Just thought id drop this on here (im meant to be revising for an exam) as a few things came up in my last tourny with guy (which we won). I dont state that to brag but to add validation for this post. Oh yeh and we WON!!!!
Now i appreciate many of you will know and understand this and bare with me, only i wish when i was starting out someone would have told this to me so my first few hundred battles would have been less painful.
Probably the most importanat aspect of how to win a game of warhammer begins before a dice is rolled.
Army selection is a massive and totally important part of winning. Take a knife to a gunfight and they will be scraping you off the floor very quickly. However take a bazooka to a knife fight and see what happens (probably roll a misfire and blow yourself up!) So its of upmost importance you take the troops that you need to succeed or at least lessen the odds of you losing.
Firstly, if your off to a tournament, especially one with its own rules on comp (composition) etc then make sure you know these rules and look out for ways to exploit them. For example last weekend guy and i attended a doubles tourny where the comp was basically anyone could fight with anyone else. There was a table that stated if you allied with a force that u highly distrusted then ud get -2 to all ld checks if within 6" of each other but you would get the first turn automatically if you didnt fight another highly distrusted pair.
Guy and I took dwarfs and daemons (a heavily distrusted alliegence). So we took the rules dissected them and saw the positive (always get 1st turn) and the negative (-2ld) and worked out how to turn this to our advantage. Well dwarfs arnt famous for their racing up the field but daemons can be. As long as we did this then the negative aspect would be nullified. Dwarfs are famous however by being able to shoot the boots off anything with a long range, hence they dont need to traverse the board and can sit tight. This was advantageous then that we would win first turn most if not all the time. My xbows would deploy 8-10" in shoot those dastardly empire handguns (range 24") 1st turn with them not being able to return fire for at least 2 turns.
There were 2 i think highly distrusted combos at the tourny and we didnt face the other so we always got first turn and 2 outta 3 games the enemy units were below strength, running for the board edge (if not fleeing entirely) before they rolled a dice in anger.
So we used the rules to our advantage.
Making the list is next, use the ruleset to the fullest to heighten the strength of your army or lessen the weaknesses.
Decide what you want to do with your army. Are you a combat force? a shooting force? magic heavy? highly manouverable? then when you worked out what you are and what you want to do start building around that concept.
If you know what you opponant is taking then tailor it to face them. Lots of magic, take lots of magic defence. Lots of shooting, take fast, heavily armoured troops who are not going to panic, with special saves against shooting if u have access to them in you list (ie dark chalice for beasts)
For tournaments where you dont know your opponant you need to look to yourself to see what you want to do. An all round list may be slightly better than an all out one way or other list(by this i mean all shooting or all fast combat armies) yes in some games you'll smash/shoot/magic the crap out of an army but next round you could come unstuck vs an army designed to negate your strengths and hammer your weaknesses.
Im not however saying ignore or downplay your strengths but merely add some variation and redundancy (insurance policy or a different approach if route one dosnt work.) Emphasise your army's strength but also guard against its weaknesses.
For example pure wood elf bowlines can be amazing against some armies but should they come up against a chaos sorceror lord with lots of chaos knights and warriors (high speed and high toughness and armour and good magic) it will struggle to do its job. But take a unit or 2 of archers out (keeping a core amount in, its a strength of the army) and add some redirection (eagles) or speed bumps (treemen) or use counter magic to move trees to obstruct enemy charge lanes then you have the time and numbers to start to make a difference to the enemy numbers as you need to worry less about some units getting to you.
So the main message of this tactical thread is to:
a) read and know the rules of any battle and look for areas to exploit
b) know your army, know what it can do but more importantly what it cant do.
c) design your list to maximise your strength and minimise your weaknesses
d) make sure you have things in your army to fall back on
e) have a synergistic army, ie units that mutually help each other out ie dwarf xbow 30" range but not too hot at hitting, organ gun 24" less range but hits like a raincloud. Place these 2 together and you have 1st round hitting potential backed up by a unit who will dole out serious smackdown. Then if enemy still around and charge the OG (and it holds remeber dwarf crews are stubborn 9) counter charge with xbows.
Thankyou for your time ladies and gents,
I have plans for a next stage tactica but will see the response to this thread first.
Cheers (better get back to revising now)
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Subject: Potentially the most important way to win at fantasy! 
Tue Mar 09, 2010 4:33 am
