Goatboy’s Monday – Victory by Tarpit!
Goatboy here to go into some tactics. Assaulting does many things to help you win, but most important is TAR-PITTING!
I know a lot of players still think assault is dead. I am not one of them but I will agree that assault isn’t the same thing we are used too. So with a quick refresher let’s go over why assault is good and then why I want to get you excited about buying chainswords and power weapons for your plastic dudesmen.
Assault does 3 things for you.
Get Moving GO-GO-GO!!!
It grants you extra movement. I know this is an obvious one but the assault move gives you a lot of bonus movement. You get 2D6″ + 6″. This is a huge amount of space you can cover and it is one of the ways you can steal/win a game by quickly engaging and getting near an objective. I know you are giving your opponent another chance to shoot you but a lot of the time a game all hinges on that 2D6 movement to get into punching ranges.
Eliminate Them!
Assaulting is one of the easiest ways to remove most units. I don’t know how many times I have swept an opponents units by only doing 2 wounds. This is a huge advantage that some armies can quickly take and remove whole options off the table. There are a lot of games that will be decided by a huge multi-charge that quickly break entire lines of your opponents armies. Those stand and shoot armies are usually so close to the board edge where even the change of running away is a threat.
Welcome to the Tarpit!
It is also one of the few ways you can turn off a unit. We all know how mean Hallucination is when it goes off and forces and opponents unit to not do anything for a turn. Assault a unit and locking it down with a tar pit is another way to do this without having your opponent deny it on a 6+. This is a huge factor in 40k that I think is lost sometimes as people set up like an old western movie and pray for the most bullets to hit.
Mastering the Tarpit
So that is what I want to go into today. The idea of a tar pit unit that in reality is just designed to hold someone up for a few turns and leave your army to do what it needs to do to win the game. I have used a lot of tar pits to get around some of my own armies lackluster shooting ability and keep those mean things from coming at me on the opponents side.
To be a proper tar pit unit you need to get a few things right. You need to be either tough or numerous. You need to have some way to mitigate morale by being fearless or stubborn. You either need to be fast or have a way to quickly cross the table by movement or teleporting.
The idea of being too tough to kill or too numerous to keep down is one of the easier ways to utilize these tie town options. Chaos Spawn and Scarabs each fit a different part of this and both are extremely helpful in specific armies. I use the Mark of Nurgle Spawn a lot to try and lock down an option for at least 2-3 turns. The Scarabs have the ability to be created and their size is a big help to getting them all over your business. You can see the numerous option too with an IG platoon with their multiple ways to slow down a combat with challenges and sheer number of bodies.
The next key to this is somehow mitigating the crippling effects of morale. Your tar pit units are going to be taking wounds. They are going to be losing a lot of combats and having some way to either ignore the morale roll or at least make sure they are not effected by any negative effects is a great way to keeping this busy. Those IG platoons with the hidden Commissar are a great way to annoy the hell out of an opponent. I don’t know how long I have sat there trying to murder so many dang IG guys as I had my Daemon Prince locked in an eternal murder spree. Zombies from the Chaos Marines is a great option for this as a lot of players use those blobs in Typhus builds to give your opponent terrible options when they are shambling forward.
The final key to making an effective tar pit is usually having some sort of speed option. IG blobs can get an order to push them faster and most of the other options I have talked about are beasts with the ability have fleet and ignore terrain. A teleporting unit can also be a big help with the Dark Angel’s Death Wing being an interesting choice in holding up your enemy when trying to remove those white armored jerks.
Right now my favorite tar pits are Chaos Spawn of Nurgle as they double as a great set of extra wounds for my Chaos Sorcerers on bikes. With the addition of being able to Ally in Black Legion my army doesn’t need a double force org to be effective with 2 sets of Spawn and 2 sets of Dragons. I wish the Spawn were an Elite choice as I think more people would use them. We saw some crazy double force org Scarabs take the win during Beakie Con this year and I think the old farm might have some legs still with Marines moving up and tying up the Tau with their speed and ability to hide behind an Aegis line pretty effectively.
Current Spawn Happy list for this interested.
CSM/Black Legion Tarpit-o-DOOM!
Warlord – Chaos Lord, Bike, Veteran of the Long War, MoN, Sigil of Corruption, Gift of Mutation, Powerfist, Lightning Claw
Chaos Sorcerer, Veteran of the Long War, Bike, Sigil of Corruption, Lvl 3, Gift of Mutation, Spell Familiar.
Black Legion Chaos Sorcerer, Veteran of the Long War, Bike, Sigil of Corruption, Lvl 3, Gift of Mutation, Last Memory of Steve, Spell Familiar
Cultists X 10
Cultists X 10
Cultists X 10
Cultists X 10
Black Legion Cultists X 10
Black Legion Cultists X 10
Chaos Spawn X 5, MoN
Chaos Spawn X 5, MoN
Heldrake, Baleflamer
Black Legion Heldrake, Baleflamer
Maulerfiend, Lasher Tendrils
Maulerfiend, Lasher Tendrils
1850 with really terrible troops. I really wish the CSM had Stubborn or something to make them not suck so bad. But this list is big, it moves and it is coming to get involved in your school play and take the lead roll of Peter Pan. Most enemies crack under the pressure.
So get out there and let’s hear about your favorite tarpit units!
