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AbaddonFidelis wrote:tactics 101.
if you have a choice between rapid firing and charging, charging is the right thing to do 95% of the time.....

build your army to be super shooty or super assaulty. If you try to make a generalist list you're going to super lose.

Could not disagree with these points more as they are entirely subjective to your army. For example point 1) If my Grey Hunters rapid fire they get two shots each at a 3+ followed by (usually) a 3 or 4 to wound. They then get charged and have a good chance of having as many attacks when charged as when charging - so this is subjective. A unit of Fire Warriors for example should always rapid fire, as should tac marines facing Orks (example)

The second point you made that I haven't quoted I completely agree with.

Your third point again is wrong IMO however YMMV. Many armies cannot be completely shooty or super assaulty: Vanilla Marines for example or Necrons The best armies I have played against a tournaments have tended to be a lot more genralistic with the shooty elements supporting the assaulty elements and vice versa.

To the OP great thread will make a great article

Many armies cannot be completely shooty or super assaulty: Vanilla Marines for example or Necrons The best armies I have played against a tournaments have tended to be a lot more genralistic with the shooty elements supporting the assaulty elements and vice versa.

QFT

If you are super assaulty, you will lack preparing support fire (i.e.: killing transport vehicles before asaulting whats inside or decimating target units to a number your assaulters can handle)
if you are super shooty you can not intercept or counter enemy assault forces and you will be crushed in close combat.

as an assault army you dont need much firepower, and in a shooty army you dont need many cc units, but it serves you well to have some.

@OP

another great post. I look forward to the defence part.

These would fall under operational arts correct? Either way, great posts! Subbed and faved the page. I love reading this kind of thing for 40k as opposed to 'this list is as good as it gets and nothing can beat it cuz mathammer says so' definitely puts the battles into the generals field so to speak instead of the paper pushers.

I'm really happy to see this thread. A lot of what I hear from people about tactics these days is "Build your list with (blank) units, always do (blank) never consider (blank)" etc etc. It's nice to hear more legitimate tactics that address more than list building and general strategies that work for an average situation.

Moral of the story: good thread

EDIT: Just noticed that the guy above me made basically the exact same points. Well, I guess that just means that it's twice as true.

DeepBeige wrote:
EDIT: Just noticed that the guy above me made basically the exact same points. Well, I guess that just means that it's twice as true.

Well, if nothing else it means I'm not crazy, or at least not crazy by myself. It is nice to share an opinion with a fellow Dakkite every once in awhile.

Tactics 101: Defense

The final part of my posts before merging all the information into an article will about defensive operations and when it would be beneficial to conduct them. Before discussing when it may be a good idea to conduct a defensive operation, I’ll first discuss the purpose and types of defenses.

Defensive operations can be valuable techniques especially if you are looking for some new ways to beat that local power list. I do not promise the tactics can beat any list, just that a new approach may throw a overconfident or over-comfortable player out of their comfort zone. We’ll start with the purpose of defensive operations as they are applicable to 40k.

Purposes of Defensive Operations

Defeating an Attacking Enemy

As I stated earlier, most of what you do in a game of 40k is attack. However, there are those times where the enemy is more aggressive, either by race tendencies or list design, then you are. Times like these are where you may want to play defensively. The most important thing to remember is to transition to attacking operations when the opportunity presents itself. There will be a post on transitions later.

Deter an Attacking Enemy

This is what I like to consider a psych-out tactic. In this tactic, you present the enemy with a defense that they would rather not attack. This is a mental battle rather then a physical one. Accomplishing this will conserve material and position that will make an offensive transition easier.

Gain time

We’ve all heard of those frustrating slow players trying to waste time so that it denies the enemy turns. Instead of slow playing, master tacticians will use defensive operations to deny turns by making them non-productive. Slowing or even better, stopping an enemy attack is the primary goal of this tactic. This may also allow for an offensive shift later in the game.

Economy of Force

This is where commanders places few units in a defensive position that will allow them to control a large area, allowing the rest of the forces to attack freely. This is commonly called camping, but it does have a tactical use.

Protecting Key Terrain/Assets

Using forces to protect terrain or in most cases objectives is a commonly used defensive tactic. A lot of times commanders will place cheap scoring units in terrain to protect it and go to ground to become hard to remove. Protecting assets is a similar idea, but instead of protecting terrain, the command will usually protect other units. This tactic is usually referred to by the term “Bubble Rapping” and is used primarily by Guard and Tau, but can be very effective with other armies as well.

These are some of the purposes of defensive operations, and is by no means exhaustive. Also remember these are purposes of the tactic, not the way to execute them.

Types of defensive operations

There are three different types of defensive operations. They are area defense, mobile defense, and retrograde. Each defense is unique in its own right, but any unit can pull off each defense is some sort of practicality.

Area Defense

This is a defense that denies the enemy terrain instead of destroying the enemy. There is usually some sort of small reserve that can be deployed if needed. The reserve is not given a task, but is given priority to the counter-attack. Usually, the defender has the advantage of terrain and time.

