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All armies are not created equal. Dismissing the movement phase is not a fundamentally sound idea. Just look at Tau. They rely upon both shooting and movement equally. Alpha strike is pretty much a lame horse in this edition.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
All armies are not created equal. Dismissing the movement phase is not a fundamentally sound idea. Just look at Tau. They rely upon both shooting and movement equally. Alpha strike is pretty much a lame horse in this edition.

So...Tau rely on movement and shooting more than any other army? What's more complex with them? They have on additional step. They move to get in range with their guns, shoot, then move to get out of LOS. That's not too terribly complicated. It just takes them one turn where-as most other units require two.

Well, and I'm not dismissing the movement phase. There are two important things that the movement phase does - get onto objectives and getting your guns into range (or keeping your opponents' out). You can't win roughly a quarter of the games without moving (assuming you deploy on objectives), and you can't win ANY games without applying your killing power.

Just because it's important, though, doesn't mean it's difficult or, more accurately, doesn't mean that there is an infinite depth of skill to it.

It's sort of like driving a car with a manual gear box. Just because it has a steep learning curve doesn't mean that it actually takes that much skill. Once you've figured it out, it's really just a matter of putting the clutch in and moving the lever.

http://www.3plusplus.net/2013/05/the-movement-phase-analysis-of-a-game-in-progress/

It's things like this that make me feel that detailing a bit more about why things move the way they do, why you choose to put this unit here and the other unit there, makes such a difference. It's not necessarily intuitive, especially to new players, why you'd choose to sacrifice certain units at certain points and the like. Or why you'd choose to accept certain risks over the course of the game, in order to give certain opportunities.

All that said, for the most part it's pretty straightforward. Getting into more details when there are significant movements, or getting into a bit more about why you take the game in the direction you do, can give a lot of insight. Your tactical overviews generally do a good job of this, however, and I enjoy those more than the narrative ones in a lot of cases.

He's just saying in a lot more words what I've already been saying. Really, he's presented with two options, moving guns (or, in his case, assaulters) into range, or denying the enemy from shooting him with guns. With units in the backfield moving onto objectives.

It doesn't make the movement phase the most important part of the game, though, as the very fact that the tau player hasn't moved any models yet and is nearly winning clearly shows.

I could do better about going through my plans and thinking, though.

There are things coupled with movement phase that make it more complex than how simple you make it out to be. Especially when it's a game that involves two good gamers both with good armies... It's not all about moar pew pew and late game objective grabbing all the time. The new Tau being able to easily remove cover saves goes hand in hand with this train of thought. Sure for two über shooty armies facing off it could just boil down to what you said - moving onto objectives, moving your guns into range or moving your units out of range for enemy shooting. As has been pointed out some armies' main strength is the movement phase such as dark eldar and eldar. There are some good things associated with a simple approach such as you have stated... For example the more simple your army is to play the less chance you'll make a big mistake. On the flip side not having some options can also lose you the game as well so the most simple approach is not always the best. It is a good place to start though but as you gain experience then you should be able to figure out more winning tactics Über shooty armies like guard can be very straight forward but that doesn't apply to every army.

Dozer Blades wrote: As has been pointed out some armies' main strength is the movement phase such as dark eldar and eldar. There are some good things associated with a simple approach such as you have stated...

Right, and as I've asked, what does movement actually DO for those armies? Actually? How does movement actually help an eldar player win a game, outside of the preservation of their units or the depreservation of their opponents, or moving onto objectives.

I keep getting the impression that there is this lack of understanding of what movement actually does that causes movement to be cloaked in almost a mysical, supernatural power.

Furthermore, look at it this way. It is possible to win a purge game without ever moving a model. Obviously you'll probably want to move a bit to apply your killing power unless, of course, you run a gunline, in which case you don't have to. Furthermore, you can definitely win a relic game without capturing the relic (most relic games for me end that way), and you can likewise blow your opponent off of their objective in an emperor's will game (or draw on objectives, but win with secondaries). Add to that any of the other 3 missions where you roll 4 objectives, and, of course, any ones where you get both an odd number of objectives and first player.

Really, of all the combinations of mission, first player, and number of objectives only 4 out of 24 require you to do any movement at all, and even then, that's assuming you didn't bring enough firepower to simply blast your opponent off of objectives. If you do that, then you NEVER, strictly speaking, have to move.

Which is why applying killing power is what's actually important in this game, and movement is merely a subsidiary to that purpose.

I think you are the one lacking comprehension in regards to movement. You've given your limited definition of how movement can be applied. A counterpoint is screening one friendly unit with another... You can do this to prevent an enemy unit from charging your primary unit. That's just one example that quickly comes to mind. There are plenty others.

Plenty of others that, like the one you just gave, exist only to apply damage to the enemy (or prevent him from applying damage to you), or getting onto an objective.