Thoughts on Way of...

Fritz over at Way of Saim Hain had an interesting article today about the nature of the change of the game into 50th edition. Go read it here. I will not regurgitate what he said.

Ok, back now? Good.

I think that what he says has some merit too it, but I think the play style that he is imagening simply isn't ready for 90% of the armies out there at the moment. We may be on the verge of a total battlefield environment, but I think those days are new on the vine.

I honestly hope that martie players don't read it and then go take some terminators (in deepstrike), scouts with a storm (outflank) scouts with sniper rifles (infiltrate) and put everything in reserve, and then can't understand why they got blasted off the table.

I like reserve, I think they are great, when you use your mind. A few of us were talking recently and often I feel that the game has been decided at set up. Think about that, that the game has already been decided after the first dice roll has been rolled, and your army is deployed, or not. Let me list two examples of, one that I heard about, and one I experienced. Let's make fun of myself first, that is always entertaining.

One of the first games that I played while playtesting my marines about six months ago was against Andy's guard list. Now few people have played against his guard concept (although we will be working on it in the next 6 months or so) but it is fairly... brutal (as most Andy lists are).

At any rate it was Sicarious, a drop dread, scouts in a storm, vangaurd with heroic intervention, some preds and tac marines and I think some terminators. I put all that I could in reserves, with the believ that I would rather deploy as close as possible, (as I knew andy would go first). However, when I did come on, it was haphazardly with 1/3 of my stuff because of the Master of the Fleet. 1/3 of my army fighting entrenched guard? Yea, I got tabled (imagine that!).


I watched two other lists try to fight against andy's list doing the same thing, and both times the same result, their army ended up back in thir carrying cases pretty quick.

Now, I played another varient of that some list last month I believe. My list was
a little more tooled but I didn't reserve anything. I knew that if I did, I would against be fighting 100% of his army with 33% of mine, or at best 50%. This time I left the scouts in the storm on the table and assaulted with them, and tore him up in shotting while advanced. Andy ended up conceding the game by round 2.

I think there are times to get tricky, there really are. Other times, you just have to bring the hammer.

Another game that I heard about was when Russ played Ryan Graham at the last tournament. Russ I (believe) went first, and set his storms up, and set up 12 inches in accross his entire board edge. Ryan set up in the corner. This is again another great example of hammering your opponent with 100% of your army, while they fight back with 50% of theirs. Any time you can do this (especially early on) it is devestating. Russ ended up trying to get to Ryan the entire game, while Ryan was just hammering his units with all that Vulcan goodness (tastes like chedder!). The game was over before the first dice were rolled because of deployment.

As a side note, a similar situation happened to be at the last tournament against Don's Orks. Grazgull + 3 battlewagons +60 orks = 27 inch charge of death against Tau. However in that situation Fritz was completely right. Instead of deploying my army and trying to duke it out with him, I would have been better served by Reserving everything, then coming on for side shots on armor 12 to the side and spreading out. Instead I deployed everything and got run off the table in round 3.

I think the multiple envelopement style works, but only against some opponents, some of the time.

There is no silver bullet but your brain.