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Made in dk
Fresh-Faced New User




I'm sure most people are trying to control the flow of the game by proper unit placement, but from the games i've seen in my area people aren't really trying to play the control-game. Is it not viable?

I've always played some king of control i every game i've played, it's what i like, and that's why i'm asking you guys for help. How can control be achieved in 40K and which armies, builds or units does it best?

I'm sure horde armies just try to deny the opponent any real movement and locking him in place denying him any objectives. But is that the best way or can you effectively debuff an enemy to render him uselesss or bring a few tarpits and then use movement to dictate where the fight is going to take place.

Mobility, durability and debuffs are they only things i can think off. are there other ways to achieve control of the game?

Basically i'me looking for the ways to deny my opponent to play to his strengths and win because of that.
   
Made in us
Nasty Nob





United States

AV14 spam can deny opponents shots.

Deep Strike based armies can deny shots.

Some pyskers can shut down individual units.

Fliers can do it somewhat.

Tarpits

Being highly mobile can give you the advantage of picking and choosing your fights.

Units with excessive range can dictate flow by removing key things early.

Horde armies bog the game down.. Perhaps making you feel like you control the flow.


What are we talking about again?

I am the kinda ork that takes his own washing machine apart, puts new bearings in it, then puts it back together, and it still works. 
   
Made in us
Blood-Drenched Death Company Marine




Little Rock, Arkansas

The most effective form of control in this game is to remove your opponent's most effective models against your army in the field via clubs or bullets to the head.

Anything less than that is not quite as good. You could horde it up and just wash over his army, trapping everything in CC, but you may take too many casualties getting there, or they may be particularly good at CC against you, such as furioso blendernoughts against ork boys.

One thing to remember about locking an opponent in his deployment zone is that, like you, they can also have deep strike/outflank or similar options. Tank shocking you out of their way is also a thing.

In a game where most models die to the first unsaved wound, debuffs would be kind of...unbelievably terribad. The randomly-gotten biomancy power enfeeble is probably the best, and you won't even get it every game, because "random power narrative lol." It also only lasts one turn on one enemy unit, and is really just another tool for "force multiplier for everyone trying to kill this unit this turn."

Riptides are really great at that mobility + durability + effective from any range thing, and are sharply undercosted by a good margin, so...y'know, there's that, but it's still pretty much the bullet to head solution. Also riptides have a rule where after a game where you used more than one, on a d6 roll of 1 your opponent punches you and throws a riptide against the wall.

The best way to deny enemy strengths is to A: figure out what they are, and B: kill or stay away from those.

If they have a bunch of ap3 and ap4 guys, send your 3+ guys at the ap4 guys, and your vehicles and lesser armored (and also 2+) dudes at the ap3.

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Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut






One trick that works well in casual play is forcing your opponent to deploy first. If he's smart he will castle...if he's not he will deploy widely across the whole board (the exception being that his entire army is geared toward long range shooting). If the opponent deploys across the whole board you can more easily mass your army on one flank and attack him piecemeal. This also works with null deployment and deep striking...with pods for example.

Tier 1 is the new Tactical.

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Tough-as-Nails Ork Boy





San Diego

If you want control do "Do Not Use" ork or nids. For nids once you lose synapse you lose control, for ork the only thing that gives you any type of mobility can easily be destroyed. Both teams allow no strategic error or bad luck

 
   
Made in au
Trustworthy Shas'vre






Models with special deployment rules, when used appropriately. No-scatter deep strike like drop pods.
Practice target denial. This starts at the army building stage by removing potential targets from your list and/or spamming one particular type of target at him. Most armies can deal with a single AV14 vehicle, but take 5 of them... On that note, don't take flyers either unless you can take 5 of them. Most armies invest a little in to some kind of AA and giving that one good target to shoot at, not a good idea.
Don't give your opponent time to react. If you're an assault army, get ready to charge on turn 2. if you're a shooting army, take out the counters to your models as quickly as possible.
Don't give your opponent any easy choices. If you have a unit of bikes in assault range and a unit of terminators 18" away, your opponent knows what to focus fire on. If you have 3 units of bikes in assault range, one of them will be making contact.
Make the most immediate threat to an enemy model one that isn't hard-countered by that model. Eg, sending terminators against plasma guns, not the best idea. Sending an equal amount of points of conscripts on the other hand...
   
