Re: [Epic] Q&A (&Tactics) pages updates

From: Sean A. Upchurch <sau_at_...>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 1997 09:52:59 -0700 (PDT)

This is going to be long, I apologize.

>
> * I've added a page that includes the last letter sent off to
> Jervis.

An interesting read. I was quite busy for a couple of weeks and missed out
on the ImpGuard thread completely. Not to restart it, but I want to say that
I agree with the POV expressed in the Pending Q&A. Now here is a use that I
*have* found for Guard Tacticals.

The die. They die easily and quickly. Most of all, they die cheaply.

If Overwatch is your friend, then it is the greatest friend of the Imperial
Guard. Leman Russ tank companies, Heavy artillery all want to sit back and
Overwatch until the entire enemy line lies dead. The problem with this is that
you end up surrendering mobility to the enemy. A speedy enemy force will
march up and assault those guns before you get a single shot off.

The solution is to take a host of little infantry detachments, load them into
chimera and form successive lines in front of your guns. Each detachment will
die when assaulted by the enemy, but each line will give your guns another
round of overwatch fire. Further, if each little detachment can hit the 5-7
firepower mark then they stand a good chance of inflicting a blast marker from
their own fire on these assault groups. This will stop 1 in 6 of them from
assaulting you and give you even more time [unless stubborn of course]. Since
most assault troops get their legendary speed from the charge to the enemy
you can be pretty sure that each "line" detachment will mark the end point of
a turn of movement for an assault force.

So you want a bunch of little detachments. You want them to have 5-7 FP. You
want to minimize the cost so you can get many of them and also so that you
don't lose too much morale when they fall. This is a situation tailor-made
for the Guard Tactical Detachment. Due the the "hose job" GW did to the HQ
stands you never want more than 1 in a detachment anyway. Since you pay the
detachment surcharge for each extra one you might as well make them totally
separate detachments. Limiting the main force to 3 plays right into your keep
it small plan. Your chimera are even cheap *and* supplement with firepower
which is good since mechanizing this force puts the "assault break" even
further from the guns they are defending.

Line Detachment 2M (7FP, Mechanized, 88pts)
     HQ w/chimera, Tac Squad w/chimera, Heavy Squad
     options:
       add psyker (2MP) +10pts
       add Hellhound (2MF) +12 <-- still only 2 morale!

Line Detachment 3M (8FP, 2 Anti-Tank, Mechanized, 145pts)
     HQ w/chimera,captain
     2x Heavy Squad w/chimera, commissar
     2x Support Weapon [all troop units have SAVE]
     options:
       replace Support Weapon w/Hellhound (3MF) -1pts

In your typical 2000pt game you can buy 5 of the 2M detachments which can
form 2 somewhat ragged lines [on a 180cm table] and is only *1/4* your total
points. Anyway, that's it. I'm not presenting it as the end-all-be-all
Imperial Guard strategy. It's just an application of Guard infantry that has
been field tested and has succeeded [mostly] at it what it was designed to
do -- tie up the enemy in the middle of the table for 2 turns while your
artillery hits them.
 
> Also, I've added Emil Kartov's general purpose Eldar tactics to

Allen, are you sure this isn't Emil KartALov? Reading the article certainly
makes it sound like our resident Eldar Commander. Lots of stuff there that
sounds like our after-battle discussions.

Erik - If you want to know more about how Chaos has a hard time dealing with
Nightspinners and Swooping Hawks _*Read this article*_ Emil has covered it
all.

Note though, that his "Morale Harvesting" tactic was originally written with
the wrong interpretation of the Take & Hold Objective. It can still work on
the offense but is decidedly more dangerous. You might want to say something
about this Allen.

Sean U
Received on Fri Sep 05 1997 - 16:52:59 UTC