Mobile Defense

A mobile defense is typically force oriented and is given objectives of destroying the enemy. Mobile defense usually uses a fix and flank maneuver with the main effort, the strike force, being the flank.. In order to successfully perform a mobile defense, the defenders must have more mobility than the attackers. The strike force is usually tied to the decisive point.

Retrograde

This is a defense that is rarely used in 40k. It is used in retreat, and it is difficult to disengage the enemy on a table top game. One way that it can be used is in a tactical withdraw situation where you need one unit to relocate back away from the fight. In this situation you can use one unit to cover the retreat of the other by providing supporting fire or assault the pursuing enemy to slow them down.


Defensive operations can be very handy when the situation calls for it. Later posts will deal with transitions which turn a defensive operation into an offensive one and can turn the tide of battle in your favor.

Next post: Defensive situations and Transitions.

Hm, I would disagree about 40k being attack oriented.

You dont have to gain much ground, but you rather capture certain spots on the field or you have a battle around material.
Therefore most of the game is defending.
You deny the enemy kills -> win the material battle
You deny the enemy spots on the field -> win the objective battle

Denying is more important than gaining.

You only need 1 kill, but you have about 10 to 20 units to save. So Saving is more important than killing. (1:0 is better than 3:4)
And you only need one objective, but you must defend 2 to 5, so again the defending part is more important. (again 1:0 is better than 2:3)


Now I am interested in your basic defensive manoeuvres

Tactics 101: Defense Planning and Situations

How do you eat an elephant? The answer is one bite at a time. Defense is structured the same way. The general who tries to eat the whole elephant at once will choke. The commander who tries to engage the entire attacking force will similarly choke, while the commander who takes the force apart piece by piece will not.

Planning the Defense

This is used more in deployment than any other part of the game and it also blurs the line between tactics and strategy. The main reason I am including it is for the situations that may be better if approached in a defensive way.

This first step is to, the best of your ability, analyze the enemy forces and determine their battle plan. This includes the enemy avenues of approach, key terrain and enemy objectives. While doing so, it is important to look for points of commitment.

A point of commitment is where the enemy has made it clear what their intent is and limited their own options. These points are usually attempts to create a decisive point by the enemy commander. These are usually areas of key terrain, your own units, or where avenues of approach converge. These are the areas the can stall or completely halt the enemy’s attack providing an opportunity to gain the advantage and gain the attack.

Once these points of commitment have been determined, the commander can now begins to stage his defenses. The fewer points of commitment, the better the defense of each position will be. However, the down side to this is that it also limits the options presented to the defending commander. Using the terrain analysis (OAKAC) and enemy analysis, the defending commander can then pick his Engagement Area(s). These are the areas where the enemy will be defeated piece by piece.

Once the engagement areas have been defined, the defensive player must then place his forces to inflict maximum damage to the enemy once they make their move. The firepower placed here should make the enemy wish they had never moved. Unit should be placed so that their maximum effectiveness can be used within the engagement area(s).

Situations and Transitions

There are some situations where playing defensively would be beneficial to your cause. It may be that your enemy has far more offensive capability than you. Some armies are naturally aggressive while some are naturally defensive. Guard is an army that I find to be very defensive. This does not mean that they cannot be aggressive, just that they seem to have a natural disposition towards defense. I find that Daemons are a naturally aggressive army. When fighting an aggressive race or list, it may be better to use defense oriented tactics.

Other times when playing defensively may help is mid game. What you have to be wary of is the Culmination Point. This is there point when the attack is no longer valid. Identifying the Culmination Point is similar to identifying a decisive point. These also mark periods where transitioning from the attack to the defense, or vice verse, could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

How can you tell when you or your enemy is culminating? In real world application, there are a variety of ways such as intelligence, frequency of attack, and battle damage assessment. On the table top, it may be much harder to identify. The best way to tell if your opponent is culminating is when they lose their attack strength or combat multipliers. For example, if an Eldar jetbike counsel has lost it’s farseer, they have lost the multipliers they really on. Also, if the opponent is attempting to minimize losses after engaging by dis-engaging units or hiding behind terrain, they have typically culminated.

Once an attack has culminated, either yours or your opponents, it is important to transition. Lack of transitioning will mean defeat for attacker. If you opponent has culminated, make sure to move to attacking as soon as possible. If you have culminated, moving the the defense can help prevent disaster. These transitions are difficult to predict, and even more difficult to master. Practice and patients are the keys to success with transitions.

I believe that’s the end. I hope you have enjoyed my posts and please feel free to continue with any questions or discussion. I may possibly do some posting about graphics and map analysis later so that you can better evaluate your own battle reports and battle reports of others. The link to the finalized article will be posted once it is done. If you wish to hear anymore about any certain subjects or how some tactics can be applied to certain armies, let me know and we’ll see what we can do. Thanks so much for reading and for posting. I wish you the utmost luck applying any of these tactics to your games. Always remember, the true art of tactics is to beat your opponent mentally.

the true art of tactics is to beat your opponent mentally.

QFT

It is most interesting to see what a mentally beaten opponent does.

Game theory suggests otherwise.

