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Hey I had an odd game recently in which a player utilized a tactic I hadn't faced before which actually proved annoyingly effective.

I play a foot heavy IG. My opponent had a vanilla marine army, his army was pretty standard for a smurf force, excepting he has a couple surprises. Namely the use of Land Speeder Stroms with scout units inside. These served mostly as annoyance units, zipping about pumping harassing bolter fire into my foot troops, but over all ignorable (he did not have multimeltas on board so I mostly left them alone first round as to concentrate fire on those targets which were a threat to my artillery). Little did I remember that these speeders are assault vehicles, and scouts armed bolter hand weapon actually do a pretty darn good job of pushing veterans off of objectives... Turn two I saw two of my veterans camping in cover on objectives assaulted and losing combat (-2 to LD thanks to the storm) and lost two well held objectives early in the game. With the addition of camo cloaks on his scouts it meant my well placed "vets with 4+ cover save are gonna be a pain to pull off this objective" just became scouts with a 3+ cover save sitting on my objective...

So this got me wondering. What other "out side the box" strategies have people faced which proved much more effective than expected? I am not looking for interweb cheese or random luck or rolling well, but strategies and effective use of those underdog units a codex seems to forget or ignore.

Platoon infantry in chimeras. W/1 melta per squad.

Its bad, and was in 5th so probably even worse now, but the solid wall of AV12 coming at me just overwhelmed my ability to use heavy weapons, and then tank shock through cover with infantry hopping out in the middle of my lines...

My armour didn't survive, I didn't have flyers, and my own infantry was outnumbered and flanked. Just couldn't push him off my objectives in time, so he won. Couple more turns and my veterans and better special weapon choices (plus my flamer PCS and orders) would have done the job, but we were both rolling well for saves.

I like to deepstrike landspeeder squadrons (3) with assault cannon/heavy bolter. They're only 90 pts a pop (from the SW codex) and they can deal with ANY threat very quickly: if he's got an infantry blob pissing me off, I come in with 18 S6 rending shots and 9 S5 hb shots to thin 'em out; or if he's got some armor causing me problems I can deepstrike in his rear arc and hit him with the same thing (rending can pop armor up to AV14). As a squadron, you're looking at 270 pts but when they show up, they deal some death and FORCE your opponent to turn and shoot at them which relieves your units already on the table. win-win IMO

Its expensive as hell, but Chain Teleporting Necrons is always fun

You will need:
Stormlord
Zhandy
Oby
Lord with WS SW RO MSS
5 Lychguard
10 Flayed Ones (yes I said it)
2x 10 man Wariors in a Night Scythe, each with ajoined Gauntlet/ResOrb Lord

1 - Use Stormy's Bloodswarm Nanos to mark a unit, prefferably a Blob of cultists or Guardsmen behind an ADL.
2 - Deep Strike the Flayed ones with adjoined Zahndrek, without scatter within 6" of said Blob.
3 - use the Ghostwalk on Oby to bring the Lychguard and WS Lord into range, without scatter within 6" of Zhandrek
4 - Bring on the two Night Scythes, and jump out the Warriors and lords
5 - watch your opponants look of 'wtf is going on'
6 - watch them be spoilt for choice on what to intercept
7 - watch their look of panic as you kill everything in that shooting Phase
8 - ????
9 - Profit!

I wouldnt take it in under 2500, as it costs about 1000 in itself, but Ive done it once and it is hilarious

I've got a friend who was tabled by an Eldar player who spammed wave serpents and strategically tank shocked him off the table edges one unit at a time. To be fair he was new to the game at that point and playing vanilla marines without any anti-vehicle weaponry, also the Eldar player was being cruel with misleading advice. It was still fun that a player tabled his opponent without firing a single shot.

Honor Guard out of a Drop Pod with a Librarian with Force Shield. (And the Chapter Master, obviously.) I kit them out with Relic Blades and Auxiliary Grenade Launchers. Expensive as hell, obviously, but no one sees it coming. It's a great sucker punch. The new rules for AP on close combat weapons means that many of the combatants you see are only using AP 3 or 4 power weapons, which your Artificer Armor can just laugh off. I wouldn't use it habitually, but I always love breaking out a unit that no one is prepared for.

 SupremeDalek wrote:
I've got a friend who was tabled by an Eldar player who spammed wave serpents and strategically tank shocked him off the table edges one unit at a time. To be fair he was new to the game at that point and playing vanilla marines without any anti-vehicle weaponry, also the Eldar player was being cruel with misleading advice. It was still fun that a player tabled his opponent without firing a single shot.

Probably fun for everyone but the poor newb

Thats just douchey...

I have had a 20x man Flayed One squad (w attached DLord) wipe out half of a tyranid horde army by themselves over the course of 3 turns by landing an awesome deep strike and moving in...and this was playing under the old Necron Dex!

Thats just douchey...

haha yes it was. To this day he considers all Eldar players as untrustworthy for their "Eldar trickery".
As I used to play Eldar I can indeed confirm that the army is built to mess with their opponents, I've never been that bad though.

Still waiting for somebody to accomplish some epicness with cultist, possesed marines, any underrated units in csm army.

Creed, 3 outflanking punisher LRBT with HB sponsons and pask.
87 shots the turn they come in
around 50 s5 hits
against t4=33 wounds
against t3=43 wounds
Good against hordes, side armor or those pesky space marines behind cover. Wiped out my 10 man (300 point) sternguard unit in 1 turn. Proceeded to take a devastator squad with lascannons and 2 tact squads with MM (not within 12") to get a weapon destroyed and a few stunned/shaken results. Then proceeded to wipe another 170 point tact squad the next turn. Destroyed two, but then lost my dev squad. At this point (turn 5) I had almost no AT weapons with which to stop the mechvet guard rolling up my side (a pair of TLLC razors and 3 ML in tact squads). More than made their points and won the guy the game

A ranged ork army.

phatonic wrote:
A ranged ork army.

A melee tau army? Donkeypunch-gogo.

 Filch wrote:
Still waiting for somebody to accomplish some epicness with cultist, possesed marines, any underrated units in csm army.

I've done the opposite: Hardly anything was left on the board apart my scorcerer, a few cultsits and his biker seargent.

My scorcerer charged in to get some glory. Promtly fails and dies to the chainsword.

My cultists always do something awesome. I absolutely love them. I run a squad with 30, 3 flamers and autoguns. They are my go-to unit to deal with terminators, especially the hammer variety.

Move forward, flamer, shoot with 52 shots. They charge, get hit with 3d3 flamer hits and another 52 overwatch shots. Then I make 32 attacks in melee before he swings.

There's nothing better!

The thread is about interesting, out of the box tactics though, so I'd like to see more about those rather than just underdog units. "This unit that sucks was great this one time" or even my own "this unit does what it does normally and that's why I like it".

I really liked the land speeder storm story. Small cc scout units for grabbing poorly kept objectives fast is interesting. Skimmer fleet tank shocking the opponent off the board is interesting. I want to hear more of that.

dude, scouts are where it's at

Using a stealth team to infiltrate the bloody handed god at some broadsides! Hilarious, and worked against other armies backfield units too!

I took 3 Storm Ravens and 3 Storm Talons against a Necron Cheese list ... I flew around the board just shooting away while he had to roll 6's to hit and 6's to glance ... Much fun that was.

Nid Psychic Choir:

Enfeeble, Enfeeble, Haemorrage.