Made in dk
Fresh-Faced New User




So it's more guidelines than actual playstyle? But first try and have a way to eliminate or disable one or two key units the oppenent has and then just find a style that suits you, be it tarpitting, horde or just hard to kill units on top of objectives. Is that the way to go?

   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




 Mojo1jojo wrote:
If you want control do "Do Not Use" ork or nids. For nids once you lose synapse you lose control, for ork the only thing that gives you any type of mobility can easily be destroyed. Both teams allow no strategic error or bad luck


The art of fighting with Orks is the art of the first strike, or iaido.
   
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Devestating Grey Knight Dreadknight







Remember the forces you deploy on the board initially are the Anvil and the reserves the Hammer. You want him to be very conscious of the blow you have above his head and in that way force him to move his forces together and therefore slowly, or he takes the risk and breaks up to grab objectives.

There is always that one unit in an army the opponent prizes (unless he is running a very decentralized mech list), weigh up whether you can kill it efficiently or not. If you can't that means he put way too many into it and he is lacking somewhere, most likely the supporting units.

 SHUPPET wrote:

wtf is this buddhist monk ascendant martial dice arts crap lol
 
   
Made in dk
Fresh-Faced New User




I have a few ideas about how to do it, don't know if they work though
First is an Eldar list with waveserpents containing wraithguards and a wraithknight to get the damage rolling and some psykers to support and perhaps some jetbikes to claim objectives.

Second is a Daemon army with lots of summoning. Flying circus perhaps. But i don't know how they fare with unloading a lot of damage first turn.

and last i was thinking Necrons since they are hard to remove and seems to have some good options. Don't know much about them but with multiple flyers and warriors in transport they should be able to hit pretty hard. Correct or am i wrong?

So basically a semi alpha-strike and then just tarpit and win by opponent not being able to claim enough objectives. viable?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, a lot of good advise from you all I'm very grateful

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/11/25 07:56:34


 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




zaible wrote:
I have a few ideas about how to do it, don't know if they work though
First is an Eldar list with waveserpents containing wraithguards and a wraithknight to get the damage rolling and some psykers to support and perhaps some jetbikes to claim objectives.

Second is a Daemon army with lots of summoning. Flying circus perhaps. But i don't know how they fare with unloading a lot of damage first turn.

and last i was thinking Necrons since they are hard to remove and seems to have some good options. Don't know much about them but with multiple flyers and warriors in transport they should be able to hit pretty hard. Correct or am i wrong?

So basically a semi alpha-strike and then just tarpit and win by opponent not being able to claim enough objectives. viable?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, a lot of good advise from you all I'm very grateful


Necrons are something of a control army. I am a Necron player and I am also a Landstill player so if you get my drift then you will see what I am saying. The only other army I think that can count as control besides Necrons is Ultramarines or Tau since they can effectively be tuned to fight and overcome any threat given foresight.

Orks and Tyrannids are pure green/red aggro. Eldar, Dark Eldar and Demons somewhat aggro/control like fish. Necrons, Tau, and Space Marines can be pure control.
   
Made in dk
Fresh-Faced New User




Necrons are something of a control army. I am a Necron player and I am also a Landstill player so if you get my drift then you will see what I am saying. The only other army I think that can count as control besides Necrons is Ultramarines or Tau since they can effectively be tuned to fight and overcome any threat given foresight.

What makes necrons more inclined to "pure" control than Eldar/Daemons. I can imagine Eldar/Daemons being more aggressive but knowing very little about Necron i have no clue about what it is that makes them playable as control
   
Made in us
Tough Tyrant Guard






Seattle

While I don't play necrons. That would be my pick for the control army as well. C'tan shard with writhing worldscape can really slow down an army, and in particular helps you control really mobile armies. The quick mobility you then have of flyers can counter control any of his plans. Responding wherever he is headed and giving you an alpha strike against the base of his army.

~seapheonix
 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





Drop Pods are basically the single reason Marines are on top of the heap now.

They can put half their army in your deployment zone. Most players will fight them there, allowing the rest of the Marine army to control the rest of the board (where the juicy objectives are).

"'players must agree how they are going to select their armies, and if any restrictions apply to the number and type of models they can use."

This is an actual rule in the actual rulebook. Quit whining about how you can imagine someone's army touching you in a bad place and play by the actual rules.


