Post by stonecutter on Sept 2, 2010 8:41:41 GMT -5
8th Edition Tactics
The following article on 8th Edition fantasy tactics is based on my own assessment of the game playing a variety of armies and opponents. The intent is to provide both beginners and experienced players with some guidance and to hopefully stimulate further debate and improve both the calibre of play and people’s enjoyment of the game. This article is far from all-inclusive and contains no secret “tricks” that will auto win games or defeat all foes. Instead, it is a guide on how to approach the game and how to think your way through tactical problems.
Army Design
The first step toward success in warhammer is in army design. Before an army is ever fielded, a considerable amount of thought should have already gone into its composition. This process involves taking into account a number of factors including the specific race, the theme for the army, its likely opponents and the playing style of its general. There is a very simple method for accomplishing this called SWOT, an acronym that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. In designing your army, SWOT can be used as follows:
Strengths: What are the strengths of my specific army? Does it have good shooting, magic, manoeuvrability or close combat power? Are the troops plentiful and cheap or elite and expensive? More importantly, what are the specific units and characters that have those abilities within the army? As an example, Dwarves and Empire both have impressive gun lines but dwarven leadership, toughness and armour makes them better at close combat whereas the Empire has cavalry and magic to support relatively weak close combat forces.
Weaknesses: After examining the strengths of your army, it is also important, nay vital, to determine where the weaknesses are. Warriors of chaos (WOC) and vamp armies have very poor shooting options whereas other armies excel in this area. One area that is not always obvious is the resiliency of your army to damage – something which it will inevitably suffer. Toughness, armour, ward saves, mobility and leadership all contribute to how well your army can withstand suffering damage and a fragile army generally does not respond well to a straight up fight against a tougher opponent. Again, it is necessary to examine the major areas of shooting, magic, manoeuvrability and close combat to identify where and when your army is most vulnerable.
Opportunities: Having established an understanding of your army’s particular strengths and weaknesses, it is now time to take the process one step further and ask the question, “So what?” For every strength, it is necessary to determine under what conditions that strength can best be exploited. If you have excellent close combat capability, then the obvious “So What?” is that you need to get your troops into combat to do their job. The next “So What?” following this is the means of achieving this and how you can protect those troops or distract your enemy so that your combat forces arrive in sufficient condition to do their job. Conversely, a magic or shooting heavy army must seek to prolong combat as long as possible so that it can either destroy entire units or inflict sufficiently heavy damage on the enemy that its combat forces are severely weakened and can be defeated by relatively inferior troops in greater numbers – quantity has a quality all its own.
Threats: Nearly identical to identifying opportunities, the threat analysis involves asking the question, “So What?” to determine how the weaknesses in your army can be exploited by your opponent. At the same time, this should also provoke the secondary “So What?” of how do you stop your opponent from exploiting these weaknesses or, more probably, how do you minimize the damage this does to your army or make your opponent pay a steep price for exploiting your weakness? A good example would be WOC versus an Empire or Dwarven gun line. Clearly, the WOC are vulnerable to the shooting and must get into combat as soon as possible. To achieve this, they must limit the effectiveness of the gun line. This can be accomplished in at least three ways:
Deployment: use of terrain to provide cover against ballistic skill based shooting and force indirect shooting with war machines while also attempting to spread out the gun line as much as possible by having troops across your deployment area, thereby forcing your opponent to do the same.
Direct Targeting: Use magic and fast cav (with vanguard move) to directly attack the most dangerous shooting.
Sacrificial Goats: Sometimes, there will simply be a bloody price to pay before combat can be joined. By overloading one side of the board and screening more expensive troops with cheaper troops, the gun line will have so many targets that it cannot deal with them all. Throw in fast cav, war dogs and other fast movers and the problem becomes even more complicated. If the fast moving support units are not destroyed, they will be charging the next round whereas failure to shoot up the infantry blocks means they will arrive relatively intact and will sweep through the gun line. Large monsters are also good for soaking up ridiculous amounts of an opponent’s attention and effort. Giants in particular seem to draw a lot of fire and while they usually go down before reaching enemy lines, their sacrifice means the rest of the army is proceeding rather unscathed.
