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Or more precisely, if you aren't deep striking or outflanking, what is the point of holding units in reserve?

< Taken by the void dragon. >

Them not getting shot. Able to 'counter shoot' the enemy.

Example we (my chaos team and I) were against 2 other teams, we went last due to roll off and so reserved most of our armies. By the time we came on the aliens and imperium had thinned each other out!

Frankly, there is very little reason. I don't know about Apocalypse, but in 40K, you are just presenting yourself piecemeal to your opponent. I may not be able shoot your reserve units, but I sure can shoot what starts on the board. Furthermore, the reserve units are contributing nothing to the battle while they are in reserve and provide an additional variable to go wrong. Many of my victories as BA against lists that should have won have come from ill-advised reserving of units. I thought reserves were garbage in 5th and still are in 6th.

More so to the OP, I don't much like deep striking either unless a drop pod or spore in involved. Way too much random stuff can go wrong, and you are asking to be assaulted. At least the drop pods and spores reduce the piecemealing effect.

It's hugely variable. As BA you can re-roll jump pack reserves and only scatter d6 not 2d6.

You need to weigh this against the possiblity of them not arriving and also how much they will get shot skipping up the board.

Counter charge units are good to keep in reserve. If you need to wait for the enemy to come to you anyway may as well wait in safety.

But 6th edition forces you to deploy things that will get shot even for a DoA army. Plus, you can not assault until turn 3 at the soonest with DoA. Why not just have them available for a turn 2 assault? Things are going to die in 6th edition. Holding reserves just makes things easier for your opponent because you have less table coverage and throw weight until they show up.

It also allows you to keep weaker/cheeaper scoring units alive to come on later in the game and pick up objectives with a lower risk.

Those units could have been contributing instead of doing nothing, though. If my non-reserved army is eliminating models from your army utilizing reserves faster than the reserved army is eliminating them from the non-reserved army, how is it safer to come on the board later? The odds will likely be no better in later turns.

Martel732 wrote:
Those units could have been contributing instead of doing nothing, though. If my non-reserved army is eliminating models from your army utilizing reserves faster than the reserved army is eliminating them from the non-reserved army, how is it safer to come on the board later? The odds will likely be no better in later turns.

Having one or two units in reserve does not make your standing army weaker. Deepstriking gives you the option of having an untouched Alpha Striking unit touch down anywhere you desire; it gives you flexibility.

Five Kasrkin with Meltas can smoke any vehicle when they fall from the sky.

Having a deepstriking unit can give you the advantage of attacking a poorly defended objective, or reinforce the units the enemy is focusing on.

I honestly think you're being deliberately stubborn for the sake of argument...

Deepstriking arrives on a random turn with a good degree of variation where they land. And they shoot as having moved. And can't assault. I just don't think its that great, and I have punished many players for having reserves, and likely won only because they did reserve.

There are some units that can only contribute at certain times in the game though. Infantry with meltas is one example. If you field them then your opponent has the opportunity to negate them without them being able to contribute. Deep striking them at least allows them to contribute, and even if they stadt in reserve its likely they would be contributing ezrlier than if they had ben deployed normally.

The current rules for reserves makes it more likely than ever that they will turn up reasonably early and most armies have a means to increase this probability to the point you can pretty much rely on them.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend putting large chunks of your army into normal reserve, but there are times when it is useful to have a unit or 2 held back.

If your opponent has turn one and you have something with a lot of long ranged damage output but is a bit fragile and you don't want to weather a turn of your opponent's shooting at full strength you can reserve it and use the turn you have to disrupt or take out their units that threaten whatever it is you're holding back. There's also cheap troops that your opponent could easily take out earlier marching on to hold objectives later on.

 PrinceRaven wrote:
If your opponent has turn one and you have something with a lot of long ranged damage output but is a bit fragile and you don't want to weather a turn of your opponent's shooting at full strength you can reserve it and use the turn you have to disrupt or take out their units that threaten whatever it is you're holding back. There's also cheap troops that your opponent could easily take out earlier marching on to hold objectives later on.

I'd say these are the only good reasons, but they're not even that great when you consider how easy it is to limit your opponent's LoS with scenery, AV models or fortifications. It allows you to contribute from turn one as well as maintain their full strength.

Certain units, like an astropath, eldar autarch, or tyrant with hive commander make reserves a lot more attractive. The coms relay as well if you are willing to sacrifice anti air. This means that all your reserves are coming in on a 2+, which is a lot less piece meal.

Also units like guardian jetbikes, they have light fire power, but are quick. You can put small squads of them in reserve, then dance over to any unguarded objective later. You want your opponent shooting at them as little as possible because good opponents eliminate scoring units- especially ones as quick as jetbikes.

If I'm CSM and I'm facing a SW drop pod army, I reserve everything I can and pillbox the rest.

I also want to lose initiative and will pass on Seizing it. Nothing like a good counter-DP strike

Reasons to bring a normal unit in from reserve are situational as noted above, denying and then counter attacking alpha strike units like things that come out of Drop Pods is a good example.

Other than that the main reason is if a unit has a special ability on its reserve roll, like outflank or deepstrike that can put it in a considerably better position than if it were deployed normally.

Back in 5th reserves were way more advantageous because you could hold all of your units back, which denied your opponent any alpha strike ability, and left them guessing as to how your army would actually end up being deployed.

easy example.