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Unrelenting Rubric Terminator of Tzeentch





 DarknessEternal wrote:
Drop Pods are basically the single reason Marines are on top of the heap now.

They can put half their army in your deployment zone. Most players will fight them there, allowing the rest of the Marine army to control the rest of the board (where the juicy objectives are).


Barring having a bunch of fast skimmers/jet bikes in your army is there any way to not fight them there? I mean 3 pods + 10 mans in each can pretty effectively box you in.

"Backfield? I have no backfield." 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





 astro_nomicon wrote:

Barring having a bunch of fast skimmers/jet bikes in your army is there any way to not fight them there? I mean 3 pods + 10 mans in each can pretty effectively box you in.

That doesn't do much either. They still have the rest of their army behind those Pods, so you can't just fly over them. Flying over means landing in the middle of more marines.

I wish the Internet would learn that Drop Pods are a hard-counter to Wave Serpent spam.

"'players must agree how they are going to select their armies, and if any restrictions apply to the number and type of models they can use."

This is an actual rule in the actual rulebook. Quit whining about how you can imagine someone's army touching you in a bad place and play by the actual rules.


Freelance Ontologist

When people ask, "What's the point in understanding everything?" they've just disqualified themselves from using questions and should disappear in a puff of paradox. But they don't understand and just continue existing, which are also their only two strategies for life. 
   
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Unrelenting Rubric Terminator of Tzeentch





I'm just curious if you had a tactic around this? You said "Most players will fight them there" referring to my deployment zone that the marines just landed in but I don't really see a way around that. I can't move through 'em and I can't leave 'em there so I don't see what options I have. I'm sure there are some ways around it in terms of deployment but I haven't really wrapped my head around it yet. I play daemons with a lot of cav so my units have a pretty big foot print meaning it's almost impossible to skirt even two well placed drop pods. I honestly don't really mind too terribly much when drop pod players get stuck in the notion that if they paid for the pod, they need to deploy the squad in the pod. As even 10 tacs and 10 sternguard have proved to be a relatively small speed bump for my list. It's just weird still being in my deployment zone turn 2

"Backfield? I have no backfield." 
   
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Monster-Slaying Daemonhunter




Grand Rapids Metro

Last time I fought a pod list I had my Mechdar. We fought the first two turn in a 12" by 20ish" square in my corner of the board. Fortunately enough I managed to keep to that corner long enough to amass most of his army there before I GTFO and took most of the obectives on the board for myself and was able to stay out of his foot slogging range the rest of the game.

Pods need to be fairly close to cause damage. So when you have the speed to get to objectives and you're facing pods...do not place them where you're deploying.

Objective placement is key in control...creating a killzone or flipping an objective into nowhere'sville can be highly effective.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/11/25 22:13:44


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Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





 ductvader wrote:
So when you have the speed to get to objectives and you're facing pods...do not place them where you're deploying.

Objective placement is key in control...creating a killzone or flipping an objective into nowhere'sville can be highly effective.

You don't know where you are deploying when objectives are placed. You don't even know the deployment type before then. Also, you only get to put out half the objectives and your opponent gets to force you into where you put some of yours.

Not that I'm saying you are wrong, just that it's more subtle. If you know what to do with objective placement, we should assume your opponent does too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 astro_nomicon wrote:
I'm just curious if you had a tactic around this?

Well, I have something anyway. Playing against free drop pods in 3rd edition taught me a thing or two.

Deploy together. Drop Marines are most dangerous when their opponents find difficulty in bringing their superior numbers to the Marines, either via LoS, tricky terrain, or just non-optimal threat foot prints.

Never turn around. That's the ultimate key to victory for Drop Marines and I've seen so many people lose because of this. If they drop behind you, you can't go backwards. You may as well concede. How many turns does it take to get to where you need to be? Do you really want to spend most of those turns going the wrong way?

Kill them. And by this, I don't mean do some damage, or assault them and eventually win the assault in a few turns; they need to actually be dead. A Drop Pod brings up to 3 Objective Secured units right onto an objective. Even a 3 pod army is putting 20 Marines and 2 Pods in your face, potentially before you even get a turn. 20 Marines and 2 Drop Pods are actually pretty difficult to wipe out, especially when their unmolested reinforcements are nearby now. You have to actually kill them without getting bogged down by them. There's nothing that brings more joy to a Marine player than seeing Tactical Marines tie up something much more expensive. That they can kill anything that isn't T8 or AV 13 on the rear is just icing on the cake. Don't be confused though, killing those Marines doesn't win anything. They were bought to die after all.