KNOW YOUR ENEMY
Having applied SWOT to your own army, you must now do the same with potential adversaries. This can be done in general before the battle so that you have a solid understanding of each opponent and can then compare and contrast your own army’s SWOT with the enemy SWOT. Again, you must ask the question, “So What?” The goal here is to pair your strengths vs your opponent’s weaknesses (ideal) and to determine how to minimize your own weaknesses vs your opponent’s strengths. Doing this beforehand makes it much simpler to rapidly look at an opposing army before a game and quickly apply the deductions and solutions you have already come up with.
With the SWOT done and a plan in your mind, it is now time to go from vision and into action. As the saying goes, no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, so once again you must strive to carry out your own plan while denying your opponent the ability to do the same. We will look at each phase of the game and some general principles for what you should be seeking to accomplish.
The first and most important thing to remember is that, the game is “6 TURNS LONG”. It is neither necessary nor desirable to win on turn 1. A friend of mine once told me that I am a great “closer” in warhammer - meaning that I start off relatively slow with some minor setbacks but inevitably come on strong the last few turns to turn the game around. I would generally agree with this assessment as I often use the first few turns to shape the battlefield, observe my opponent’s style of play and set favourable conditions for decisive action later in the game.
Movement Phase
Many players often overlook this phase as they are only concerned with the current turn. In moving your troops and watching your opponent’s moves, it is necessary to keep focussed on what the long-term plan is and where you want your troops at least one turn ahead. In addition, it is vital to keep units facing in the correct direction where they will be able to shoot or cast magic this turn, remain within the general’s leadership bubble (if necessary), or be in a position to flank an enemy later or even declare a charge in the next turn. Also, keep in mind the effect of overruns, pursuits and the ability of units to reform after combat. Lastly, determine how to best use terrain to your advantage. Any type of terrain will cause a dangerous terrain check for charging cavalry/chariots and any building will allow even the lowliest of units to hold out against a superior foe since they will be steadfast.
Magic Phase
This consists of two phases: one offensive (your turn) and one defensive (your opponent’s turn). During your own turn, think of what your plan is and what the most vital spells are in order to achieve that plan and what the targets will be. I personally abhor the #6 spells in each of the lores since they have too great an impact on the game but that aside, they can be a devastating weapon even if you never cast them. Simply maintaining the threat of casting these killer spells may cause your opponent to allow several smaller spells to go through – spells that are actually vital to your plan. Minor buffs and hexes are particularly useful in this regard and require relatively few power dice but they can greatly enhance a subsequent shooting or close combat phase.
While you are playing defence during your opponent’s magic phase, you must resist the attempt to stop everything. Before picking up the dice to attempt to dispel you must ask yourself if it is critically important to stop the spell and what else your opponent can do during the magic phase. I often allow an opponent to blast away with relative impunity at my units early on in a game so long as the units remain effective for their task or are merely fodder that, while useful, are not vital to my overall plan. Strangely enough, allowing my units to get blasted often causes my opponent to hesitate and plants the seeds of doubt in their mind, thereby sowing confusion that I can later build upon and eventually harvest ;D
Having concluded that it is necessary to stop the spell, don’t send a boy to do a man’s job. Each d6 will yield 3.5 on average so always add up what is needed on average (taking into account your caster’s level) and add at least one more die than necessary. While the dice gods may sometimes curse you, this approach leads to well over 80% success in my experience. In a similar vein, a dispel scroll or equivalent must be saved for the killer spells that have the potential to swing the game completely in your opponent’s favour.
Shooting Phase
Like the magic phases, there are two parts to shooting: offence and defence. During your own turn, establish both a priority for targets, what the effect is that you want to achieve and then what shooting is most likely to achieve the desired result. Sometimes, it will be necessary to entirely wipe out a unit to prevent it from charging in the next turn but more often than not, weakening it by inflicting a number of casualties/wounds will be sufficient and the resulting panic check may solve the problem for you. Even causing a number of panic checks can be an objective in itself as the dice will eventually fail your foe – especially if you target vulnerable units outside the range of the general and BSB. Lastly, use the right tool for the job. If faced with a large, tough, monster and a unit of infantry, use the mortar on the infantry and a cannon on the monster.
