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What percentage of points in your army do you consider purely expendable? To be uses for suicide attacks, backfield distractions, fire magnates and other less than MVP roles.

Edit: A lot of these responses reminded my of a line from the Hobbit "What does it mean by "lots" and "none at all"..."

Allow me to rephrase the question. I know that in any given game any unit can be sacrificed to accomplish a goal. But how many points (as a percentage of your army) do you spend on units that you plan on being neutralized or dead very early on in the game.

Think Paratroopers as a real world equivalent. These are units that after initial deployment takes place they will either accomplish their set goal or they won't, but redeployment or new strategies or objectives as more or less out of the question.

I've found as an IG player 80% of my entire army is expendable...

However I have found that planning to use 20% of my army as a backfield distraction can be worth a lot. It's hard to ignore a Manticore and a Harker vet squad on an objective.

Everything but the last single model (to avoid automatically losing with no models on the table) is expendable if the results of expending it are enough to justify the loss.

Probably 50% of my Black Legion list is expendable.

In a typical 2,000 point game, I lose about 25% of the army by turn 3, another 25% by turn 5. Anything beyond than that and it's unlikely I will win. Rhinos don't count towards that total.

I don't take cultists, CSMs, or other auto-expendable units. Bikers, Chosen, Noise Marines, Heldrakes, Obliterators and Laspreds are my main units. Sometimes I take Plague Marines, Raptors, Possessed, Spawn, Terminators, or Berzerkers. I try to let the later go before the former.

Ditto peregrine. There is no such thing as a non expendable unit. If you can win the game by sacrificing all but one model then do so.

While the "only the last model REALLY counts" is true, what I think he means are units you dont expect to survive from the firstplace, and really count them as "already dead" when thnking your stratagy.

deep-strike melta teams often fall there.




So how much of an army is THAT expendable? usually about 50% of it is either that suicidal or built as a fire magnet on my lists.

I'm happy for almost all my army to be lost, my opponents vary so much that I can't stick to one plan. I'm prepared to lose any of my units as long as my other units can be used optimally to carve out a win.

No plan survives first contact with the enemy.

Personally I play my Black Legion army quite aggressively (possibly because I used to play a green tide ork list) and about the only unit I'll hesitate to throw into the enemy's guns is my 500 odd point Abaddon/WS5 Tzeentch terminator unit. Unless I have to. Because jesus crap they can suck up the pain. It doesn't matter how many of your side dies, as long as more of their side dies.

I consider my whole army expendable, if sacrificing something means something else can cut a bloody path its what il do.

 Peregrine wrote:
Everything but the last single model (to avoid automatically losing with no models on the table) is expendable if the results of expending it are enough to justify the loss.

This. I always count on all my gants to die, but if I can secure the win by throwing 2 Carnifexes and a Hive Tyrant suicidally at a unit, I will.

Everything and nothing is expendable. Even when I field a drop pod of sternguard, I try to do a flank drop to keep them alive the whole game. But if there is something nasty in a center that needs a suicide drop, they will step up to the plate and lay down their lives to get the job done.

The only thing not really expendable in the 5 man sniper squad. They have one job: live until the end of the game camping an objective. I guess the same could be said about my tactical squads. Their primary role is to live to claim objectives.

With that mindset, all non-troops are expendable. They are just support units, who's job is to make sure the troops reach their objectives. In a 1,500 point list, I'll run a 5 man scout and two full tac squads, which clock in at about 500 points. So about 2/3s of my army consists of expendable units. Generally no more then a third of my army is what is classically considered suicide units (drop pods, melta speeders, etc.) the rest is firing line support or troubleshooters.

By all means, let the OP talk for himself, but my interpretation of what he means by expendable is that you have some sort of strategy with your army, some sort of battle plan, and certain units in your army are key to that battle plan, while others are not.

Having units in your army that are not needed for the battle plan either means: a you planned poorly or b you have tarpit units, which now makes them a part of your battle plan

As a Thousand Sons player, I have no cannon fodder. I just throw as many scary things at the opponent as possible and hope he doesnt shoot my point capping blue boys. There is no cannon fodder in the CSM that is an immediate threat besides spawn, but I dont like them.

My armies:

Tyranids 90%
Eldar 20%
Pure GK 0%


My bugs an win almost any objective game with severe losses.

My Eldar expect to lose Aspect squads after they've delivered their fatal blow.

Every single Grey Knight I lose is a major loss to the game and strategy.

I find that a wall of cultists fares quite nicely... Supported by a wall of havocs

A lot of these responses reminded my of a line from the Hobbit "What does it mean by "lots" and "none at all"..."

Allow me to rephrase the question. I know that in any given game any unit can be sacrificed to accomplish a goal. But how many points (as a percentage of your army) do you spend on units that you plan them on being neutralized or dead very early on in the game.

Think Paratroopers as a real world equivalent. These are units that after initial deployment takes place they will either accomplish their set goal or they won't but redeployment or new strategies or objective as more or less out of the question.


