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Something I've noticed: If you strike in a Melta Squad, Deathmarks or any other suicide unit aimed purely at a single target... It doesn't matter if it suceeds or not, that unit is going to attract disproportionate retribution next turn.

In fact, you can reliably plan around it. Even if your Deathmarks blow enough of a hole in the command squad to render it useless, or your meltas pop a Land Raider, you know you're going to have a lot of diverted firepower in that direction next turn. Good positioning and you can even redirect the momentum of an entire flank.

So... Why don't more people just largely ignore these units? The Melta unit are unlikely to get that close to a second tank, the Deathmarks won't get a 2+ to wound on a second unit... The threat is over.

Why is it so rare to deal with the main force first and worry about the five man squad in the back later?

Emotional response and/or uneducated fear of that unit repeating the destruction. Your point makes sense but not too sure if people can ignore a unit who just destroyed one of their tough units.

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/DISTRACTION_CARNIFEX

People get tunnel visioned easily.

Short ranged weapons tend to be more powerful than long-ranged weapons and usually the drop-pod squads are a more immediate threat than the stuff on the other side of the table.

I did that last game. I let some BA assault marines take out an exorcist, cripple a second and take my backfield objective, scoring all 5 of my opponent's points.

Instead I took his backfield, the midfield objective and got Linebreaker for a 10-5 win (I had 2 kill points and first blood already). Dante and his sang guard moved into my backfield to support the assault squad ignoring that there were no points left for him to claim there.

Some suicide units can't be ignored. Take stormteks with a veiltek for example. They have the mobility to eat a tank a turn.
Also taking out 5 marines isn't a huge ask requiring an entire flank to be diverted. But I see your general point.

I think unconcsciously most people assume there is a 'Part 2' to the plan, and so can't help but wipe out the squad to prevent 'part 2'.

I tend not to ignore, but I don't dedicate that much effort to putting a suicide squad down-if it's close to a squad that can't reach anything important, then I'll throw a few shots to cause a wound or two, but I'm not going to change my entire plan to wipe out one squad, my plan has already been altered by the loss of the tank (or whatever) the suicide unit took out. I've had one or two games where people have dropped pods, which were originally intended to take out my backline, insanely close to their own army just to stop my suicide squad-such a waste of tactical flexibility.

Still, I agree, some suicide units require a bit more attention than others-when I'm just having a casual game, sometimes my first pod on the ground is a 9 man sternguard squad with various combis....and an Iron Hands captain with the gorgons chain and Relic blade. Not something that you necessarily want running around behind you.

Particularly when Cypher has infiltrated in and is rapidly closing the distance to support the suicide squad...and there's a location beacon on the Drop pod to bring in some support assault terminators and assault squad.

It's a risky tactic, but it can be a lot of fun.

The example that prompted this train of thought was a game I played on Sunday.

Playing against Tau. Now, I lost on Maelstrom cards anyhow because luck of the draw favoured what he was doing: Sitting still on three objectives and shooting things.

But, as far as the combat itself went, I started with a huge disadvantage. We agreed to not say what army we'd bring in advance, I'd brought a gunline army with an Aegis defence line, and the other guy brought his Tau. Rolling for missions, we got deploying down the table the long way. So there I am, turn one with nothing in range and a worthless line of cover.

On turns 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 he tried to focus fire me one unit as a time as they came into threatening range.

Turn two though? I deep struck Deathmarks dropping his Riptide to one wound and Acanthrites Meltaing his Hammerhead causing an explosion that killed four Pathfinders using it as cover. At the same time, my allied Vindicare (two Deathmark units and a Deathmark converted as a Vindicare. Going for a Sniper Team theme there.) sniped a Cadre Fireblade out of one of his units.

And whilst that did a lot of damage... What really turned the tables was my opponent abandoning the focus fire strategy and firing wildly at the units who had already done their worst and fully destroying none of them. Broke his momentum and let me start swinging things to the point where he had one and a half units left at the end to my five. Had he kept to the game plan, I'd not have capitalised as well as that. Had the game rolled on to turn seven, I'd have probably managed to table the Tau.

...More of a rambling anecdote than I meant there, but I was basically just trying to provide context.

I will focus my fire on the linebreakers that deepstrike into my deployment zone. I do not like giving up bonus objective points if I do not have to. Let's not forget that when an opponent deepstrikes units into your deployment zone, he now splits his force in half. I would prefer to shoot the units where I can mass firepower enough to eliminate them from the board. That is easier to do at the units that pop up in your backfield than enemy units further out.

IMO killing the suicide unit is almost always the right decision. A conventional suicide unit is a glass cannon capable of killing so much in a single turn that it doesn't matter what happens to it after that. You just can't give that kind of threat multiple turns to kill stuff. And on top of that the suicide unit is at close range, where you can deliver the maximum amount of firepower to it. So you'll rarely have an opportunity to remove more of your opponent's firepower with a given amount of your own attacks. The only exceptions to this rule would be when the suicide unit depends on one-shot weapons and is no longer a significant threat, or when it kills something away from the main part of your army and isn't going to be in position to do any significant damage for a while.

Maybe it's a wish to protect what you think belongs to you.

*A suicide unit gets on my backfield*
You unpack a shoota.
- Get off my lawn backlines!

Or maybe that's a wish for revenge. A hustband comes back after a hard day of work and sees his whife with another man. The damage is done allready but he still picks a knife and tries to kill the 'intruder'.

Maybe it's just because I play orks, but when I have like a battlewagon get blown up or something, I don't need to divert a whole FLANK to deal with it. Just, whoever was in there gets out and shoots/charges that unit then continues to try to walk up to everyone else. If they drop behind my back lines and take out say some mek guns or something, on the other hand, and I don't have anything nearby to go take it out, I don't bother with it. Those sort of things fall more in line with "targets of convenience" to me rather than "targets of priority."

ancraig wrote:
Maybe it's just because I play orks, but when I have like a battlewagon get blown up or something, I don't need to divert a whole FLANK to deal with it. Just, whoever was in there gets out and shoots/charges that unit then continues to try to walk up to everyone else. If they drop behind my back lines and take out say some mek guns or something, on the other hand, and I don't have anything nearby to go take it out, I don't bother with it. Those sort of things fall more in line with "targets of convenience" to me rather than "targets of priority."

Yep, as an ork player i often feel happy when someone's coming for me themselves once in a while!