I place one objective closest to my board edge making it my home objective. I reserve my cultist unit and hope they fail reserve rolls until 4th turn. They come in 4th turn, I move them on to objectives 5th turn and hope the game ends.

 KplKeegan wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Those units could have been contributing instead of doing nothing, though. If my non-reserved army is eliminating models from your army utilizing reserves faster than the reserved army is eliminating them from the non-reserved army, how is it safer to come on the board later? The odds will likely be no better in later turns.

Having one or two units in reserve does not make your standing army weaker. Deepstriking gives you the option of having an untouched Alpha Striking unit touch down anywhere you desire; it gives you flexibility.

Five Kasrkin with Meltas can smoke any vehicle when they fall from the sky.

Having a deepstriking unit can give you the advantage of attacking a poorly defended objective, or reinforce the units the enemy is focusing on.

I honestly think you're being deliberately stubborn for the sake of argument...

This... reserves are far less-strategic now that you can't assault when you arrive, but if there's a unit you don't want to die which has a short-ranged defensive payload, or you have a unit to counter enemy linebreakers, then reserving them is sensible. It's just not particularly great anymore.

I think it's army dependant. As IG I'd never reserve anything that wasn't outlfanking or deep-striking. Anything not on the board is a unit that's not shooting at the enemy or being used to throw in my enemy's face to protect the big guns.

In 5th I'd sometimes take Rough Riders and keep them in reserve, since they could assualt and destroy infantry MEQs for laughably few casualties. But that's no longer an option so no reserves for me.

I run a half mech half jump infantry BA list. I will go with three baal preds, 4 units of 10 assault marines, 2 librarians, 2 priests, 10 death company, and a storm raven.

For objective missions I will combat squad my units into melta squads and CC squads with a power fist. I then deploy 3 baal predators, 3 squads of assault marines, one with priest and libby(ifg his warlord trait needs him to be on the board). I then have my reserves as DC and storm raven(does not count towards reserves count due to being a flyer) and 4 units of deepstriking melta assault marine squads, one or two with a librarian(shield and blood lance) and priest.

Hard armor up front, hidden jump infantry behind and an alpha striking mega melta deep strike. This hits hard and shows the value of reserves.

This is a super effective use of reserves

The safest place to be is off the board... I like my scoring units in reserve because it doesn't matter who holds the objectives DURING the game...just at the end!

its a strategic ability that can be radical game changing or do nothing and those who use it generally do it badly in my experience but when you play ageist a really good Space mairne player with drop pods and stuff it can be brutal and hard to stay ahead because no matter what you do they always hit you first making your ability to counter week.

and as a experinced daemon player i can tell you right now its very frustrating for people to fight an all deepstriking army. if they go first they lose a whole turn of shooting and assaulting timewarp in 40k woot

It could be one of those lol moments your opponent deepstrikes say 5 Terminators down and says ha! an imperial guard vet squad comes in the same turn and says haha! With their plasma guns

Reserves have been an important part of battles throughout history. See here, which also answers in part the original question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_reserve

If there is no point to a reserve force in 40k across the board, no pun intended, it only shows to illustrate the loss of even a token adherence to being a wargame/generalship/battle simulator.

Halfpast_Yellow wrote:
Reserves have been an important part of battles throughout history. See here, which also answers in part the original question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_reserve

If there is no point to a reserve force in 40k across the board, no pun intended, it only shows to illustrate the loss of even a token adherence to being a wargame/generalship/battle simulator.

Reserves in 40K are very different from reserves in military doctrine and history. Notably, a real reserve is "to deal with weak points or opportunities" (Wikipedia). That means the general decides when, where, and how it is committed to battle. In 40K, since you don't know when your reserves will show up, that doesn't work.

Counter-charge units in 40K are actually closer to the original Roman concept of reserves. Let your bubble-wrap light infantry take the enemy's initial charge, then counter-charge with your military reserve (who are almost certainly not reserves in 40K terms).

consider eldar guardian jetbikes:

They can move 12", turbo-boost 24", and eldar cheat move 2D6 in the assault phase That's a max of 48"!! They don't take much firepower and are easy to kill. because they are usually fielded in small numbers it takes few shots to force a leadership test. and with their low leadership that's not really a risk you want to take. If you field them regularly then they will most certianly be killed before they can do anything worthwhile. So why take them? to put them in reserves so they can come out at the end of the game and grab objectives.

nonowho wrote:
consider eldar guardian jetbikes:

They can move 12", turbo-boost 24", and eldar cheat move 2D6 in the assault phase That's a max of 48"!! They don't take much firepower and are easy to kill. because they are usually fielded in small numbers it takes few shots to force a leadership test. and with their low leadership that's not really a risk you want to take. If you field them regularly then they will most certianly be killed before they can do anything worthwhile. So why take them? to put them in reserves so they can come out at the end of the game and grab objectives.

Except they come out on turn 2, not at the end of the game. The difference is marginal, especially when you could just hide them out of LoS.

One less turn for them to be shot at, but one less unit for your opponent to worry about.

Non-drop pod reserves are generally bad in 40K. Hiding units seems like a weak reason to have them not contributing. If the unit doesn't contribute in the first place, take a different unit.

I usually have to keep 2 units in reserves just because I can't fit my entire army in my deployment zone