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TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Again, you can call it what you want. You seem to equate planning with Strategy and execution with Tactics. If i said my Brigade conops was strategy it would elicit some chuckles from my colleagues. If I was feeling grand I might talk about my design, but really it was just a plan. A tactical plan.

Well said. Too much of this thread got bogged down in semantics; which are important for online discussion, to be able to communicate clearly, but too often there is a wilful lack of understanding as people get hung up on definitions. Which can be valuable in getting to the nub of the matter but all too often descend into repitition.

Anyway.... a nevertheless fascinating discussion that gives some insight into what the nuts and bolts of the game actually are, and just as important, how people think about it.

If I could add anything, it would be the irrelavant point that although this is a strategic, tactical, dice-based wargame with strict rules mechanics, we should not overlook the fact that it is also a role-playing game, and a lot of deicisions, both in list building and on the table, are based on this.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Would you be surprised to learn that the doctrine manual that provided guidance is called “Brigade Tactics?”

What I laid out was my mission and concept of operations. It’s a plan, not a strategy. Strategy is at a much higher level on a very different time scale. If you are in contact with the enemy you are in the realm of tactics. A Corps might talk about Operations.

Planning is important. But if you are making a plan for troops in contact you are talking about tactics. Corporations talk about strategy - it’s s powerful word. That’s fine. You can call your plan for a game of 40k your strategy, but at the end of the day it’s a tactical plan. It might be an awesome plan based on your visualization of how the game will unfold. But it’s a visualization of tactics. You can’t make that plan without a deep understanding of tactics.

Again, you can call it what you want. You seem to equate planning with Strategy and execution with Tactics. If i said my Brigade conops was strategy it would elicit some chuckles from my colleagues. If I was feeling grand I might talk about my design, but really it was just a plan. A tactical plan.

Is the planning stage of a 40k game important? Absolutely! But you can’t make that plan without knowing the tactics. The plan is tactics visualized.

That does make sense when put that way. A strategy is a long-term direction to plan around while tactics are immediate-term plans to be enacted in accordance with the strategy.

In any case, much of what you presented in your last post are the kinds of things that I've been saying do exist in 40k. Building a list with a win condition in mind, deciding how to deploy it in response to the opponent's force and mission and then applying these to your engagements with the enemy. Obviously, you can't just play 40k based on how you pictured the battle unfolding and will need to make reactions on the tabletop but the argument I've been making is that those correct calls will be obvious to a skilled player and that much of the 'depth' in 40k goes away once you understand the game's rules and the way missions are won.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Deployment - Necrons vs a prototypical White Scars list. I'm not going to bother modeling everything - just the key pieces though almost all the WS army is on the board. This mission is Hold 1/Hold 2, so I will focus on scoring at least 10 and prevent my opponent from getting "more".
<the rest of the post has been removed due to its size>

Let me start off by saying thank you for the clear and concise diagrams. It makes it much easier to understand the situation you're describing on the tabletop in a way that none of the other descriptions of a board state have managed. If more players were willing to put in the effort and put forth specific scenarios we'd have a lot more discussion of gameplay level decisions on Dakka.

As for the scenario, might I ask what model count you were running your warriors in, what they were armed with and if you had any reserves in this game. I only ask because I feel like the stronger play would have been to move something from reserves onto the point you teleported your 1st block of warriors to while using a unit of Reaper warriors to try to claim the objective closest to your 2nd warrior unit who could then aim to remove the INF unit and secure and additional objective marker with a tough to shift unit while also leaving the BGVs and VV 1 completely out of options for further impacting the game due to how isolated they are.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Let me start off by saying thank you for the clear and concise diagrams. It makes it much easier to understand the situation you're describing on the tabletop in a way that none of the other descriptions of a board state have managed. If more players were willing to put in the effort and put forth specific scenarios we'd have a lot more discussion of gameplay level decisions on Dakka.

Yea, I wish there was a tool to make them though. Such a pain. And everything can change with a different deployment, opponent, etc.

As for the scenario, might I ask what model count you were running your warriors in, what they were armed with and if you had any reserves in this game. I only ask because I feel like the stronger play would have been to move something from reserves onto the point you teleported your 1st block of warriors to while using a unit of Reaper warriors to try to claim the objective closest to your 2nd warrior unit who could then aim to remove the INF unit and secure and additional objective marker with a tough to shift unit while also leaving the BGVs and VV 1 completely out of options for further impacting the game due to how isolated they are.

