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Anyone got any advise on using reserves effectively?

It seems like if you do place guys in reserve your at a huge disadvantage until your reserves come on, if they come on. I've been trying to make some lists for various armies but I always feel like there's a good chance of getting tabled first turn if not much starts on the table.

It feels like your dividing your army for your opponent to conquer.

The exception to this is Drop Pod assault which gets you where you want to be instantly

Any tips?

Surviving that first turn is key.

Ultimately, it comes down to why you want to put stuff in reserve, which is usually "to bring it on in the right place instead".

You shouldn't build an army entirely around reserves unless you can bring stuff on turn 1 (Nemesis Strike Force, Space Marine Strike Force Ultra, Deathwing, Drop Pods, Elysian Drop Trooper Guard).

If planning on staying in reserve till turn 2....make sure there's a decent wedge of stuff on the board. I don't mean "a squad", I mean about 1/3 of your army. And don't hesitate to go to ground - their job isn't to beat the enemy, it's to survive until the cavalry arrives.

I would suggest an aegis line, basion or similar with a comms relay (or any other way your army has of enhancing reserve rolls) because whilst not getting your outflanking scouts until turn three is annoying, not getting 2/3 of your army and leaving what's left to face two turns of attention from the enemy is catastrophic.

For a general balanced army, throwing in one or two units of outflankers or deep strikers, on the other hand, isn't a bad plan - close range, high firepower units (like stormtroopers loaded with assault weapons) can't really contribute to the game during the 1-2 turns they'd take footslogging up the board to get into range, so you might as well have them spontaneously appear in the enemies lines.

Suicide or precision strike units are excellent reserves. Obliterators or legion of the damned materialising at close quarters is great for tank assassinations, and nothing draws fire like a Great Unclean One suddenly towering over the enemy's lines (especially since he can now pull off Iron Arm the turn he arrives)

What armies are you looking at?

Now that maneuverability is paramount, reserves is ever more important.

The only deployment style where I almost always use reserves is Vanguard Strike. Your table edge allows you to, on Turn 2, enter farther down on your table edge than you would have been able to deploy. This is really nice for getting one squad of Marines, for example, onto an objective without making them a fire magnet (since it's obvious that you're going in that direction anyway).

If you have a way to boost your Reserves rolls, it can be more reliable so not really worrisome.


Another area where I use Reserves is Deep Striking. Gotta go into Reserves to DS, and often you can gain a lot of ground with units that would usually take forever to get into position otherwise (Terminators, Storm Troopers, etc.)

Reserves can be great for units with limited range and survivability.

For my IG the best examples are hellhounds and rough riders, the hellhound can move on 12" and still fire so it's a great unit for counter attacking. Rough riders come on from reserves when the enemy is hopefully a little more depleted, and I use their flamers to torch enemy infantry, then if they survive they can assault deep striking units and clear my deployment zone.

I probably wouldn't reserve slow units, because moving on from the table edge and trying to get into the fight can be a pain. But for hard hitting but fragile units, reserves can make them pretty darn good.

Why would you hold a unit in reserve?
An outflanking unit is fine. It will help the unit to get where they want to be, say disrupting enemy plans.
An SM army with Pods could provide empty Pods as FA so that all Pods with mounted units could arrive in turn 1.

I tend to use reserves in a semi defensive manner. If I find myself short on cover, I'll hold a unit in reserve to protect them for a turn or two while my other units blitz. If there are backfield objectives, I may do a normal reserve so that a unit can trundle up to it to hold. This also gives them some horizontal maneuverability, as they can come in from a different spot if the flow of the battle has changed. Outflank and Deep Strike just add flexibility to this. Dropping a unit behind an enemy's line usually gives themselves something to consider on the next turn and can be used to exploit a weak point in their formation.

Short Answer: Use reserves modify the flow of the game.

Why? To possibly deny an enemy his full first turn. If you take a comms relay you get about 90% of your reserve units in the first turn the reserves can arrive. This can obviously work very well for Grey Knights, but other armies can throw off an enemy by denying as well.

I've pulled this off a few times with Eldar, only deploying a Farseer in a Jetbike unit out of LOS. The first turn they couldn't get shot at and the second turn most of my army arrived. Thanks to fast skimmers and Jetbikes you don't suffer too much from having to enter from your table edge. Outflanking, as mentioned, offers nice synergies. This was used pre 7th edition when WS couldn't Jink first turn.

Putting units in reserve is something people always seem to underestimate the value of, if your opponent has an alpha strike unit with a massive chance of removing your key unit from the board instantly, as with drop pod melta, by reserving you can let other units deal with it first, and then get more turns worth of firepower out of your key unit.

If there's no place on the board to deploy something safely, place it in reserve, same as with facing an aggressive list where units would quickly be in peril. Sometimes, holding units back in reserve to walk on and claim your objectives on your side can be a safe way to guarantee they last longer or more reliably last the game.

Other than because they're outflankers or deepstrikers or have something else needing reserves for the purpose of attacking properly, there isn't any.

The idea of reserves works in the real world because there are vast distances and a heavy fog of war. You just don't know where everybody needs to be, so you don't deploy everybody just in case.

40k, though, has no fog of war, and it's fought over an area the size of a parking lot. Not much point.

Other than deepstrikers, etc. the only thing I can really see is having a superscoring unit hide in reserves to rush out at the last moment to snag an objective. But given the way we do missions now, this is less useful.

