remaining crons. That was entertaining.

RegalPhantom wrote:
To be fully honest, the most success I've seen from "unorthadox use of units" has been using units in an inefficient role to take advantage of the fact that the enemy is worse in that role that you are. I've seen Devastators run instead of snap firing to get themselves into cover so they could hopefully assault a fire warrior squad the next turn. I've also seen Slugga Boyz "tactically retreat" behind area terrain so that another Ork Squad could get another turn of shooting in before the Hormogaunts got into combat. With some armies, particularly mixed arms armies and take all comers lists, it isn't always about playing to your strengths but to your opponents weaknesses.

Although moving beyond that, I have seen a Biker army maneuver themselves in such a way that all of the Fliers from a Necron Army were forced off the table, and then use the next turn to table the remaining crons. That was entertaining.

O.O
Outmaneuver a Necron flier? Do tell sir!