A discussion about the Tactics Forum

[Ichiyo1821]

@ Cal, honestly speaking if I may, there are more posts per day in the RP section that in any of the actual tactics, army list and discussions these days and sometimes I don't feel like explaining everything but the most of the threads are rehashed from just a few months back all asking the same ol' things. Anyway, I'm just waiting for the new big thing for Dnet and DE usage but so far I have yet to see anyone come up with something new.


Mod's note: This thread originated from Ichiyo1821's post in Are Manticores Worth it?
Calisson

[Calisson]

Discussion is always welcome and should be straightforwards (as long as it remains polite and argumented, of course).
I ackowledge that nowadays, RPG are more flourishing than tactics. I even adopted myself the "if you can't beat'em, join'em" attitude!



If I may expand about the tactics forum:
- There are many young generals with little experience who seek here the basics. The forum is for them.
- There are a few seasoned generals who would like to discuss subtle tactics. The forum is for them, too.
The forum should endeavour to conciliate the needs of all of his users.


I tried to improve that with the D.R.A.I.C.H. (no, it's not that I want to advertise, just to explain and open a discussion).
- The D.R.A.I.C.H. is there to avoid repeating every three months the same basic truths for beginners. At least, we can avoid most of the low quality posts usually found on similar forums.
- The D.R.A.I.C.H. is there also to accumulate knowledge, which will help someone willing to compile a systematic article about such or such aspect of the game.
- There have been in the past some very nice articles, well written with lots of thoughts and experience, followed by an open discussion among experienced generals.

Since 8th edition came, there have been a few discussions, initially mostly based on theory.
Now that some of us have accumulated a respectable experience with more than 100 games (not me) and more than 75% wins (not me), I would love to see more of such discussions.
Something like the intersite game made against WE that we had in 2009 would be also of the highest interest.


I could conclude by: if you cannot find the information you want, make it!
Looking forwards to reading the promised update of your Go Rin No Sho.

[Ichiyo1821]

I will update that, it's just that the 40k bug has bit me thus I've been spending more time on it for a while. Haha. I've learned some things in 40K that I've applied to Fantasy and vice versa. I am seriously play testing an all cavalry army that aims to resolve the problem with steadfast but the 40k tourneys at my FLGS goes on like almost every month or two that we barely get to pay Fantasy(almost every 40k player in our area has a fantasy army as well).

Here's my pitch. Every person and their uncle's uncle is using horde formations and blocks and every general that you will meet will say "oh heavy cav does not work anymore because you can't break ranks, horde can occupy the baord and you can't do the WE avoidance tactic of old". Now I've been thinking if it's really possible to take advantage of DR's. Now if you are a horde army chances are you have atleast 2 units of 40 or so models. Now look at it this way. If you deploy both units wide to screw MSU deployment, you sacrifice ranks to cover most of the board. If you deploy deep from the start, you can only wheel so much to face your target. Now here's the angle I want to exploit. In either situation, if you run an almost all cavalry army, you give your opponent more or less just 1 turn more to quick reform and adjust to you. Horde armies are mostly low ld who rely on the general's ld and BSB. Now we I am focusing on horde armies simply because against elite armies like HE or WOC, they would only have atleast 1 unit in horde and that unit's points are very expensive (except Marauders ofcourse) thus breaking ranks immediately shouldn't be an issue.

Now going back to DE. What does the AB have to offer if we wish to that exactly that? What we want is a very fast mobile army with enough punch to kill units. In short I am not looking for ways to break stead fast. I am looking for a way to kill and hit hard as fast as you can. I have yet to see people use shielded DR as well as Metal lore. I was thinking in the lines of a master led DR, a medium sized COK, a POK Dreadlord on a DP, a lore of metal sorceress and or Shadow, couple of Shades, naked DR, Harpies and Either Chariots then 1 or 2 units of 10man RHB Corsairs (yes I said RHB Corsairs). Now we all know the synergy with Shadow, now i want to see if there is such with metal. I can't resist the idea of 2+ armor save DR for example.

(to be continued my daughter is asking for food)

[Pjeos]

Hi there,

I agree with Ichiyo in most of his posts, I liked very much the psot Calisson just mentioned (once I was able to read it lol).