 Mr.Omega wrote:
Putting units in reserve is something people always seem to underestimate the value of, if your opponent has an alpha strike unit with a massive chance of removing your key unit from the board instantly, as with drop pod melta, by reserving you can let other units deal with it first, and then get more turns worth of firepower out of your key unit.

But then you're doing for free what your opponent has to work to do: keep your unit off the table.

The reason I'm bringing a leman russ in the first place is to do damage to my opponent's stuff. If I leave it in reserves, it's not damaging my opponent's stuff - it might as well be dead. Plus, if those melta dudes in a drop pod don't have my russ as a target, that just means that they're going to blow up something else valuable instead, so nothing is really gained. Unless, of course, I put everything valuable in reserves, in which case I'm starting the game with a massive handicap.

Putting stuff in reserves in this case just makes it easier for your opponent to kill the rest of your army (which will then make it even easier to kill the thing that was in reserves), and make the arrival of that precious whatever-it-is too late to change the direction of the game.

Reserves are very complicated, as the posters about mentioned. If you put too much in reserve, you will likely make your opponent's job easier since they can now shell what you have on the table with an overwhelming force. The balance for this is the idea that you will be able to reserve in or deep strike models that will strike your opponent where it counts.

Honestly, if the possible, it is better to deploy units than hold them out. One unit in reserve is fine, maybe two in large games, but it needs to be 10% of your army or less. I had an opponent hold 33% of his army in reserve in the form of his terminators, general, and obliterators Saturday. By the third turn, when the terminators arrived, the game was already over, meaning that 600 block just arrived and had everything on the board turn and fire on them.

Reserves really cant be viewed in a nutshell, it really depends on your army/list.

As an Ork player the only time i put things in reserves is when they have outflankability or is a flier. I literally have no other reason to do it.

As a Tau player, i use it for deepstriking and protecting my skyray if i dont have a spot i can hide him in (if he has a flier to deal with that game).

General reserves....as in no outflank, deepstrike, or some other shenanigans for specific races....i dont think theres a single reason to do that unless its like my Skyray and i just want to keep it safe since i technically wont even be using it anyway for a turn or two. But i only play 2 armies and have limited tactics knowledge for other races, so there could be a very good reason i just dont know about.

Can't fit in the deployment zone. This is one of the few reasons I use basic reserves. In Vanguard it can be really hard to get all 100 or so units on the board and not be decimated by blast weapons turn one. In these cases, I will reserve units, normally backfeild objective grabbers/defenders that would not be contributing to the game anyway the first few turns.

Beta Strike armies are often Alpha Strike armies that can't take a turn of shooting and are going second.

So white scars grav spam vs triptide and tau Gunline will do well to reserve the bikes and outflank all the bikes. It's great to null deploy vs centurion star with Gate too, or against drop pod armies. Let them drop their meltas then drive on out of range and shoot your (for instance) Wyverns into the space marines.

Have a look at Frontline Gaming's battle report where Reecius reserves his AM vs Centstar to devestating beta strike effect for an example.

Bringing force in a single, devestating wave is very powerful, rather than drip feeding the enemy your army in bite sized chunks. But, as others have said, much more reliable if you have a method of manipulating reserve rolls.

Kholzerino wrote:
Beta Strike armies are often Alpha Strike armies that can't take a turn of shooting and are going second.

So white scars grav spam vs triptide and tau Gunline will do well to reserve the bikes and outflank all the bikes. It's great to null deploy vs centurion star with Gate too, or against drop pod armies. Let them drop their meltas then drive on out of range and shoot your (for instance) Wyverns into the space marines.

Have a look at Frontline Gaming's battle report where Reecius reserves his AM vs Centstar to devestating beta strike effect for an example.

Bringing force in a single, devestating wave is very powerful, rather than drip feeding the enemy your army in bite sized chunks. But, as others have said, much more reliable if you have a method of manipulating reserve rolls.

Thanks! That's a great watch. Gives a good insight into how to combat drop pods. Does that kind of tactic rely on the the comms relay a lot?

Because what is, say, a squad of assault marines or terminators going to do turn 1?

Move towards the enemy, get shot at.

Or, instead, you can make your opponents only option for shooting at your highly entrenched el cheapo sniper scouts hiding behind 2+ cover saves, or your smoke popped land raider. Gooooood luck.

Basically if you wanna deep strike, you just have to avoid these common pitfalls.

1) don't leave the priority target on the table while the cannon fodder sits in reserves. I see marine players turn one drop dreadnoughts down and leave tactical marines sitting in reserve and I know that I win because those dreads are utterly exposed. Ditto goes for guard who set fragile artillery down on the board and leave grunt squads sitting in valks off the table. You want your hammer in reserve, your anvil on the table. Vehicles with High AV, entrenched cheap infantry, and entrenched artillery-perfect anvil. High mobility units, fragile vehicles, destructive suicide squads- perfect hammer.

2) don't leave a small enough force for your enemy to decimate on the table. A couple Devastators squads and one rhino of tacticals sits across the table from me, and two assault squads with a terminator Death Star and a chapter master sit in reserves with a flier-I win already. I can easily wipe most of what he's got on the table before the big scary dudes arrive and odds are, at least one of his squads is gonna get screwed out of coming in turn 2.

3) if you're reserving more than 2 squads you need some kind of reserve booster. Portals, astropaths, beacons, just get something so you're not straight up rolling threes then scattering full distance. It's too chaotic and units WILL get left behind. An army split into two can be effective-an army split into three is sluggish.