Totally plausible, yea. That represents about 1,200 points of Necrons on the table ( 2x20 Warriors, 2x9 Scarabs, 1x5 LG, NS ). There would still be a bunch of other stuff floating around. The biggest concern for me is that VV go BRRRT on warriors if you're not careful and you won't get a chance to reanimate.

Which reminds me of another tactical note for playing marines - make absolutely sure you position characters with room to HI when you get charged. You do NOT want marines picking up more attacks with a counter charge the next round.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yea, I wish there was a tool to make them though. Such a pain. And everything can change with a different deployment, opponent, etc.

*nods* If there was a premade tool for making snapshots of a battlefield that would be great. It's a shame that the projects that were running in vassal all seem to be shut down or else that might do the trick.

Totally plausible, yea. That represents about 1,200 points of Necrons on the table ( 2x20 Warriors, 2x9 Scarabs, 1x5 LG, NS ). There would still be a bunch of other stuff floating around. The biggest concern for me is that VV go BRRRT on warriors if you're not careful and you won't get a chance to reanimate.

That also makes sense. You can't afford to lose a brick of warriors in exchange for maybe a turn of holding an objective, those other 800 points of models would likely tell which move would be the correct choice.

Hmm, probably with TTS we could cook up something.

Spoletta wrote:
Hmm, probably with TTS we could cook up something.

Still a lot of heavy lifting. I bet I could do some killer tutorials around terrain with my VR headset though.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Strategy and tactics aren't confined to any particular level of organization and are crucially dependent on context. Squad level tactics, company level tactics, brigade level tactics, etc, and each level can develop it's own operational strategy.

This is part of the critique about modern western militaries that I mentioned before. There is a belief that Generals do strategy and grunts do tactics and that strategy and tactics *are* confined to a particular level of organization. This has resulted in the stunted development of strategic thinking and ability amongst generals and higher ranking officers, as they fail to learn and develop anything other than tactical acumen in their formative phases and are often still grappling with trying to comprehend operational art when they get thrust into a role that requires strategy.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Strategy and tactics aren't confined to any particular level of organization and are crucially dependent on context. Squad level tactics, company level tactics, brigade level tactics, etc, and each level can develop it's own operational strategy.

This is part of the critique about modern western militaries that I mentioned before. There is a belief that Generals do strategy and grunts do tactics and that strategy and tactics *are* confined to a particular level of organization. This has resulted in the stunted development of strategic thinking and ability amongst generals and higher ranking officers, as they fail to learn and develop anything other than tactical acumen in their formative phases and are often still grappling with trying to comprehend operational art when they get thrust into a role that requires strategy.

At the risk of thread derailment, most western militaries have the tactical, operational and strategic levels. Strategy involves national aims. The operational level deals with campaigns. Tactical involves battles and engagements. I was in a Div HQ on a Corps exercise in a conventional setting - the Corps considered itself at the tactical level.

I would rather spend time training new officers to command their platoons. We teach the estimate process for planning. Some elements of the estimate could be useful in 40k.

We learn company level tactics after a couple of years, followed by battalion and brigade when most have been Captains for about five years (so late 20s). They get exposed to operational planning and campaign design. Majors take a year long course that deals with the operational level and campaign design. Strategy is also discussed. Colonels take another year long course on strategy. Experience also matters. Much of the recent critique concerns officers brought up on conventional fighting who then had to command on counter insurgency. Now we are wondering if we need to go back to more conventional training.

Anyhoo. Articles about planning for 40k games could be useful.

A thought on tactical diagrams:

If you make a google document and then insert a drawing, it opens up an embedded diagramming tool. I used this a bunch for ProHammer to make the deployment maps.

I could see making a google doc template that has one diagram with various unit and terrain features and the deployment maps. You can setup up the terrain approximately, delete the extra objects that's aren't needed. If you do the first turn/step, you can copy the drawing and when you edit it makes a new version, so you can incrementally tweak each step if trying to show multiple tactical steps.

