Goatboy’s 40k – Back to Some Tactic Thoughts
Goatboy here again asking the question – how do you build your armies? Do you look at just the sheer punching power or do you try and build a balanced force that can complete missions? I want to discuss the idea of creating balanced armies.
I know I am known as a somewhat competitive player. Most of the time my lists are designed to be efficient with their points and effectiveness. As we start to get newer codexes we are starting to see a push into a much more thought out game where there is more then just sheer offensive capabilities of a unit. So lets look at what makes a balanced army.
I think there are two real choices in an army list. You have “holding” choices and “engaging” choices for an army. A choice that holds is not meant to be a true offensive threat. It can have that option to engage but its main focus is to hold whatever “object” is needed to win the game. This can be an actual item or keeping itself alive in a way that is hard for the opponent to exploit and kill.
You can see engaging units as those that are designed to go out and do something. They are normally called rocks and they have some kind of ability to either gain more then they are worth in actual game points or are designed in a way to keep the opponent busy. Since this game usually has a limited number of turns any way to keep your opponent engaged is usually a good thing as your holding units can live longer and provide the needed “objectives” to win the game.
Normally I design armies with 1 to 2 holding units to keep my home objectives and the rest of the army is designed to engage. This way I know I can usually complete most mission objectives in any given tournament. This can be all about being in your opponents deployment zone, killing needed Kill Points, or just being an overall nuisance and contesting objectives.
You can see this design set up in the newer army books as we start to get ahold of some decent troop choices as well as ways to keep said troop choices alive and still viable in a game. They are giving some long ranged options as well as creating units that are normally bigger to get said options.
Some of the older codexes suffer because their design was obviously not meant for 5th. They are either missing pieces to create these types of units or are focused on the older aspect of the game – killing things. The FAQ changed up some of the marines and created some interesting engage and hold strategies. I am hoping this trend continues through the newer books we are going to get in the future.
I am starting to add in some kind of small, cheap scoring unit to my armies that is designed either to hide well or at least hold the objective. I know a lone Razorback with a TWL lascannon can easily be helpful throughout a game as it is usually not overall offensive to get itself noticed and can normally add something needed to the game – a long ranged bad touch to take down a raider or two.
How do you build your armies? Do you take into account that you should normally have some kind of home base unit? Or do you create lists with options that can hide if need be and save whatever kill point they give out?
