Spacecurves’ Tactics Class : More Tank Shock and Awe

Hello everyone, welcome to another Spacecurves’ Tactics Class, where you learn useful tactics you can apply to your games of 40k.  Today I’ll be talking about more uses for Tank Shock.

The first is the classic Tank shock example; Pushing enemy troops off objectives.  This is actually harder than most people make it out to be.  Take the example shown in picture 1:

I am playing as Salamanders and the enemy has the Blood Claws holding that objective.  I want to tank shock him off of it, but I have to be careful.  If I send one rhino forward in a diagonal movement right onto the objective, I won’t succeed in my goal.  Rhino’s are not very wide and there is a very good chance that the enemy will still end up with a model within 3″ of the objective.

 I have to carefully tank shock the rhinos one by one.  First I move the lefthand one 7 inches forward.

This secures the left-hand side of the objective.  Next, I tank shock the right-hand rhino forward 7 inches, this secures the right-hand side of the objective.

The combined effects of the two tank shocks force the enemy more than 3 inches away from the objective.  Either Rhino on its own would have been unable to push them entirely away, but the two working carefully together can do it. Note that I keep a couple inches in between the rhinos.  They don’t need to be touching as long as an enemy can’t fit a model between them.

Another often overlooked ability of Tanks is to simply move through enemy units.  Sometimes your goal isn’t to break or push the closest enemy, it is simply to get past them!  

In Picture 4 we see a scenario where I’m playing Salamanders against space wolves.  My land raider is full of assault terminators.  In front of my land raider is a big nasty squad of wolf guard. (elites) Behind them is a squad of blood claws. (troops)  Let’s assume that I’m playing an objectives scenario, and I’m trying to wipe out the enemy troop units.  If I get my terminators out of the land raider right away and charge into the wolf guard, it is unlikely enough of them will be left alive to kill the blood claws afterward.  Instead, I can use Tank shock to get my assault troops where I really want them.

Picture 5 shows the board after I have tank shocked 12 inches through the wolf guard, and disembarked my terminators on the other side.  Now I can wipe out the blood claws before the wolf guard can protect them.

Class Dismissed!