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.

morning dakka,

I'm looking for suggestions on how I can be a better player. obviously, playing more games is at the top of my list I watch a fair number of batreps, but there's often not a lot of tactical discussion in most of them. I also regularly read through the tactics and army list forums here on dakka. what else could I be doing to improve? are there any books on tactics or military history that might be useful here? other suggestions?

thanks!

What do you seem to have problems with?

Well, a good start for us to help you is by answering a few questions:

1. What army do you play? What kind of list do you run?

2. What do you feel you do well?

3. What do you feel needs improvement?

As far as books on real military history, I'd avoid them save for the broadest lessons. The best RL kind of stuff isn't really any kind of military battleplan, but in being able to manage the psychology of your opponent, luring and baiting and diverting.

General tactics are a must for the game.

You have to know your armies strengths, the enemies, how to deal with the problems set before you, and plan ahead.

Always have a backup plan, make sure to learn from your mistakes and keep an open mind.

True strategy cannot be taught, but the fundamentals can be applied.

Misdirection, surprise, bait and switch, as well as other general tactics work well in 40k. Being able to pick out lanes of fire, approach, defense and choke points merely takes practice.

1. What army do you play? What kind of list do you run?

In addition to curran12's questions (which are all important for you to answer before anyone can give you more specific answers) I would add this to the question above:

Do you regularly play the same or similar lists, or do you jump around a lot. Army x this week, army y next week etc. Really knuckling down and focusing on one army with maybe only a few lists for a longer length of time can really help.

 juraigamer wrote:
...

Misdirection, surprise, bait and switch, as well as other general tactics work well in 40k. Being able to pick out lanes of fire, approach, defense and choke points merely takes practice.

I think this last bit is what I'm trying to improve upon. I usually don't have a plan in mind until my models hit the table and I see what the other guy's up to; I end up playing reactionary until my opponent drops the ball or I have a good turn and put him on the back foot. this can work, but I feel like I've won more games due to my opponent's horrific dice than due to any amazing generalship on my end

I play vanilla marines at the moment and will also be starting chaos marines later in the year. both of them are shooty and light on armor, though my chaos marines will have some dedicated assault elements as well.

So, right now you tend to run shooty Marines? Any more details you can offer? The more you give us, the more we can give back.

I play Sisters, which are shooty Marines in a lot of ways, so generally the biggest skill I find is making sure your fire is concentrated and directed appropriately. If you are shooting army, here are a few rules I follow:

1. The order of your shooting is important. Don't just fire willy-nilly as you may leave stuff without things to effectively shoot. Plan your shooting phase.

2. Do not mix shooting unit roles. For example, if you have a Devastator squad, don't mix up the weapons. If you want tankbusting, give all of them tankbusting weapons otherwise the anti infantry stuff will be wasted.

3. Movement phase is important. Ensure that your stuff is positioned to cause damage, and resist counter attack.

Tycho wrote:

1. What army do you play? What kind of list do you run?

In addition to curran12's questions (which are all important for you to answer before anyone can give you more specific answers) I would add this to the question above:

Do you regularly play the same or similar lists, or do you jump around a lot. Army x this week, army y next week etc. Really knuckling down and focusing on one army with maybe only a few lists for a longer length of time can really help.

I play the same army (vanilla space marines), but I change up parts of the list from game to game. here's the core of my list (1000-1250pts):

- two 10-man tac squads w/plasmagun and plasma cannon (I usually combat squad these and keep the plasma cannon in cover somewhere while the other combat squad advances)
- 2 rhinos/razorbacks
- land speeder with typhoon ML and HB (this thing has been my MVP unit so many times...)

and here are the elements that change from game to game:

5-man tac termies w/termie captain
10-man tac squad with ML/flamer and PA captain
5-man assault marine squad w/flamer
5-man sniper scout squad w/ML
5-man devastator squad w/LCx2 and MLx2
dreadnought w/MM and DCCW

in the near future, I'll be adding an ADL, drop pod, predator and stormtalon to the mix and playing more around the 1500pts level.

 varl wrote:

I play vanilla marines at the moment and will also be starting chaos marines later in the year. both of them are shooty and light on armor, though my chaos marines will have some dedicated assault elements as well.

