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I was wondering when is it wise to use reserves? I'm talking about normal reserves where no bonus is given (deepstriking, outflanking, etc.), just normal guys coming in late. I'm pretty new to 40k and always wondered this. Any input will be helpful.

It always depends on your army and your enemies army.
For exampe a good unit for reserves are Gretchin. They die fast if they start on the table but are great for keeping an objective in your deployment zone later.
Another use I can think of is when you play agains IG with lots of artillery. Then you can put your scoring units into reserve and take the artillery out in the first round so you are safer in the backfield.

But there are lots of situations where you don´t want to be in reserves, especially when you have a strong alpha strike or depend on a gun line to defend against approaching enemys.

Most commonly when you need something to score but it's too fragile to survive the game on the board you are playing. Another use is if you really need to get the drop with a particular unit and don't want them killed first. So overall, it is mostly to mitigate damage to something.

Some advice I can give is don't hold back small squads of infantry (by this I mean a ten man squad in a rhino or a squad of fire warriors in a devilfish) even if they are in transports to try and grab late game objectives. Unless they have outflank if they don't its not going to work well. Have had it used against me a couple of times didn't work well at all.

The answer to this is rarely, if ever. 40K is not strategic level, and reserves are a strategic level concept. You want everything you've got contributing as soon as possible. Even "fragile" units.

 Gunhead1 wrote:
Some advice I can give is don't hold back small squads of infantry (by this I mean a ten man squad in a rhino or a squad of fire warriors in a devilfish) even if they are in transports to try and grab late game objectives. Unless they have outflank if they don't its not going to work well. Have had it used against me a couple of times didn't work well at all.

And why do they need Outflank to take an objective in their own deployment zone?

Well its not always in their deployment zone (though I see your point) and if the match is the scouring (or any other multiple objective game) and the four point objective or necessary objective is on the opponent's side of the field its easier to outflank than it is to send a unit that has to start from their edge of the broad to make it to the other side and it may not have enough turns to make it (taking two turns to reach it and a third to get troops out depending on how far away the objective is) or even a chance to survive to get to it. While it can work one has to step it up right for it to work. Though it if not set up right it will not work. Example an opponent only brings around 30 to 36 fire warriors when 10 to 12 of them are not on the field and he/she already has a couple of units in reserve for deep striking one can focus their fire power on his/her units that can score and one can remove them or make the run off the broad before the other fire warriors can do anything. In my own experience weight of fire power tends to ignore all those special items that makes a unit a rolling beast so keeping infantry units that can't deep strike out of reserve and on the field were they can lend their fire power to the over all battle is better IMO. Though if you already had enough troops on the field than it wouldn't be to much of a problem, but every time I have seen it used it just doesn't deliver. Though I'm not saying it couldn't.

Hope this clarifies what I was trying to say earlier

I agree with the thought of "almost never". I'd probably go a bit further and say only reserve those units you are forced to.

You have on average 6 turns to defeat your opponent. Any unit held in reserves is going to miss out on at least 20% of the game, and possibly more. Meanwhile you will be playing at a disadvantage: meaning your opponent will have more points on the board while yours are twiddling their thumbs off to the side.

I *might* consider reserves IF the unit in question was scoring, had a low probability of living through the game AND they were going to control and objective on my side while not being able to contribute to the larger battle. However, this would mean I was either playing on a table with no LoS blocking cover or I badly placed my objectives.

I would say it might depend if you are going first or second.

Going second, you will have last turn, so could be useful having a few of your cheap scoring units in reserve to come in late and take objectives, also if you have a squishy unit that you dont wont your opponent the privilege of killing T1 then hold it back so it can be more useful.

Going first? I would keep everything on the board and go for the alpha strike

I used to play a lot of 2nd and 3rd edition, back when specific missions and objective based games were less common and most games were just the equivilent of Purge the Alien without a concern about game turns. In this situation, normal reserve was a decent strategy since you could limit what your opponent could kill in early turns while providing strong reinforcements later in the game.

I don't see this working too well in 6th though. Being able to reclaim an objective in your deployment zone is a possibility; however, now that most games are 5-6 turns, being able to utilize something from reserve is iffy at best and that's assuming some control over your reserve rolls.

While I have not used normal reserves since getting back into 6th edition a few months back, I wouldn't really consider it unless it was a unit that had the speed and mobility to make their late arrival count. Bikes come to mind here since many armies have the ability to make bikes scoring units and they have the speed and toughness to do a second wave push.

This is a hard question to answer because the variables are to many in each game. Deployment, mission, opponent, enemy units, your units, terrain, these all go into the thought process when you reserve. Some very broad and general guidelines:

It's easier to reserve in vanguard deployment than any other type of deployment because your guys will walk on closer to the enemy deployment zone than in any other deployment.

If you feel there is a good chance your unit will get destroyed in the first turn of fire. You base this on going second and seeing what is deployed against you and where the fire lanes are.

If its an objective give game and you have objectives close to your board edge. If the unit is fragile or only has short range weapons you might consider reserving.

If your tabletop has very little terrain a dn you are going second.

Assault based units are usually better off starting on the board rather than reserving. Good shooting units can get away with going into reserve.

Very resilient units should not go into regular reserves. They might go into special reserves like deep strike sometimes, but you only wanted to discuss regular reserves.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Unholyllama wrote:
I used to play a lot of 2nd and 3rd edition, back when specific missions and objective based games were less common and most games were just the equivilent of Purge the Alien without a concern about game turns. In this situation, normal reserve was a decent strategy since you could limit what your opponent could kill in early turns while providing strong reinforcements later in the game.
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This is still a viable strategy in 6th edition. Look to Reecius' most recent video battle report for evidence of this tactic working to perfection. It's Footdar vs. Mechdar.

Well, there's not many times you would want to use reserves without some kind of bonus.
I am almost always allying in an autarch with my tau for the bonus so I can get 2+ turn two and don't need to use an aegis line. (also eldar are really really fun).

But my list is fairly reserve heavy and it is really working well for me. After my opponent moves up on their first turns, I drop a few squads behind their main force and slice up either the attack force or anything left in the deployment zone. It's something that is much more effective if you build your lists around it.

I have beaten GK a few times with lowly BA because they had too much stuff loaded on Stormravens. I was overrunning their deployment zone by the time their stuff was even eligible to assault. My Stormraven velocity locked one of their Stormravens, meaning their stuff had to deploy via "skies of blood" or whatever the hell its called now. Even BA can win with only half an opposing army on the table turn 1.