The Full Stop - Deployment

Hello and welcome back to The Art of Caesura! 

This week I'm going to do something that I've never done on the blog before: discuss tactics!

My decades in this wonderful hobby have very much revolved around painting and modelling. But in the past year or so (since our FLGS, The Guildhall opened) I have been playing more and more games of Warhammer 40k. Now with the league having started, I'm playing a game every three weeks or so! I've never played so much Warhammer in my life!

I'm really approaching my games with a mindset for learning and improvement. From having started the league as an absolute noob who had never played a 2000 point game before, I would like to come out of the league as a half decent player; a real challenge for my opponent. And, it's not for any other reason than I'm really enjoying the game!

Having listened to tons of 40k strategy podcasts and YouTube videos (something I had never done pre-league) most experts recognize three areas in which you can pretty much lose the game almost before it's even started: 1) List Building, 2) Deployment, and 3) Turn 1 + 2 Movement. 

Today we're looking at deployment and in later posts maybe we'll look at the other two.

Deployment has been near and dear to my heart of late, because in my league game with Robin a few weeks ago, his feedback was that, while I actually played fairly well, and made him make difficult decisions at times (remember, this is coming from someone who has played hundreds of games of 10th edition) my deployment really set me up for failure. You can't win the game in deployment, but you sure can lose the game! You can check out my thoughts on that game here. 

So, I am obviously not going to be able to cover every deployment situation in this post, I will be talking about some of the broader concepts around smart deployment. And take everything I say with a grain of salt, I am learning all of these things myself. 

General Principles

Know the mission: How are you going to score primary / secondary points? Almost all of the mission objectives involve board-control, so you can't win just by killing your opponent or just by not getting killed yourself. In some missions the objectives will move or disappear later in the game, sometimes your home objective is vitally important (Linchpin) other times it doesn't matter (Supply Drop), you need to deploy your army in such a way to take advantage of this. 

Study the map layout: This one will sound super nerdy but for my last game (which I have not posted on the blog yet), I really wanted to improve my deployment so I printed out a map of the terrain layout, with deployment zones and I literally drew lines across the page showing where the firing lanes were. This exercise really helped me to figure out the areas that were truly safe to deploy (and thus likely where I should deploy the units that I absolutely do not want to get sniped (shot or charged) first turn if I ended up going second (for me, that's my transports). I know I could have done this digitally, but this was easier for me and I actually brought it into my match with me and referenced it for deployment. 

In addition to being aware of firing lanes and safe-zones, it's also important to recognize staging areas. These are areas that are at least somewhat defendable and which will be great areas from which to put pressure on your opponent (so they're often somewhere in no man's land). Because the tournament maps are symmetrical, it's helpful that once you've identified staging areas that benefit your army, you can also see the one which your opponent will be able to capitolise on and thus you may be able to anticipate (and pre-emptively scupper) their plans. 

Deploy as if going second: Position your most valuable units out of the opponent's potential first-turn firing lanes to avoid early casualties. In addition to this - and this is the most important thing that I am still struggling with - it is vital to acknowledge that the way you see your opponent's army displayed in front of you in the deployment phase is NOT what they will look like when your first turn rolls around. In between deployment and you being able to interact with your opponent's army, there may be scout moves (suddenly that unit which looked like it was right out in the open has ducked behind cover when my opponent realized they would not get first turn), or if you find out your opponent gets to go first, the whole board state will be completely different. For this reason it is not a great idea to solely deploy reactively to how your opponent deploys. 

Understand unit roles: Identify units for holding objectives, completing actions, screening, scoring, and dealing damage to optimize placement. And unit roles are not always obvious; Gladiator Lancers, for example, are there not just to blow enemy armour away, but to create "no go zones" for your opponent to make them think twice about moving into firing lanes. With this mentality, even if your Gladiator doesn't destroy anything all game, it may still have served its role if it forced your opponent to move sub-optimally and be overly cautious in ways they would otherwise not want to be. 

Analyse Opponent's List: This is the "yang" to the point above's "yin", as well as understanding the roles of your list, you need to have some idea of what their models do: does your opponent have units which will threaten you and punish your movement etc.

Use terrain: Hide units behind terrain features to protect them from line of sight and influence enemy movement. This is just an extrapolation on "Study the map layout" above. 

Plan your turns: Think about your turn one and two movements during deployment to ensure your units can achieve their goals. This is something that I am still working on. This is the time to grab your tape measure: you can measure enemy threat ranges (the distance of their movement + shooting or move + advance + charge if they can advance and charge). You can measure the distance from your models to the objectives or to important staging areas to plan how many turns it will take you to get there and where you're going to hide en route. 

Practice deployments: Mock deployments on various maps with a practice partner can help identify mistakes and refine deployment strategies. I have not done this yet, but if/when I ever get on to Table Top Simulator, that will be the perfect platform for this. Until then, I will continue to print off pictures of the maps and bust out my markers to draw stuff on!

Now, having looked at some of my general thoughts about deployment, let's consider, for a few minutes, the implications of deploying first or second (which is randomly decided by a dice-roll). 

First vs. Second Drop (Deployment Order)

 

First drop advantages: Claims board space and prevents the opponent from establishing a foothold, especially against armies with scouting units.

First drop disadvantages: Gives the opponent valuable information to respond to your deployment and can provide their elite units with a unit advantage. To mitigate this, I like to deploy my units from least to most important - but if you are doing this, it is absolutely essential that you ensure that you leave adequate space for your important units (a RepEx sized hole in your deployment zone).

Second drop advantages: Allows you to gather information from the opponent's deployment, adjust your own placement (though, as I mentioned before, don't be overly reactive to your opponent's deployment, as much will change before you get to interact), and respond more effectively. This is particularly useful if you have infiltrators that can gain an advantage on your turn.

Consider Infiltrators: If your opponent lacks infiltrators, taking the second drop to get information is often beneficial.

Let us now consider a few more tips and tricks with deployment.

Strategic Placement Considerations

Objectives: Deploy objective-holding units strategically, considering the possibility of resurrecting models or using screening units to contest objectives. See if you can deploy behind cover and still hold the objective.

Screening: Use screening units and infiltrators to block enemy movement and for zoning out the back lines to prevent enemies entering from reserves / deepstrike. 

Baiting: Place a unit where your opponent will want to use their limited activations, to bait them into a bad position where you can counter-attack. It can even be a valid strategy to bait with a kind of important unit of your own if it means you will kill a unit that is crucial to your opponent. 

Staging Units: For aggressive armies, stage fast-moving units safely to launch a decisive attack on your first turn, rather than deploying them aggressively and risking early losses. 

Reserves: Incorporate strategic reserves and deep strike into your deployment plan for flexible deployment and surprise attacks. 

Thank you for joining me for this deep dive into Deployment, I know it was quite text-heavy so thank you for making this far and I hope it will be a useful resource for you (and me!) in the future!

See you next week on The Art of Caesura!

Reading: Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

Watching: Traitors - UK Celebrities

Next Week:

League game 3...