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Hello,

Recently back into 40k after many years hiatus. Mostly played around 3,4,5 editions, but truth be told got more games in of Mordheim, Inquisitor, WHFB & Warmaster than I ever did 40k.

Have a small nid army, love it.

However in my few games played with friends and based upon the battle reports I am watching, I have this idea in my head that a lot of the movement in 40k is fairly unimportant to the outcome of the game.

Of course you need to move and the consequences of moving (or not moving) do indeed exist. But what I mean is that for a tabletop strategy game, the positioning and maneuvering of units on the board is largely procedural and easily predictable.

This is somewhat different from a lot of wargaming that I remember which tended to heavily emphasize units relative positions to one another. Classic Battletech is a great example of that.

The tactics of positioning and maneuvering seem to mostly revolve around a deep understanding the various ranges of your opponent’s army and being careful to skirt those edges as a way of securing an advantage in target priority or charge.

This edition feels almost like a simulation of list-building statistical outcomes because it is so shooting heavy.

Most movement seems to be directly forward and because of the LoS rules, flanking is not a critical component to victory. Deep striking does indeed serve a pseudo-flanking role, but the advantage of deep striking is not really a flank as much as it is keeping models off the table until a certain moment.

If we take a lot of the topdown maps a lot of BR use to show what happens turn by turn, a large theme seems to be that both armies simply advance towards one another, if they bother to move at all. Yes factions like nids do have to move quite a lot, but even the gene stealer sling is still essentially a rush straight ahead.

I am not really meaning for this to be a critique, as I do enjoy 8th edition a lot. 5th was a ton of a fun and I feel had some more strategic elements I enjoyed (vehicle facing etc). But it was admittedly very finicky and could make things drawn out (which wasn’t always bad!)

I guess I am looking for some insight on how I should view the strategizing of movement phase? What are the tactics of positioning and maneuvering that one should take into account in a way that helps really influence the game to the same extent that a massive round of shooting has?

The obvious one is of course hiding units from LoS. I feel that out-maneuvering an opponent should contribute to strategic advantage. But it seems there is a lack of relevant fast-attack units in competitive lists these days, which seems to point towards the fact that movement is not as important as it could (or should be?).

WHFB was often very “just slog forward”, but it sort of worked, thematically, and flanking for a charge was often a make it or break it moment.

It seems in 8th the way in which you deploy your units vizaviz your opponent is often the most important “move” a player makes.

Some caffeinated thoughts.

You're pretty much spot on. My Slaanesh army uses out-of-LOS to hide from enemy guns, but the first thing it does as soon as it can is spring out of hiding and charge. There's not a whole lot of jockeying.

I think there is definitely some truth to that sentiment. In general, 40k has some of the longest effective weapon ranges of any miniatures game I've tried to play relative to the size of the table. When I say effective, I mean that often games with a lot of concern for realism like WW2 games will have a theoretically very long maximum range based on the physics of the weapon etc, but with so many massive to-hit modifiers that to actually fire your tank's gun and hit something 40" away requires you to roll a double 6 on 2d6 to make the hit.

In 8th, the point where movement micro makes the biggest tactical difference is when you've successfully made a charge move. How you use your charge move, pile-in, how you allocate your attacks and then how you consolidate can vastly change the situation you find yourself in, and that is probably the situation where skilled, strategic movement makes the biggest difference. The other area where it makes a big difference is sight line blocking.

It is definitely terrain dependent, and army dependent, and I can for sure say that 40k is unique among wargames that I"ve played in massively encouraging super long ranged, static gameplay. Almost no other game, including other games GW produces, encourages sitting 36" away from your opponent perfectly stationary and plunking away like 40k does, and it is for sure weird that they identify that a strategy of blindly charging into close combat with your entire army should not be the epitome of competitive play, but brainless gunlines have been A-OK with being in tournament play for whole editions now.

Yeah the game is pretty much geared towards either standing still and shooting, or charging forward in the shortest possible route to the enemy and bashing them

I would say don't expect 9th to change this much. Modifiers being capped at -1 and terrain being more effective might see more movement in the "devastator marine shuffles sideways to get a clear shot" sense, but you won't actually see much change in the strategic flow of the game from what I've seen.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I would say don't expect 9th to change this much. Modifiers being capped at -1 and terrain being more effective might see more movement in the "devastator marine shuffles sideways to get a clear shot" sense, but you won't actually see much change in the strategic flow of the game from what I've seen.

