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There are a few types of list in 40k and the two I'd like to discuss today are "Hammer" lists, lists that rely on large numbers of models to hammer your opponent into the ground, and "Scalpel" lists, lists that use a few high powered units to inflict damage to the key enemy units. This weekend doing some tourney testing I faced my Scalpel army against a modified Hammer list from Dakka (I want to talk tactics so I'm going to leave out the actual armies involved) and was completely overwhelmed. I know that I made a grave tactical error during deployment, I put my line breaking units into Reserve and deployed along a wide front leaving my smaller units to be overwhelmed by large squads of enemy foot troops. Looking back on the game even if I hadn't made those two crucial errors it would still be an uphill fight, my army can put out a maximum of 101 shots plus 6 Blast templates and that requires every model to be in ideal range. I did find a lack of anti-horde weapons in my army, but I'm finding it difficult to sacrifice the range and power of AT to include the anti-horde weaponry.

Even if we played the game again with the same lists and I didn't muck about on the deployment I'm still not certain I could win the fight. The way I see it I should have deployed my army in a tight knot as a refused flank and attempted to roll up my opponents line from one side. This takes advantage of the generally slow movement of a Hammer list, but as always is horribly dependent on not being tar-pitted or having transports shot out from under my troops.

So Dakka my question to you is this: If you play a Scalpel army how do you deal when presented with 90+ enemy models on the field? If you play a Hammer army what do you fear from an opponent running a Scalpel? Can the Scalpel beat the Hammer without running a list devoted to anti-horde or should I expect to lose these games and try to scrape as many VP/BP from the match as possible?

That's a lot of jargon.

So you are asking whether a shooting list can beat a horde list without tailoring for the job?

My basic response to this is not to focus your army so much. Make a TAC (Take all comers) list that is capable of handling multiple types of armies so that you reduce the amount of bad match ups you get.

 pretre wrote:
That's a lot of jargon.
So you are asking whether a shooting list can beat a horde list without tailoring for the job?
My basic response to this is not to focus your army so much. Make a TAC (Take all comers) list that is capable of handling multiple types of armies so that you reduce the amount of bad match ups you get.

All I'm asking is can a list that relies on a few "hard" units beat a list that relies on overwhelming you with bodies. It doesn't matter if the list is shooty, assaulty, or a combination. The list I ran is a TAC list, but I really don't care what you think of my list, I want to know what tactics people use. The jargon is an attempt to make this understandable to as many Dakkanauts as possible since we are a worldwide forum and everyone uses different terms for things.

To make this more understandable I guess: My current tactic against a list that outnumbers me is to deploy in a tight knot of units and rely on my mobility to punch a hole through the opponents line and disrupt his advance. The downside of mobility is fragility so the tactic is very reliant on my dice rolls going in my favor.

Hammer players please feel free to chime in with things like "this small DE list beat me by..." or "I had a close call because my opponent did __________ with his SM army"

Tight knots work fine until you run into large blast templates.

If the horde list is assault, you have a lot more options than against a horde that's shooting, imo. That's why its important to know.

Not all hordes have the same rules, either. Many have access to fearless, which limits your options as well. Overall, I'd say 6th is a good edition for hordes.

For hammer lists you have to remember with a large number of units you have to spread over the board. When you spread over the board so much you only have a couple hundred points covering a corner of a table(foot guard for example) and if your facing a marine army that could drop almost double the amount of that corner of guard in one pod it really hurts the guard because they cant react properly. With hammer list Ive found the key is to find where their line or force is weak. Then attack it because once you break that weak spot you could probably blow through the rest throwing the rest of the army off.

With scalpel list Ive found that its best to just focus on the biggest threat and focus on it until its dead, find new target and repeat. I play space wolves as allies for my guard to aggressively take out key vehicles or units my opponent has and my opponent would deal damage to my hunter squad thinking he would be fine but that squad then went back and chewed up more units. Against lists like that just take out the biggest threat to you and focus, then repeat as mentioned.

Well by "hammer" you seem to mean "horde" armies. You also seem to be indicating a "horde" that cannot castle into a corner around their artillery (i.e. IG). So the normal tactic that I have seen work both for and against me (I play IG, DA, and Eldar) is to hit 1/4 to 1/2 of the enemies force with ~100% of your list. This tactic works as the "force concentration" (i.e. the density of your fire power at any given region of the board) is much higher in a "scalpel" army than a "hammer" army. You do however need both reliable and fast mobility to outmaneouver your opponent or a way to force the opponent to go to where you want them.

