The Men, The Means, The Monsters and Machines

[Ragnarox]

Alright, this is for the table top Warhammer and 40K players out there.

So, since I assume everybody here who plays table top wants to find better and better ways to wage war on the felt, I figured it would be nice if we all shared some of our favorite models and weapons and how we use them to win battles (hence the title), or just for fun. This way we can complement each others armories and doctrines and become greater menaces on the table.

Blood Angel Space Marines:
Alright, I really like Bolters, Bolters of all classes from the lowly Bolt Pistol to the mighty Hurricane Cannon (or is it Hurricane Gun? Nevermind). Being Blood Angels, and having Assault Squads as one of my Troops choices, I get a lot of bolt pistols. I also have a Tactical Squad with Boltguns and of course my Devastators with two to three Heavy Bolters, not to mention my Death Company.

Why do I like Bolters? Well because they are nice beefy guns in the hands of nice beefy troops. Even small salvos of Bolter fire tends to rip most troops to shreds, even fellow Space Marines. Heavy Bolters are excellent at providing a potent torrent of fire in a concentrated area or can force the enemy to keep their heads down while the rest of the troops move in. And Pistols, Pistols are superb at softening up an enemy before a charge.

Since I like Bolters so much, I have made them as critical to my game doctrine as the cold steel of my close combat troops. Of course being Blood Angels I want to be as close as I can to the enemy (well, without exposing myself too much that is), but I close distance not only for the sake of getting my hands dirty in the assault phase, but also to get off those shots with the Bolt Pistols. Meanwhile I use the Heavy Bolters of my Devastators to suppress, or at least occupy, enemy long range weapons and pound the hell out of enemy troops before my troops assault. The Tactical Squad's Boltguns provide much needed fire support in critical areas. With the Tac Squad, the name of the game is Fire and Maneuver. Once I get my Razorback up and running, I expect I will have both the Twin-Linked Heavy Bolter and the Twin-Linked Lazcannon turrets painted, just so I can choose to get more Heavy Bolters when the need arises.

Tau doctrine later.

[kongurous]

My entire IG army is built around speed and hitting swiftly yet with a keen edge. I have a lot of Rough Riders and Chimeras as a result. My strategy usually involves using Rough Riders to hold my flank as I move both them and my Chimeras onto the enemy. I drop a squad or something to keep the enemy busy, and then fall back. Rinse and repeat until while I use my heavier artillery to blow the hell out of the enemy.

When Rough Riders cannot be reasonably used or used at all, I just revert back to the typical Imperial Guard strategy of protecting my tanks and blowing the shit out of the enemy from a range. I particularly hate Tyranids and Orks in this regard, because they tend to close the distance or just outnumber me by so much that I can't really stop them from hitting me, which is why Heavy Weapons Teams are very valuable.

When the need arises, I can also use my storm troopers or seasoned veterans to hinder the enemy in some form. I usually hold their line and if their leader is isolated, I deep-strike my storm troopers to them and attack. After all, what is an army after losing it's HQ choice?

[Pisces]

I never like playing armies which are easy to use, which is why one of my armies is a pure harlequin's army (using the edition before they get a wraithlord). I use 3 infantry squads (in 1000pt), the first is protected by a shadowseer and uses the speed of its skimmer combined with the protection of the shadowseer to pick on a vulnerable unit, heavy weapons are good but I like to get rid of any C/C vechiles first with fusion pistols and haywire grenades because it is a lot harder to take them out in C/C and are fearless, my main concern with using this squad is they have to attack a point far enough away from the enemy's fearless/strong C/C units for them to wait for my reinforcements, if there is no such point then this squad will be sacrificed to make such a point for the next sqaud. The second squad (with great harlequin) is also on a skimmer, it will use the speed to stay out of weapon's fire rather than to attack, it will join the first sqaud if the opposition has plenty of C/C units otherwise they will engage another weak unit to spread out the enemy. My third squad is on foot (though they are still quite fast) and they will help out one of the above squads, usually the one which is winning to the winning sqaud can sweep across the enemy. Then I have a jetbike squad which will join the first squad but a the first opportunity ditch out and join the second squad when they charge.

My chaos army is a lot more relable because the infantry are basically space marines, so I designed this army on the philosophy of overkill to make it more unique and harder to use than space marines. I have several high point moving targets which are each designed to draw lascannon fire away from my heavy support and fast attack, while the enemy will probably think he has won the battle if he takes out 1 or 2 of these buggers, he probably has lots half his points to my fast attack and heavy support already and if any of my expensive units reach C/C then the enemy better make the most of their chance to run away because nothing can hold up against 60 attacks, a dreadnaught on morphine, or 2 durable killing machines (daemon prince & bloodthirster).