Yeah, as long as a marine standing 2" away from an enemy and 30" away from an enemy make an identical to-hti roll, you're not likely to see that change lol.

I guess I am the voice of dissent here but I feel like the entire game is won and lost in the movement phase. it doesn't matter how long range your guns are if you never take any ground to secure objectives with. The duck and dance of line of sight, the assault phase movement shenanigans that make or break a successful turn.

I would say that if you don't feel that movement is as important in the games you have played then you should try adding more terrain to your tables and see how you feel after that.

 Aftersong wrote:
I guess I am the voice of dissent here but I feel like the entire game is won and lost in the movement phase. it doesn't matter how long range your guns are if you never take any ground to secure objectives with. The duck and dance of line of sight, the assault phase movement shenanigans that make or break a successful turn.

I would say that if you don't feel that movement is as important in the games you have played then you should try adding more terrain to your tables and see how you feel after that.

Typically, the addition of more terrain makes it harder for my Keepers of Secrets to get into combat, since they have to navigate a labyrinth (monsters can't move through ruins), while the enemy blasts them to pieces. The Keeper is about 6" wide (thanks, claw-pose!) and 7" tall, so you need a HUGE piece of LOS-blocking terrain to make it unsee-able. My troops are Daemonettes, who run in 30 girl blobs (or 20, sometimes). Also not easily hidden.

And sure, I've won games by bum-rushing the enemy and pinning them in their DZ because they didn't move, but that didn't make movement important. There was nothing strategic or tactical about "run forwards and whack the enemy"; it wasn't a jockeying move-countermove-countercountermove. It was because I went first - or, alternatively, because I went second and my enemy's dice betrayed them when shooting.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I would say don't expect 9th to change this much. Modifiers being capped at -1 and terrain being more effective might see more movement in the "devastator marine shuffles sideways to get a clear shot" sense, but you won't actually see much change in the strategic flow of the game from what I've seen.

I think the combination of terrain being more effective and reserves appearing from unexpected table edges might significantly change game flow.

I can't recall the name of it, but I played an infantry combat wargame a while ago where everything had infinite range, so engagements were entirely dictated by line of sight, and hit likelihood dictated by a combination of intervening terrain and range. With how long weapon ranges are in 40K, I think we might be moving towards that sort of model, where terrain is what constrains the effectiveness of shooting, rather than mostly range as it was in prior editions.

They've also said that the game will be coming with concrete terrain recommendations, which if it's in line with previous editions should get more terrain on the tabletop. I've had games using dense terrain coverage (33%) and houseruled area terrain rules that really made for some tough decisions, due to narrow fire lanes and inability to just shoot from one deployment zone to another.

Anyways, not to say you're wrong re: Devastators shuffling sideways to get a clear shot, but I think there's potential here for terrain to add a significant dimension to positioning, which in turn will impact maneuver.

The problem with adding more terrain is that it also restricts maneuver - unless the modified terrain rules are REALLY GOOD (and therefore complex, i.e. the old 4th edition "can't see more than an inch into woods, unless you're within 6", woods are height level 2" style of complexity).

People always tell me I don't have enough terrain to run my Daemons, and I'm like "well, if I add more terrain, it's a hassle to move 30 Daemonettes and Keepers of Secrets literally end up in places where they cannot move except backwards, so..." because the terrain is already super dense. But a combination of needing to use monsters and large infantry blobs makes it pretty easy to predict where I'm basically required to go.

 Gregor Samsa wrote:

It seems in 8th the way in which you deploy your units vizaviz your opponent is often the most important “move” a player makes.

This is absolutely true. Deployment is where many games are won or lost, and in general the earlier something occurs, the more important it is to victory outcome (list building being first). Positioning, flanking, getting angles, etc aren't really terribly important, as you noted, it's mostly about managing range bands. This is largely forced by the scale of the game, in wanting to portray both a single grot as a distinct tabletop element and roll individually for its single pistol shot but with potentially hundreds of them on the board, being opposed by an entire army of superheavy battle machines, all in a normal typical game, the game has to abstract in an awkward direction to keep the game playable in a two hour time window, resulting in a pretty straight up attritional nature of play. This results in things like facings, flanking mechanics, morale, terrain rules, range modifiers, component damage, and other such things largely being minimized or absent entirely.