I had an amazing game the other day, used some of the most effective tactics ever, it was anniahlation, I charged my Archon and His Court at 'Mephiston, Lord of Death' on turn two, failed to get the archon in CC, mephiston went Raaah! I lost combat and was swept... in the mean time my wychs managed to move 3" that turn and didn't make it into combat!

Needless to say this was all a crafty plan and I won 11KP to 10.
Simply, by making my opponent so confident in my lack of ability or understanding. I was able to put a beastmaster unit into combat almost every turn from there on, he'd been drawn in the center of the board mwahahhaha...

Game theory suggests otherwise.

I dont think so. The opponents and your own mind is also a parameter to consider.

It is comparable to the morale of a general.

An overconfident general will act too hasty or too slowly.
A confident general will act rational and well thought.
A shaken general will act too hasty or too cautious.
A broken general will act even more unpredictable.

You as a general have to secure that your opponent is everything but not confident. And you have to secure that you are confident.

Game theory works as long as the generals minds are evenly matched.

Nope, that's incorrect.

One of the best features of game theory is that it makes no appeal to anything so vague and subjective as the morale of the general, preferring instead to work with the theory of revealed preference.

I recommend that you go look that up, but it's a tremendously successful approach. Relating to this, one of the amusing historical incidents involving game theory was a tournament that was run to see who could divise the better strategy for the Indefinitely Iterated Hawk-Dove game.

Many and complex were the strategies, many of them requiring reasonably heavy-duty computing machinery. The winner was the following strategy, called Tit-for-Tat:

1. First turn, play Dove.
2. If opponent played Dove in the previous turn, play Dove.
3. Otherwise if opponent played Hawk in previous turn, play Hawk.

This simple strategy meant that the Tit-for-Tat team could have done better, but they didn't need to, since they just had to avoid doing as badly as their opponents.

Now there are better strategies, Grim for example, but the point is that the state of mind of the players was irrelevant to what actually happened. The Tit-for-Tat team was definitely not the greatest minds in the room, which is why they went for a simple strategy.

Hawk and Dove is a game based on the fact that 2 different kinds of draw exist:

1:1 and 2:2

with only one draw available dove is pointless.

concerning morale:

of course playing with your opponents mind is a poker game. And even poker has theories that can be brought to 40k.

Hawk-Dove is simply an example of principals that can be generalized across games. The abstract rules of the game simply exemplify the specific principles of game theory at work without distracting the reader with local-specific issues.

Incidentally game theory applies to Poker as well. That was something that always irritated me as a philosopher student, was that unlike the math students I could never go to the Casino in Halifax whenever I needed petty cash...

Hawk-Dove is simply an example of principals that can be generalized across games.

Yes this maybe. But not every game can be fit into these specific principles.

Incidentally game theory applies to Poker as well. That was something that always irritated me as a philosopher student, was that unlike the math students I could never go to the Casino in Halifax whenever I needed petty cash...

Well, poker is math. So is psychological warfare in 40k. There are units and circumstances that just cannot estimated in the right way. And it always is an advantage for you if your opponent estimates your forces wrongly (resulting in overconfidence or lower confidence) and does not act in the right way to deal with them.

An example: You have eldar, you fortune one serpent with some firedragons inside. Then you tell your opponent in his shooting phase that you did this because this unit important. What does the opponent do? His focus is put upon this unit, so he will think about whether you said the truth or not, so he is irritated and there is a good chance that he alters his battleplan according to your irritation. You know what I mean?

Or last big tournament I faced an ork player I know very well (he knows me very well too) and I often heard him "whining" about the bad matchups he has against guards. So I did something I normally never do. I assembled every mid to heavy gun available and formed a crescant formation and showed confidence, more than I had. He thought quite a long time and then reserved everything (which was basically what I hoped for, I know his caution ). That was his death sentence. After the battle he admitted that it was not clever to reserve. So bluffing works in 40k too.

No, bluffing in Poker relies on the players not having access to complete information rather than the players not being able to understand the hand they've been dealt, which is the equivalent to what is going on in the situation you describe.

bluffing in Poker relies on the players not having access to complete information rather than the players not being able to understand the hand they've been dealt

I have to disagree.
The hand you have been dealt is your own army. The opponents hand is the opponents army.
A bluff in poker is that you make you pretend to have a strong hand by playing a weak hand like an obvious strong hand.
Lack of information is the problem of a poker player in general. If the opponent checkraises you dont have information too.
This is not a bluff specific problem.

If you transfer:

having a weak hand -> having a weak army in the first turns
pretend to have an obvious strong hand -> playing with the obvious expectations about IG being strong in the first turns

I think this is correct

Thanks for the series, Omega_Warlord, I like them a lot.

Very interesting series.

A good example of Retrograde defense would be vanilla SM who do this incredibly well. Live up a few squads of them and start try to charge a good SM player will break and reform repeatedly using his multiple battle lines to ensure you don't catch his squads.

I have also seen something similar done to bunch units into a "kill" corridor pretty nasty.

I would really like to see some map analysis added. Thanks for the good work.