The Curse Of The New - Review

So, I talked about how new units can be difficult to use the first time that you try them and I was worried for my Land Raider last week. Of course it went on to do a lot of damage. However, in that review I didn't talk about the other new unit that I tried: a "Rifleman" Dreadnought. He managed to kill 3 Sternguard but Lysander's Thunder Hammer had turned him into scrap metal before the end of turn 1. So, what went wrong? Well, I forgot what the Dreadnought's mission was - killing transports. 4 Twin-Linked strength 7 shots a turn are the last thing that Rhinos, Razorbacks and Land Speeders want to see. However, I tried to use it reactively after Andy had podded the Sternguard in. Had I used it more proactively I could have taken out the Land Speeder on Andy's left flank and thus kept my Assault Cannon Razorback alive longer.

I think the key learning I'm trying to take out of this is have a plan for your units. By that I mean at every stage, right from list building until the end of the game. When I put the list together, the Dreadnought was there to take out transports not shoot at troops. In fact if Andy hadn't failed a couple of saving throws, it wouldn't have killed anything. Have a role for everything in your list and stick with it and only change if another part of your army is destroyed and you need to make do and mend or if there are no viable targets. So, my Dreadnought could have switched to killing Space Marines if all of Andy's transports and speeders had been destroyed or if there was nothing else in LOS or in range.