In wanting to allow people to take almost anything they want that exists in the 40k universe and slap it on a table for play and making each model and weapon be relevant in the same way, the game has to sacrifice in those other areas, and movement is definitely one of them.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The problem with adding more terrain is that it also restricts maneuver - unless the modified terrain rules are REALLY GOOD (and therefore complex, i.e. the old 4th edition "can't see more than an inch into woods, unless you're within 6", woods are height level 2" style of complexity).

People always tell me I don't have enough terrain to run my Daemons, and I'm like "well, if I add more terrain, it's a hassle to move 30 Daemonettes and Keepers of Secrets literally end up in places where they cannot move except backwards, so..." because the terrain is already super dense. But a combination of needing to use monsters and large infantry blobs makes it pretty easy to predict where I'm basically required to go.

Totally get you. 8th's terrain/cover rules meant that if your army was a few big monsters and hordes of large units of infantry, the terrain might as well not exist for all the benefit it gets you.

But, just to take an example, one of the things they've talked about for 9th is an 'Obscuring' keyword attached to terrain, which, assuming it follows the model established by Kill Team, will mean that if any part of the target unit is obscured, they get a -1 to hit. So you might not be able to hide out of LOS entirely, but it will at least reduce the effectiveness of shots coming at you.

The Reserves system might also let you put some of those big blobs off the board, giving you a little more room to maneuver, and having them come on later in a more advantageous position.

Anyways, as a Tyranid player I fully understand where you're coming from; I just think we need to wait and see how 9th shakes out as there's the potential (not trying to say it's guaranteed, by any means) for things to change for the better.

 catbarf wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The problem with adding more terrain is that it also restricts maneuver - unless the modified terrain rules are REALLY GOOD (and therefore complex, i.e. the old 4th edition "can't see more than an inch into woods, unless you're within 6", woods are height level 2" style of complexity).

People always tell me I don't have enough terrain to run my Daemons, and I'm like "well, if I add more terrain, it's a hassle to move 30 Daemonettes and Keepers of Secrets literally end up in places where they cannot move except backwards, so..." because the terrain is already super dense. But a combination of needing to use monsters and large infantry blobs makes it pretty easy to predict where I'm basically required to go.

Totally get you. 8th's terrain/cover rules meant that if your army was a few big monsters and hordes of large units of infantry, the terrain might as well not exist for all the benefit it gets you.

But, just to take an example, one of the things they've talked about for 9th is an 'Obscuring' keyword attached to terrain, which, assuming it follows the model established by Kill Team, will mean that if any part of the target unit is obscured, they get a -1 to hit. So you might not be able to hide out of LOS entirely, but it will at least reduce the effectiveness of shots coming at you.

The Reserves system might also let you put some of those big blobs off the board, giving you a little more room to maneuver, and having them come on later in a more advantageous position.

Anyways, as a Tyranid player I fully understand where you're coming from; I just think we need to wait and see how 9th shakes out as there's the potential (not trying to say it's guaranteed, by any means) for things to change for the better.

I guess my faith is broken.

The "obscuring terrain" thing doesn't help, because it's a -1, and we know from the Q&A modifiers are capped at -1. All obscuring terrain does is let them open the distance with their heavy weapons by moving them (or do the Devastator Shuffle so they're open next turn), and then fire with no additional penalty (if it is, in fact, a -1).

Daemons can already pay CP to put anything they want into reserve; all it does is make my army come in piecemeal which makes it easier to disassemble with gunfire.

 Aftersong wrote:
I guess I am the voice of dissent here but I feel like the entire game is won and lost in the movement phase. it doesn't matter how long range your guns are if you never take any ground to secure objectives with. The duck and dance of line of sight, the assault phase movement shenanigans that make or break a successful turn.

I would say that if you don't feel that movement is as important in the games you have played then you should try adding more terrain to your tables and see how you feel after that.

I see this sort of thing a lot, either talking about deployment or movement and saying things like "movement is the most important phase of the game". It's not so much that it's an incorrect assertion, more that while it may be true, movement is also trivially easy to get right. There's not really any nuance to it and very little decision making. In many cases you could literally just use a checklist of steps to go through during your movement phase. Things like leaving a big enough distance between units to prevent chargers from tagging your non-screens, or wrapping characters properly, or tri-pointing properly aren't things that take skill. You just need to remember them. So 40k has this weird situation where the movement phase definitely is very important, it just doesn't take much real skill to move correctly.

