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Just as the topic implies which approach do you generally take? In kill point missions do you feel going first is an advantage? If you have troops in skimmers or bike troops is going second preferable? How often do you alpha strike with a 6ed list? I have seen this topic mentioned many times in batreps but never seen a general discussion of the pros and cons of each choice. I'm curious how other players view this as it often lends a real advantage to your chances of winning.

Depends on the mission and the opposing army. Generally it's better to go second in objective missions, but if the other guy has strong alpha strike potential you may want to go first. Night fight is also a factor. If the opposing army's alpha strike is weakened by night fight then it might be ok to go second.

At the NOVA open over 80% of the games were won by the player going second. That may be case partly because many of the games were ending because of time and the player going second was able to capitalize on it.

 Arschbombe wrote:
Depends on the mission and the opposing army. Generally it's better to go second in objective missions, but if the other guy has strong alpha strike potential you may want to go first. Night fight is also a factor. If the opposing army's alpha strike is weakened by night fight then it might be ok to go second.

At the NOVA open over 80% of the games were won by the player going second. That may be case partly because many of the games were ending because of time and the player going second was able to capitalize on it.

Is that part true about NOVA? I play Tyranids and a minimalistic BA list competitively (mephiston, sternguard, DC, DC Dread, Stormraven, etc) and I always try to go first. With Tyranids I want a chance to get my psychic powers up and with the second I rely on grabbing first blood as I don't have any scoring models. If people at NOVA were winning because they went second, I will say this:

If someone is able to move over to an objective on the last turn and score it before time is called, it is because you've focussed too much on shooting and not enough on close combat and assault. If you've bought in to the idea that 6th is all about shooting... think again. The reason I do so well with my Tyranids is because my opponent can't shoot me down quick enough and I'm able to push them back off the objectives with my waves of bodies.

Warhammer is like a football team. If you build a team of quarterbacks and wide receivers, you're going to get run over. You need linemen and linebackers to either penetrate the defense or hold opponent's off you long enough to score. Everyone seemingly brought Tau with Eldar jetbike allies so I'm not surprised that whoever went second one. However, I do not believe opting to go second is a good strategy in normal play.

I noticed that the player going second in a lot of games has won as well. And night fighting certainly plays a roll in this. Of course using bikes and skimmers is always a risk. you are betting on when the game ends at times. If my oppponent is playing a daemon list with grimoire I might want to go first ... nice to take a troop down before its up ( I have an orbital bombardment waiting for those hounds and a pod waiting for Fatey). But generally, I like to go second as most missions I play are objective based.

Hi,

My answer related to my army:

I choose to go first when available. My Warlord has the fixed Master of Deception trait, and I usually roll 2-3 Infiltrating units so that means I am okay with putting max Rhinos within 18" of my opponents to make up for my Troops' Slow and Purposeful rule. Oddly enough, if my opponent seizes the initiative, I am more than happy to have Wrecked Rhinos because it means my guys can still shoot/move normally since they're Fearless.. But I prefer to have first turn for a nice solid reposition or Rapid Fire. I could not get a Rapid Fire if I infiltrated a unit on foot within 18" unless my opponent moved closer to me.

I have not rolled a Kill Point mission in months since I have been playing my recent army lists, so I can't really comment. I suspect that going second and Outflanking as many of my 4 Rhinos as possible will preserve some First Blood issues, because what I always have on the board is durable and relatively safe from Alpha Strike (barring IG opponents, which I dont have).

I have 9 Screamers and if I go first, they can get their nice Turboboost. If one of my two Level 4 psykers has Invisibility (incredibly likely), they will have a 2+ cover save and will soak up lots of enemy fire, thus being more durable in the opponent's first turn. If I go second and they have drop pods, I will lose some Screamers and other models because I do *not* believe in Deep Striking a fast Daemon unit like that. Also, Deep Striking any Daemon unit means that my opponent has more Thousand Sons units to shoot at with his entire army. Very bad for me.

I can't really Alpha Strike with my list. It is a very psychic dependent, reactive, elite endurance-based infantry force.

I will say that generally if my opponent is super-light on the shooting, I will Outflank/Deep Strike as many units as possibile (except the screamers, which are wasted if they don't use their Turbo Boost a lot because you're paying points for a fast unit with 2 Wounds each).

