Something To Think About: Is 40k a Choppa Boyz Game?

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 6 months, you may have heard of a little thing called the Heretics rulebook. This, for those of you who don't know, is a supposed leaked first draft of the new 6th edition rules, and they have been out for quite a while. Now there is plenty of speculation on whether these rules are the real deal, partially real and completely and utterly fake, so I decided to download them and have a read myself. My verdict? The rules are FANTASTIC!!! It doesn't matter if they're real or not. They create a solid set of rules and make a game that's very fun, fair and balanced.
This is where I stopped to think however.

Only a fool would say that 40k is a completely fair and balanced game. It's a fact that some armies have better synergy than other armies, and that some rules are far more exploitable than others.

Now looking at the game as a whole, armies are divided into shooty and choppy (or excel at shooting/ combat more than the respective other). However, I feel that armies that excel at combat have an advantage when compared to units that excel at shooting.
Here's how I see it.
A combat unit has to be able to survive shooting until it gets into combat (which it is going to win). It can achieve this through various methods; transports, cover, deep striking close, screening etc.
A shooting unit on the other hand has to be able to kill the combat unit before it gets into combat, which it will lose. It can achieve this in only one way; shooting.

Now the combat phase is very much a trap. Once in a combat, there is only one realistic way of getting out; winning! Very hard to do this if you're not designed for it. Sweeping advances also make it so that if you manage to break away by losing there is still a pretty solid chance you'll be completely and utterly wiped!

The shooting phase is in no way a trap! If a combat unit doesn't like being shot at, all it has to do is find a combat it can join and jump in; BOOM no more worrying about shooting. And combat units are not useless in the shooting phase. Many of them are armed with guns they can use to soften up the enemy, before they completely massacre them!

Now I'm not saying that all shooting armies suck. As a Necron player that would be very depressing. What I'm saying is that, in the current edition of rules, there is a bias towards the combat phase instead of the shooting phase.
To return to the point I made at the beginning of this post. The leaked rulebook was fair and balanced in how the game was played. The turn sequence meant that combat units couldn't use the shooting phase to soften up its meaty close-combat treat. Sweeping advance is not unfair to low initiative units and is still fair to high initiative units. Models assaulting into ongoing combats get bonuses to help them beat combat units. Pistols are  not just extra attacks but can be actually used. Clearly I cannot actually post these rules due to legal reasons, but I can still talk about it and say how much Games Workshop needs to make the 6th edition rules more balanced, in the way that the heretics rulebook has done.

So that's my opinion on the game as it stands right now, and what needs to be done by this time in 3 months or so. Hope you all enjoyed it. Until next time!  

Something To Think About: Where are the Medics?

Hi all! Hope you all had a good week! So what I want to talk about today is the big problem I see in 40k. There is a huge lack of medics in the 40k universe and I really don't see why... I mean, sure you have the apothecary for marines and the painboy for orkz, both of which confer FnP, but most of the other armies have  very little designed to act as a medic.

Now in my opinion, for a unit to act as a medic it simply has to keep a unit alive with special rules for regenerating wounds, through FnP or the regeneration rule for nids. So I really see no excuse for the armies that don't have specified medics. I imagine it could go something like this:

Chaos Daemons: Some kind of Elite unit, Nurgle maybe, that could have an aura making units have FnP in a 6" radius or something, or maybe some kind of lesser daemons that can help greaters recover their wounds. Not really a daemon fan, clearly...

Chaos Marines: Quite simply, a chaos apothecary. I can imagine that it would be a very cool model and it could be used as an upgrade character for units like a unique character or something. There could also be lesser daemons like I suggested for Chaos Daemons.

Eldar: I suppose the farseers could have psychic powers and warlocks of course.

Dark Eldar: Technically don't really need medics thanks to army wide FnP, but I suppose Haemonculi could be used to maintain talos and cronos like units.

Tau: Can't remember if there is a caste that would have lots of healers in it like the water caste or something. I can imagine a caste designed for healing personally.

Necrons: Harbinger of Healing. Nuff said.

Now I realise that this whole topic is a little shaky and the fluff might make some things tricky to justify. To be honest I may have overlooked (in fact, I probably have overlooked 90% of relevant info) but I thought it was just another thing I could throw into the ring. Well that's all I've got today folks, have a fantastic week and see you later!

Something To Think About: Deployment

Hello everyone, and welcome to another fun filled, and factual, document! This week I have discovered my new found love of Paint software and, as you can see, have started making little logos for my posts.
This week I want to talk about deployment. For many of you this will not be the first deployment article you have seen and its safe to say it won't be the last. Now I will start off by saying, I am not the best at deployment; in fact it is probably the one part of the gaming side of 40k that I utterly stink at.
Still, there are 1000 lessons in defeat so I'll give this whole "advice" thing a try.
Now 40k is a game of chance. You rely on dice for almost everything you do in the game. You want to move through cover? Dice required. You want to shoot that grot 2 feet away? Dice required. You want to hit someone with a stick? Yeah you can kind of see where I'm going.
These are all examples of 'random strategy'; points in the game were you can, at best, predict what will happen but in the end, have no control over the result.
Now deployment, that's a different story. In the deployment phase, you can decide exactly where you want your units to be! They can be put in cover, or in reserve, or in a transport. Whatever you want to do with you units, you can make them do it (within reason mind). This is an example of 'definite strategy' were you have full control over what happens; no dice. This can be made more random if you are deploying first and have to guess what you opponent is going to do but apart from this, and a few other examples, it is a nice definite point in the game.

Now to tackle the elephant hiding in the corner, the way to deploy. Well, I'm not going to give a general idea of how to deploy but am instead going to go over some points of consideration when deploying, with any army (except daemons, they're a WHOLE different kettle of mutated fish).

Fragility: Discussed this one a little with Bryss after our last game. The first thing to consider when deploying is how much damage your army can take. For the more fragile armies (DE, Eldar, Orkz etc.) you really don't want them to be shot up in the first turn of the game. To counter this you'll want to try things like cover to screen your units, transports to hide in and charge forward quickly or reserves. When using more durable armies (MEQ) you can afford to be a little bolder and deploy some units out of cover and with clearer LOS to the enemy, maybe to try and lure out the enemy?

First or Second: Now depending, on whether you go first or second, deployment tactics can change. If you're going first, you can act boldly and try getting as close to the enemy as you need to be. This means that, if you're feeling bold, you may deploy some units out of cover or without any screens. If you're going second, you may want to be a little more on the defensive side of things. To try and keep your opponent from getting at your units from the get-go, you'll want to castle up your units in cover and out of LOS from the enemy. You may even want to leave some of your bigger hitting units in reserve to come on, later in the game, and counter attack.

Size: By this I mean the size of the units deploying. It doesn't take a tactical genius to work out that smaller units will die quicker than larger units of the same type. So by this logic you'll want to try your best to keep small units out of the opponents way for as long as possible whereas you'll be able to afford to send larger squads into the front line.

Shooty or Assaulty: This is probably the most obvious one. If you're a shooty army, and have a long range, you can afford to deploy further away. In contrast, you'll want to deploy as far forward as possible with an assaulty based army.

Now these are only a few things to consider. There is much more to think about than what I've put above, I just don't know them unfortunately. So my final verdict? When deploying your units, consider the points made in this article, and any others you can think of. Remember, the deployment phase is meant to be a problem solving challenge; there is no one all-powerful answer when it comes to deploying your units; it's up to you now. Good luck!