 Aftersong wrote:
I guess I am the voice of dissent here but I feel like the entire game is won and lost in the movement phase. it doesn't matter how long range your guns are if you never take any ground to secure objectives with. The duck and dance of line of sight, the assault phase movement shenanigans that make or break a successful turn.

I would say that if you don't feel that movement is as important in the games you have played then you should try adding more terrain to your tables and see how you feel after that.

That has as much to do with objective-based scenario play as it does with terrain. Some shooting armies with wide access to Indirect Fire actually get better on a terrain-heavy board in a straight kill-em-all game.

OP; yes and no. Yes, you can try to predict all of your opponent's movements, and yes those movements are pretty straightforward in terms of what you're trying to do. However, I wouldn't say it's easy, and I would agree with others that say that the game is won and lost in movement and deployment.

The issue becomes in trying to predict further and further out, with random chance muddling the waters as you go out, and having an opponent of similar skill level. As the game gets tighter, the small advantages have bigger and bigger effect. Take this example:

You have a large unit of infantry that are going to charge your opponent. Your opponent's unit is covering one objective. You have enough models to do one of three things:
#1 - Charge and tag, leaving lots of models on the far objective, and few of your opponent's models can attack back. You should safely have the far objective.
#2 - Charge, and take prisoners, and get lots of models into them. You might fail to take prisoners, and you may take lots of attacks back. You should safely have the objective your opponent has.
#3 - Charge, and take prisoners, and get some models on both objectives, but your opponent will get lots of attacks back, so you might lose too many models to hold either objective.

Which do you do? The actual movement is simple, and the probabilities are simple, and you should be able to know what's going to happen this turn - but the actual outcomes can vary enough that you don't really known until you're committed one way or another. And you may have made a mistake in how this engagement will affect the rest of your opponent's plan. Maybe your opponent realizes this is a perfect time to use Attack Twice, and cause devastating losses to you. Or maybe you realize that they *could* do this, so maybe you shouldn't charge at all. But then they'll still have 3CP to spend on something else later! Or maybe... etc.. etc.. etc..

There's a lot going on, and a ton of costs and opportunity costs, and possibilities. Maybe your opponent will roll a 12 on their counter-charge, and get so much movement from it that they suddenly are in your lines when you didn't plan on them being there.


The game has a low enough amount of randomness that you can plan what's going to happen, but enough randomness that those plans can be forced to drastically change. So you have to decide; do you take a risky route for a bigger win on a small part of the battle, or a safe route but open to a potential loss if things still go poorly? And your movement will determine which of those situations you're going to end up in.

 Yarium wrote:
OP; yes and no. Yes, you can try to predict all of your opponent's movements, and yes those movements are pretty straightforward in terms of what you're trying to do. However, I wouldn't say it's easy, and I would agree with others that say that the game is won and lost in movement and deployment.

The issue becomes in trying to predict further and further out, with random chance muddling the waters as you go out, and having an opponent of similar skill level. As the game gets tighter, the small advantages have bigger and bigger effect. Take this example:

You have a large unit of infantry that are going to charge your opponent. Your opponent's unit is covering one objective. You have enough models to do one of three things:
#1 - Charge and tag, leaving lots of models on the far objective, and few of your opponent's models can attack back. You should safely have the far objective.
#2 - Charge, and take prisoners, and get lots of models into them. You might fail to take prisoners, and you may take lots of attacks back. You should safely have the objective your opponent has.
#3 - Charge, and take prisoners, and get some models on both objectives, but your opponent will get lots of attacks back, so you might lose too many models to hold either objective.

Which do you do? The actual movement is simple, and the probabilities are simple, and you should be able to know what's going to happen this turn - but the actual outcomes can vary enough that you don't really known until you're committed one way or another. And you may have made a mistake in how this engagement will affect the rest of your opponent's plan. Maybe your opponent realizes this is a perfect time to use Attack Twice, and cause devastating losses to you. Or maybe you realize that they *could* do this, so maybe you shouldn't charge at all. But then they'll still have 3CP to spend on something else later! Or maybe... etc.. etc.. etc..