Try telling the Iron Warriors lists that

If you're considering moving onto CSM, I shall give you a hand in this area:

1) CSM is a mid-field expert army. Give yourself a tough core of elite units, backed up by a squishy shell of meatshields (Usually cultists). When using this, use the cultists as mobile cover, and to drag your opponent closer. Once you've got them where you want, thwack them with the most dangerous thing you have.

2) Cult troops are almost always better than standard CSM, until you need a static gunline.

3) The Land Raider has an identity crisis. it has no PotMS, and is stuck between firing two guns or ramming into the enemy with a cargo of terminators. Make sure you know what you're doing when using it.

4) The CSM army is centered around having a big bad boss monster (ML3 psykers, beefy Chaos Lords, DP's, Abbadon, Typhus). The HQ choice you make will literally define your army. You can use marks to unlock cult marines as troops, you can use a warpsmith to reinforce a gunline, and you can use a DP to scare the opponent s***less.

5) Against MEQ armies, the Heldrake with Baleflamer can be a game breaker. Make sure you line it up to vector strike and flame in the same turn. Note that you can vector strike a rhino, break it, and then flame the passengers.

Nilla marines are exactly that. Vanilla.

No weakness, no huge strengths. So basically, every enemy you face will have a basic weakness. Strategically, hit that weakness. Maximize templates vs Horde, focus fire vs. Tanks etc.

Tactically, practice makes perfect. Here are some high points I've found:

-cover is everywhere, and free. A marine is already tough to kill, give him a 4++ and he's a character in any other army, with only 1 wound.

-Watch battle reports on Youtube of people who play your army, and note where they position and deploy. Also note what the target and why, what works and what fails. Important to follow up with, why did it fail. Everything is subject to dice, so expect the best decision in the game to fail AT LEAST ~15% of the time.

Everything is subject to dice, so expect the best decision in the game to fail AT LEAST ~15% of the time.

Everything is subject to dice, so expect the best decision in the game to fail AT LEAST ~15% of the time.

In larger games land speeders become victims. HP 2 AV 10 jink is not particularly durable in 6th and the weapons on those things add up quickly.

I have two points about tactics in general, not only in 40k

1) People say that knowing your enemy brings you victory. Agreed, if you're playing against friend, think how he plays and how he thinks. Your friend will propably try this on you too, so the big thing is suprise. You shouldn't bring lousy units just to show him/her, but if you often use predator support and he knows it, switch it to Devs and his AT-weaponry will be wasted points (just an example). But don't forget the fli-side of this coin, that you should also know your own strengths and weaknesses.

2) There are 2 types of tacticians: those who will strike at weak spots of the enemy and those, who will strike where he believes to be strongest, and then take the advantage away from the enemy.
IMO, the second ones are better. Why? They are bolder, the enemy doesn't expect you to assault his CC-specialist unit, but then you will at least tie him up for a turn and use it well.

 soomemafia wrote:
I have two points about tactics in general, not only in 40k

1) People say that knowing your enemy brings you victory. Agreed, if you're playing against friend, think how he plays and how he thinks. Your friend will propably try this on you too, so the big thing is suprise. You shouldn't bring lousy units just to show him/her, but if you often use predator support and he knows it, switch it to Devs and his AT-weaponry will be wasted points (just an example). But don't forget the fli-side of this coin, that you should also know your own strengths and weaknesses.

2) There are 2 types of tacticians: those who will strike at weak spots of the enemy and those, who will strike where he believes to be strongest, and then take the advantage away from the enemy.
IMO, the second ones are better. Why? They are bolder, the enemy doesn't expect you to assault his CC-specialist unit, but then you will at least tie him up for a turn and use it well.

Good points.

New tip: Daemon Prince is powerful only if he's used to assassinate a high-value target.

I would say that a key tactical skill you could focus on improving is your analysis of a battlefield's terrain.

Terrain is what changes a battle from a straight-up reliance on the best army or luckiest dice, to a true analysis of tactical skill. Terrain can slow down units, or protect them from the enemy. It can form barriers and choke points, that allow you to funnel the enemy into your killing zone. It can shield your units, so they can close with (or escape from) their opponents.

Try heading over to the Battle Reports section and taking a look at the battlefields shown - never mind the armies involved or how they deploy. Think about the following:

- Where would you deploy your units, and why?
- Which terrain pieces give you additional protection (from shooting, h-to-h, or both)
- Which will impede your movement?
- Which will impede your shooting?
- Are there any 'avoid' areas that will leave your units vulnerable?
- Are there any 'killing zones' where your fire will be move effective (this includes thinking about blast and template weapons here)?
- Now go back to the first question. Would you do anything different now you've thought about all of the above?