Send your own fast, objective grabbing units out into the board. You bought them to score (or at least you should have, no one should be playing without some fast moving scorers these days), don't waste them taking some probably inconsequential shots at a blob of Marines.

Finally, there's no magic recipe. Marines are running the the top tables at tournaments with their Pods, Bikes, or (most dangerously) Pods+Bikes for good reason: fantastic board control in an edition of missions that reward that.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/11/25 22:38:00


"'players must agree how they are going to select their armies, and if any restrictions apply to the number and type of models they can use."

This is an actual rule in the actual rulebook. Quit whining about how you can imagine someone's army touching you in a bad place and play by the actual rules.


Freelance Ontologist

When people ask, "What's the point in understanding everything?" they've just disqualified themselves from using questions and should disappear in a puff of paradox. But they don't understand and just continue existing, which are also their only two strategies for life. 
   
Made in se
Rookie Pilot




Vasteras, Sweden

Interesting topic OP!

One thing to understand is that 40k does not lend itself to playing the control game in the same way as for example card games like magic. There is so much luck invloved which means that when people talk about "control" in 40k they mostly talk about mitigating chance, not controlling the flow of the game.

For starters I would recommend taking a look at some of the battle reports from jy2. He is a very competitive player that likes to play armies that work with a lot synergy. I remember some older ones using necrons that use null deployment and some with Grey Knights that use a deathstar to control the game. Also notice how often his best laid plans dissolve with a few fluke die rolls....

From your post I guess that you want to play a game where your actions (as opposed to your list) is what controls the game. The so called null deployment or deathstar approach would not be for you then... If you are not in a terrible competitive environment I would probably recommend Eldar and try to stay clear of Serpent spam. The Eldar toolbox seems extremely versatile with a lot of subtle buff/debuff spells and an army wide special rule that lends itself very well to frustrating opponents.

My personal experience is with guard and csm and with both I try to use table control to some extent, but I don't actively try to shut down my opponent. I simply need to control movement as most armies are faster than mine. I try to:

Limit space by filling it up. Works with both guardsmen and cultists and can by used to prevent fliers and deep strikers. The most classic example would be the bubble wrap.
Limit space by ranged threat. Works best for guard with big guns. Force opponents movement by aligning fire power to a specific area. Plasma cannons are for example a great deterrent against deep strikers.
Limit space by cc threat. Works best for fast CSM and deamon units, but doable for guard blobs. Create local no-go zones around strong CC units.
Limit options by threat from reserve. Keep some units that can really hurt your opponent in reserve to keep him guessing. Works best with cheap specialized units like Oblits or to some extent stormtroopers. Against pods keeping veterans in reserve makes sense.

I also think about the overall structure of the army trying to apply things like:

Refused flank. Appear to deploy across the entire width of the table, but then use speed to leave some portion of the enemy stranded. Works best against infantry and other slow models. I used this more in 6th with scouting stormtroopers in Chimeras, but it is still doable to sacrifice a CC blob to keep a flank occupied for many turns.
Control the center. By occupying the center of the table my have more options and the enemy is quite limited in where they can move. Works best if there is a decent amount of LOS blocking terrain and you have the advantage in CC and/or short range firepower.
Anchors. Using table edges to protect flanks. Place tarpittish or strong (enough) CC units on the edges to keep the initiative. Castling up with guard for example. This way you know where the enemy will come from.
Hammer and Anvil. The classical definition doesn't quite fit 40k, but think of anvil units as designed to keep enemy in place while the Hammer units intervene to (rapidly) destroy enemy units.

On the tactical level it is all about frustrating your opponent. I guess most players know this game well, but I still often miss asking myself questions like:

If a unit is doomed, can I delay its demise?
If I can't delay, can I force an enemy unit to move out of position to kill it?











   
Made in us
Shas'o Commanding the Hunter Kadre




Olympia, WA

zaible wrote:
I'm sure most people are trying to control the flow of the game by proper unit placement, but from the games i've seen in my area people aren't really trying to play the control-game. Is it not viable?