There's a lot going on, and a ton of costs and opportunity costs, and possibilities. Maybe your opponent will roll a 12 on their counter-charge, and get so much movement from it that they suddenly are in your lines when you didn't plan on them being there.


The game has a low enough amount of randomness that you can plan what's going to happen, but enough randomness that those plans can be forced to drastically change. So you have to decide; do you take a risky route for a bigger win on a small part of the battle, or a safe route but open to a potential loss if things still go poorly? And your movement will determine which of those situations you're going to end up in.

The obvious solution is #3, because a single units worth of melee attacks is always less devastating than enemy shooting.

Option 1: The enemy falls back, your unit is wiped out, you get no objectives and your enemy has one.
Option 2: The enemy unit will likely be wiped out (30 Daemonettes is loads of pain) and so your enemy wipes you out in the shooting phase. No one has anything, except you traded 30 daemonettes for howevermany guardsmen or scouts or whatever.
Option 3: The enemy unit is trapped, so you won't get shot, and you only have to endure one units worth of attacks - which means you're much much better off than getting shot by everyone. Unless the enemy army is mostly a melee army, which is rare.

Sort of echoing what some of the other posters have said: It's not the movement that happens in the Movement phase that's important. Rather, it's deployment and the Assault phase.

Great feedback everyone, appreciate the discussion!

Undoubtedly there is a lot of complexity that I am overtly simplifying - especially, as pointed out, as it relates to the assault phase where the positioning of models does require concentration and anticipation of possible outcomes.

As well I think some good points are raised regarding objectives - ultimately "playing the objective" is what has a large impact on the relevance of movement. And cleverly designed missions can do a lot to break up the static tendencies of many playstyles.

I personally enjoy the challenge of trying to crack open a castle, but do think some more complexity should be added to reward players who look to use terrain to their advantage. The necessity of dedicating a large chunk of list points to hiding Hive Guards behind a big rock, although a good strategy and one that is perfectly fine to have in game, should not be so essential. *EDIT* I loved the 4th edition terrain rules as well! Yes they were wordy and confusing at times, but they also did terrain justice. In any battle, the battlefield environment is one of the most important conditions! A good wargame needs to take into account the terrain features and working out those rules are many fond memories (and some salty arguments as well, of course)

As a result I have been having a lot of fun with Kill Team, which does a good job of really making you think before you grab your model and move it around! Unfortunately the smaller points cap means I don't get to field a lot of the Tyranid bugs I love (tervigons!)

And I do sympathize with those who have to use monsters in their lists - the models are posed in such an obnoxious way it does make many of the LoS rule simply absurd. My old hive tyrant is smaller than the new warriors! And those plastic Flyrant models are impractically large. Although this is wandering into an aesthetic critique now, however the wing-span and massive footprint of such "display case" models sure does limit their function as battlefield units. Maybe I am just too nostalgic...

I am hopeful that 9th will open things up a bit. If shooting accuracy is reduced I think that would be a big step in the right direction. As I play more, I find myself missing things from earlier editions like heavy weapons having to move OR shoot. Even the infamous Tau jump-shoot-jump did have some interesting tactical decision making. As well, IIRC was there not a crossfire rule as well for trapping a unit between shooting units which wiped them out?

There are some great suggestions listed above for opening up some more tactical options. Hopefully it comes into the game again. As an example I watched a Ravenwing battle report recently, which is an explicitly "mobile" army - yet their strategy was largely the same: move directly forward *but faster!*. Considering there are now so many flying models, it would improve the game system to reward those fast and fragile units for getting strategic positions on their targets, above and beyond capturing objectives (which fast attack cannot!)

so I have got my fingers crossed.

I have got some Goblins and Skaven kicking about, perhaps I will try some AoS and see how things have changed there. I am forever a map nerd and so the ideas of maneuvering an army on a chaotic "fog of war" battlefield is a huge draw. For those who remember Battlefleet Gothic, it had some great rules for 'drifting' ships and modifying weapon accuracy.

I don't hold out too much hope for that happening when the new baseline troop choice in the game has approx 66% of the width of the entire board as its optimal effective range.

