Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Fairly simple question that can be applied all over.

I was playing my very elite grey knight force against thousand sons a week ago, and I feel I made a large mistake.
It was my turn and I had a very suped up Paladin squad ready to charge some cult termies, dragio and a invis Libby ready to charge another squad, and two dreadknights ready to charge two separate cult termie squads. I had plenty of ap2 and was rather sure I could take each of those squads with my respective squad and wipe them. However, I failed three of the four charges (screams internally) and he ended up charging everything he had into the Paladins. What I wonder is if instead just charge everything into one unit and wipe them out. Rather than try and spread my small force out to get a possible game winning round off.

So my question is this. For a small elite army like grey Knights is it better to divide up forces and hit priority targets/ targets of opportunity? Or stay together and steam roll each unit I direct my force against?

Now obviously this is all situation dependent. But it's starting to become a problem for me. A lot of times I think maybe if I wipe them to nothing then move on instead of a slow slug fest, turn after turn I would wipe out portions of any possible damage that could come my way. On the other hand, I need my small army to do a lot all at once make ten men feel like 100. tieing up multiple units at the same time means less shots at my terminators and less enemy manuvering around my shiny marines.

What do you all think?

Just my two cents but running DA in a Lion's Blade I'd rather you charged 1 unit at a time and steam role them. You'd waste a lot of effort on guys you'd probably win in CC with anyways. It would keep my other units safe and after you steam rolled them in your assault phase, i'd be able to put a lot of dakka on them in my shooting phase. Plus my other units would be open to get objectives.

Now if you divided them up it could be more problematic. You'd keep more of my army that hates CC in CC. Ideally, you'd want to win combat in my assault phase as well instead of just steam rolling them them on the charge in. I wouldn't be able to shoot at them in my shooting phase and you'd be able to (hopefully) set up another charge at the top of the next turn.

It depends on the opponent, in that specific situation, you didn't really do much wrong, you couldn't have counted on failing those charges.

However, it depends on the list I'm facing and the army I'm using.

For example, I fought against a White Scars Gladius with my DE, I made a huge mistake by placing my objectives all around the table, and spreading my MSU out for board control before the bulk majority of his force came on from outflank.

This allowed his guns to kill my DE units piecemeal (not hard to do) but I didn't have reinforcements.

Normally I like redundancy in 40k, when it comes to charges, shooting, and my overall list. I like having at least three units that can accomplish a certain objective (a rule of three, guard players live by it), so say I can charge a unit of terminators into a unit of marines, I will also throw some assault marines in there, just to make sure (especially if it is vital to the mission that those marines dropped).

Obviously this is very hard to do with an elite list, however, generally if you are facing a tough army (necrons, deathguard, etc etc) then make sure you either buff all of your GK to super human levels, or dedicate multiple units to killing a single unit. A glance on a vehicle still allows the vehicle to function at full efficiency for example. For a hardcore MSU list (gladius in normal/small games, most Eldar/Dark Eldar lists nowadays, KDK, etc etc) then it is pretty easy to send units all over the board because they won't get bogged down and the such.

Hopefully this helps a bit, this guide is far from universal, but I think it works as a general rule of thumb, Its what I use at least

Space Wolves player - I tend to go unit on unit, admittedly I've usually been aiming for said assaults since the begining of the game because I have a fair idea of the outcome but I am never 'above' ganging up on a single unit.
Mostly the reason I go unit for unit is as ILegion said, you want to win during your opponent's assault phase, not on the charge. I'd rather just scrape by and come out after my opponent's shooting phase than steamroll and get shot at, then assaulted in retaliation.

I think where I went wrong was I should have ganged up on one squad at a time with him. For MSU lists I spread out as much as possible and engage as many units as I can by shooting a witch fire at one unit then shooting another and assaulting it. While against another super elite army (that's not 100%shooty) I should try and overwhelm one squad at a time. This was honestly the first time in a while I faced an army with almost as few models as me.
Another problem was he was using the rules wrong. He was re rolling ones for saves for blessing of tzeench even though he didn't max out his squads for the formation. So his termies re rolled saves of 1 and had 5 T. Still almost won though. This has nothing to do with the tactics question. But I would have won had he not used his army wrong.

with Psycannons galore I like to keep mine reasonable close and dominate the middle. If assaultsz seem inevitable you can afford to be patient and wait and perhaps thats a situation that you spread out but for the most part you want to overwhelm things and move on to the next target whenever you can. Your own losses hurt and the enemy losses usually ar followed with a whole lot of pain for you that they can take better than you. So I like finishing strong on units and taking thm off completely.