40K: List Building 101 – Part 2: Scoring Units
This article is intended to help new players build effective army lists in 40K, over the course of a 4 part series. This is the second part part covering scoring units. You can find part 1 here. Lets forge ahead.
Scoring Units:
Choose scoring units first, as they are the most critical units to achieving victory in 2 out of 3 games. You must look to what you have available to you and then purchase units that fulfill the requirements of your army type (unless you play an army with only one troop type; sorry Necron players).
The two objective missions are quite dissimilar from each other in that one of them only has two objectives, one of which you may place in your own deployment zone; the other having up to five objectives. You must take enough scoring units to ensure that you hold more than your opponent. Theoretically this number can be one, but in practice if you have only two scoring units, unless they are extremely durable, you will have a serious weakness as a canny opponent will focus on killing those units first in an objective mission and ensure that the worst outcome for himself will be a draw.
Therefore, you need to take enough scoring units—or scoring units durable enough— to score at least one more objective than your opponent. Each army is different in what it has to offer, but this is a good rule of thumb to go by when choosing your scoring units. Since in seize ground missions the maximum number of objectives is five, a good rule is to not take less than three scoring units (allowing you to control the majority of the objectives). The exception to this is if you are playing a small point level game or your scoring units are extremely durable, such as those available to armies like Orks. That said, in almost no cases is having a large number of scoring units a bad thing.
Assault List Scoring Units
There are many types of assault scoring units and they are characterized by the desire to get into close range and attack the enemy. They typically fulfill the dual role of scoring unit/damage dealer. In some armies these units are very effective at both, such as Ork Boyz and Nobz, Chaos Space Marine cult troops, Space Wolf Grey Hunters, Black Templar Crusader squads, Tyranid Genestealers, etc. When you have a situation such as this, you can make a very powerful army by simply taking a large number of these units. This gives you the triple advantage of multiple scoring options, effective damage dealing units and redundancy to ensure that you will be able to win games even when sustaining heavy casualties.
These units usually function best when used en masse to engage the enemy at close range and hit them hard with close range firepower or in assault. This also has the benefit of an army that likes to be mobile and engage the enemy, meaning that you will be coming for him and his objectives. With this type of list, you want to place all objectives as close to one another as possible and usually in center board or in your opponent’s deployment zone as you will be coming at him. You can make an excellent list by taking 4 to 6 scoring units, such as with Grey Hunters, or Ork Boy Mobs for example, and then filling out the other roles specifically to support this core.
Shooty List Scoring Units
Some armies or build strategies do not use effective assault scoring units and as such they must be built using different guidelines. Examples of this are Eldar Guardians, Eldar Rangers/Pathfinders, Tau Fire Warriors, Necron Warriors, Imperial Guard Infantry Platoons (in most cases, they can be built to be effective in combat), Space Marine Sniper Scouts, etc. These units want to engage their targets at medium to long range as they usually do not want to be in assault. Therefore they must be able to maximize the amount of time they can sit and shoot, but they must also be mobile enough to go and get objectives, or at the least have support units that can contest enemy objectives. This type of army plays a more defensive game, preferring to castle and defend their own objectives while destroying the enemy as they come in.
Therefore, you must consider several factors when building this type of army. Can you shoot an assault army enough to defeat them before they get to you? Can you outshoot another shooty list? Can you reach out and at the least contest enemy objectives while keeping them off of your own?
If you answer no to any of the above questions, you will find yourself regularly losing. Why? Because if you are unable to shoot up an assault army enough before it gets to you then those armies will defeat you in combat. If you cannot outshoot another shooty army, then you will obviously be defeated as you will either stand and get shot to death or turn into a pseudo assault army and try to rush across the board to engage. If you cannot score objectives or at least contest them, then even if you shoot the pants off of your opponent and he has more objectives than you do, you still lose.
In order to build an effective list of this type, you can get away with taking less scoring units than in an assault list as you will typically be playing defensively and holding only one to three objectives and looking to contest the rest. In Kill Points your damage dealing units will be doing the heavy lifting. Although if your scoring units put out the same or better damage than your damage dealing units, then by all means, maximize them as this improves your redundancy and ability to win games.
You need to at least take a core of shooting units that can survive what the enemy throws at them. For different armies, this means different things. Some units like Space Marine Scouts and Eldar Pathfinders are very difficult to destroy due to cover save benefits. Other units, such as Imperial Guard Infantry Platoons, can be made very numerous and difficult to shake with leadership upgrades or similar abilities. No matter the list though, you need to be able to defend your objectives for seven turns while still adding the unit’s firepower to your army’s total output.
Hybrid List Scoring Units
A hybrid list can take many forms. It can be an army built of scoring units that are good in both assault and shooting such as Grey Knights, Grey Hunters, Shoota Boys, Plague Marines, etc. or it can be made of equal parts assault units and shooting units. Lastly, it can be a combination of units that allow them to function in either role, such as putting an assault unit in a transport vehicle that shoots well as with Bladestroming Dire Avengers in a Wave Serpent with anti tank weapons.
These types of armies have the benefit of being very flexible. However, that flexibility usually comes with a hefty price tag and at the expense of specialization. You will typically find that a dedicated assault army will defeat you in combat while a dedicated shooting army will outshoot you.
Therefore, in order to win with this type of army you will have to take one of two paths in most cases. You will either have to swarm your opponent with numbers or take units that are very resilient. Examples of this are a shooty Ork foot army, an Eldar foot list, Monstrous Creature heavy lists or a heavy tank based list, such as a Land Raider, Battle Wagon or Eldar Skimmer list. All of these lists get over their shortcomings by eliminating a portion of the other player’s army. An Ork horde ignores anti tank weapons, rendering those points wasted, and a Monstrous Creatures or heavy tank list ignores most if not all of the other player’s anti infantry weapons. You therefore level the playing field.
Scoring units in these types of lists must be able to either perform both an assault and shooting role or be complimented by a unit that does what they do not. Typically these types of lists will rely on their scoring units to fulfill multiple roles, typically that of scoring unit and as damage dealing unit. You therefore need to take a large number of these multi role units as they will need to be able to engage the enemy and survive with enough numbers to still score objectives.
Nonconforming Scoring Units
Some lists are built around an unconventional concept that does not exactly comply with the archetypes listed above. These lists will still fit into one of the three basic list types; however they will utilize scoring units in a different role. Typically they use scoring units to only score objectives and then to engage enemy units only if necessary. Examples of this are armies that rely on small, fast scoring units to pounce on objectives late game such as Eldar Jetbikes, or 5 man Chaos Lesser Daemon squads. Another example of nonconforming scoring units are filler squads that are chosen only to allow the use of a dedicated transport such as a 5 man Black Templars Crusader Squad in a Land Raider Crusader or a 5 man Dire Avenger Squad in a Wave Serpent. All these units do is make their transport vehicle scoring and typically play almost no part in the battle themselves.
These types of lists rely on their damage dealing and support units to do all the heavy lifting and only have scoring units to achieve victory. They have the advantage of focusing points on sheer kill power, but they have the weakness of scoring units that are easily destroyed which means easy kill points or a lack of scoring ability. These types of lists require skill to keep the scoring units alive but can be very powerful.
Look for more next week, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the series so far and your philosophy on list building.