[Ragnarox]

nothing can hold up against 60 attacks
That's...border line insane, I don't think I've ever managed to muster up more than 40 attacks with a single squad at any one time, and that alone is hard to stand against.

Tau Doctrine:

My Tau are significantly harder to play because the Tau have the extreme disadvantage of being very soft and squishy in close combat. At the same time, I have no Kroot troops because they are not particularly good in close combat themselves.

Contrary to popular belief, the majority of Tau firepower lies not with the Battlesuits or tanks but with the Fire Warriors. Twelve Fire Warriors armed with Pulse Rifles with a clear view of the enemy is a terrifying scenario for those on the receiving end of the Tau salvo. Similarly however, to lose even one Fire Warrior Team is a devastating loss to the force because that is a significant amount of firepower which has just gone up in smoke. So the key is to move them around, a LOT. I try to keep them on the high ground if possible, and if not I try to keep their firing lanes open as far and wide as possible so there is no chance of them getting assaulted by their target if the barrage fails to either destroy the them or cause them to fall back.

Aside from poor close combat skills, Fire Warriors have another problem. Despite all that great and awesome firepower, Fire Warriors are not the best shots in the galaxy with a BS of 3. Without some kind of help, Fire Warriors are likely to only hit roughly 66% of the time. That is a large amount of fire wasted. The counter to this is of course, markerlights. In my Tau army, almost half the 1137 points invested into wargear in my 2750 point Tau army is composed of markerlights and marker drones. Not only do the markerlights allow all my Fire Warrior Teams to shoot much better but it makes the target much more susceptible to the ill effects of that fire (besides dying of course).

What I like to do is draw the enemy into my battlesuits which are covered by my Fire Warriors, and if possible I will put the enemy into a position where he simply cannot ignore my battlesuits. Once the enemy gets into the firing lanes of my Fire Warriors, I let all the marker lights in the army which can see the targets open up. Then I rain hell down with Pulse Rifles and my battlesuit weapons and even my Stealth teams if possible. Once the targets are destroyed, I move my Fire Warriors to another area and have the battlesuits cover their movement. If the Fire Warrior teams encounter vehicles, it isn't much of a problem because I always give my Broadsides good firing lanes past my troops to hit tanks. Even if that doesn't work for whatever reason, the Fusion Blasters on my Crisis suits get the job done anyways.

[Dezzick]

Ragnarox, you do realise the probability of hitting with BS3 is 50%, unless you have messed up dice.

For Fantasy, I like Lizardmen, because the main combat troops, the saurus, are hard-hitting, with a decent statline, and their only disadvantage is initiatve 1, and the cold blooded rule means that you roll 3d6 and pick the lowest 2 for leadership tests, combined with Ld8, means they can stay in combat for a long time, even if they aren't winning. Even better if you have temple guard with a slann mage-priest in it, because then they're stubborn. ^_^

Next up is the humble skink. A squad of skirmishers with blowpipes can take out any lone super-monster, because their ranged attacks are poisoned, which means any rolls to hit of 6 wound automatically, combine that with 2x Multiple shots, which means most of your hits will wound. And if you're firing at long range, it's autowound for every hit, since it requires a 6 to hit. ^_^

And now onto the dinosaurs. Kroxigors have S5, and great weapons, which means even though they strike last in all but the turn they charge, they have 3 S7 attacks each, with a minimum of 3 in a squad, this is Painful. and it deserves the capital P.
Stegadons have T6, which means they can't be killed easily, and they're the chariots of the Lizardmen, causing D6+1 S5 impact hits as they charge, and they have a howdah full of skinks with a bolt thrower on top, or a single skink priest, and with 4 S5 attacks, they're not to be laughed at.
Carnosaurs have a statline from hell, and because they can only be ridden by a saurus oldblood, so does the rider ^_^. 4S6 attacks, which cause D3 wounds instead of 1 on a large target, and they have frenzy from the first wound they cause. And they cause terror.
Salamanders just throw S3 flames at things, with a -1 to armour saves, but the number of hits scored is rolled on the artillary dice, which means a potentially high casualty rate, since it's 1 artillary dice per salamander, with 3 in the regiment, that could be 30 S10 hits a turn. And they can hold their own in close combat, like anything else in the lizardmen list, except maybe slann.
Terradons are flying nasties, with a skink rider who can throw poisoned javelins. They also have the hit-and-run rule, which counteracts their low toughness.

