Tacktical setup Bolt throwers

[Zenith]

Hi,. so now that the bolt thrower is back, in many of our lists.
How do we set these guys up?

Do we deploy them on the sides of the army, as far back as possible?
I face many obstacles whenever I try to use them.

[Dangerous Beans]

My standard setup is to place my reapers spread evenly throughout my deployment zone where avenues of LOS will allow the best shots - that way my opponents have to go a long way to deal with each one and if you also ensure that the middle two bolt throwers are set back from the two on the flanks then you should be able to get clear shots on any target that manages to reach one of them after that enemy has smashed in that bolt thrower!

Alternatively putting two in your centre will draw the enemy army toward them whilst the other two on extreme flanks get the flanking shots off (If you can target cavalry this is brilliant!). The same can be true if you wish to play a refused flank idea: either by placing 3 of your Reapers near each other on one flank might make your opponent assume that your army will setup there and so put units opposite them to deal with the reapers (and therefore your combat army can more easily flank attack his) or you can choose to defend them if the opponent has very little shooting himself as the reapers will make him come to you.

The combinations are endless!

[Gidean]

I would place them all in the same third of your deployment zone if the scenario allows it. This is a psychological move to force your opponent to deploy a certain way. Therefore you should likely drop your RBTs down first. Just make sure to space them enough so he cannot get two with one charge. Maybe stagger them a bit making overruns a bit more tricky.

The main idea is to force your opponent to deploy units/characters susceptible to bolt thrower shooting in the zone as far from your RBTs as possible. So if you drop yours in your right flank you can bet his units that can be hurt by them (like a Demon Prince for instance) will likely be deployed on your far left. Then you can use that knowledge with respect to the remainder of your drops.

[Dalamar]

I've recently started testing a particular tactic.

First I figure out which side of my deployment zone has the best lines of fire. That's where the Bolt Throwers get deployed... before anything else. What it does is creates a dilemma for my opponent. He now knows where my bolt throwers are so he knows where to put his monsters and characters to hide them from the bolt throwers. He also knows where to put his war machine hunters.
Typically the war machine hunters will go opposite from my bolt throwers, and any big monstery things will go far away. Which is exactly what I want.
Then I spread out my fast cavalry more or less evenly across my deployment zone and the meat of my army on the opposite side from the bolt throwers (bolt throwers will likely have a small unit with them to support them)

What this creates is forces my opponent to split his army if he wants to deal with both. If he sends his light troops to fight my bolt throwers, they will not be supporting the rest of his army (and likely die to bolt throwers), if he doesn't do it, then my bolt throwers are out of danger for the entire game.

[Zenith]

Thanks for the imput masters.,

Today their is a local tourney., I will try using the setup you suggested.

[Datalink7]

I've recently started testing a particular tactic.

First I figure out which side of my deployment zone has the best lines of fire. That's where the Bolt Throwers get deployed... before anything else. What it does is creates a dilemma for my opponent. He now knows where my bolt throwers are so he knows where to put his monsters and characters to hide them from the bolt throwers. He also knows where to put his war machine hunters.
Typically the war machine hunters will go opposite from my bolt throwers, and any big monstery things will go far away. Which is exactly what I want.
Then I spread out my fast cavalry more or less evenly across my deployment zone and the meat of my army on the opposite side from the bolt throwers (bolt throwers will likely have a small unit with them to support them)

What this creates is forces my opponent to split his army if he wants to deal with both. If he sends his light troops to fight my bolt throwers, they will not be supporting the rest of his army (and likely die to bolt throwers), if he doesn't do it, then my bolt throwers are out of danger for the entire game.

That's an interesting tactic. I might try that next time. Wonder if it will work for me as well though. I'm only running two Bolt Throwers.

[Gidean]

That's an interesting tactic. I might try that next time. Wonder if it will work for me as well though. I'm only running two Bolt Throwers.

Two will still give your opponent pause. If you only had one, I doubt it.

[Dalamar]

I run two bolt throwers as well, last game I had my opponent's Hellstriders go straigth for them (and die) and DP hover in the center trying to get to them (and died). DPs choice was to try and go for bolt throwers or a frontal charge into a horde of execs

[Kargan daemonclaw]

I recommend putting them within 6" of each outher, within 6" of other small panicable units and outside the general and BSB leadership bubble.

That's the Nigella Lawson recipe for success.

[Paricidas]

The combinations are endless!

Yo, there is no cokie cutter recipe for deploying RBTs. It is very much dependend of what you want to do with your army.

-The easiest way is to just Cluster them up on a flank. This creates a "do-not-fly"-Zone for the enemy (see dalmars post...) The upside of thistactic is also ist downside, theenemy now knows where NOT to deploy his vulnerable Units. Another downside is the vulnerability of the RBTs themself. Cluster of warmachines are very very easily overrun, they dont have flanks, so the enemy can very often get nice Charge ankles for an overrun).A Minimum distance of 6 inches is advised, as you probably dont want your RBts to test on ld 8 without bsb reroll if one of them gets cannon sniped (or death or shadow or "anything else" sniped).
Flank-deployed RBTs sometimes will Need some babysitting, as they are sometimes too much of a bait at 200 Points.

-Cluster them up in the middle. Shoot everything everywhere, rerolls from the bsb and it blocks a lot of deployment Zone if you dont want to get hard cover from your own troops. This is the classic deloyment for gun-errrr-bowlines. Cover the RBts with cavalery (or charriots), and they can shoot and shoot and shoot for the whole game. Anyhing that ventures near enough to be dangerous will be shot or charged.