Broke: Space marines as a lightning-strike, mobile force of elite warriors

Woke: Space marines as more obnoxious fire warriors

At least now all marine strategy matches the images of a bunch of marines huddled together around a guy going "LOOK AT MY SWOOOOOOORD" that was the first 5 editions of codex cover art :p

I wish that we could go back to base movements like 4", with charges double base movement, and more terrrain and cover interactions to limit ranged weapon effectiveness to help the table feel bigger and make movement more important. Some sort of overwatch mechanic that allows watching lanes of fire like in older editions, and then we can see cultists for instance used as they should be used to overwhelm this overwatch fire and make way for what moves up behind them...

the_scotsman wrote:I think there is definitely some truth to that sentiment. In general, 40k has some of the longest effective weapon ranges of any miniatures game I've tried to play relative to the size of the table. When I say effective, I mean that often games with a lot of concern for realism like WW2 games will have a theoretically very long maximum range based on the physics of the weapon etc, but with so many massive to-hit modifiers that to actually fire your tank's gun and hit something 40" away requires you to roll a double 6 on 2d6 to make the hit.

In 8th, the point where movement micro makes the biggest tactical difference is when you've successfully made a charge move. How you use your charge move, pile-in, how you allocate your attacks and then how you consolidate can vastly change the situation you find yourself in, and that is probably the situation where skilled, strategic movement makes the biggest difference. The other area where it makes a big difference is sight line blocking.

It is definitely terrain dependent, and army dependent, and I can for sure say that 40k is unique among wargames that I"ve played in massively encouraging super long ranged, static gameplay. Almost no other game, including other games GW produces, encourages sitting 36" away from your opponent perfectly stationary and plunking away like 40k does, and it is for sure weird that they identify that a strategy of blindly charging into close combat with your entire army should not be the epitome of competitive play, but brainless gunlines have been A-OK with being in tournament play for whole editions now.

I'm not entirely certain, since 40k seems to be in the mid range for effective ranges, but I've also skewed myself towards those WWII games and towards games with small models and long ranges.

Also, "brainless gunlines" are in fact not good. We haven't had tournaments lately to look at, but note how what we saw recently before lockdown involved a lot of flyers or high value infiltrators, because in fact standing in place and shooting does not win games.

Gregor Samsa wrote:Hello,

Recently back into 40k after many years hiatus. Mostly played around 5th edition, but truth be told got more games in of Mordheim, Inquisitor, WHFB & Warmaster than I ever did 40k.

Have a small nid army, love it.

However in my few games played with friends and based upon the battle reports I am watching, I have this idea in my head that a lot of the movement in 40k is fairly unimportant to the outcome of the game.

Of course you need to move and the consequences of moving (or not moving) do indeed exist. But what I mean is that for a tabletop strategy game, the positioning and maneuvering of units on the board is largely procedural and easily predictable.

This is somewhat different from a lot of wargaming that I remember which tended to heavily emphasize units relative positions to one another. Classic Battletech is a great example of that.

The tactics of positioning and maneuvering seem to mostly revolve around a deep understanding the various ranges of your opponent’s army and being careful to skirt those edges as a way of securing an advantage in target priority or charge.

This edition feels almost like a simulation of list-building statistical outcomes because it is so shooting heavy.

Most movement seems to be directly forward and because of the LoS rules, flanking is not a critical component to victory. Deep striking does indeed serve a pseudo-flanking role, but the advantage of deep striking is not really a flank as much as it is keeping models off the table until a certain moment.

If we take a lot of the topdown maps a lot of BR use to show what happens turn by turn, a large theme seems to be that both armies simply advance towards one another, if they bother to move at all. Yes factions like nids do have to move quite a lot, but even the gene stealer sling is still essentially a rush straight ahead.

I am not really meaning for this to be a critique, as I do enjoy 8th edition a lot. 5th was a ton of a fun and I feel had some more strategic elements I enjoyed (vehicle facing etc). But it was admittedly very finicky and could make things drawn out (which wasn’t always bad!)

I guess I am looking for some insight on how I should view the strategizing of movement phase? What are the tactics of positioning and maneuvering that one should take into account in a way that helps really influence the game to the same extent that a massive round of shooting has?

The obvious one is of course hiding units from LoS. I feel that out-maneuvering an opponent should contribute to strategic advantage. But it seems there is a lack of relevant fast-attack units in competitive lists these days, which seems to point towards the fact that movement is not as important as it could (or should be?).