I've always played some king of control i every game i've played, it's what i like, and that's why i'm asking you guys for help. How can control be achieved in 40K and which armies, builds or units does it best?

I'm sure horde armies just try to deny the opponent any real movement and locking him in place denying him any objectives. But is that the best way or can you effectively debuff an enemy to render him uselesss or bring a few tarpits and then use movement to dictate where the fight is going to take place.

Mobility, durability and debuffs are they only things i can think off. are there other ways to achieve control of the game?

Basically i'me looking for the ways to deny my opponent to play to his strengths and win because of that.


Check out the extremely recent Battle Reports on my blog. I think you'll find valuable answers there. =)

Board control can be as simple as giving an enemy no better target as you'll see...

Hold out bait to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and then crush him.
-Sun Tzu, the Art of War
http://www.40kunorthodoxy.blogspot.com

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Made in us
Hellish Haemonculus






Boskydell, IL

There are ways to achieve board control.

A) Slow, hard to stop units. If your opponent knows how threatening they are it gives you a big no man's land to work with.

B) Arriving from off the board. This gives your opponent X amount of time totally wasted.

C) Target priority. Every army will have one for your list. If you know what it is you can force them to come to you.

Watch out for people who aren't familiar with your army: if they don't know what they're supposed to do, control tactics may fail spectacularly against them.

Welcome to the Freakshow!

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Hurr! Ogryn Bone 'Ead!





 ductvader wrote:
Objective placement is key in control...creating a killzone or flipping an objective into nowhere'sville can be highly effective.


Playing an army with a heavy emphasis on long rage artillery and shooting, a good tactic is to position objectives in a 12" sided triangle in the middle of open space. The enemy is forced to leave cover to control the objectives, giving my firepower the advantage to target them under optimum conditions.

Death Korps of Krieg Siege Army 1500 
   
Made in dk
Fresh-Faced New User




So, besides the Drop pod lists and other alpha-strike armies would i be correct to assume that i would be better off with more mobile specialized units compared to slower all-round units? To dictate movement and range and having the right people in the right spot as much of the time as possible.

If my actions is the main source of control then i need units to complete that task. Would you go with a faster and more specialized army or a more durable army like Necrons as long as the have movement to not be left stranded in a corner somewhere? I'm sensing that movement/unit placement is the biggest part of control.

I can see pros and cons with a lot of lists and armies and i'm sure most of them will work with the group i play with. No tournaments but we're trying to compete the best we can without too much cheesiness.
This topic has turned into an eyeopener for me. Actually thought the answer would be rather simple but turns out that there are so many little things that contribute to the whole picture.

Since i don't like horde armies and i don't like drop pods (effective but don't like the model so won't be spending money on that ) that narrows it down for me. I think i will go on youtube and check out some battle reports with Necron, Daemons and Eldar as the seem to fit my ideas quite nicely.

But please keep commenting. I already have this topic bookmarked and i'm sure i will be using it as a reference on how to improve on controlling the game. Or perhaps more accurately put. Trying to minimize the randomness factor and thereby increasing my chance of winning even with bad dice
   
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Monster-Slaying Daemonhunter




Grand Rapids Metro

I'd stick to Necrons and Eldar...Daemons can be highly reactionary in comparison to the other two.

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Made in us
Sneaky Lictor





Chicago, IL

One of the earlier posters alluded to a thread by jy2, so here is a great quote from him in respect to Tyranids, which are not what you would normally think of as an MtG control army (I am an old MtG tourney player too, so I know what you're talking about here):

 jy2 wrote:
roxor08 wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I saw a reference to jy2's coined strategy term "Positional Dominance" from an earlier page. The individual went on to describe that the main goal of this strategy is to control the corners and attack from the sides...I thought it was more: Take the middle and force your opponent to react to you.

Could you explain this strategy another time jy2?

Sure thing, buddy!

Basically, Positional Dominance is my philosophy that if you can control the Movement phase, then you've got the advantage in objectives-based scenarios. Basically, if you can get onto the objectives first, then you have the advantage because you've already got the objectives and it is up to your opponent to take it back from you. This usually requires 2 key characteristics:

1. Mobility. You need to have a mobile army.

2. Aggressive play. Normally, you need to play more aggressively and push your army forwards and onto the objectives (and beyond). Dare your opponent to move towards "your" objectives and thus, towards your army.

