How to win

[Primarch]

Everybody likes seeing their enemies fall before them and hearing the lamentation of their women, so I thought a thread where we offer simple advice and tips on how to win would be fun.

Here are my ideas.

1.) Play the mission - If it's an objective game, concentrate on holding the objectives and removing your opponent from his. If it's a kill point game, keep vulnerable targets hidden away or out of range.

2.) Shoot the fighty stuff, fight the shooty stuff - If your opponent has a unit of 10 Banshees led by Jain Zar, shoot it, don't charge it. Likewise if you're facing off against a wall of Tau Firewarriors, don't try and out shoot them, get stuck in.

3.) Adapt your plans - You probably have a plan for each unit in your army 'this squad will outflank, this will deepstrike,' dont be afraid to change those plans after watching your opponent deploy. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you have to.

4.) Prioritise threats - Kill the things which are an immeadiate threat early in the game. If you can destroy some transports before they can move it will slow down the enemy advance. If you can kill their long range firepower your own transports will live longer. A squad of assault terminators is scary, but if they are walking towards your lines you can concentrate on other targets first.

Have at it guys. What do you think is the key to victory?

[The Other Dave]

Andy Chambers' Tabletop Tactics 101 (pdf) has a bunch of good advice in bullet-point form - simple stuff that I often have trouble remembering, heh.

[Admiral-Badruck]

I agree with Prime these are some good solid advice about how to win games... I find that if you are not doing these things you are going to get worked...

I think the other thing you need to do well in games is to know your Enemies army like you know your own ... other wise how can you even start to determine what the treats are until it is too late..

The other thing I would say is do not despair when your favorite Unit gets blown up of when you have lost a Blood-thirster to deep strike.

The key to wining is adapting to loss of units but even more important is to bate your opponent feed them units you want them to think are important to you... force them to attack things they would like to ignore and make sure they fight the punchers and try to shoot it out with the shooters..

And Most importantly if your opponent is reminding you to move something of telling you to do something that you normally would want to do... Make sure it is what you want to do don't walk in to the trap..

[me_in_japan]

all good advice so far. I'd add a couple of points:

1) always have multiple units to deal with any given threat-type. e.g. Look at your list and think to yourself "why is this in my army?" make a wee table with the following headings:

killing light infantry (Guard equivalent, or GEQ)
killing heavy infantry (Marine equivalent, or MEQ)
killing vehicles (can be split further into light vehicles and heavy vehicles)
objective grabbing
drawing fire

Any given unit in your army can fall into multiple categories. e.g. a wraithlord with a scatter laser and a wraithsword would fit into "killing GEQ", "killing vehicles" and "drawing fire" categories.
Make sure there are at least 2 units in each category. 3 if possible. Drawing fire is a particularly important one. If there's only one unit in here, you can expect him to be gone by turn 2.

That way, even if you lose something early on, youre not hamstrung against a particular type of unit. (The ol' "ooh eck you killed my lone melta gunner and now i cant hurt your landraider" scenario.)

2) Always make your opponent make a decision (Unless you really, really want him to do something, in which case make it really clear that he HAS to do it.)

e.g. As mentioned before, field at least two fire magnets. That way he has to choose between magnet A and magnet B. You never know - he might screw up and attempt both A and B, most likely leaving both of them intact at the end of the turn.
OR, wave magnet A in his face while magnet B sneaks up behind him to kick him in the arse.

fire magnets are an interesting category in their own right. E.g. an avatar is an obvious fire magnet. In an opponent's first game, he's gonna fire his lascannons at the avatar and ignore the waveysnake sneaking up on his land raider. He'll do this once and once only. Nobody forgets their first Fire-dragoning. Next game, suddenly, your Fire Dragons have changed category from "killing vehicles" to "FIRE MAGNET!!!!!"

It's amazing how bothered some people are by 96 points of infantry...

3) Concentrate your fire. Pick a target and rain hell upon it until it either goes away, or is reduced to impotence. The aspect of synergy also rears its ugly head here. Magic players among you will know what I mean, but what it basically boils down to is: does unit A help unit B do its job? e.g. Howling Banshees vs marines = 2 or 3 dead marines plus a good number of dead banshees. BUT cast Doom on the marines first, throw in Jain Zar, and suddenly all ten of your ladies are cleaning Marine pate off their shiny white armour. The mathematically inclined amongst may be thinking "ahah, but that many banshees plus Jain plus Farseer is worth way more points than the marine unit", which is true. The key is that the marines are dead and none of your guys are, so you can do it again next turn.

