On Wed, 10 Sep 1997, A. Allen McCarley wrote:
> There are two points I wonder about, though. Small detatchments were
> presented as the best way to play the "morale game." I've a question
> about survivability, however. I've found casualties to be horrendous
> in the firing phase. It seems to me that a small detatchment built
> to grant 5-7 firepower is simply going to cease to exist in the
> firing phase, and thus give you an immediate hit to morale with no
> chance to remove any blast markers.
>
> Have you had problems with this? This thread seemed to come up in
> the midst of a Chaos vs. Tyranids battle, so perhaps massive firepower
> wasn't a concern.
Well, as one of the primaries I should address this. The origin of this
thread is purely coincidence. I've been quiet on the list lately and the
Battle Report was sort of my 'return'. Anyway, to the subject at hand.
Yes, smaller detachments are very vulnerable to being wiped out in the
firing phase with no chance for marker removal. However, if you look at
the tables the number of blast markers *placed* by the firer is purely a
function of the firepower they throw. Larger detachments are inherently
less efficient at placing blast markers. This is the only real solace you
have.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that wipe-out is a single hit to
your army morale. Your goal is to make those larger detachments bleed each
turn and hope that in the end the "big boys" lose more total markers than
all of your "dead boys" did. I *don't* know if this works, we haven't done
a close enought study of army morale loss to get a feel for where the points
really come from.
In practice [2 games with the ImpGuard marker game army] I've only ever had
a single detachment get wiped out in a single firing phase in each game. My
opponent was Squat both times and it was the gyros that did the killing. We
have found it fairly difficult to wipe out detachments. There almost always
seems to be one or two survivors to run off with the blast markers. The
ability to obliterate opposing detachments might be a "big boys" advantage
that we haven't quite enjoyed yet.
Sean U
---------
Sean A Upchurch |
http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~sau
Jet Propulsion Laboratory | EPIC /spmar/spmar.html
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Received on Wed Sep 10 1997 - 21:07:21 UTC