WHFB was often very “just slog forward”, but it sort of worked, thematically, and flanking for a charge was often a make it or break it moment.

It seems in 8th the way in which you deploy your units vizaviz your opponent is often the most important “move” a player makes.

Some caffeinated thoughts.

You are correct that flanking has been removed from the game. However, there are a lot of wargames that don't include flanking because the scale of the game is considered to be at a level above where it matters. Take, for example, Dropzone Commander, or for classic games, Panzer Blitz/Leader.
[Also, like seriously, how important was flanking in previous editions? Not really. Even getting into the side arc of a tank was a significant effort, much less the rear which was probably never going to be accessed at all outside of always hitting the rear in melee. And you couldn't move & fire heavy weapons.]


Anyway, movement and position are generally pretty important, and careful attention to the movement phase and to the fight-phase movement make a difference. There's a lot of micromanaging movement and advantage to be gained in the fight phase, which is something you can figure out how it works into your strategy through practice.
But the most important part of movement is board control. You need to control objectives early to win missions this edition, because all use progressive scoring, and you need to hold onto that, so you want to get your units both onto objectives and into key positions that can keep the opponent off of objectives or into places you can fill them with fire or they can't make a difference.

Its army based, my Nids and Quins are 100% movement based. Heck the last game i had with nids i spent 7CP turn 1 to move units better, and i'm spending 351pts for Swarmlord+Guard to make sure to move more units. My Quins are moving 22" or more a turn. Its also Mission based, ITC is not warhammer, its ITC. Are you watching ITC batreps or GW missions?

A lot of people see forced tactical movements as the only way, like Bonuses for hitting rear or flank. But movement blocking, screens, out moving, repositioning for cover, using LoS, etc.. are all movement based tactics and are and always have been used by a lot of armies.

If you are watching an ITC match from year ago with IH shooting dreads and Custodes triple tanks, yeah it looks boring. But those lists did terrible in Maelstrom and was short lived.

Positioning for screening, for deep-strike denial, setting up charges, and as mentioned, consolidate moves, positioning for auras and for synergy vs redundancy and all of the various strategems and abilities that allow you to manipulate these things... I don't know, I think there's a fair bit to movement.

Also, bit of an odd time to discuss rules when we already know some of what is about to change- reinforcements and cover being the things that are particularly relevant to discussion here.

PenitentJake wrote:
Positioning for screening, for deep-strike denial, setting up charges, and as mentioned, consolidate moves, positioning for auras and for synergy vs redundancy and all of the various strategems and abilities that allow you to manipulate these things... I don't know, I think there's a fair bit to movement.

Also, bit of an odd time to discuss rules when we already know some of what is about to change- reinforcements and cover being the things that are particularly relevant to discussion here.

The problem in 8e is that it's not really a set of tactical decisions, it's a long binary checklist where if you've checked all the boxes you have the correct formation. There aren't really any decisions to be made or trade-offs or anything for most armies.

Yeah, watching high level games is actually pretty disappointing.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its army based, my Nids and Quins are 100% movement based. Heck the last game i had with nids i spent 7CP turn 1 to move units better, and i'm spending 351pts for Swarmlord+Guard to make sure to move more units. My Quins are moving 22" or more a turn. Its also Mission based, ITC is not warhammer, its ITC. Are you watching ITC batreps or GW missions?

A lot of people see forced tactical movements as the only way, like Bonuses for hitting rear or flank. But movement blocking, screens, out moving, repositioning for cover, using LoS, etc.. are all movement based tactics and are and always have been used by a lot of armies.

If you are watching an ITC match from year ago with IH shooting dreads and Custodes triple tanks, yeah it looks boring. But those lists did terrible in Maelstrom and was short lived.

Yeah, my experience is that using actual GW missions makes movement very important. Needing to be able to get to objectives quickly makes speed and planning where you are going important.

Also, the importance of movement also really depends on what your weapon range bands are. Even 24'' or 30'' can be surprisingly short when you want to try providing mutual support to focus fire.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
Positioning for screening, for deep-strike denial, setting up charges, and as mentioned, consolidate moves, positioning for auras and for synergy vs redundancy and all of the various strategems and abilities that allow you to manipulate these things... I don't know, I think there's a fair bit to movement.

Also, bit of an odd time to discuss rules when we already know some of what is about to change- reinforcements and cover being the things that are particularly relevant to discussion here.