Close Combat Phase
I generally classify close combat as employing three types of troops:
1. Hammers: Hard-hitting, tough units that can inflict a lot of damage but are usually small in number.
2. Anvils: Units that are stubborn or can lend positive combat resolution (CR) without giving up excessive active CR through lost wounds.
3. Grinders: A unit that combines the hammer and anvil abilities with toughness/resiliency that eventually wears down an opponent over time.
Like the other phases, it is again necessary to identify where and when you want to use your own troops and against what opposing enemy units. A large unit of inferior infantry can hold a monster/dragon lord or non-ranked unit in place for several turns since they will be steadfast and this may be useful as it will grant time for the rest of your army to defeat your opponent in detail. While the infantry may not like it, they are likely only peasants, gobbos, skinks or rats and there are plenty more where those came from!! These troops are particularly useful in suicide charges. While the unit may be lost, being able to direct 6 or more attacks against a T3 supreme sorceress every round is definitely worth losing a block of 40 or 50 gobbos J Even more expensive, harder hitting units can be employed in this manner if there is a reasonable chance of success and the destruction of the target will contribute to the overall plan.
Where possible, move hammers into a flanking position and charge them in with an anvil. This will yield maximum static CR for your own troops and increase the likelihood of denying steadfast to your foe and allowing a victorious pursuit that completely destroys the enemy.
Characters provide a very unique ability to be both hammers and anvils and can be equipped accordingly. A resilient character with good saves can negate an opposing enemy character with strong offensive capabilities, thereby limiting active CR and other factors to determine the combat. Similarly, a strong offensive character can be used to kill high value enemy rank and file (cavalry, monsters, etc.) if a champion steps up and throws himself under the bus in a challenge against a bloodthirster, chaos lord on dragon, carnie old blood, etc.
Well, I have blathered on rather long enough so I will leave you to actually putting these ideas into action. I would welcome any additional comments and criticisms as our intent must always be to learn and to improve. Tactics are constantly evolving and if one fails to stop thinking and adapting you will soon calcify your intellect. In effect, you will become a living stone and no one wants that ;D
The following article on 8th Edition fantasy tactics is based on my own assessment of the game playing a variety of armies and opponents. The intent is to provide both beginners and experienced players with some guidance and to hopefully stimulate further debate and improve both the calibre of play and people’s enjoyment of the game. This article is far from all-inclusive and contains no secret “tricks” that will auto win games or defeat all foes. Instead, it is a guide on how to approach the game and how to think your way through tactical problems.
Army Design
The first step toward success in warhammer is in army design. Before an army is ever fielded, a considerable amount of thought should have already gone into its composition. This process involves taking into account a number of factors including the specific race, the theme for the army, its likely opponents and the playing style of its general. There is a very simple method for accomplishing this called SWOT, an acronym that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. In designing your army, SWOT can be used as follows:
Strengths: What are the strengths of my specific army? Does it have good shooting, magic, manoeuvrability or close combat power? Are the troops plentiful and cheap or elite and expensive? More importantly, what are the specific units and characters that have those abilities within the army? As an example, Dwarves and Empire both have impressive gun lines but dwarven leadership, toughness and armour makes them better at close combat whereas the Empire has cavalry and magic to support relatively weak close combat forces.
Weaknesses: After examining the strengths of your army, it is also important, nay vital, to determine where the weaknesses are. Warriors of chaos (WOC) and vamp armies have very poor shooting options whereas other armies excel in this area. One area that is not always obvious is the resiliency of your army to damage – something which it will inevitably suffer. Toughness, armour, ward saves, mobility and leadership all contribute to how well your army can withstand suffering damage and a fragile army generally does not respond well to a straight up fight against a tougher opponent. Again, it is necessary to examine the major areas of shooting, magic, manoeuvrability and close combat to identify where and when your army is most vulnerable.