One of the main strategies of Positional Dominance is board control. If you can control the board - and thusly control the movement of your opponent - then you can set yourself up favorably position-wise with regards to the objectives. So as your army advances, your opponent has to retreat (or at the very least, you stop them from advancing). Thus, even if you take heavy, heavy fire, come Turn 5, you are already on the objectives and now your opponent has to make his way towards the objectives. So he could be decimating your army with his shooting, but if he can't reach the objectives in time, then you've got him.

However, Tyranids are not the only army that can control the board. Other armies can do it, and some can do it even better than our bugs. Armies like multiple Imperial Knights, deathstar armies (beaststar, seer council, centurionstar, Draigowing, etc.), more assault-oriented armies (daemons, orks, Mindshackle Necrons), super-fast armies (Necron flyer-spam, Daemon FMC-spam, mechdar/jetbike Eldar, biker armies, etc.) and drop pod armies can potentially control the board better than our bugs. Against these types of armies, you have to resort to other means of controlling the Movement phase. Against these types of armies, you have to use whatever tool is available to you, including a mostly reserves army, outflanking, trying to lead your opponents away from the objectives and just trying to kill off their fast objective-grabbers.

For example, I took Skyblight to a tournament and in my very 1st game, had to play against a drop pod Marine army with drop pods. Now I knew that my opponent could just drop on the objectives and I'd then have a hard trying to get rid of 70+ marines (with Marneus Calgar) + drop pods. So my strategy going into the game was to disdirect him. I deployed my bastion, venomthrope, gargoyles and 1 flyrant in one of the corners and then put my objectives far away from it. So Turn 1, my opponent took the bait and dropped 30 marines there (of which 20 were the very dangerous sternguards). Yes, he did kill my flyrant, but on my next turn (when my reserves came in), I just ignored his 30 marines who were stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Thus, instead of having to deal with his entire army, I gave up a flyrant so that I only had to deal with about half of his army. So for the rest of the game, his 30 marines were running towards where the action was but they were never involved in the battle. I was the only one who managed to pull out a draw against my opponent, who won all of his other games and finished 2nd Overall at the BAO.

So normally, Positional Dominance entails board control. However, armies have changed throughout the editions and sometimes, you just can't control the board against these types of armies. In that case, you're going to have to get a little more creative with how you can control the board and in many cases, you're going to have to rely a lot more on finesse rather than on just brute force run-up-the-middle type of board control.


   
Made in ca
Unhealthy Competition With Other Legions




Toronto, Ontario

"Control" in 40k is one of the most important things to look at when list building, setting up terrain, deployment and in every movement phase.

Any 40k army can control the flow of a game, but you have to bring the right units to the battle. Truth be told, you can use any units in your codex to do so, as long as you have an idea of what you want them to do when you you add them to your list.

When setting up terrain, it's important to use both large and small pieces in terms of footprints as well as LoS blocking peices as well as peices that will simply provide cover or high ground. I like the d3 per 2x2 square placed one at a time, alternating between the players as it lets both players actively try to influence the game without giving one side advantage and keeping some randomness. Since terrain is set up before sides are chosen, it makes for important choices and is always a huge factor in the way the game plays.

For deployment, "winning the deployment" is the first step to setting the tone, or controlling the game. You can do this deploying first or second, it just depends on either who has set up best to take advantage of the terrain, or who has set up their army to be reactionary and who will actually control the flow.

The movement phase is when most games are won, even if people don't realize it. If you can feint or force you opponent to constantly react to your movement then they can't dictate the flow as they're chasing you.

I'll give you my last game as an example. It was a 2000 point CSM vs ultramarine battle with diagonal deployment. All six objectives were in "no man's land". Without a picture it's hard to imagine the terrain, but the just is that the middle had very little LoS blocking terrain, with some smaller rubble peices and one large series of craters right in the middle. The right was dominated by a huge ruins in one corner and on the left were a bunch of LoS blockers. My lists was about 40 chaos marines in rhinos, a vindicator, a drake, 2x5 bikes and 2maulerfiends led by a sorcerer, and it was up against a pred and vindicator, a las dev squad, an ironclad in a pod a storm talon and Marnius Calgar, leading 40-50 TAC marines in rhinos.