Also, most units have a natural scaly skin save, of 6+ or better, which means you can get a -1+ save on a saurus scar-veteran, so it has to be S7 or higher to get rid of his 2+ save.

And I haven't even got round to mentioning cold-ones and slann yet, but DINOSAURS!!! =D

[Ragnarox]

Ragnarox, you do realise the probability of hitting with BS3 is 50%, unless you have messed up dice.

Ya I realized this. But usually I see that I make roughly 66% of the shots without markerlights with a BS of 3. I know, mathematically it doesn't make sense which means luck is playing a role.

[Dezzick]

It's Dezzick. >.>

I'm guessing it's how some people never fail 3+ armour saves when they're outnumbered by a huge swarm of gaunts, so the squad ends up pursueing them and eating them alive.

[Ragnarox]

It's Dezzick. >.>

I'm guessing it's how some people never fail 3+ armour saves when they're outnumbered by a huge swarm of gaunts, so the squad ends up pursueing them and eating them alive.

And how people keep rolling those sixes on glancing hits.

Sorry about the name mix up, same avy and all.

[kongurous]

And how people keep rolling those sixes on glancing hits.

Sorry about the name mix up, same avy and all.

My avy and sig are of the Witch-king, not the Black Templars.

[Ragnarox]

My avy and sig are of the Witch-king, not the Black Templars.

Yeah but when I saw Dezzick's sig, it said "kongurous" on it. Also, you had that avy and sig for such a long time that it became automatic that when I saw them I immediately thought it was you despite the fact that I have seen Dezzick with the same sig and avy several times.

[Protogod]

Havent played in so long, lol. But I used to have a kickass dark-eldar army. With thier mobility and splinter rifles they'd put up a harass that was simply incomparable. Wile my Talos and grotesques gained on the enemy, soaking up damage, I could harass just about anything they had with my infantry and jet bikes.

[Pisces]

That's...border line insane, I don't think I've ever managed to muster up more than 40 attacks with a single squad at any one time, and that alone is hard to stand against.

Its usually only 40 attacks by the time I reach the enemy, but they are 40 S4 WS4 attacks plus the 4 strength 8 attacks the aspiring champion has. It is a squad of 20 khorne berserkers btw. They are the most expensive squad in my army but because I have lots of things with big targets painted on them the berzerkers usually don't attract much fire until they have wiped out the enemy's best C/C unit. If things work perfectly then I will hold back my moving targets from being shot up until my berserkers reach combat and the enemy will repriorise their firing which lets my moving targets stay alive until they reach combat, in which case it won't matter if they are half dead because they are almost unstopable in C/C. More often than not my opponent isn't that stupid and only half my army will reach the enemy, but that half is always good enough to clean up.

My army is funny, because opponents don't target the usual things which get targetted in a batte, e.g. rhino, predator & dreadnaught with heavy support and use the fast attack to attack my heavy weapons, they usually attack the waves of forces coming at them while leaving my more fragile units alone. To beat my army it is best to spend the first turn directing fire at my rhino, predator & dreadnaught while keeping all vehicles at the back (even if they are assault vehicles). Throw second turn fire at either the rhino or dreadnaught if they survived the first turn then additional fire at my raptors which are an easy kill. Third turn fire everything at whatever is closest to your C/C unit (which will probably be my demon prince or bikes) and ensure my raptors are below half health and this turn move any vehicles to my berzerkers, the vehicles will probably be destroyed but they may do some damage against the berzerkers or slow them down. Hopefully you would have killed off my bikers (releasing a weaken bloodthirster) or demonprince, engage any dreadnaught type unit with my other big C/C, dreadnaught may die but you should be positioned to fire heavy weapons once the combat is finished. Space out the remaining units to make the berserkers take as much fire as possible moving between units, I wouldn't pile in on them as they tend to punch a surprise. The rest of my army probably isn't worth attacking, although they are soft targets you would lose too many points attacking them so its best to wait out the rest of the game in cover and win on points as most of the damage I would have done would have been thinning out units rather than earning points destroying them.

[Giantfish]

If you charge in with a 32 model brood of hormagaunts, you can get up to 96 WS5 strength 4 attacks in theory. Though given their 6+ save, I doubt you'll manage to get your bugs up there without casualties.