Opportunities: Having established an understanding of your army’s particular strengths and weaknesses, it is now time to take the process one step further and ask the question, “So what?” For every strength, it is necessary to determine under what conditions that strength can best be exploited. If you have excellent close combat capability, then the obvious “So What?” is that you need to get your troops into combat to do their job. The next “So What?” following this is the means of achieving this and how you can protect those troops or distract your enemy so that your combat forces arrive in sufficient condition to do their job. Conversely, a magic or shooting heavy army must seek to prolong combat as long as possible so that it can either destroy entire units or inflict sufficiently heavy damage on the enemy that its combat forces are severely weakened and can be defeated by relatively inferior troops in greater numbers – quantity has a quality all its own.
Threats: Nearly identical to identifying opportunities, the threat analysis involves asking the question, “So What?” to determine how the weaknesses in your army can be exploited by your opponent. At the same time, this should also provoke the secondary “So What?” of how do you stop your opponent from exploiting these weaknesses or, more probably, how do you minimize the damage this does to your army or make your opponent pay a steep price for exploiting your weakness? A good example would be WOC versus an Empire or Dwarven gun line. Clearly, the WOC are vulnerable to the shooting and must get into combat as soon as possible. To achieve this, they must limit the effectiveness of the gun line. This can be accomplished in at least three ways:
Deployment: use of terrain to provide cover against ballistic skill based shooting and force indirect shooting with war machines while also attempting to spread out the gun line as much as possible by having troops across your deployment area, thereby forcing your opponent to do the same.
Direct Targeting: Use magic and fast cav (with vanguard move) to directly attack the most dangerous shooting.
Sacrificial Goats: Sometimes, there will simply be a bloody price to pay before combat can be joined. By overloading one side of the board and screening more expensive troops with cheaper troops, the gun line will have so many targets that it cannot deal with them all. Throw in fast cav, war dogs and other fast movers and the problem becomes even more complicated. If the fast moving support units are not destroyed, they will be charging the next round whereas failure to shoot up the infantry blocks means they will arrive relatively intact and will sweep through the gun line. Large monsters are also good for soaking up ridiculous amounts of an opponent’s attention and effort. Giants in particular seem to draw a lot of fire and while they usually go down before reaching enemy lines, their sacrifice means the rest of the army is proceeding rather unscathed.
KNOW YOUR ENEMY
Having applied SWOT to your own army, you must now do the same with potential adversaries. This can be done in general before the battle so that you have a solid understanding of each opponent and can then compare and contrast your own army’s SWOT with the enemy SWOT. Again, you must ask the question, “So What?” The goal here is to pair your strengths vs your opponent’s weaknesses (ideal) and to determine how to minimize your own weaknesses vs your opponent’s strengths. Doing this beforehand makes it much simpler to rapidly look at an opposing army before a game and quickly apply the deductions and solutions you have already come up with.
With the SWOT done and a plan in your mind, it is now time to go from vision and into action. As the saying goes, no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, so once again you must strive to carry out your own plan while denying your opponent the ability to do the same. We will look at each phase of the game and some general principles for what you should be seeking to accomplish.
The first and most important thing to remember is that, the game is “6 TURNS LONG”. It is neither necessary nor desirable to win on turn 1. A friend of mine once told me that I am a great “closer” in warhammer - meaning that I start off relatively slow with some minor setbacks but inevitably come on strong the last few turns to turn the game around. I would generally agree with this assessment as I often use the first few turns to shape the battlefield, observe my opponent’s style of play and set favourable conditions for decisive action later in the game.
Movement Phase
Many players often overlook this phase as they are only concerned with the current turn. In moving your troops and watching your opponent’s moves, it is necessary to keep focussed on what the long-term plan is and where you want your troops at least one turn ahead. In addition, it is vital to keep units facing in the correct direction where they will be able to shoot or cast magic this turn, remain within the general’s leadership bubble (if necessary), or be in a position to flank an enemy later or even declare a charge in the next turn. Also, keep in mind the effect of overruns, pursuits and the ability of units to reform after combat. Lastly, determine how to best use terrain to your advantage. Any type of terrain will cause a dangerous terrain check for charging cavalry/chariots and any building will allow even the lowliest of units to hold out against a superior foe since they will be steadfast.