4) It's been said already, but just to emphasise it: Know your army's strengths/weaknesses, and know your opponent's strengths/weaknesses. If you want to learn to do this well, play eldar.

5) know your opponent, if possible. Some people like charging in, some hang back, some actually think about their game. Badruck is a good example. He has Orks, World Eaters, Red Scorpions, and various other amies. However, it's fairly widely recognised that regardless of which set of minis he's using, he's really playing orks. Use this kind of info to your advanage.

In a similar vein, don't ever listen to any advice Stu gives you mid-game. Ever. It sounds like good advice. It looks like good advice. It even smells like good advice. But it aint!

6) Don't play against my Eldar

[Primarch]

Badruck is a good example. He has Orks, World Eaters, Red Scorpions, and various other amies. However, it's fairly widely recognised that regardless of which set of minis he's using, he's really playing orks. Use this kind of info to your advanage.

In a similar vein, don't ever listen to any advice Stu gives you mid-game. Ever. It sounds like good advice. It looks like good advice. It even smells like good advice. But it aint!

True and True

[Mike the Pike]

Top Tip #236:
Tell your friends that you are bringing an army for a 'friendly' match, then turn up with a tournament armies loaded with Nigel the Weatherman (or whatever he is called) and Captain Puppy in tow. Or 150+ Ork Boyz!

But I'm not bitter or anything...

[Primarch]

Top Tip #236:
Tell your friends that you are bringing an army for a 'friendly' match, then turn up with a tournament armies loaded with Nigel the Weatherman (or whatever he is called) and Captain Puppy in tow. Or 150+ Ork Boyz!

But I'm not bitter or anything...

...Or two Hydras? (Yes, I know that's WFB, but the effect is much the same).

[Mike the Pike]

Seriously...
Prim. has the right of it with his advice about remembering what the mission objectives are. I have lost countless games owing to the fact that I forgot what I was meant to be doing.

Case in point, in Annihilation missions, you really can't afford to throw your units headlong at your opponents. Sure, you have to destroy his/her units but you don't want to give up points from your own. If there's only two or three guys left in a squad, run for the hills, rather than hoping to get in a few last lucky shots or one last desperate charge. Just like, rugby, football, soccer, ice-hockey, polo, lacrosse, hurling etc you not only have to get points for your team but you have to stop the other guys scoring too.

I notice that when I switch my brain to ON and keep the mission objectives in mind, I tend to do a lot better than when I just blunder forward regardless of the mission. If you don't believe it works, just ask the Mighty Prim about his Tyrannids vs. My Purple perverts. His Broodlord is still suffering performance anxiety related nightmares after spending half the game chasing my Rhino around the board but failing to even scratch the paint work.

[Danguinius]

Since two-thirds of the missions involve taking objectives and since those missions usually allow your opponent to place objectives in/near their own deployment zone, I always design my lists to have something (2-3 units at least) that can get over there quickly/instantaneously and put pressure on my opponent in his own zone. I find that this is the best disruption strategy of them all since your opponent will usually (over)commit a lot to that side of the board allowing for more flexibilty in controlling the other 80% of the board.

True, Daemons excell at this, but I make all of my army lists with deepstriking, outflanking, 12" moving units to implement this strategy. (Just my opinion, but) I think if you design strictly gunline lists or strictly run-forward-and-chop-up lists, you are less able to dictate WHERE the fighting takes place on the board. It took me forever, but as soon as a got my head around this concept, I went from winning some of my 40K games to winning most of them (without the use of much cheese).

Side note, this aspect of strategy is almost totally NOT applicable to WarMachine and Hordes (where you can lose the game instantly when you caster is assissinated), so I`m currently trying to "unlearn" this concept for PP games.

Danguinius

[me_in_japan]

always design your lists to have something (2-3 units at least) that can get over there quickly/instantaneously and put pressure on your opponent in his own zone.

(ok, a slightly edited quote...)

I agree. Mobility is key, as it allows you to dictate what happens where, which in turn allows you to shoot the choppy units and chop the shooty units. Denying your opponent the same works too.

Side note, this aspect of strategy is almost totally NOT applicable to WarMachine and Hordes (where you can lose the game instantly when you caster is assissinated)

Duly noted...