@martel732: the land speeder has surprised me with how well it's done. it'll die if you sneeze in it's general direction, but I either keep it tucked away in the back field lobbing missiles down range or park it at the 36" mark in front of an oncoming 24" ranged unit. it does consistent damage, but not enough to warrant a lot of focused fire from my opponents (so far). I'll probably replace it with stormtalons and bikes for bigger games, but for now it's a fun and effective unit.

@cod3x: that's a good suggestion regarding looking for batreps specific to my army. I tend to watch stuff for every army out there, in part because that just happens to be what the producers put out and also in part to get exposed to other armies. in person, I've only played against other vanilla marines and CSM, so seeing tau, IG, nids, etc. in the videos has been educational. I'll have to hunt down more vanilla marine batreps, though.

@selym: that's for the CSM suggestions. my chaos list is a bit up in the air at the moment, but I'm currently planning on a core of 2-3 CSM squads, some cultists for objective camping, a large pack of raptors to run my lord with and a heldrake or two. things are up in the air for heavy support. it's a night lords themed list, so probably won't be using cult troops. I may add armor, though... vindicators, perhaps. anyway, that's several months away

one area to improve that springs to mind is deployment. are there any general dos and don'ts? I try to take advantage of cover, but that can also end up hindering my advance (crappy difficult terrain roles, etc.). I'm also light on transports at the moment, so if I rush my rhinos forward I end up with my army fragmented across the table and that worries me.

One thing I've found is that shooty lists tend to play very well as reactionary lists. I do generally have an aim when I play a game, but I find that ranged weapons give you time to think, plan and react. Assault based lists must focus from the outset.

The good thing about playing a reactionary style is that the dice don't control you. You are far less likely to win/lose on dice rolls as one failure means you can easily change your plan. On the flip side, one success means you can focus in on it and really take advantage of it.

It could be the way I think, but shooty mech lists really fit this style well, and I've found it to be very useful.

 varl wrote:

one area to improve that springs to mind is deployment. are there any general dos and don'ts? I try to take advantage of cover, but that can also end up hindering my advance (crappy difficult terrain roles, etc.). I'm also light on transports at the moment, so if I rush my rhinos forward I end up with my army fragmented across the table and that worries me.

I'm inexpert on the subject of vanilla tactica, so I'll stick to CSM do's and don'ts

Do:
-Stick a long range weapon on all your CSM squads. It will drastically improve their wound allocation range, and allow them to tackle more specific threats.
-Bring a Vindicator if you want ground heavy support. You can move 12" and still fire, so it has a danger zone of 36".
-Use blobs of cultists, and try to improve their LD, or make them fearless. 10-man cultist units are an easy kill point, but maxed out they are a serious problem for the enemy.
-Give raptors melta bombs if you have 5 points to spare, you'll rarely regret it.
-The lord could do very well with a chaos artefact (Possibly black mace, but that's ap4).
-If you're not deepstriking the raptors, jump from cover to cover. Lure an opponent next to some terrain that your raptors are hiding behind, and jump them.

Don't:
-Use small cultist units
-Keep the Vindicator back, unless you have something vital to defend
-Encourage long-range firefights

 varl wrote:


one area to improve that springs to mind is deployment. are there any general dos and don'ts? I try to take advantage of cover, but that can also end up hindering my advance (crappy difficult terrain roles, etc.). I'm also light on transports at the moment, so if I rush my rhinos forward I end up with my army fragmented across the table and that worries me.

If you have lots of tanks, It's better to hide behind them than behind of cover. They can move out of the way, and block LoS completely

I always worry about explosions with that idea. rhinos blow up pretty easily these days. then again, that's what 3+ saves are for I guess.

Only S3 and you have 3+ save, it shouldn't kill too many, but I understand your point. But remember that blocking LoS is more important than cover on first turn.

Listen to podcasts, I recommend 11th co and 40kuk. You can draw on a lot of experienced players tactical expertise and also learn about different armies strengths and weaknesses.

