Spacecurves’ Tactics Class: Death by Wreckage

Hello everyone, and welcome to another Spacecurves’ tactics class, where you learn practical tactics you can apply in your 40k games.  Today we are going to learn about how to destroy enemy units by trapping them inside wrecked transports.

First, a history lesson.  In older editions of the game, it was much easier to trap units inside a transport.  If you blocked the access points when the vehicle was destroyed, the guys inside couldn’t escape and all died. However, 5th edition changed that.  Now, embarked units can “emergency disembark” from any point of their vehicle and not only escape, but act normally on their next turn.  Somehow all models can now magically squeeze through vision slits, exhaust ports, and tailpipes.

Furthermore, if a vehicle “explodes”, the guys who were inside get placed where the vehicle used to be.  If you have the vehicle completely surrounded, the opponent will probably not be able to place their whole squad.  This is good, but not as good as wiping out the unit completely.  Special characters inside are sure to live through an explosion since the enemy gets to pick what models get placed and which one’s die.

So all this means that in order to destroy an embarked unit, you have to wreck, not explode their transport, and have it completely surrounded when you do so.  How do you accomplish this?  Well first you need to surround it, then you need to  inflict a whole ton of glancing hits.  The only sure way to kill a vehicle without exploding it, is to wreck it through weight of glancing hits.

These are pretty tough conditions to achieve. This is not a tactic you will get to do often, but some armies are much better suited to pull this off than others. Dark Eldar have the perfect tools to pull this off.  Wyches with haywire grenades are guaranteed to inflict a ton of glancing hits, and the Dark Eldar have lots of really fast units that can be used to surround enemy tanks.

In the picture above we see an opportunity for me (the Dark Eldar player) to perform this tactic. A Rhino full of ten Grey Hunters is driving toward me. It is the start of my movement phase. I turbo boost my Reaver bikes to surround three sides of the tank, and move my wytches up closer, using their run move to close the distance further and ensure I can completely surround the tank.

In the assault phase I charge with my Wyches, slap a bunch of haywire grenades on the Rhino and wreck it, splattering everyone inside when they cannot disembark.

Now you may be saying, “that’s all well and good, but what if the rhino moved 12 last turn?”  That is a very good point, and you certainly shouldn’t count on the above scenario working out as you hope if you need 6’s to hit the tank.  However, what if the Reavers started off closer, and used their heat lances to immobilize the tank before  the assault phase?  Or what if you directed some other anti-tank units to shoot at it and accomplish the same thing?  At this point you are building a combo with 3 units, but think of the rewards, if it works, you have annihilated an entire enemy unit with no losses to yourself.  Even if you “accidentally” explode the tank in the shooting phase, you can always charge the depleted guys inside with the Wyches.  Not as cool as telefragging them in your shooting phase, but still a “normal” outcome.

Dark Eldar are perhaps most suited to doing this, but other armies can too. Ork bikers are great at performing this tactic. They are fast, so they can surround transports, and they can throw a ton of glancing hits in the shooting phase to immobilize a tank with their str 5 shots, then throw a ton of str 4 attacks in the assault phase to get those last few glances to wreck it.

So keep an eye out for an opportunity to attempt this.  Performing this tactic is usually low risk and high reward.  At worst, you blow up their tank and then charge the few guys who can be placed in the wreckage, at best, you can win the game by making their super scary unit die in a fire.  (250 pt+ Grey Knight squads in Rhinos look particularly delicious).  Because this tactic is so rare, many new players have never seen it happen. This helps make it more practical, because your opponents very likely won’t be guarding against it.