I deployed first, with 20 marines and sorcerer, 5 bikes and both maulers on the left basically out of sight and right at the edge of the deployment zone and the other 20 marines, vindicator and 5 bikes at the other side ready to go the long way around the right leaving the middle all open. The ultramarines deployed 20 marines, with calgar on my left with the pred and vind in the middle and the rest of the marines on the right. The devs had a great field of fire to the center of the board where there was no terrain, but I had nothing there. I won deployment as he deployed specifically counter me, letting me decide where his units went. If he would have had his rhinos bunched up in the middle surrounding his tanks, he could have driven hard up the middle and then towards either of my halves with his whole force, but instead he tried to directly counter me giving me defacto control from the start.

There were a few specific things that happened in movement phases that dictated the flow of the game where I controlled his subsequent turn. On turn one we both moved further towards to far flanks, but while he was reacting to me in his deployment zone, I was able to set up to take all of no mans land. On turn two two I pushed hard around the left side, and sent in my bikes and fiends while my noise marines and sorcerer moved closer for what looked to be an attack, but stayed in the rhino and just out of sight/range for an immediate conter attack. The other ten marines took the center of the board and met up with 10 other marines who did the same thing only on the right side. So, by the top of turn 2, I basically owned 2/3rds of the board and had tons of maneuvering room, while he was penned in to his deployment zone. When he got Calgar out of the rhino ready to meet and crush my attack on his turn two, i used my turn 3 to move 18" away towards the center and put hiim a full turn of movement behind me. Now, he made great use of his rhinos to go grab objectives after dropping off their cargo to fight tooth and nail to fight me somewhere else so the game was a very close one. But he was always racing around to try to catch up because he fell behind early. Since I was able to control the flow of the movement of both armies, I was able to actually drive empty rhrinos to block him from moving forward in between terrain peices to keep Calgar and 10 marines literary out of the game completely. Had I used my rhinos just as a tool to deliver my troops, I would have have been able to kill a few more marines a bit quicker, but I would have had to deal with an angry chapter master charging into my men. Instead I let my guns foot slog it a bit and take an extra turn to completely wipe out the center of the board from all the ultramarines, but was able to completely neuter his heaviest hitter and a possible game changer with 2 rhrinos acting as mobile road blocks. In the end, it went 7 turns and ended in a 19-19 tie, but he had to make some very aggressive and ballsy moves to score enough points to keep up and had any of them not worked, he would have lost. It was a hard fought tie (moving 50 combat squaded marines is no easy task), but it was an excellent example of one player completely controlling the game through the use of the movement phase.

"He's doing the Lord's work. And by 'Lord' I mean Lord of Skulls." -Kenny Boucher

Prepare yourselves for the onslaught men. The enemy is waiting, but your Officers are courageous and your bayonettes sharp! I have at my disposal an entire army of Muskokans, tens of thousands of armour and artillery supporting millions upon tens of millions of the Imperium's finest fighting men with courage in their bellies, fire in their hearts and lasguns in their hands. Emperor show mercy to mine enemies, for as sure as the Imperium is vast, I will not!
- General Robert Thurgood of the Emperor's Own Lasguns before the landings at Traitor's Folly at the onset of the Chrislea's Road Campaign

"Pride goeth before the fall... to Slaanesh"
- ///name stricken///, former 'Emperor's Champion' 
   
Made in us
Shas'o Commanding the Hunter Kadre




Olympia, WA

Rhinos play big in the new Warhammer world we're in for sure.

My Sisters of Battle Army has nine Rhinos. When we know a mean Psyker phase is coming we just jump in and huddle, then jump out and slay ther offender.

Cat and mouse. Cat and mouse. Give them a target. Let them come for it. Let them come for iiiiit... and now they are out of position and can do no more good. mission accomplished.

Hold out bait to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and then crush him.
-Sun Tzu, the Art of War
http://www.40kunorthodoxy.blogspot.com

7th Ambassadorial Grand Tournament Registration: http://40kambassadors.com/register.php 
   
Made in lv
Regular Dakkanaut






You can control youre oponnet by feading him youre units to gieve them false sence of wining until theire understand that they lost game. Launching powerful scary units in youre opponents face to distract him from little squishy units that hold objektives ,feed hes super unit with youre expendable units whiles bully his troops... I think eny aggressive army is based around controll enyway !
   
 
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