How to beat me

Disclaimer: I in no way claim to be a tactical genius and all of this is largely my opinion and how I approach things in order to win so feel free to disagree, but taff asked me to write something on how to beat me so here goes...

Okay apologies if I start off basic but if I’m going to do this I’m going to do it properly and by properly I essentially mean long...

Know Yourself

Anyone seen my Tyranid codex recently? It is a filthy dog eared tea stained piece of crap. Yes this is largely because I’m incapable of taking care of my own things, but also because I have been through that codex so many times – I virtually know it backwards. I have previously given an opponent my unopened codex and told him the page number he needs to look at to check the rule he was questioning.
That’s not to say that you need to memorize every page of your own codex as well but know the units in there. Know what they are for – shooting, assault etc – their strengths and weaknesses, what weapons can hurt them, what can they hurt themselves, how many wounds can you expect. Yes math hammer is generally a load of old pish posh as your never gonna roll average. But having that idea of what level of wounds the unit is going to put out and what punishment it can take means you know exactly how best to utilise your forces, resulting is less overkill or underkill both of which can result in heavy losses for you.

Know your enemy

Now I don’t mean this in the same manner as above, you don’t need to have the same level of knowledge about your enemy as you do you – just the basics. If you know what your opponent is going to be trying to do it’s a lot easier to counter. It’s worth skimming over other peoples codexes so you get a feel for the armies and more importantly how to beat them. Are they all T3, rely on feel no pain, have a lot of tanks, have an uber psycher guy, lots of T6, lots of 2+ armour saves... It sounds obvious but it’s no use looking at your enemy if you’re not at the same time looking at your own army working out the hard counters you have available to you.

Okay that’s fine, so how do I actually win?

Play the missions!! Seriously. How many times have I heard the words “Oh yeah, I forgot about the objectives”. I never do, the mission is all that matters, killing the other guy is just a means to an end.
The majority of the missions in the book now are objectives, and for me you need to have a minimum of 4 scoring units, if you don’t have enough guys alive and sitting on objectives at the end of the game you lose. It doesn’t matter how many of the enemy you killed if he only has 3 models alive at the end of the game they all happen to be troops, which are sitting on objectives – you lose.


Deployment

More than once I have lined up against opponents seen their deployment and known exactly how the battle is going to proceed – I’ve already won.
First off in your head you need to have a base deployment strategy for the list your running. You win the roll for first turn ceteris paribus how you going to deploy? This can be tweaked once you know things such as the location of terrain, objectives, you opponent. Depending on how you set up it might not be a good idea to adjust it too much anyway – you start spreading 3 devastator squads right across the board for example, they are going to be forced to split their fire – when it might have been better to focus fire things down....

Movement

By far the most important phase in the game. Everything else relies on probabilities movement is all you. It’s hard to write a blanket advice for the movement phase as it’s reliant on so many factors. Essentially though the core is what I have said previously – know what you’re doing and how you’re going to do it, don’t blindly move shooting units towards assault troops and don’t leave assault units standing in front of rapid firing death rays from outer space. Think of the movement phase like chess – don’t think about your movement just this turn think about what your movement is going to be turn 2 and turn 3 etc. Think ahead.

Shooting

Decided very much by what happened in the movement phase – moved your plasma guns behind a giant rock – whoops.....

Target priority – What in the other guys army needs to die first? This is case by case and I can’t tell you what is going to be, it fluctuates. If you playing objectives – he can’t win if all his scoring units are dead, the same applies to you though. Establish the immediate threat and neutralise it, I take great pleasure in screwing with peoples target priority – sending in distractions that force themselves to be dealt with while the rest of the army quietly takes care of business elsewhere, don’t be fooled! Know what’s going on around you and *remember the mission!!!*

Assault

Well random charge lengths, and disordered charge took the fun out of this for me, but I digress...
Pick your fights – just because you can assault doesn’t mean you should, sometimes it’s better to step back/ stand your ground and let the other guy come to you, eat your over watch and potentially fail the random charge.

Movement – Assault can potentially give you another 12” movement, someone leave an empty transport in midfield – that’s a nice catapult forward with no danger to yourself – you can even use it as cover, how kind of them!

Largely speaking though this was meant to be about beating me, and this isn’t the phase to do it in (I could go on and on about assault but it would be wasted). Although it’s possible it’s not exactly best case. Fight the fights you can win.

Next time up – Anti-Tyranid specific, I’ll go through the codex weaknesses and how to exploit them....

I think this is a great piece.

When you watch/read battle reports on line I am always amazed by the way people forget what you are playing for and what the best way to do it is. If I was to emphasis one part of this entire thread it's "Know yourself".

