Do You Build With The Objectives In Mind?

I’d like to put this out there as I still see a lot of people trying to kill their opponent and forget about the mission. The mission wins you games, more so than creating an army list to destroy your opponent. This coincides with army building, as each unit should have something clear to do. Many people skip this forward thinking phase, in search of more powerful codex choices.

Let me go through a few examples which I have picked up on. Venerable Brother took a fairly solid looking wolf list to Brighton Warlords. Now I take nothing of this away from him, but did he consider every mission when building his list? Well he has plenty of scoring units for Seize Ground, s decent amount of tough Killpoints, but what about Capture & Control? We all know at the end of the day you need a decent section of your force sitting on your objective, but you wouldn't want a fairly expensive troop unit hiding on it all game do you? To this end, army design must take this into consideration. One unit of 5 Grey hunters in a Razorback could have done this for example.

Another is mech Guard. I have see time and time against a Guard army sitting backs hooting me to death, whilst I calm sit on objectives. I aim for units which can affect my scoring units ability to sit on the objectives, and by the end of the game I have won simply because I have more objectives than him. It’s not about me rolling more dice than him; it’s the fact that I positioned my army in accordance with the mission.

Similar to Venerable Brother, I faced a chaos army who had 3 large scoring units. Two of which were 7 man Plague marines, the other Berserkers. He had to reduce the effectiveness of his army by keeping a whole unit of 200+pt Plague marines on his home objective in Capture and Control just because he had to. The list therefore lacks the ability to win every mission.

One great example, which although isn’t very sporting, is taking one killpoint from your opponent then hiding. A Decent of Angels list can do this very well, dropping one or two tough units to take a killpoint or two on his opponent’s flanks, then hiding behind line of sight blocking terrain the rest of the game. Is this a fun game? Of course not, but is he playing the mission? Well yes. This is one of the many examples why Killpoints is a flawed system but I won’t go into that.

Now each of these examples show different yet common situations which many players face. Have you ever considered taking perhaps a weaker option just to take on board the missions whom you are expected to find at a tournament? I, for example, wrote a very mech Blood Angel list. 4 Razorback assault squads to push forward with 2 Honor guard squads with Librarians, and 3 Predators laying down firepower. Now in a Capture and control mission, do I really want to leave one of my 165pt built to rush Assault squads sitting on the back field doing nothing? If they were a cheaper and couldn't contribute, I’d consider it, but they aren’t. To that end, I added a 90 point scout squad with camo cloaks & sniper rifles. Some people will look at the unit and say, hey don’t they suck? Well yes, but they are also a great utility in Objective missions. But they suck in Killpoint mission’s right? Well to some extent, but for 90 points I can simply pop them in reserve and hid them, go to ground and have done with it. Other armies do this such as taking a 3 man henchman unit in a razorback for Grey Knights. Lots of armies can do this, but not many people consider it.

I personally never build a list without at least one home objective sitter, but I give them something to contribute. I don’t like to see a unit do nothing. If I foresee that the unit will tend to take a backfield presence, I will equip them with some sort of long range weapon. Be it a Cyclone wolf guard for my 5 man Grey Hunter unit, or a Las/Plas Razorback for that 3 man Henchman squad, I have something to provide support to the rest of my army, without effectively wasting points.

I’d love to hear how you all build your lists. Do you take into consideration common missions, be it Nova style or straight from the rulebook, or do you simply follow advice on the internet and take a list that looks good on paper?

Killswitch