This has me motivated to maybe put something together as a tool


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For the curious, here is a blog article I wrote the other week prior to starting this thread. It's about the design of ProHammer and covers some similar topics as here:

https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/114883

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
the Corps considered itself at the tactical level.

And yet if you go back far enough in history (and you really don't need to go very far...) you see Corps were responsible for planning, managing, and executing at the Operational level (and in some cases at the strategic level).

Just because the US military has decided to ignore what the words mean or decided to organize themselves differently doesn't change what the words actually mean or their relevance when discussing the game.

chaos0xomega wrote:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
the Corps considered itself at the tactical level.

And yet if you go back far enough in history (and you really don't need to go very far...) you see Corps were responsible for planning, managing, and executing at the Operational level (and in some cases at the strategic level).

The Corps in this case was fighting a battle (conventional peer on peer). The Corps Commander was manoeuvring divisions in contact. The Operational level deals with campaigns. The same Corps was at the Operational level in Afghanistan.

Anyhoo.

 Lance845 wrote:
Just because the US military has decided to ignore what the words mean or decided to organize themselves differently doesn't change what the words actually mean or their relevance when discussing the game.

Sure, but playing around with words doesn't mean Warhammer is devoid of mental engagement. A rose by any other name...

Does Warhammer offer the opportunity for challenging thought? Yes. Is that universal on every game? Likely not, but the opportunity exists moreso now than ever. Is it ultra deep tactical thinking? No and it doesn't need to be. There's a difference between playing a board game sitting down as opposed to standing for ten hours for three rounds of Warhammer and expecting every second to be jam packed with decision after decision - it would be extremely exhausting.

I get to design my force in a way that I can envision the broader tactical moves I will make and how that force enables me to better score specific objectives ( primary and secondary ) . I can bolster the plan in motion to try and ensure success. I have to balance scoring primaries, secondaries, and denying my opponent's secondaries. I have to adapt to losses and squeeze out the best score I can with resources and units running low.

For me? Warhammer is fun and engaging.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Just because the US military has decided to ignore what the words mean or decided to organize themselves differently doesn't change what the words actually mean or their relevance when discussing the game.

Sure, but playing around with words doesn't mean Warhammer is devoid of mental engagement. A rose by any other name...

Does Warhammer offer the opportunity for challenging thought? Yes. Is that universal on every game? Likely not, but the opportunity exists moreso now than ever.

I have seen this argument. 40k is without a doubt leagues better then it was in 7th 6th etc.. Being way better doesn't make it good. The shiniest turd still goes in the toilet.

Is it ultra deep tactical thinking? No and it doesn't need to be. There's a difference between playing a board game sitting down as opposed to standing for ten hours for three rounds of Warhammer and expecting every second to be jam packed with decision after decision - it would be extremely exhausting.

I feel like a wargame SHOULD be. Whats the point of a wargame devoid of deep tactical thinking?

I get to design my force in a way that I can envision the broader tactical moves I will make and how that force enables me to better score specific objectives ( primary and secondary ) . I can bolster the plan in motion to try and ensure success. I have to balance scoring primaries, secondaries, and denying my opponent's secondaries. I have to adapt to losses and squeeze out the best score I can with resources and units running low.

For me? Warhammer is fun and engaging.

I am glad you enjoy it. Thats not sarcasm. I legit am happy for anyone to enjoy whatever they enjoy. Like what you like. Like it to the extent you like it. My arguments are never against your personal enjoyment. My arguments are against the products quality and character. I like and even love some really bad movies. My enjoyment of them doesn't make the movie any better.

It isn't devoid of it. You just don't get it at every action you take. Like I said - that level of game would be totally exhausting. The format doesn't fit that notion. Certainly there is more they can do to expand the scope a little, but they'll only go so far.

9th is not a simply solvable puzzle that one can just "shoot the right things" and win. That might have been more true early last edition and the ones prior.

I play Root, Through the Ages, Twilight Imperium, Agricola, Brass, Scythe, Burgundy, Power Grid. You know what gets played the least? Twilight - because it's really hard to get enough people to sit down for an extreme length game that is that involved let alone introduce a new player to the game. Root has this problem to an extent, too, because everyone has to learn how factions score and you wind up pleading with other players to stop a run away leader often.