As an additional note, I'd say that whenever I get first turn I am able to cause the most critical damage to an opponent throughout a game in later turns, though it might not have an impact on whether I win/lose. I have won many games lately after going 2nd. Hm.

Basically, if you have the ranged tactics to possibly hurt your opponent, go first..

I regularly play Tau for instance... Letting those little buggers go first is a bloody pain in the butt... So now I play with Decimators and pie plate them all the time with the str 10 AP 1 conversion beam Going first became 100x better for me lol

Its quite a toss up for me really since i run a pod/gun list. Going first gaurantees me first blood, but going 2nd helps me decide which positions will give me greater damage for my dropping units.

Thatguyoverthere11 wrote:

Is that part true about NOVA? I play Tyranids and a minimalistic BA list competitively (mephiston, sternguard, DC, DC Dread, Stormraven, etc) and I always try to go first. With Tyranids I want a chance to get my psychic powers up and with the second I rely on grabbing first blood as I don't have any scoring models. If people at NOVA were winning because they went second, I will say this:

Yes, it's true. But I don't know how applicable it is to the wider, more casual 40k gameplay since time was an issue at the NOVA. The game takes longer to play now with all the extra rolling at the beginning for psychic powers, warlord traits etc and during the game things take longer with look out sir, units moving in multiple phases and all the pre-measuring.

In 5th with BA I would always prefer to go second. Once I started playing Eldar I needed to go first to get fortune up and to capitalize on Eldrad's divination rule allowing units to redeploy. Now that I don't have fortune much of the time, the need to always go first isn't really there. It's now more situational. I run wave serpents now and I need first turn to get holo-fields to work by moving first, but if it's night fight or hammer and anvil deployment then I can afford to go second.

the topic came about from this ...

http://www.thedarkcity.net/t6960p160-a-tdc-blog-tactics-unit-analysis-batreps-observations

last threads on page nine. It is hard to come to a consensus

It really depends on your army, your opponents, army, the mission whether objective based or not, and the game formate ie tournament with fixed turns, time limit, etc.

In objective based missions some armies have a huge advantage, ie Night Scythe Crons, the best objective grabber in the game. Simply deposit troops where you need them. Eldar jetbikes fall into this category as well. Armies with an ability to grab an objective of their choosing have a huge advantage of going second in an objective based mission. A full Pod flyer army loves going second, denying your opponent one turn of shooting and delivering an alpha strike is huge.

Obviously, going first is more advantageous in a KP mission, or if your army relies on alpha striking your opponent or psychic powers. FMC Spam wants to go first, getting air born, Iron Arm and Endurance up are paramount.

The desire to go first is entirely situational, but with certainty going second with the right armies in competitive play is borderline unfair due to fixed game lengths and/or time limits.

A fragile army like DE also wants to go first against an equally mobile army. It needs to try and eliminate some of the shootier threats

I almost always want to go first with my White Scars, going second denies me my jink save in the first turn. I never really understood that - apparently my entire army comes to a halt just as the enemy comes into range, before moving again...

For Chaos first is also better - I always have some close combat units, and the less fire they take getting to the enemy the better.

In a tournament I want to go second because typically you know exactly when the game is going to end and so can play accordingly. Also because of objectives. It is really what makes lists like the screamer star work. They know when it is going to be the last turn and so may contest a lot of objectives at the last minute.

Basically unless it is solely kill points I am really not wanting to go first.

Even then because of knowing when the game is going to end I can take a lot more risks to try and take out units if I go second or I can put them in a bad position because I know they are not going to get shot.

First blood is pretty insignificant in my mind.

If you are going to win, it doesnt matter
If you are going to lose, it doesnt matter
If you got warlord/linebreaker and they dont it doesnt matter
It only matters as a tie breaker. Not a biggie IMO

A friend said it best. Winning is like kissing a girl, losing is not getting to kiss anyone, and a tie is like kissing a girl, but that girl is your sister.

This debate always reminds me of this scene:




I always try to go first, because of first blood. Also, I've been playing an alpha-strike army lately.

As has been said, depends on a lot of factors: what army I'm playing, what I'm playing against, and what the mission is.

That being said, generally I prefer to go second.

- allows you to deploy to best counter the opposing army's setup
- any reserves you have can counter your opponent's (this is particularly important when playing with and against flyers)
- you generally have the last word in objective games