For example I play Tyranids and I the past I have run Genestealers in large units to insure they can make contact. But I am toying with the idea of breaking them up in to a lot of small units and infiltrating them in to ambush positions all around the table to become area denial units. So in essence these units can't move without exposing themselves to fire and they are small enough that they won't be able to destroy most units but they will give any unit a bloody nose that tries to move past them.

But the questions is how many to field in this way? How many points do I spend on units that that will essentially be on autopilot for the entire game?

 Peregrine wrote:
Everything but the last single model (to avoid automatically losing with no models on the table) is expendable if the results of expending it are enough to justify the loss.

This. Anything goes if it brings victory. The last game I played I won because of secondary objectives, while my lone surviving Sergeant stared down a Stompa 3" away.

Zookie wrote:
Allow me to rephrase the question. I know that in any given game any unit can be sacrificed to accomplish a goal. But how many points (as a percentage of your army) do you spend on units that you plan them on being neutralized or dead very early on in the game.

I think this can only be answered on a game by game basis.

If I'm facing Tau, my termagants are precious....Clan Raukaan, now they're giant paperweight squads that keep the machines from moving.

Another Black Legion player here, in terms of numbers probably over half of my models are expendable - stuff that doesn't score, and cultists. Many cultitsts. Points is a different story as usually 50% of the models represent 10% of the total points. Unlike my fellow Dark Lord techsoldaten, I utilise cultists in every single game I play. They're easily one of my favourite units in the Codex.

Zookie wrote:

But the questions is how many to field in this way? How many points do I spend on units that that will essentially be on autopilot for the entire game?

I think this is the wrong way to look at it; I never build an army thinking "I better include X units that are used this way." I take particular units based on my needs, so for my eldar if I need or want some deep strike surgical AT, I bring warp spiders. If I need horde control or a deep strike distraction, I take swooping hawks.

To determine the unit composition, I look at the minimum threshold to make the unit effective. 5 naked warp spiders can get the job done 99% of the time, so I don't spring on upgrades. Hawks get access to the large blast at 6 bodies, so I always add one. I may also add an exarch with a sunrifle to increase the accuracy of the blast, add AP3 and blinding potential.

Take these units to fill specific roles in the army, and build them such knowing they will probably die. However, they may actually get a chance to do something, so invest enough points where they can perform as needed and actually be threatening. If you are using a fire magnet, it has to be scary enough to actually be worth shooting at, and last long enough to absorb more than a handful of lasguns.

Everything, unless you're running a decent Deathstar. If it isn't expendable then the structural integrity of your list will be easily weakened by its loss, so I almost always take doubles, triples or occasionally quadruples of units.

agree this is a game so if one unit wins you the game wail the other ones are used for fodder who cares, there fellow models will not miss them

all of it.

No unit is un-expendable, if it gets you the win in doing so.

Everything besides troops is automatically expendable. And then, all troops are expendable if the situation calls for it.

rigeld2 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Everything but the last single model (to avoid automatically losing with no models on the table) is expendable if the results of expending it are enough to justify the loss.

This. I always count on all my gants to die, but if I can secure the win by throwing 2 Carnifexes and a Hive Tyrant suicidally at a unit, I will.

There is literally no problem that can't be solved by just throwing more gants at it. I mean they're just Gants.

I'm in the camp of "all units should be considered expendable" if you're building redundancy into your list then it shouldn't hinder your battle plan all that much. The only exception would be your warlord, who should be played somewhat wisely.


Also, death stars. I don't understand putting that many points into a single unit. It's not my cup of tea.

That's a difficult question. To be honest by this point I look at pretty much my entire army as a giant bullet/assault sponge to stop the enemy from getting to my Ethereal and my riptide... which probably isn't the best way to do it. Even worse is the fact that by this point I feel like my pathfinders are the most expendable part of my army. Markerlights are supposed to be awesome, but given how much my opponents hate them, I pretty much accept the fact i will probably only get to fire them once and just look at it as shots they could be spending removing my actual guns.

I play foot imperial guard and i do everything possible to keep them alive. I hate seeing my models die (not in a power gamer way) and will always try keep them alive.

Playing GK... Nothing is expendable. Everything In my list is of importance as they all come to support one another...The only time you really have expendable units are when you have power house armies built entirely on one unit. In my army list at least... there is no room for.... expendable.

Smart players will try to ignore the suicide units in order to take care of the real threat. As an ork player the only unit that I can bring that is important for me to win a game is boyz. Really all troops. Anything else is just a distraction to try to keep attention away from my troops. That is why I like to bring all of my troops options. Grots are especially good at pretending to be worthless. My hope is that my opponent will shoot at any thing besides troops which win games.

For the express purpose of dying? None. I run mech guard and each loss is a drop in firepower. I also dont expect anyone to die as a matter of course. However, everyone is expendable if it means victory. I spend the lives of my men but I dont waste them.

So, I dont really have a quota for suicide units.