I saw Terraforming Mars spoken of earlier - here's one particularly negative review where the posters go back and forth about the interactivity of the game and the arguments are not too dissimilar from this thread:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2372547/game-great-theme-not-without-flaws

I am not saying the game is devoid of tactical decisions. I am saying it is devoid of DEEP tactical thinking. And again, it is better then it was. But it's still not good.

It is still solvable. It is still simplistic. And your interactions with the other player are still next to null because of the very core structure of the game.

That review of TM comes from someone who has as little understanding of the difference between interacting with the other player versus interacting with the other players pieces as was argued in this thread. You can't have deep tactical thinking if you are not interacting with the other player/s.


My trouble with playing Twilight Imperium is not people wanting to play. It's TIME to play. TI is an event. You set aside a day for it. Thats not an issue with the level of strategy and tactics involved. Those who play love it. It's an issue of real world constraints that are not at all dissimilar to that of 40k. If I can play less games of 40k but have a significantly better time doing it because it's a more engaging game hands down I would take it every time. More games of a worse experience.... why? Why would I want that when I could have the other?

Yeah. I never understood the cheerleaders happy for moar faster games of less quality with more pieces that were all less important on smaller tables with hand painted terrain that didn’t matter...

2nd Ed was superior in every real way. I was hoping that 8th would be that with some tweaks... I was wrong and sadly disappointed.

@Lance

I think one reason why people are reacting so strongly to what you are saying is, to an extent the manner you are phrasing your points.

You say that it isn't devoid of tactical decisions, but then say it's solvable, still simplistic, and interaction nearly null.

I think most people would agree with you that the game isn't that tactically deep. But there is a difference between "not deep" and being "solvable, simplistic, etc.". You seem to be saying both at once which doesn't come across as that genuine.

 Mezmorki wrote:
@Lance

I think one reason why people are reacting so strongly to what you are saying is, to an extent the manner you are phrasing your points.

You say that it isn't devoid of tactical decisions, but then say it's solvable, still simplistic, and interaction nearly null.

I think most people would agree with you that the game isn't that tactically deep. But there is a difference between "not deep" and being "solvable, simplistic, etc.". You seem to be saying both at once which doesn't come across as that genuine.

I agree with this.

There's plenty of games which are "not deep", yet people play them regularly at competitive levels and international events are organized for them.

It simply changes what being good at them means. The "easier" the game, the higher the burden on not doing a single mistake during the whole game and the higher the burden on catching every error on your opponent's part. The "harder" the game, the higher the burden on making as many "correct" choices as possible.

Lance is moving the discussion forward imho. Hard distinctions call for clarification. The tactical strategic distinction introduced might not be universally accepted, but it maps handily onto table top interactions or lack thereof. Where people find it lacking, they must clarify their thinking. That motivates good discussion imho.

.

Spoletta wrote:

 Mezmorki wrote:
@Lance

I think one reason why people are reacting so strongly to what you are saying is, to an extent the manner you are phrasing your points.

You say that it isn't devoid of tactical decisions, but then say it's solvable, still simplistic, and interaction nearly null.

I think most people would agree with you that the game isn't that tactically deep. But there is a difference between "not deep" and being "solvable, simplistic, etc.". You seem to be saying both at once which doesn't come across as that genuine.

I agree with this.

There's plenty of games which are "not deep", yet people play them regularly at competitive levels and international events are organized for them.

There's a world of difference of the cost of those games + the level of white khighting y'all do for GW

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
There's a world of difference of the cost of those games + the level of white khighting y'all do for GW

I'm not sure what cost has to do with it since there's a hobby aspect to Warhammer and the miniatures in this games are well beyond most board games. X-Wing isn't exactly cheap. It just uses less models. 40K is supported to be played at 1K. How many people are clamoring to do that?

Aside from that have I said something that was not correct that constitutes white knighting?

Let's leave definitions to the side and perhaps discuss the times when player decisions impact their chances of winning. Choices are made when building the list, when making the plan and when executing the plan. It can useful to think of them as phases, but I also think a player needs to think of how their list is going to play on the tabletop when they build it so a player should think of how their list will play as they build it. Seems obvious, but I see it when people have either grabbed a list off the net or having only done the Theoryhammer on the units in a vacuum.

