Target Priority and Mitigating Luck

I just thought I talk about a few of the key points from last night's game, mainly around some of the thinking behind some of my tactics.

Going First

So, I won the roll off and decided to go first for two reasons. Firstly, I knew that this would let me get my two Rune Priest Rhinos into midfield which would really open up the firing lanes for Living Lightning. I figured that with a combination of popped smoke and night fighting they'd survive Andy's first go and they'd really hold up any support that Andy tried to get to Lysander's drop pod as he'd either have to go through me or around. Even though I had one of the Rhinos immobilised, it didn't matter as I was still able to cast Living Lightning out of the top hatch with impunity. Secondly, I wanted to have my Long Fangs on the board for when Lysander appeared. I guessed (wrongly, as it turned out) that Andy would bring him in on turn 1 and I didn't want him sat in my deployment zone while I was still walking on the board especially as I would have expected one of the squads to be shot down with Bolter Drill before they even got to do anything.

Deployment

I admit that I stole the idea of deploying two empty Rhinos from here. So, they go 7" on from your board edge and then on turn 1, the Rune Priests and their Grey Hunter squads get in and then off you drive. As mentioned above I drove 12" and then popped smoke. One pack of Long Fangs walked onto the hill overlooking the objective so that they could see over the battlefield but mainly so that they could shoot anyone daft enough to get near enough to my objective. The second pack came on so that they too would be able to cover the objective. The razorbacks were positioned so that they could move forward to attack Andy's objective or stay where they were to claim my own. The Land Speeders made a flanking maneuver around my left with the intention of making a move towards Andy's objective and clearing it of anything nasty.

Target Priority

Early on in the game I wanted to take out the two Land Speeder Typhoons, the Autocannon/Autocannon Dreadnought and then probably the Thunderfire Cannon (don't laugh, it has the ability to do a number on my Long Fangs). If I could take these out, it would give me a big range advantage over Andy's army. I was helped by the fact that Lysander didn't turn up until turn 3 as that would have given me something else to think about. As it was I'd pretty much eliminated the threats I wanted to before he arrived and so I could focus my fire on him and his chums. If he'd arrived earlier I would have had to make some tough decisions about whether to shoot him or keep trying to take out Andy's long range shooting. This is one of the key factors in Warhammer 40,000, once you force people into making decisions, it's very easy for them to make the wrong one.

Mitigating Luck

Once again Andy had some terrible luck at times (Tactical Squad failing morale check and running away, Lysander failing Morale Check and running away being the main two). In any game using a dice, you're always going to be reliant on luck to some extent but the key thing is how you mitigate against bad rolls. For example I had a couple of half-turns where I either couldn't hit a barn door or couldn't cause any wounds. Why half-turns? Well, I have so much shooting in my list that if I do have a nightmare with some units I have enough other units who can step up to the plate. In the grim darkness of the future there is only Long Fang spam.