Goatboy's article about army lists

This is from Bell of Lost Souls yesterday. This is a really great article about army building, especially if you are new to the game.

http://belloflostsouls.blogspot.com/2009/01/goatboys-40k-thoughts-for-week-you-must.html

I quoted a lot of it here, but you should click the link and check out the rest.

"The biggest thing I see with most army lists, is a lack of concentration and overall focus. Units are placed within the list, without any kind of backup, or redundancy to ensure that they get their job done. An example is playing one dreadnought, with your only real heavy weapon, and hoping that he just gets the job done versus the 3 Land Raiders you see across the table. If you need something to work reliably for you, and the rest of your army depends on it, take more then one if you can.

A good example of this is the chaos power “Lash of Submission”. There are so many factors that the power relies on to work. Dice roll to see if it goes off, a dice roll to see how far you move it. Those two factors can really hurt you, especially when you need at least one a turn to go off to help push your army into the win. When you are running a lash list, you need to run two to guarantee one going off per turn, in order to make sure the odds roll in your favor.

There are other examples from different armies too. Let’s say you need to at least get three shots off of your Defiler versus that Ork nobz army you always see at the top table. If you are just bringing one to the game, then you are just waiting for that to get shot up to pieces by the lootas sitting in the back. If you are bringing 3, then you know you can most likely survive enough to get 3 shots in the game, plus if you go first, you can concentrate one on the lootas to get rid of their annoying shooting. This is also the same with vindicators, melta guns (only taking 1 in an army is just a disaster versus all the mechanized lists you see running around), and other units that need to create a distinct advantage for your army quickly, in order to be effective.

This is especially evident when you are dealing with a unit that can be very fragile (IE vehicles). Any unit that can be destroyed with one shot needs to have more backup to be effective. Yes I know one shot from the battle cannon can turn the game, but you need to make sure you get a chance to make that shot. Vehicles are the greatest example of this, but other multiple model units can also have the same effect. Anything that has a high damage potential, will get a ton of attention from your opponent. The only way to counter this attention is to either have more then he can shoot out in a turn, or have an army built of things that pull his attention away.

There are only a few units in the game, that are ok to use singly. Nob bikerz are an extremely survivable unit that can also generate a large advantage, as well as get its points back pretty quickly. It is also the same with Thunder Hammer Terminators. They have a low invulnerable save, mixed in with large damage potential really help make up the extra points they cost over other units. These units can survive multiple turns of opponent attention and thus can be a great addition to one’s army lists."

Solid article. Redundancy is the name of the game, although I prefer the "throw a bunch of stuff in and hope it comes out ok" method. This leaves me with an army that isn't very focused, but works ok because I generally hack out a battle plan on the fly based on terrain/opponent anyways.

I don't know if I completely agree with the redundancy thing. I mean, it's an overall good idea, but my philosophy is to throw out at least 4 things that, even though they may be different units/models, that if one is taken out, my opponent still has to worry about 3 other things. For instance, I only run 1 dread, but I group it with my 2 trukks carrying orks. Also, I have a battlewagon and a nob biker group. If my opponent concentrates on one thing, I've got three other things that will be able to be freed up. I guess it's about the same thing, but I just don't use duplicates of most units to accomplish it....

I think redundancy is a good way to win 40k.... but it does lead to lots of army lists looking very similar in tournaments (ork horde, nob biker, nidzilla, and so on.)

It works though!

..yeah, my lists are pretty copy/paste

I don't think redundancy per se is exactly the best word, but I do see lots of new players running one drop pod full of badasses and then just a bunch of tac squads, or nothing but 1500 pts of foot slogging berserkers and Kharne, or my personal favorite: two raiders full of incubi & wytches and an entire army of dark eldar warriors with no transports (that one made me scratch my head).

You just don't want one unit to be the only unit that can do ______.

Addd dark lances tothe Dark eldar wariors and you hav some heavy shooting. And never under estimate what 40 berserkers can do to an army.

You know, as much as I like the whole blood for the blood god thing, I'm not a berserker fan. I've never played a game where they accomplished much.

12 dark lances would be good. I've never seen anybody do it though. Raider rush requires most of the same models and is probably so much better that it just doesn't make sense.