I think we can all agree that decisions made in list-building can help you win or hurt your chances of winning. Perhaps we can all agree that decisions made in the planning phase after you receive the mission and before the die-roll for going first will impact your chances of winning. Contrary to some, though, I find that there are plenty of decisions that I have to make during the execution phase that impact my chances of winning.

I played a 1500 Matched Play yesterday as part of a tourney warm-up. My opponent went first, and while my list had mobility I still had to adjust my plan as his plan was pretty much a counter to mine. Part of my Turn 1 decision-making was indeed somewhat straight-forward. Which unit(s) would I sacrifice to buy time and space for my killers, as well as garner enough Objective VPs before dying? At the mid-point of the game my opponent was essentially split into two elements, having gone for one of my exposed flanks. I had to decide between bolstering my collapsing flank or doubling down in the centre. Both had risks. I went for the centre. At the same time I had to decide when to go after his warlord (linked to Secondary VPs for me and him). I could have done so in the 3rd Turn, but it would have left my own completely exposed if it failed. I played somewhat conservatively and set myself up for a 4th turn charge, which my opponent himself made more difficult with his own manoeuvring. At the start of my 5th Turn I still had two viable courses of action open to me. One more conservative and one that was more risky but would garner many more VPs. I went for the risky one. These decisions were all made in response to things that my opponent did. I haven't discussed the impact of terrain on my play - plenty of obscuring terrain that was also impassible to me. I had to adapt to and exploit the board. This was true when I was planning but also when I was playing because my opponent was also manoeuvring on that table.

Then there are the positional things you have to do in the game with the details of pile-in, consolidate and model placement. There are procedural things to decide on like fight activation order and stratagem use. I had to make several decisions during that game regarding falling back and stratagem use. I also made some mistakes with model placement, hindering my own manoeuvre while also giving opportunities for my opponent to exploit. Which he did. I was playing a veteran, skillful player and we were certainly interacting with each other.

Maybe we are playing different games? Maybe I am just dumb? I think there are plenty of areas to discuss regarding things that happen after the die-roll for first turn that can be helpful for people.

I do see players not really playing to the mission, relying on power-combos and killing power without paying attention to primary objectives and secondaries. They kill some stuff and then find themselves with 15 or 20 VPs while their opponent has 70 to 80 VPs. Some of that can be mitigated with better planning, but it also takes execution.

Some mid game tactics are evident in that description, and it seems about what is expected.

Your “list-building” phase gives you resources to deploy according to role, sometimes finding that role on the fly.

Tactical, by the convention introduced in this thread. And skilful.

Deeply tactical, as introduced in this thread? What might be missing to provide this depth? What is part of the current game that detracts from that depth? These might be the next things to get clear on...

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mezmorki wrote:

Spoiler:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
In response to slayer/canadian arguement.

It sure would be cool if we had more to do on defense. Like when a unit gets targeted they could lie prone or dive for cover. Or at the very least - we could have chance to cast defensive powers...defensively.

Indeed. There's a lot that could be done in 40k even with an IGOUGO system, though a lot of the really cool stuff - like having effects on hits and making wounds far rarer than they currently are - could easily break the current system as player 1 could debuff your army. A fix might be that player one gets has a penalty to their attacks that vastly limits how effective they can be in a turn one blitz, but that's just a spitballed idea without a lot of thought behind it and might swing things too much towards player 2.

Well, we did have exactly that option with the "go to ground" in 5th-7th edition

And FWIW, ProHammer has ramped up these "response actions" quite a bit to give the player on defense some decisions.

To lay out a few specifics:

(*) ProHammer has an option for old-school style overwatch. You can place a unit on overwatch and it will fire during the "first fire" phase of your opponents shooting phase next turn. So that's one tactical choice added: Do I shoot now on my turn or defer until a better target maybe moves into range (or does putting something on overwatch change your opponent's plan!)

Spoiler:

(*) Speaking of first fire: Units that don't move shoot first (relevant in a moment), alternating with any units on overwatch. After all first fire + overwatch shooting attacks are resolved, we go to normal shooting.

(*) In normal shooting, a unit hit by normal fire may take reactive fire OR go to ground (or do nothing). Reactive fire returns fire and resolves wounds simultaneously with the shooting unit. The downside is that if you take reactive fire you suffer in close combat AND your shooting next turn is limited to snap fire only. But it frequently is a tricky choice. Reactive fire itself has some limitations (limits on the number of shots per model, limited range, etc.)

