Thursday 10 February 2011

Deployment in Action - Mech Vs Mech Part 2


 See last week's post for part 1...or just read this lol...  


Pitched Battle – Capture and Control

SM going first
As I ponder this one I realise that I am not this week enjoying writing this.
I am not in a good mood.
It’s most likely because I have a literal fuck-tonne of work on and don’t. fucking. want. it.
I just want to teach.
All the other responsibilities I have taken on…well, they are going out the window as they are distracting me from what I love.
Or its because the fiancé wants me to sell my gas-guzzling car…and I don’t want to.

But I am a trooper and will continue.


Remember, this is designed as a general guide, look for the equivalents within your own army…
My first thoughts with SM going first were as follows;
-          Put the tougher armour at the front…even though we are going first, av13 from preds is tough to crack from range, av11…not so much.
-          Shoot the riflemen over the top of a rhino chassis (so they are in cover…plenty of comparisons here…Hive Guard, Broadsides etc) …there job here is to neutralise 3 threats per turn. Anything up to av12 they can put down comfortably.
-          Deep strike the speeders as they can come in later in the game and melt something before dying. Perhaps also coming in late they could survive to contest.
-          Pop my scoring units back from Imperial guns. This is of course a false sense of security as we all know that IG have great ranged weaponry, but as a generic guide, other SM armies (which you’ll play a lot of!) don’t necessarily.
-          Refuse flank. A lot of mech armies have a lot of hulls…hulls are hide to all put in one place. Terrain stops it from happening. Use this. If one side is more crowded with terrain or blocking line of sight…knock youself out.
Of course, the issue is, he could do the same in response and your limited, truly long range firepower would not have the desired effect.
-          This is more than a bit defensive though, relying almost solely on the speeders to come in late and contest. Yeah, not a great bet, more a hail mary- which sucks. This mission does not have to be ‘roll dice and draw’ or whatever you call it locally. It is simple to play it aggressively and win regularly…
-          Remember with this force we are not too worried about our mobility, if our position looks crowded, its not the end of the world. We have the lasplas at the back that can potentially move up to our objective, whilst the 2 rhinos can bomb up into the midfield…however, if the enemy seize the initiative or we immobilise ourselves in terrain…its all good.

How would the IG respond to this then?
-          The Hydra groups (bottom left and bottom right) are in position so they are partially protected and can just rain fire into the troop positions of the enemy. Remember, the Hydra’s are your long range, high rate of fire unit with middling strength…whatever your equivalent is…most likely Rifleman dreads! Lol.
-          The Vendetta’s will scout 24” up to the positions indicated, putting extreme pressure on the flank of the SM position. Remember, that fast units can really threaten and draw fire from your main position simply through their physical presence and the strong visual of such a rapid redeployment.
As you can see, the flat out (represented by smoke) moving Vendetta’s draw massive attention. This will hopefully draw a good amount of fire away from the main battle line.
This is great as we have 3 extreme threats  with av12 and 4+ cover that will draw fire.

In the IG turn, there will be a lot of mid to high strength fire coming at the SM line, potentially unmolested.. plus the CCS can move up into the midfield and hold/block SM advances with TL’d Melta…

Imperial Guard going first

What’d be different this time around? The heavy gunline army that is the IG would probably revert back to its KP style setup and strike hard and fast at the enemy. This could potentially be brutal without bubblewrap or alpha-strike blocking ability.
Let’s examine.
Here the IG are in Alpha-strike mode. All 3 Vendetta’s are ready to deliver melta death to the enemy mechanised position. The thing with mech is, without tools to stop the alpha, it is deadly to grouped tanks that have not moved yet.. having to stay 12” away is just not enough.
The dice mark out the position of 12” assuming that the SM spread out along the lines…
The rest of the tanks are in position to strike from all angles, each vehicle group has the ‘protection’ of an empty tank.

Options for SM? And by SM we mean anyone facing this shit…

Reserve.
Spread out so only one little portion can be crushed.
Build in something into your army that can stop it!

So we reserve first. Knowing that we can sweep on the board, get some shots off first and try and suppress a portion of the army.

My principal issue with this is that if your army does not possess any way of manipulating the reserve roll, we come on piecemeal and are shot to pieces as and when we arrive.

Some may argue this is fine in some missions as we can just roll on towards the end of the game and draw… fucking great.
What happens with the IG if we reserve? Are they stumped? Are they fuck.


Here, the Vendetta’s are in position for some good stuff shortly…



Turn 1:
Can you guess what it is yet?













Turn 2: Still no SM army…huh? 
You get why I don’t like this tactic?

Tell me I’m wrong and catch up with some more ideas next week… peace…

Oh and be honest…did you reserve the speeders or deepstrike them…? One is useful here, one is not…

5 comments:

  1. sorry to hear things are getting to you. just think, in just over a week you will probably be XLegion champion ;)

    great article. really makes me think about the possibilities if people do decide to reserve everything against my guard, especially with capture and control.

    i would almost always advocate deep striking the speeders against guard. just knowing that there will be a few meltas and flamers dropping behind my lines scares the hell outa me as a guard player.

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  2. Yeah, yeah - keep talking..I think we both need to ready ourselves for a surprise or two...

    I was surprised the other week when someone mentioned being stumped by what to do with guard if someone reserves, so I thought...build it into the article... I think what I propose towards the end is a very viable option..

    Vs heavy shooting armies, DS'ing speeders is really the only way.
    Against an army with a Rock or two...we need them for blocking..

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  3. Nice post ven, interesting POV/thoughts.

    The idea of reserving has always slightly daunted me when playing my mech - even with the triple outflanking preds I can run - that word "piecemeal" scares me to death - especially knowing my luck with "you have cover, but really its just a leaf blowing in the wind cover" - I'd get stunned, or more likely to be(as the trend is recently) blown off the table.

    I like the counter the IG does - forcing the marines into a corner of potential death (the non-cover/terrain side established from the first guide) - at this stage the speeders would be just lovely to come in on in reserves - can use the flamers to try and shift the bubble wrap or meltas to get rid of tanks - though more than likely they are going be deepstruck - with (I think by the looks of it) not much space to do it well (that gap in the guard back field looks quite dangerous area?

    I had a thought that the marines may attempt a tank shock on - but its damn risky - and even falling back thats meltavets blowing their AV to kingdom come.

    Anyway - nice report! (Shame I'm not doing mech for the next couple of months!)

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  4. A Dread is high ebough to actually have his gun over a Rhino? Really? I csn't believe that

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  5. TLAutocannon conversion dreads, Riflemen...most commonly built from Aegis defense line kits... the position of the gun on the shoulder mount...you check it out dude... I learnt this one from Stelek at YTTH..

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