The Five Pillars of Competitive Play in any Tabletop game (Part one) - Understanding Unit Roles

 

Grimdark Future

The Five Pillars of Competitive Play in any Tabletop game (Part one)

I used to be a very high level player in competitive 40k, but I've made the transition to Grimdark Future due to the poor state of 40k competitive play.  After playing many games, I've started putting down my thoughts on strategy to try and help those I play with, but I figured these would also help others in the community.  So, here is part one of my thoughts on playing wargames well and how it relates to Grimdark future.

Understanding Unit Roles:

              Each unit in Grimdark Future has a different set of stats and weapons, and so, in different situations will have a different effectiveness.  Firing AP0 shots into a 2+ Def unit is unlikely to ever do much and putting Deadly(6) shots into an infantry unit will only kill 1 model.  So much is obvious, but there are additional uses for units that are not as obvious.  Cheap units with lots of models can take up space on the board and can screen out ambushing units from getting onto your powerful, but vulnerable, units like vehicles or your objectives.  Additionally, there are very powerful weapons with only a 12” range (aka flamers), but if you put your unit within 12” of a melee unit, they are in danger of being charged. 

              Being able to look at a unit’s profile and determine its strengths and weaknesses, so you can position the unit appropriately, target the proper unit with a specific defensive profile with your offensive profile, bring the proper support for that unit, and know the potential moves your opponent will attempt with that unit, is an incredible asset and is likely one of the biggest pillars of competitive play.  This is quite hard to teach as it comes mostly from experience, but you can also train this ability on your own if you know the right tricks.  One method I’ll use is that I’ll pick out a unit from a roster and I’ll find the most similar unit and try to determine why I would use one of the units over the other.  I’ll come up with potential scenarios where one unit is better than another.  Then, when I see this unit in an opponent’s list, or I try to use it myself, I know the theoretical best uses for that unit (to counter or to use).  Obviously, this theoretical knowledge is worse that real-life experience, but it gives you a baseline to build from and improve.

              Here is an example.  In the battle brother’s roster, there are the following 2 melee focused units: Assault Brothers [5] (Pistols and CCW) for 140 points and Brother bikers [3] (Rifles, pistols, and CCW) with Tough(3) for 270 points.  Mentally, I’ll note that the bikers are about twice as expensive and so I’ll convert the Assault Brothers to 10 models.  This also gives 10 wounds to the biker’s 9 which is approximately the same.  Looking at shooting within 12” (18” threat range), the units are also very similar (9 shots to 10).  The bikers however have shooting at a 24” range (32” threat range) and so will be effective from turn 1, which is a point in favor.  However, the Assault brothers have vastly better melee (20 attacks to 9) and so will be more effective when melee opens up from T2/3 to T4 (depending on matchup).  So, if I were facing a battle brothers army, I’d focus down the bikers first on T1 before they activate as I know that’s when they are most effective and I’d focus down the assault brothers T2 or T3 before they activate before they “turn on”.  If this strategy works, then I cement it in my mind and if it doesn’t, I’ll edit my strategy for the next time.  On the other hand, if I'm using these units, I'll try to provide better targets in T1/2, so the assault brothers can survive to turn on later, or pay to upgrade them to ambush units if they are getting picked up before they can "work", and I'll activate my bikers before my opponent can blast them before they can be most effective or deploy them further back out of my opponent's range, knowing that fast can make up for that over the course of the game.

Let me know what you think.

-Camden