The specifics of the two lists in question are important in the remainder of any such tactical discussion as the tactics a drop pod scapel army us is totally different than those used by a rhino army or an aircav army. They are totally different types of mobility and fight at totally different distances and with different survivability.

The "Hammer" type force is important too as many people use this to describe a more "anvil" type force and there are "Hammer" lists which are AV14 and there are hordes. Then there are standoff hordes and advancing hordes. The addition of highly mobile elements also changes things.

ansacs - this is what I was hoping for, I'm not the only one using "force concentration" as you put it. I used the term Hammer rather than horde because horde, for me, immediately puts Orks and 'Nids in my head and nothing else. While they are the most common Hammers there are viable Hammer lists for other armies, the GK/IG 24" list that slowly advances, the DA Banner o' Doom list with as many bolters as you can squeeze around the standard, DE Beastpack lists, IG footslogger lists, etc. I think what separates Hammer from Anvil is the expected battle plan and to a lesser extent the armies footprint. IG castled around artillery would be an Anvil, the player expects you to break your army against his. On the other hand an IG list with a ridiculous amount of crunchies that wants to lasgun you to death would be a Hammer. A Hammer list can't effectively castle because they occupy too much of the table.

Since you bring up three types of Scalpels what would you do in each case? If you feel more comfortable with context let's say the Hammer is an Ork mob composed mainly of Shoota Boyz and Slugga Boyz and are deployed in such a way that you could not place a drop pod behind their lines without risking it going off table.

Okay, I understand your wor choice better now however do note the DE beast pack is usually a deathstar list and the DA is actually a scapel army and dies like a scapel army when hit by a hammer head on.

For the proposed situation that is a horde army without high mibile elements but probably with a back field shooty element.

I would start by trying to go second. Leave half your pods empty and on the board in cover 30+ inches away from his line. Castling also helps but make sure the line is staggered so that a charge gets only 1 unit if it is ~20 inches across.

Usually you should collapse your front line in front of the enemy into your fortress. Your on board elements will take a beating but they will have to move up to engage you. Bottom turn 1 you drop 1.5 times the necessary fire power to wipe their back elements and hold the objective (if they actually were foolish enough to leave one here) the remaining force drops on the rear of the force if possible (should be with them moving up) on the saw side as your "fortress". Be sure to combat squad your force and place the drop pod to block charges (unless you have flamers then drop them to optimize flamers). this should leave the enemy without a backfield elements but possibly severly outnumbering you where you didn't drop. You should then feed the horde MSU units while keeping out of charge distance until you can start winning CC reliably. Keep in mind you can "feed" the empty pods to the horde you did not engage by dropping them in the path. Also drop pods stop themselves from scattering into bad situations, are huge, and are your units so cannot go within 1" so they are great for this.

This of course is just a general strategy outline and getting first turn would change my deployment and entire plan. I would then drop my empty pods first in front of the horde so they had to kill them and hope for good reserve rolls. If it goes right the situation should be similar to above.

I also assumed that it was a melee oriented force as even shooter boyz are better at CC than at range. If they are better at shooting than you (ie guard) then use the pods as cover for the no chanrge turn after deep strike then charge away.

Hopefully this is what you are looking for cause there are certain units that change the entire board situation. Doom of Malatai is a biggie.

I'm not so sure about a shooting only army but if you brought just one grape tastic assault unit that could potentially multi assault and either push back (TEQ) or overrun the enemies swarms you should be fine, unless you're playing orks, in that case throw all logic out the window

But while you can shoot once a round there's two turns of CC, so there's a lot more damage capability

Also useful things to take note of: this usually applies more to warhmer than 40k as 40k has more maneuverable units but try to get your hardier elites into CC with hammers and your elites should come out on top while you use the rest of your army to shoot over the CC. You can also use choke points to force your opponent into getting his troops closer together for blast weapons and if you're really desperate you can put an anvil unit to take the charge and then hit with your own hammer consolidating the anvil forward and the hammer back

to abuse the hammer lists weakness you need to create choke points with the terrain to slow the player down, or reduce the amount of the horde you have to fight at once. If you can get them to hit with less than their whole army at once you will be at a better advantage.
You also want to deny the horde cover saves if possible and destroy full units if possible. The other thing to consider is throwing a sacrificial squad into the choke while everyone else backs up to get an extra turn of shooting, or a strong counter assault.
Horde armies also hate pie plates in general, and might not have a decent answer for fliers. You might also be able to stall the horde out with tarpits of your own to save your expensive units. If they can't handle armor well and aren't fearless you might be able to tank shock them off the table.