Goatboy’s Monday Thoughts – Why You Win
Goatboy here again smashing out 40k strategery. Today we talk tabletop mindsets for victory.
I should call 6th edition the game of handing your opponent a fist full of bullets and saying – swallow it and give me your objectives. The game has become a very brutal shooting gallery. Every time I get to the table I have to quickly decide how I can even hope to win during the waves of bullets, energy, and upgrade shenanigans I will end up facing when reading an armylist. This brings up the discussion – how do you decide what to do when facing such crazy ranged offensive?
We’ll start at the beginning of any game. Most events run some kind of book mission mashup. This means the obvious avenues of winning will be used so we all should know how to win. Most of the missions have some kind of objectives to control mixed with the usually single points for linebreaker, warlord, and sometimes first blood. This tilt towards objective holding means that only certain units can take, hold, and win you the game.
I know this is pretty obvious stuff but I see and play enough games where opponents seem to forget this. The truth of the matter is that you can win a lot of games if you just focus on what your opponent can win with. There are some many choices in the game that just do one thing and remembering what they can do and figuring out if you need to remove or ignore is an extremely important facet of this wargame.
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| The Cage always focuses on the WIN! |
So back to the objective biz, a unit can only hold one objective. That is one of the biggest rules you can use to try and control the game. If your opponent has a rather large unit you know that huge and most likely hard to remove unit will just have one objective at the end of the game. An opponent usually takes these large units because they are hard to remove fully without a full armies attention. This is an advantage of the unit but you can turn that on them as you quickly “give” up that one objective and move onto the others this fat unit can’t get to fast enough. This also works when looking at it from the other side with small MSU units. These little guys can easily be killed with a small bit of focus and quickly remove an opponents resource – scoring ability.
Let’s look at the Emperor’s Will mission. You have two total objectives on each side of the board. I have seen this called the draw mission in so many battle reports. I don’t know about you, but anytime I see an opponent start to castle up thinking this game is going to end in a draw with First Blood/Warlord solving the win/loss aspect I laugh. My plan is always the same – I am getting your objective. If this means throwing almost all of my army into your business then that’s what is going to happen. I know that you will most likely be sitting back and trying to deal with my rush which leaves me more chances to at least contest your objective and win the game in the end.
This type of play style also works on the missions with random point value objectives. If your opponent has the higher value objective then it is my mission to get there and control or contest it. It is pretty simple and it feels like a lot of players miss that when they play the game. This also comes back to what I said earlier about killing the options that win – not the options that just kill.
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| He can’t even spell LOSE |
So many of these lists have weak troop choices. It doesn’t help that the only real star troop choice is the one with the best transport option (Wave Serpent). I will ignore all those fancy Wraith Knights, Riptides, etc and just go for what ends up actually winning the game. This is why I tell most people that the key to winning is losing all your big scary non scoring stuff by the end of the game. Those guys are meant to die while your troops need to survive. If your opponent is pouring fire into those options and not what either holds your troops or are your troops then they are choosing the wrong thing.
I know the game is about dice but there is so much you can do before you even lay down your first model. Looking at your opponent’s list and figuring out how they win is extremely important. The list will telegraph how they will most likely play each turn and when they need to move to win. This means you can see the parts that you can quickly dismantle and cause their game plan to falter. There are lots of games I have won by losing 75% of my army and still keeping to the course of killing their troops and their ability to move and contest.
The other missions that activate different units to score means that now you can focus of options that are most likely starting on the table top. The game really is about limiting your opponents resources. Finding the weaker options or causing havoc to your opponent’s winning options is how you should approach most match ups. Instead of just making it a shooting gallery you should just look, move, and engage the parts that will make the winning game plan change for your fellow warmaster.
As a quick side note I want to plan on reviewing lists on a weekly basis. I think it can be a big help to get people to the next level or at least give them another avenue to spice up their army. I constantly change lists due to my crazy army ADD and having more avenues to try and experiment/build will help me find new avenues of game play. It might not always work but at least it gets me thinking.
If you are interested in having your list reviewed you can send me an email to [email protected]. I will see if the list needs work, write a review about it, and help you out.
Goatboy out and good luck out there!