The problem in 8e is that it's not really a set of tactical decisions, it's a long binary checklist where if you've checked all the boxes you have the correct formation. There aren't really any decisions to be made or trade-offs or anything for most armies.

Of course that begs the question: what is a set of tactical decisions? I don't think any of those examples are binary, nor do they lack trade-offs. For instance, deep-strike denial: it's rare that you can spread out to deny the entire board. Instead, you have to make decisions about which units you'll use to deny, where you'll spread them, and you'll anticipate the deepstriker's new positioning. The trade-off is literally the movement spent spreading out instead of going to an objective or the enemy.

I also gotta agree there's a huge difference between any old battle report and ITC players. I don't mean to be a jerk, but in any random battle report the players make plenty of mistakes without noticing. Most players are fine with target priority and ability usage, but they don't spend enough time really thinking about deployment and movement, and don't play frequently enough to develop experience. Deployment and the movement phase are where games are won and lost.

 DarkHound wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
Positioning for screening, for deep-strike denial, setting up charges, and as mentioned, consolidate moves, positioning for auras and for synergy vs redundancy and all of the various strategems and abilities that allow you to manipulate these things... I don't know, I think there's a fair bit to movement.

Also, bit of an odd time to discuss rules when we already know some of what is about to change- reinforcements and cover being the things that are particularly relevant to discussion here.

The problem in 8e is that it's not really a set of tactical decisions, it's a long binary checklist where if you've checked all the boxes you have the correct formation. There aren't really any decisions to be made or trade-offs or anything for most armies.

Of course that begs the question: what is a set of tactical decisions? I don't think any of those examples are binary, nor do they lack trade-offs. For instance, deep-strike denial: it's rare that you can spread out to deny the entire board. Instead, you have to make decisions about which units you'll use to deny, where you'll spread them, and you'll anticipate the deepstriker's new positioning. The trade-off is literally the movement spent spreading out instead of going to an objective or the enemy.

I also gotta agree there's a huge difference between any old battle report and ITC players. I don't mean to be a jerk, but in any random battle report the players make plenty of mistakes without noticing. Most players are fine with target priority and ability usage, but they don't spend enough time really thinking about deployment and movement, and don't play frequently enough to develop experience. Deployment and the movement phase are where games are won and lost.

I find that armies in 8e tend to be built either as primarily defensive castles or as offensive lists. A defensive castle runs down the checklist and makes sure it's got all its area denial screens far enough apart so the enemy can't consolidate into the next unit, has their Deep Strike denial all lined up, has their aura coverage, etc. and then doesn't move until after they've crippled their opponent to the degree that movement/positioning doesn't really matter anymore. An offensive list runs at the enemy and touches the nearest thing. There's almost always one correct thing to do with any given unit and it's trivial to figure out what it is.

Maelstrom just means I can't tell you where I should move my unit next turn, it doesn't make it any harder to work out what to do on my turn.

 DarkHound wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
Positioning for screening, for deep-strike denial, setting up charges, and as mentioned, consolidate moves, positioning for auras and for synergy vs redundancy and all of the various strategems and abilities that allow you to manipulate these things... I don't know, I think there's a fair bit to movement.

Also, bit of an odd time to discuss rules when we already know some of what is about to change- reinforcements and cover being the things that are particularly relevant to discussion here.

The problem in 8e is that it's not really a set of tactical decisions, it's a long binary checklist where if you've checked all the boxes you have the correct formation. There aren't really any decisions to be made or trade-offs or anything for most armies.

Of course that begs the question: what is a set of tactical decisions? I don't think any of those examples are binary, nor do they lack trade-offs. For instance, deep-strike denial: it's rare that you can spread out to deny the entire board. Instead, you have to make decisions about which units you'll use to deny, where you'll spread them, and you'll anticipate the deepstriker's new positioning. The trade-off is literally the movement spent spreading out instead of going to an objective or the enemy.

In my experience that's just another checklist. Most armies have units that are designated as screens or DS deniers at army creation. They may have some other usefulness in games where that's not required but in games where you do have to screen you just use your designated units to screen. When you do screen you just set up those units in position to push out to cover a large part of the board and make sure you take the time to measure 18" gaps between all of your units. Pre-measuring means we now have all the info we require and it's just a matter of using it properly. So we're back to a binary checklist again.