Whatever the games style is it is common to have lost before you have begun. Now I am not talking about experimental lists or pure cheese list, but a normal every day list. We know that, for the most part, these are objective based games. These objectives are going to be scattered around the board and so you need a troop/scoring unit for many purposes. Unless points are tight (I'm thinking GK's here) you should never leave home without enough troops to hold objectives after losses. But this also goes back to your game plan. If you are shooty army don't bring assault troops to hold objectives as they have to leave the objective to make use of themselves!

In my recent Eldar vs Grey Knights Taff rep I wasn't sure what game we were playing, but I covered my bases so I could react to each game type.
- Guardians with 36" gun - they will stay at the back and hopefully out of the way! as it tuend out I could hop on to the air craft landing pad and gain a 3+ invun! Touch! But they went there as there was an objective there and they are really quite a weedy troops choice.
- 10 Wraith Guard - T6, 3+ wound, hopefully a 4+ invun if I got lucky on the psyker rolls. These guys survived a torrent of fire and claimed a central objecive. They were designed to move forward and ensure others weren't shot at. For me their scary guns (and they really are scary) would always make them a high target priority, levaing others to do the claiming.
- 2*10 Dire Avengers - not wonderful, but certainly not bad when kitted up. Exarch, Bladestorm and Shimmer shield. T3 troops with a 4+ save, 5+ invun and 30 18" shots if I blade storm. They are quite hard to shift, which is nice.

If I had gotten the relic mission, the Wraith guard would have grabbed it while the Dire Avengers put themselves in harms way. If there were no objectives, then all units can cause harm.

using Marines instead -

Scouts are cheap and have 36" guns. Not great but they can still contribute to a game if they are at the back with that range. Tactical marines can sit and shoot, can advance in transports or, if your feeling brave, jump into a drop pod and try and get the back objective and linebreaker!

For a short comment this is starting to become a wall of text. But I agree with eerythign Stryph has said.

"Winning starts before a Dice has been rolled - know your codex, know your tactics, know your role!"

Now stop delaying and tell me how to beat you, lol!

Thanks!

I have started a specific how to beat nids but there's 4 reasons I'm not sure about putting it up:

1. It involves me telling people how to play their armies - which is never good on any level.

2. Next campaign we do, if storm is in I'll drop nids and use blood angels for increased army variation - so really it'll end up being a how to beat storm article, which is a tad harsh....

3. I expect to lose in the campaign this turn anyway.

4. The answers are in the first piece anyway - people just have to think about them more this way; thinking is good!

great artciles boyz - its inspired me to create my scond forum of the evening with a dedicated tactica area.

definitely the place for me to put my ork codex 4.5 that i promised a while back that im halfway through!

and no need to fear posting your armies tactica - posting about what your units are good at etc is fine - just dont post direct weaknesses. Anyone with half an eye on the world of 40k will know the general weaknesses anyway!

on a more on topic stance, i must agree with the sentiments running through your posts.

when i build a lost, i spend some time figuring out what i want each to achieve with each, and going into the game with that in mind.
but what i think isnt emphasised enough is adpatability.no plan ive ever made has gone to plan ever.

its all about taking said battleplan, seeing whats accross the board form you and figuring out how to make the magic happen.
if you can adapt target priorities on a turn by turn basis, and as stryph says, keep 2 to 3 turns of plans in your head, then you can only be toppled by the Gods of Dice themselves.


the other tactic i advertise i guess i would term as "lethality"

[list][*]kill what you can kill.
[*]if you cant kill something easily, dont even try; kill the rest of it instead.

Eldrad taking along with 9 wraith guard? no biggie. kill everything else and deal with them at the end.
Landraider piling down the middle and you have precious little armour popping? not a problemm - kill the razprbacks instead.

Its all about shooting smart people!

Okay I feel like I know how this is going to go but... gonna say it anyway...

Anyone that's not hobo of taff (being probably the 2 more experienced players) have any tactical questions/ pieces they would like me to write?

cue tumbleweed from stage right

Sometimes, just sometimes, I'm tempted to use one of my other on line names and register. Then I could ask question such as this one,lol!

Very good article! It should really be 'How to win at 40k' I really struggle now simply because i don't know the rules and stats any where like as well as i used to.

but that's easy enough to get with a few battles under your belt - you've only done 3 in 6th? i've done 5 now and i think i'm getting it!

the campaign helps actually as you get to rinse and repeat your list making it easier to master, and any additional units are usually replacing the stuff that you figured didnt work (by virtue of the fact they died!), or youve figured out something better!

Lets see how thursday goes...mwahahahahahaha!