[Epic] Building the perfect firefight.
This is going to be a long one.......
Ok this little spiel basically started because myself and an
opponent were trying to figure out 3 things. A: how the heck do you take
down Greater Demons , B: What ARE bikes good for and C: How do you do some
real damage with a firefight. Surprisingly some of the answers to these
questions overlapped.
Starting with the last one first. The only way to really kill anything
worthwhile in a firefight is to stop stuff retreating. Thats simple enough.
The hard part is arragning it so you can have units in position to cut of the
retreat. The 'cant move past an enemy unit' in the assault phase part largely
limits funky tactics. A little about how to get around this follows.
Ok B : most bikes are best at firefights. Ok there are exceptions
(and why ork bikes have 45 range is beyond my understanding) but many of the
basic bike types like Marine Bikes , Vypers and Jetbikes have decent FP and
poor assault (Really - never.....). So if we can answer C we have a possible
answer to B (ok bikes are good for scamming abjectives and wide outflanking
maneuvers but what I was tring to do was find a way to do some more direct
damage.
A: GD's greatest weakness , with a 0 FP is shooting and firefights.
With 6 armour , Save and high movement they arent often around to be shot at
and they arent easy to kill when they are in range...... Winning a Firefight
and stopping their retreat does seem to be the way to go. Now how do we do this?
Ok lets go with the marginally less cheesy method first........
Well firstly you need 2 units. Bikes are probably a good choice for both but
one unit is about to be sacrificed for the greater good so a transported unit
of cannon fodder like Guardians would do ok too (they just need plenty of range
on their charge).
Ok assuing (and this is a big assumption) you can catch a demon det.
in charge range try the following........
B=Bike unit (from det A.) b=Bike unit from det. B. D= lets say a Bloodthirster.
If we start off like this...... D D D
D D
bbbbbb
BBBBBBB. And its the bikes turn
to move. Firstly get one bike from det.A CCin each GD. At this point the bikes
from det B are free to move past the GDs. Basically we end up in a situation
kind of like this B
B B
D D D
bDbDb
B bBb B
b
B
Now as none of the bikes of det B are actually in CC the rules suggest that
they in fact do not take part in det A's suicidal close combat. After the
combat we can expect det a(who is likely to have lost by 3 or even greater)
to have lost pretty much every bike in contact with the enemy. Thats why it
was kind of important that - if you can - at least one bike isnt in CC and
rather is just in support. That way all those blast markers det A just
accumulated arent going to go straight off your morale because the support bikes
should be able to back off (leaving something left of the detatchment. Heck
even if they only live a turn youll lose some of the BMs in the end phase).
Finally after det a's heroics have been witnessed , det B opens up
in the firefight. They should win this by a considerable margin (4x Firepower
= +4 (considering most demons have 0 FP) -1 for less psykers (assuming demons
are say Lords of Change) and hopefully youll be able to get more blast markers
on the demons that are on the bikes for an extra +1). If you get ahead by 3 or
4 then det B SHOULD win the firefight(at +3 its a little under 1/11 that they
will lose). At this point if det B has set up correctly most (if not all) GDs
will be running - but unable to escape - trash one demon detatchment.......
This can work against opponents with FP greater than 0 but it is harder
to accomplish (and riskier - if Det B loses it will be mangled rather than its
target). Basically because you expect to lose the first CC it should only be
done against opponents more expensive than your fodder (of course if you can
actually WIN the CC its that much better). It also requires you to outnumber
your opponent so having cheaper units becomes even more necessary......
Ok part 2 - the cheesy solution. The legality of this is a LOT more
questionable so Im putting it to you people for evaluation. Now in the rules
a unit on assault must move towards the enemy but may never move further away
from the closest enemy (unless the enemy is already in CC). Now that leads
to 2 questions. Does the 'closest enemy' mean ' the closest enemy at the start
of movement' or the closest enemy at a given time. ie in the case
Bike D1
D2 if the bike charges to this position
D1
BIKE D2 then it has consistantly moved towards BOTH enemy
but now D2 is actually the closest enemy..........
This is followed by the question ' what does 'past' the enemy' mean?
GW definition - you may never move futher away from the enemy while you are
charging. Does this mean that while you cant move 'past' as such you can move
'around'. Consider the case of 1 lone enemy unit. Then consider the assaulting
unit to either a:circle or b:spiral around it. The charger in case a: doesnt
move further away and in b:actually moves closer BUT ends up behind the
opponent. Have a think about that. You can actually wrap a unit around the end
of a line of the enemy. It requires LOTS of movement though (circular driving
aint efficient. However it might be understood as the det commander telling
a unit to 'circle around the back'(literally in this case) I guess. Its
not likely that you can trap large numbers of enemy in this case - but maybe
1-2 will find they cant run far enough. Does anyone understand what Im getting
at here? Can anyone point out a flaw in the way the rules are being interpreted
here ?
thanks for your time
JAC
Received on Thu Jan 01 1970 - 00:00:00 UTC
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