Intro

Mainly I will be using this blog as a reference for tactics and list building in Warhammer 40,000 in order to clarify my own thinking and for other people to possibly gain some advantage from. I'll be starting with basics and also bringing in some more advanced strategies and tactics as time goes on and I can be bothered.

The blog is called "Speed Kills" for three reasons:

1. It was the motto of the Ravenwing bikers featured in Warhammer Monthly, back when it was still in circulation, and it was a good strip.

2. Most tabletop games are (contrary to common perception) won in the movement phase. If you stack the odds in your favour with your movement, then given average dice rolls in the phases that follow, you should have an easy time of it, and even when the dice go against you, the effects should be mitigated if you placed well.

3. My favourite army is Eldar, followed by Raven Guard Space Marines using the Blood Angels codex, which means I enjoy fast vehicles, fast infantry and very tactical games.

I may also make some random posts just because I enjoy shouting into the ether sometimes.

Enjoy!

Friday 13 April 2012

Basics: Blocking 2

So,

Last post was about blocking infantry units with both tanks and other infantry units. Here is an example of blocking vehicles with vehicles.



The Chaos Land Raider is in position to next turn move forward 12", disembark, and assault the Tac squad on the objective on their turn 5. This is a bad thing. The Land Speeder has a Multimelta, but it is critically important that the Terminators do NOT assault next turn, which means the Marine player cannot leave it to dice (33% chance to miss, 28% chance to fail to cause damage, only about 28% chance to destroy or immobilise). So this is what he does instead.

Remember that the turn sequence is Move, Shoot, Assault. This means the Chaos player cannot get rid of the Speeder until AFTER the movement phase, unless he chooses to Ram - in which case he will be inflicting a S5 hit. We can live with that. Ramming is the reason we want to be as close as possible to the hull of the enemy, because if we were 4" away instead of 1", he'd get a S6 hit instead of S5, and obviously the further away you are, the more likely you are to die. So the Chaos player is force to attempt this instead:

He has used all of his 12" movement in order to move around the Speeder. In situations like this it is critical that you monitor the movement closely and remember a few things:

1. He may not pass within 1" of your hull at any time
2. Vehicles turn by pivoting on their center. This means he needs to move in straight lines, making multiple turns, not just moving in a curve like we normally do because we're lazy. He needs to turn, move, turn, move, turn, move to get past you.
3. You can actually sometimes pin long vehicles like Land Raiders this way up against impassable terrain or other units, by denying them the ability to pivot while remaining 1" away from you at all times.

As it turns out, the Terminators are just out of assault range, and so are forced to shoot a bit with their combi-bolters. Even if they kill a few, the Marine player can simply remove models that are furthest away from the objective - if he had been assaulted, he would have been forced to pile in, potentially dragging him away from it, even if he had survived the combat.
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2 comments:

  1. Jason16 April 2012 at 13:30

    Nice post. Like the bit about getting in close to limit the ramming damage since that's not something I would have considered, assuming they would always try to go around.

    What are the rules on pivoting? Is it around the centre of the vehicle only?

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  2. Ross16 April 2012 at 13:47

    Effectively yes, it is described on pg 57 of the BRB:

    "Vehicles turn by pivoting on the spot about their centrepoint rather than "wheeling" round."

    So if you are 1" away, the Land Raider in the above example would actually need to reverse 1" in order to be able to turn, otherwise when he tried to pivot he would be in violation of the rule on pg 11 which states a model may not move within 1" of an enemy model unless assaulting. Once he has reversed, he only has 11" of movement left and must continue to stay more than 1" away from the blocking model at all times.

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