[Ktan]

Depends. If you get lucky, they can move 24 inches in the 1st turn :D

[Ragnarox]

Depends. If you get lucky, they can move 24 inches in the 1st turn

Fleet of Claw...(shivers), it only gets worse once you realize that they were bringing in the Genestealers just behind the gaunts.

[singo]

it only gets worse once you realize that they were bringing in the Genestealers just behind the gaunts.

This reminds me of that scene in Life of Brian...

"WORSE? HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY GET ANY WORSE?"

Go on, name anything thats not an armoured vehicle that can stand up to those 96 attacks, let alone any more. The genestealers are going to have to go hungry there.

[Giantfish]

Well, if your talking about anything... Both Nightbringer and Deciever can't be wounded by by hormagaunts (it says "N" on the damage chart). Anything else that is also toughness 8 or higher (though I don't know of any) will also laugh at the 96 hormagaunt hits.

[Dezzick]

well, I had a group of 4 chaos marines take 2 wounds from at most 30 termagaunts, then they ended up owning them through sweeping advance.

[Ragnarox]

Go on, name anything thats not an armoured vehicle that can stand up to those 96 attacks, let alone any more.

Any model that is too small to be in base to base contact with that many hormagaunts at once.

[Protogod]

lol, owned.

I dunno too much about tyranids, though. I imagine they're like dark eldar though, in that they're both fast and maneuverable.

[Ragnarox]

I imagine they're like dark eldar though, in that they're both fast and maneuverable.

Well, they are very fast, but they really aren't maneuverable. This is primarily because they really don't need to be maneuvered. In fact their doctrine relies on making sure the enemy can't maneuver. They just overwhelm their enemies with lots of cheap units with a few bruisers here and there or they just steamroll over anything in their path using highly modified powerful models (i.e Warriors, Carnifex, Broodlord).

[singo]

Damn, should have seen that coming.

Then again, anything on a small base is unlikely to be hard enough to stand up to just the ones in base to base anyway.


The things that cant be wounded, once again, yup. Didnt think it through really did I? You get the point though.

[Ktan]

Also, remember the 2". You can get 6 in base to base (LOTR exp, ftw!), backed by at least another 6. Considering the bases are about 1 inch, that means you could probably get another 'row' in, and there would also be a few more inbetween.

I'd say at least 18 in range, probably up to 24. I can't think of any models that have a smaller base than the standard mansized one and if it was that small, singos point would probably stand. Even Ratlings have normal sived bases, IIRC.

[Giantfish]

Hormagaunts are counted as being in base contact from 3" because of their leaping biomorph...

[Ragnarox]

Hormagaunts are counted as being in base contact from 3" because of their leaping biomorph...

Don't you have to purchase that for the entire brood before hand though?

[Giantfish]

Don't you have to purchase that for the entire brood before hand though?

No, but there are other upgrades you'll want.

[Ktan]

Don't you have to purchase that for the entire brood before hand though?

No, they have it already, because they are Beasts, I think. Giantfish is right.

Jsut checked my codex. Yes, leaping as a standard.

[singo]

So I was right?

Wow, that doesnt happen often....

[Ragnarox]

Jsut checked my codex. Yes, leaping as a standard.

Uh oh, that doesn't bode well for my Fire Warriors this weekend. My father plays Tyranids and is Hormagaunt crazy.

[singo]

Steady aim, mark your target when it comes...

At 100 yards! Volley...FIRE!

Yes, I like Zulu

[Ktan]

Uh oh, that doesn't bode well for my Fire Warriors this weekend. My father plays Tyranids and is Hormagaunt crazy.

How many? What size are the units?

[Ragnarox]

How many? What size are the units?

I really don't know, its our first game since he bought 30 more Hormagaunts a few months ago. I'm assuming units of twelve or so backed up by Warriors.

[Ktan]

I'm not sure what to do then.

However, I actually played a game today (:o) using my Necrons.

2 Units of 10 Immortals are godly. I made a few tactical errors (but I was able to fix them), but it culminated in me leaving him with a Venerable Dreadnought (only saved by it's Ven re-rolls) and a rather bloody nose. It was a great game though, and he was blighted by his reserves being reluctant to actually appear.

One thing I did though:
A scout squad was in combat with one of my warrior sqauds, who were screening Immortals. While in combat, the Scouts were just being a nuisance to the Necrons. Therefore, I used the Monolith Portal to pull the Warriors out of combat, leaving the hapless scouts staring down 10 Gauss Blaster barrels (S5, 2 Shots, AP4)

Enough said.