[Epic] Detachment size strategy?

From: Chip & Rachel Hannum <chipjr_at_...>
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 1997 23:20:29 -0400

Hi all, I'm both new to Epic 40,000 and this list so forgive me if this has
already been beaten to death...

While I'm waiting to get enough minis painted to pound the heck out of
someone (or get the heck pounded out of me more likely given my past luck at
wargames :^) I've been toying around with various detachment designs and I've
come upon a strategic conundrum - Obviously you need multiple detachments on
the battlefield or the opponent has merely to hit your one/few detachments
enough to inflict blast markers to the point that you're a sitting duck,
unable to move, unable to assault, losing firepower, etc. The flip side
seems to be that if you shrink your average detachment sizes beyond a certain
point you get hosed by two factors: one, the increased overhead of leaders
(+25 points per detachment on average) and two, decreased effectiveness of
detachments (too small to be truly offensive and reduced to half strength too
easily resulting in morale penalties out the yin-yang).

Is there a consensus or rule of thumb for detachment sizes (excluding War
Engines of course) or is this matter still up to experimentation (my designs
have been around 300-400 pts)?

Also, couple of "newbie" questions:

1) BM's and SHW's - if I understand this issue correctly, if I have a
detachment with mixed standard FP weapons and SHWeapons each BM either
reduces total FP by 1 OR removes one SHW and it is my choice how it is
resolved. correct?

2) In the shooting phase do you resolve non-FP SHW's (e.g. death rays and
anti-tank shots) before or after the generic firepower weapons, or is it your
choice?

3) Any suggestions as to what would be a good army size (as in total supply
of minis) to aim for given the following: I will be building two or three
armies (Space Marines, Orks, and probably Chaos) both for variety's sake and
because I'll be supplying the minis I'll be playing my brother and friend
with when we get together ("Cool game but I would have *never* picked this up
if I'd seen it in the store, way too much time involved...") I'm looking to
play games lasting between one to three hours, four on the outside depending
on the size of the particular army used that battle. I was thinking of
around 2,000 pts of vehicles and infantry and approximately 1,000 pts of War
Engines for each of the races... too few, superfluous amount of minis, or
just right?

Thanks for any help,

Chip
Received on Mon Jul 07 1997 - 03:20:29 UTC