(*) When getting charged, units receiving the charge (defending) have a choice whether to stand and shoot (which triggers reactive fire unless they already shot this turn) or to hold the line and fight normally. This creates some interesting situations where you might be trying to setup multiple charges so that you draw out reactive fire against fodder units (or really tough units) to protect more fragile melee units. Reactive fire hinders your CC abilities. Granted in most cases it can be clear cut which way to go, but sometimes it's a tricky choice when unit's are evenly matched.

(*) When you force an enemy unit to break in melee (and fallback), you have a choice of whether to pursue or consolidate, contingent on a leadership test. Pursuit isn't quite as lethal and there are trade offs involved.

(*) More broadly, we've limited split fire (can only split fire once per unit on a successful Ld test) - so frequently there is head scratching about how much fire to apply to what target.

(*) ProHammer also uses declared fire - meaning you need to do declare all your shooting targets first, and then resolve them. This makes it much more difficult (tactical) as you can't take the "wait and see" approach to sequencing shooting.

(*) Last - there is the option to play with NO premeasuring (which we've started to do). This adds uncertainty to whether certain actions will be successful or not (crap, I'm out of range!) which means that you need to commit to making moves or declaring fire without knowing exactly how it will go. Since you can't pre-measure you can't make such cut optimal decisions all of the time. This adds a lot of important judgement calls to the gameplay - and while maybe not "tactics" is still an element of skill and risk management.

These would make the game more tactically deep and more demanding skill wise, for examples.
Pro hammer needs a publisher.

And, maybe the CP management aspect of the game actually detracts from depth. Maybe that is more of a skill, to maintain a strategy while using CP only when necessary to keep strategies on track?

Oh my god premeasuring did not add tactical depth. It just made people familiar with Pythagorean theorem have an advantage.

2nd edition overwatch is as deep as anything else now. To use the parlance - if you can "calculate" Warhammer now you can calculate it then.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Oh my god premeasuring did not add tactical depth. It just made people familiar with Pythagorean theorem have an advantage.

2nd edition overwatch is as deep as anything else now. To use the parlance - if you can "calculate" Warhammer now you can calculate it then.

Premeasuring... you mean removing it, disallowing it? Because guessing ranges would seem to be a skill, as written above.

Over watch at all is better than what passes for over watch now, imho.

 jeff white wrote:
Over watch at all is better than what passes for over watch now, imho.

We have posters here that forget their own units on the table imagine the hissy fit they'd throw if they missed a unit set for overwatch and got a unit blown away because of it...

 jeff white wrote:
Premeasuring... you mean removing it, disallowing it? Because guessing ranges would seem to be a skill, as written above.

Guessing was a skill of who was better at cheating the system in various ways. No that's just my arm on the table - I'm not measuring with my hand!

And then you were better or worse at charging depending on your models since that was simply a double move.

Over watch at all is better than what passes for over watch now, imho.

Not sure I agree as most people wouldn't forfeit shooting now over no move and a -1 penalty to shoot later. And again is an easily solvable item. Eradicators overwatching? Ok I'll just move everything they don't want to shoot and shoot them and force casualties before I move what they want to shoot.

It was fun and thematic when I was young. Perhaps it is better for that edition, because scoring = killing. Oh? I go first ( because I'm marines, literally ) and I deployed everything out in the open and you didn't? Everything in overwatch!

These rules existed in a time before people took the game more seriously ( as much as one might ). I don't think they would hold up very well. I could be wrong, but I don't think it would rise to the level of "deeper" in any case.

Back when the missions were Maelstrom, the best tactic was mobility. Didn’t really matter much about the unit tactics, the mobility is what won it and was the reason that Eldar was so dominant. Play the mission, not the opponent.

In 9th, the uncertainty of Maelstrom is replaced with absolute certainty of what is needed - this is why high-durability armies with low vulnerability to poorly-conceived secondaries do so well. As such when considering the tactics, again play the mission and cater your army to that effect.

Which is why we need more mission variety, so you can't plan for the mission. They've already done a good job mixing up how different factions are resilient to different weapon profiles so you can't just spam a certain type of weapon, now they need to write more missions which require different methods to score the most VP.