I play vanilla marines and they've been my main army since I first started. Like the others have said, try some different things and see what works. I play with a core group of 8 or so other players and my win/loss ratio was not good at all until recently. I'm getting the hang of setting up lanes of fire, drawing the enemy in, knowing when to attack, when to hang back, etc. I played our nid player recently and did not move out of my deployment zone and wiped him off the map completely with my all foot troop/2 dread Raven Guard army. He was very much not happy at all that he lost to me as he's a seasoned player with many years under his belt. and was hoping for an easy win against the noob of the group. I basically sat back and did nothing but shoot at him and it worked. Next game I played our unbeaten Ork player with that same mentality and he wiped me off the map. My win ration has climbed to almost 50/50 by just knowing the players in my group and how they play their armies and some of their tactics. I even went as far as buying up codexes and reading to find out what the enemy could and could not do. Not saying you should do the same as this can add up fast and put a dent in your wallet. If you play often just keep trying out different things as other armies are constantly evolving so the same ole tactics may not be good enough to get the job done. Good luck and keep fighting!!!

So, 40k is actually a pretty tactically shallow game. It really all devolves to two things: scoring units and killing power.

Killing power is mostly a list-building issue, making sure you bring enough serious shooting/chopping to really get the job done. The armylist forum can help with this. The second part is target prioritization. This is actually fairly easy. You start with the things that are most threatening to your scoring units, and then work your way down to the things that are scoring units of your opponent, and then down to things which are most threatening to the things that are most threatening to their scoring units. Etc.

Scoring units... well... once again is an issue of list building. It's about balancing bringing enough against the ability to kill enough of your opponents, and enough of your opponent's ability to kill your own scoring units. That and there is a bit of strategy involved in hiding your scoring units appropriately and then springing them onto objectives at the right time near the end of the game.

Then, over all of this, add the fact that 6th edition is a shooty edition, and you want to flavor this with the idea of "toys over boys". That is, that you should generally give a slight preference to killing power units over scoring units, and you should be good to go.

I'd like to expand upon what Ailaros said in the slightest. Target priority is key: this is true for you and your opponent. An excellent way to make your opponents target priority difficult is to field as many durable, threatening units as possible. This doesn't mean you need a tourney list - "fun" or offbeat units can still work in your army, as they'll be low priority targets for opponents, but they shouldn't make up the bulk of your force.

11th co is a pretty good resource. As far as their BA discussions, they were pretty knowledgeable. There were a few things they missed, but none of them play BA. Their comment on Tau and CSM seem very good as well. I'd check them out.

some excellent tips. I'll definitely check out those two podcasts

If you want to learn tactics... toss the terminators... not that they suck it is just that they are ok at shooty and ok at CC with great survivability... They become a crutch to bad choices... I would rather get spanked badly a few times so that I learn what needs to die right now or I am screwed than find out I am always saying my terminators saved my a$$ again.


My suggestion is to go shooty and learn target priority. The best way to do this is TFC and sternguard. TFC to give you some all around coverage but more importantly sternguard.
Sternguard with their special ammo should be your swiss army knife answer to anything the enemy throws at you. The only thing Sternguard do not have an answer for is terminators...
That can be solved by combi-plasma.

Build your list around shooty with one counterattack unit... Best is going to be honor guard, command squad, vanguard vets, terminators, assault marines... probably in that order... Again while termies are good avoid them for now... I would recommend a captain + command squad for now... A little squishy but it can answer anything but terminators...
Another possibility is 1 or 2 dreadnoughts.

To make your life easier, the one thing that marines all suffer from is lack of mobility... The best way to solve this is to go with a biker captain and 1 bike unit. Scoring, tough and pretty good. Otherwise - to stay firepower centric - I like cheapa$$ landspeeders with heavy bolters or attack bikes. They can do anything if manuevered correctly and if they are not too scary, I find the enemy often ignores them until it is too late.

The main principle of the game is allowing a greater concentration of your troops to efficiently engage a weaker concentration of enemy forces.

Deployment:
The phase serves two purposes. First when you place units, you are essentially choosing what you intend to fight with that unit, and where. Second you are choosing what objectives you are planning to take/contest. When you design a list have a plan to hold 2 objectives in your home field and and then have forces to either contest or deny enemy objectives. If you deploy second pay attention to enemy weapon ranges. Certain weapons can be marginalized or outright mitigated by careful deployment (when measuring ranges keep in mind that some enemies can move before firing, so vindicators typically have an effective range of 6+24=30"). You may want to consider that if an opponent brings vindicators you can make them not fire turn 1 by deployment, but you are ceding control of the center of the board to him.