-Spreat all over the board:very high threat Areas (the whole boad), very low threat lvl. There is a reason why you dont see many single RBTs in army lists, because they dont do enough. Thats probably also the case with this deployment. Of course this deloyment will lead to the greatest number of possible flankshots, but a single RBT is not very scray, not even to 5 unarmored redirectors. If supported by RXBs, this deployment becomes much stronger, as it can make very very short work of most redirectors which are stupid enough to end a turn without the protection of hard cover.

[Kargan daemonclaw]

I recommend putting them within 6" of each outher, within 6" of other small panicable units and outside the general and BSB leadership bubble.

That's the Nigella Lawson recipe for success.

[Datalink7]

I recommend putting them within 6" of each outher, within 6" of other small panicable units and outside the general and BSB leadership bubble.

That's the Nigella Lawson recipe for success.

Is there a similar recipe for posting two identical posts within two posts of each other?

[kaloomte]

I recommend putting them within 6" of each outher, within 6" of other small panicable units and outside the general and BSB leadership bubble.

That's the Nigella Lawson recipe for success.

And the award for pointless sarcasm goes to...

[Dangerous Beans]

Not sure quite how this topic has got a little chilly but please try and be nice to one another!

Patricidas; I think you misunderstood me, allow me to clarify - it is exactly because of 'what you want to do with your army' as well as 'what your army contains' that the combinations are endless. I merely wanted to get the ball rolling on this thread by putting a couple of suggestions that I have personally found useful over the past 14 years of playing dark elves. I wasn't implying that those were the 'perfect formula' for setting up bolt throwers - far from it, there are many and the setups SHOULD change depending on your opponent, terrain, scenario and your overall strategy for that game!

Datalink; we're all only human and sometimes people's internet is not perfect and you don't realise that you've accientally double posted (hitting refresh when the 'page cannot be viewed' is a common problem). Kargan (or a mod) clearly realised this and deleted the duplicate post - theres no need to jump down the poor guys throat!

Kaloomte; an eye for an eye leaves the whole blind my friend

Right, if we can get back on topic - Dalamar I really like the psychological impact of your Reaper deployment. Classically bolt throwers have a very way to influence how your opponent will deploy and react - it is often all too easy to simply place your war machines in the typical locations: between a set of trees for LOS advantages or on a hill. However by forcing your opponents hand you can really gain an insightful advantage into how they will deploy (and therefore how you can not only counter this but maximise your options to combat the enemy units that will choose to remain in the open.

I believe that Gidean is correct in the assumption of the 2+ rule: 1 bolt thrower is not enough to cause concern but two or more certainly are, especially if backed up with warlocks (soul blight) or a shadow / dark wizard for the access to Toughness debuffs.

Obviously another tactic is to pair your bolt thrower battery with a repeater crossbowman unit (for the combat support / threat) that has the Banner of Eternal Flame. Denying and seriously harming regenerators becomes a lot easier with this combination (which against targets such as Hell Pits of Trolls if of great use and easier Victory Points / Threat elimination).

How do you guys consider the combintion of shades and Reapers to work; would shades make good baby sitters do you think or could your deployment of shades help your Reapers in some way (such as distracting the enemy by hiding on their flank / rear)?

[Gerner]

I believe that Gidean is correct in the assumption of the 2+ rule: 1 bolt thrower is not enough to cause concern but two or more certainly are, especially if backed up with warlocks (soul blight) or a shadow / dark wizard for the access to Toughness debuffs.

I disagree on this, and I will tell you why.
Deployment is a very important part of the game, so often it is important to have as many deployments as possible so you can outdeploy your opponent. A single RBT is very cheap for a single drop.
Also while we know from experience that a single RBT won't do much damage to most monsters or other juicy targets our opponent will still be worried about that lucky shot we could potentially make - even one RBT will affect most peoples deployment. Your opponent will atleast have to figure out if he wants to bring it down (and use time on it) or completely ignore the single RBT that could potentially get a lucky shot or just annoy him.
Lastly the multiple shots the RBT can shoot are devastating against chaff and helps you to control the battlefield.

For more effect multiple should be taken, we agree on that.

[Setomidor]

What I do is something like:
1) Count my opponents and my own number of drops.
2) Consider his army and see if there are any specific targets that I need to pair the RBT against.
3) If I have fewer drops than him I'll stand a good chance to get first turn and will try to deploy the RBT to get a very good first turn shooting. If I have a specific target I may try to hold the RBT back until he drops my target and deploy the RBT to face that threat. This may of course force him to deploy behind terrain, which is normally a good thing for me.
4) If I have more drops (so I'll probably go second), or if I don't really have anything important to kill I'll deploy the RBT more defensively and instead try to create firing lanes and no-go zones as discussed above.

I think it's important to keep in mind that the RBT need only to kill or lock down a single big enemy threat for them to pay off. If I spend the whole game shooting at the enemy Steamtank with my four RBT, or even just forcing him to stay behind a hill the whole game, I'll be more than satisfied.

[marcopollo]

Also, remember that RBT's are the cheapest drop in our deployment. So it is also the cheapest speed bump and can be sacrificed to that end. But remember that we have to deploy all our warmachines at once.

[Datalink7]

Datalink; we're all only human and sometimes people's internet is not perfect and you don't realise that you've accientally double posted (hitting refresh when the 'page cannot be viewed' is a common problem). Kargan (or a mod) clearly realised this and deleted the duplicate post - theres no need to jump down the poor guys throat!

My post was supposed to be a bit tongue in check, considering we were just talking about gaps between bolt throwers is was a play on that theme. However, I failed to actually put the tongue in cheek (-->:P<--). So apologies. Wasn't meant to be as harsh as it looks.