40K EDITORIAL: Swap Armies
Getting shot up by Imperial Guard before the game’s even begun or having your close combat specialists beaten up by a bunch of Orks isn’t fun. But every army has its strengths and weaknesses
Adam from the Space Wolf blog suggests you swap armies with your opponent and find out their strengths and weaknesses for yourself.
A Declaration of Cheese
“Cheese!” declared my friend. “Beardy cheese!”
According to him, the Space Wolves are the most broken, underpriced and overpowered army in the game. The fact that I could beat him over the hills and back again with a Tau Empire army didn’t factor into this of course.
So after a whole game of him complaining that he simply couldn’t beat them with his Imperial Guard, I challenged him to swap armies and play again.
At first he was hesitant. After all, he’s never played with Space Wolves before. Meanwhile I was in the same boat with his Imperial Guard. But honestly, how hard could it be? You just point all your guns at something and it dies.
The Grass Isn’t Greener
The grass is always greener on the other side, or so the saying goes.
Anyway, I focused the Imperial Guard’s firepower on each imminent threat (just like when I used to play Tau Empire) and blasted it apart.
But once the Space Wolves managed to get into cover, it was a different story. In the end we had a fairly close game, although the Space Wolves weren’t in a position to break cover without fear of being blasted apart by heavy ordnance, so I won a solid victory with the Imperial Guard.
Space Wolves overpowered? I don’t think so. It all comes down to knowing your army and the best possible strategy for it…and for the army you’re facing.
What Did We Learn?
Being on the opposite side, I learned that once Space Wolves get into cover, low AP weapons aren’t nearly as effective as they could be.
Meanwhile my friend learned that the only sure way to kill an Imperial Guard tank is to get a melta gun close to it. Which is a heck of a lot harder than he thought!
However, from a competitive player’s point of view, which is to learn the ins and outs of your army better, this was an excellent exercise in strategy.
Know Your Army’s Weaknesses
Because you should know your army fairly well, when playing against it, you know which weaknesses to exploit.
So in the case of Imperial Guard shooting up my Space Wolves, I took out the transports first which forced them to slowly footslog across the table while being exposed to lots of basic fire power.
I also tried to bait them out of cover and into close combat, but the Space Wolves weren’t going for the ‘juicy bone’ I put in front of them and simply fired back instead. Oh well, it was worth a try.
When you swap armies you may find other weaknesses in your own army that you’d never realised before. Like Long Fangs with missile launchers having a tough time against Armour 14 vehicles. But I’m sure you knew that anyway.
See Your Army’s Strengths
Well, not so much See as Feel.
When your own army gives you a good kicking, you can really appreciate what your opponents are scared of and what hurts them the most.
In our game my friend aimed both squads of Long Fangs at my Imperial Guardsmen blob, letting off a salvo of 10 frag missiles rather than trying to take out Valkyries and other vehicles with krak missiles. With nearly every blast hitting at least 4 models, the casualties were horrendous, regardless of the cover saves.
I normally reserve squishy units for close combat with my Grey Hunters, but when the units scattered off the board, taking their lascannons with them, I saw the value in targeting the troops over the tanks for a change.
So how would you play against your own army?