Movement:
When moving you have two main goals. First is to ensure you employ your own weapons at optimal ranges. Before you move anything decide what enemy units you want to kill. Make sure that you can bring enough weapons to range to get the job done (a little overkill can hedge against a bad run of luck on your part or a good run on the opponents part, too much will leave units with nothing to shoot at). The second purpose of movement is damage mitigation, you can obtain better cover or block line of sight from high damage targets.

Shooting:
A good player will have made most of his shooting decisions during the movement phase but there are some good principles that still apply. Weapons in range of other targets should be fired later, if you have a run of luck with an earlier weapon you can engage another target. Example; an enemy tank is in range of my Missile launchers and a squad with a meltagun, meltagun should fire first if other AV targets are on the board. Allowing the ML to engage a different target if the melta is successful. Transports are a little different though sometimes you may want to fire long range support squads first, so as to allow the squad with the meltagun to fire bolters at the occupants after the vehicle is destroyed (a cunning opponent will deploy behind the wreck of his destroyed vehicle if you still have shooting left).

Another consideration for shooting is when you have templates/blasts targeting the same unit as non/template weapons. In general you may want to employ area of effect weapons first as direct fire weapons will reduce the models available for blasts/templates to hit.

These principles should make your shooting far more efficient. Another concept that I haven't addressed, use the right weapon for the job. Example, Autocannons, while capable of harming AV13, it is not an optimal weapon for that purpose. If you have S7 shot and the only av on the table is AV13, it may be more efficient to target infantry models instead the odds of taking a hullpoint off AV 13 with an autocannon are bad (~20% assuming the opponent has no coversave, i wouldn't expect autocannons to succeed in killing av13 unless you bring 14 of them).

Assaults:
This edition has not been very forgiving to assault armies, but being a marines are fairly versatile and can be employed in many fashions. Their combat stats while mediocre are usually better than other armies shootier elements. Closing with certain enemies can allow you to mitigate their shooting and even kill certain units. Try to get within 3-4 inches for a reliable assault. Assaulting with a chump unit is a good way to make sure a more valuable assault unit can survive over-watch.

I've rambled on enough at this point. I hope this helps.

Never let your opponent dictate the battle

Deployment: This part of the game is crucial as it sets up all you lanes of fire. hide any weak units that may give up, like landspeeders

Movement: 1) Units with Rapid Fire should always keep moving 6" away from assault units and 6" toward shooting units
2) Heavy weapons should only move if it will not stop an assault so when units get within 14" if there 15" or more away and they try to assault they will fail more then 1/2 the time and you will get to snap fire so... free shooting in there turn and flames have 12" range when you snap fire

Shooting: This is the whole game now so pew pew the right stuff or you will fail.
1) Glancing hits are a waste! you only want Penetrating hit
so never ever shoot a ML at a landraider. on average it would take a Space marines devastators unit 6 turns to drop a landraider
ok back to Penetrating hits on a 6+ yes you destroy the vehicle but all rolls on the Penetrating table are great 1,2 and 3 stop a leman russ battle tank shooting for a turn since you can't snap fire blast, so when this happens stop shooting at that tank and start again on it next turn.
2) 1st turn pick on the weakest unit in there army!! you have TLOS on kill it, keep shooting it untill you kill it you MUST get 1st blood over 70% of games are now won by who ever gets 1st blood, that means don't even think about moving your landspeeder into the open untill you get 1st blood, if you have to hide it for the whole game thats ok just don't give away 1st blood

Assaults: Your joking right you have read the 6ed rules. Very soon you will meet new player that don't remember the rules for melee or worse did not even know there was an assaults sub phase. The fact its now called a sub-phase should clue most players onto it not being a real part of the game any more

Your forgot the Flyer sub-phase.
you have 0 flyers and they have 2 or more you lose
you have 1 flyer and they have 3 or more you lose

Your forgot the Flyer sub-phase.
you have 0 flyers and they have 2 or more you lose
you have 1 flyer and they have 3 or more you lose

This is bull. You don't need flyers to succeed. They are just another unit type you have to account for, like AV 14.

You need AA solutions, which may or may not be flyer based.