I'd like to add a couple of things parallel to what he has already said so far:

First, on Steadfast. A player on our main forum said the other day: "I consider Steadfast to be the great lie of 8th ed" meaning that most people loose perspective with it, thinking that Steadfast units will be unkillable, etc. I agree with that, it only takes a bit of shooting to wear them down to the point where they can be easily destroyed in combat. In fact, if there's one army that can destroy a horde in 1 single shooting phase, that is (appart from Dwarves ofc xD) us DE, that can bring up to 3 breaths (BDE, Hydras) to the board.

Second,...Riders with 2+AS...I must try that x)



Salu2

[Thanee]

2+ AS DR are certainly nice, but they lack the punch with their puny S3 attacks (S4 on the charge). COK are just so much better. And they do not rely on a spell to be cast successfully (which is hardly a given) to avoid being slaughtered.

Magic is a great asset, but having to rely on it is not good.

I generally want my army to be able to function without such dependencies. Even if my Supreme Sorceress gets blown to pieces on turn 1 due to some unfortunate Miscast, the rest of the army still needs to function.

Bye
Thanee

[Ichiyo1821]

2+ AS DR are certainly nice, but they lack the punch with their puny S3 attacks (S4 on the charge). COK are just so much better. And they do not rely on a spell to be cast successfully (which is hardly a given) to avoid being slaughtered.

Magic is a great asset, but having to rely on it is not good.

I generally want my army to be able to function without such dependencies. Even if my Supreme Sorceress gets blown to pieces on turn 1 due to some unfortunate Miscast, the rest of the army still needs to function.

Bye
Thanee

S4 still does hurt, anyway back to my post. For the Dark Riders, that is why I am putting a master there and make that unit a delivery system for the master. The DR are there not to kill but to act as a very annoying fast shield for the true killers, the Hydra, COK and etc etcc. My thinking is, stead fast units are anooying as hell but since we are an army that relies on magic and multicharges to kill lacking template weapons, we generally avoid engaging steadfast units anyway. Get my point?

Since we are avoiding steadfast units, we go for the opposing army's hammer units which will be relatively smaller. Here we use our speed advantage to get the charge off first. Case A. Your typical WOC army, 2 or so units of 16 Warriors, 1 unit or 2 of Knights and a plateful of Marauders. Now we aren't about to send our Hydra or COK against the Marauders knowing that if we get held up a turn, we will get countercharged by the Knights and the Warriors, however if we got to charge the Warriors and kill most of them while making a large cumbersome unit of Marauders unable to charge us back, you pretty much have the game. Even if in the end he does get to charge you, by then it's probably to late and the issue of steadfast ceases to exist. Hypothetically and theoretically this is what I want to achieve. My problem is how many actual units of high strength fast units do we really have?

We have seen the 3 Pegasus characters. Old news. Now couple that with 2 units of 5 Harpies, toss in a COK bus, then 2 Hydras, then a unit of Shielded DR, 2 or so units of naked DR, Shades then Corsairs and Dreadlords and masters. The point of the list is to charge one unit as hard and fast as you can while the rest of the army multi-redirects everything else with the DL holding the hardest unit or atleast the unit closest to the one you are charging taking advantage of the you can only redirect your charge once. If you try to do the misdirection tactics of old with just one unit, your opponent can simply pass an ld check to switch targets. With multiple units it becomes annoying.

First theory, DRs take the lead and become the first redirector angling the countercharging unit away from the main combat. The charger declares a charge on the DR and you promptly flee, after which he declares a redirect on your other main unit and he fails his ld thus all is well and done but what if he passes? Suppose you had another unit of Harpies also in the away now this time it's even nearer to your units but angled in such a way that it takes them even farther. Harpies are there to die but cause no panic to DE units and at 55 points, they are cheap enough. "But Ichiyo you mentioned that even Harpies give away VP, why are you suggesting that we willingly throw them away"? Well for one, since we are going after his hammer unit, hammer units tend to be more expensive and thus more VP if we nail it down. No one hordes expensive 12+ point model units if they can avoid it so it's safe to say that a hammer unit is usually if not more twice as much as a anvil horde unit. The only problem is Dark Riders are so fragile and die to modest shooting. This is so true but when I look across the armies out there, only Empire, Skaven and Dwarves still use BS based shooting and they aren't a whole lot. Now these are the same armies that uses blocks of troops that we can't table or wipe off the board in most cases so why try? In most games I've had with them, I usually just end up killing his hardest and most impt. units ayway and just usually ignore the rest. I mean why would I spend time killing 2 point rats?

(to be continued)