Magic Phase
This consists of two phases: one offensive (your turn) and one defensive (your opponent’s turn). During your own turn, think of what your plan is and what the most vital spells are in order to achieve that plan and what the targets will be. I personally abhor the #6 spells in each of the lores since they have too great an impact on the game but that aside, they can be a devastating weapon even if you never cast them. Simply maintaining the threat of casting these killer spells may cause your opponent to allow several smaller spells to go through – spells that are actually vital to your plan. Minor buffs and hexes are particularly useful in this regard and require relatively few power dice but they can greatly enhance a subsequent shooting or close combat phase.
While you are playing defence during your opponent’s magic phase, you must resist the attempt to stop everything. Before picking up the dice to attempt to dispel you must ask yourself if it is critically important to stop the spell and what else your opponent can do during the magic phase. I often allow an opponent to blast away with relative impunity at my units early on in a game so long as the units remain effective for their task or are merely fodder that, while useful, are not vital to my overall plan. Strangely enough, allowing my units to get blasted often causes my opponent to hesitate and plants the seeds of doubt in their mind, thereby sowing confusion that I can later build upon and eventually harvest ;D
Having concluded that it is necessary to stop the spell, don’t send a boy to do a man’s job. Each d6 will yield 3.5 on average so always add up what is needed on average (taking into account your caster’s level) and add at least one more die than necessary. While the dice gods may sometimes curse you, this approach leads to well over 80% success in my experience. In a similar vein, a dispel scroll or equivalent must be saved for the killer spells that have the potential to swing the game completely in your opponent’s favour.
Shooting Phase
Like the magic phases, there are two parts to shooting: offence and defence. During your own turn, establish both a priority for targets, what the effect is that you want to achieve and then what shooting is most likely to achieve the desired result. Sometimes, it will be necessary to entirely wipe out a unit to prevent it from charging in the next turn but more often than not, weakening it by inflicting a number of casualties/wounds will be sufficient and the resulting panic check may solve the problem for you. Even causing a number of panic checks can be an objective in itself as the dice will eventually fail your foe – especially if you target vulnerable units outside the range of the general and BSB. Lastly, use the right tool for the job. If faced with a large, tough, monster and a unit of infantry, use the mortar on the infantry and a cannon on the monster.
Close Combat Phase
I generally classify close combat as employing three types of troops:
1. Hammers: Hard-hitting, tough units that can inflict a lot of damage but are usually small in number.
2. Anvils: Units that are stubborn or can lend positive combat resolution (CR) without giving up excessive active CR through lost wounds.
3. Grinders: A unit that combines the hammer and anvil abilities with toughness/resiliency that eventually wears down an opponent over time.
Like the other phases, it is again necessary to identify where and when you want to use your own troops and against what opposing enemy units. A large unit of inferior infantry can hold a monster/dragon lord or non-ranked unit in place for several turns since they will be steadfast and this may be useful as it will grant time for the rest of your army to defeat your opponent in detail. While the infantry may not like it, they are likely only peasants, gobbos, skinks or rats and there are plenty more where those came from!! These troops are particularly useful in suicide charges. While the unit may be lost, being able to direct 6 or more attacks against a T3 supreme sorceress every round is definitely worth losing a block of 40 or 50 gobbos J Even more expensive, harder hitting units can be employed in this manner if there is a reasonable chance of success and the destruction of the target will contribute to the overall plan.
Where possible, move hammers into a flanking position and charge them in with an anvil. This will yield maximum static CR for your own troops and increase the likelihood of denying steadfast to your foe and allowing a victorious pursuit that completely destroys the enemy.
Characters provide a very unique ability to be both hammers and anvils and can be equipped accordingly. A resilient character with good saves can negate an opposing enemy character with strong offensive capabilities, thereby limiting active CR and other factors to determine the combat. Similarly, a strong offensive character can be used to kill high value enemy rank and file (cavalry, monsters, etc.) if a champion steps up and throws himself under the bus in a challenge against a bloodthirster, chaos lord on dragon, carnie old blood, etc.
Well, I have blathered on rather long enough so I will leave you to actually putting these ideas into action. I would welcome any additional comments and criticisms as our intent must always be to learn and to improve. Tactics are constantly evolving and if one fails to stop thinking and adapting you will soon calcify your intellect. In effect, you will become a living stone and no one wants that ;D
