Asydrazor - Mastering Battle Tactics Part One

Introduction

Welcome back! Apologies for the long delay since the last post, there have been many life events and Warhammer matches keeping me busy!

Today we're kicking off a new weekly column. The Asydrazor is the school where Akhelian warriors are trained in battle and leadership. On the blog each Asydrazor post will focus on mastering a specific aspect of the game with our Idoneth forces.

Today we're looking at Battle Tactics in the latest General's Handbook (GHB) and how to best accomplish them.

A quick note, I won't be talking about book tactics as in my opinion they should not be allowed at events.

The Importance of Battle Tactics

If you talk to any of the top players about this GHB there is one point they are all likely to agree on. Points are much, much harder to come by than they were and battle tactics are often the deciding factor.

Every battleplan, bar two, uses the score one, score two and score more system for primary objectives. Additionally, over half of these have four or more objectives. This means it's easier than ever before for both players to score maximum points on the primary objectives, even if the overall battle isn't going in their favour.

Even where options for bonus points exist, these may be avoided by TOs or comped out (Mighty and Cunning) or are difficult to score until the late game (such as head on collision).

Therefore, the difference in outcome will often come down to who has scored the most battle tactics and grand strategy (more on this soon).

Active Vs Passive Battle Tactics

I'm not sure if there is an existing term to describe the core differences, but there are two categories of battle tactic.

The first are active, they require you to engage with your opponents army and do something to them in order to score. For example, An Eye for an Eye requires you to kill an enemy unit.

The second are passive, these do not require you to actively engage your opponent and can be scored whether your opponent has models on the table or not. They generally ask you to interact with the board itself instead, such as Desecrate their Lands.

There are two principles to bear in mind 1) You can always score passive battle tactics in every game, regardless of your opponents list or models they have on the table. 2) Passive battle tactics are less likely to rely on chance.

We can illustrate this with two scenarios.

1) In your hero phase you see a terrain feature in your opponents territory. You measure the distance between your Thralls and the terrain feature. You know that you can get a model within 3 inches. You know you can do this without going within 9 inches of the enemy (so no redploy) and you know your opponent has no models within 3 inches. Therefore, you know there is a 100% chance of scoring Desecrate your Lands before you pick.

2) Your opponent has four chaos warriors. You know they have a 4+ save, which at best can be a 3+ with all out defense. You know you need to do 4 wounds. On average, your Akhelian King will deal easily enough damage to kill this unit. However, there are still several risks. Your opponent might roll a 6 on their redploy making a 3 inch charge into a 9 inche charge. You might roll double 1s on your charge. Your king might miss all his attacks and so on. Whilst these may not be likely outcomes, you can never have a certainly of scoring a battle tactic that relies on interactions like this.

This doesn't mean active battle tactics are bad, or they should be avoided, but it's important to understand the difference, the risks and what you can do to minimise them. For instance, making sure you have a CP to reroll the charge or that if the chaos warriors do redploy you can still kill a different unit.

Refining Active Battle Tactics

We can further separate down active battle tactics into those which require specific lists Vs those which are universal.

Head to Head can only be scored if both you and your opponents have Galletian tin your armies. If you are running a pure Akhelian army, you'll never be able to score this. At the same time, neither will your opponent.

An Eye for an Eye can be scored regardless of lists, but still requires that your opponent killed a unit in the previous turn. So you might not be able to score this, for instance on a double turn where you didn't lose a unit in your own turn.

Gaining Momentum can be scored on any turn regardless of your opponents list, but does require a specific unit to be picked to kill.

Putting it all together

When we take all this together we can rank the battle tactics from those which require the least specific a scenario to those which require the most. Note, this is not the same as what should be picked or what order you should go in. Only the general principles to consider regarding scoring before you hit the table.

S Tier

Against the Odds - Passive / Universal

As long as you have a single unit on the field and can control an objective you can score this. It's often the turn one pick when it isn't possible to score anything else. As a note, you can score this on the Prize of Gallet even if an objective isn't active for scoring. However, you can't score it if Deadly Denizens applies.

Desecrate their Lands - Passive / Universal

Again, this can be scored with a single unit. It's slightly harder than against the odds in that you need to get into the opponents territory. On some plans this is very simple, but on others it can mean getting to the far board edge.

Barge Through Enemy Lines - Passive / Universal

The hardest of the passive tactics as it requires two units. Notable for the fact it awards an extra point for Galletian Veterans, the only Battle Tactic offering a bonus.

A Tier

An Eye for An Eye - Active / Universal

Unless you completely obliterate your opponent, you will lose a unit at some point. You are also likely to be able to kill at least one of your opponents units if you need to do so.

B Tier

This One's Mine! - Active / Universal

The ease of this varies based on the model you choose to be your general. However, should be achievable for most IDK lists who use a King. Pick a unit you want to kill and know you can then smack it off the table with your big fighty leader.

Gaining Momentum - Active / Universal

This is harder in that you need to be able to have dominance over the primaries and kill a specific unit in a turn. Picking a specific unit means your opponent will know to invest in keeping them alive. For instance, with all out defense or finest hour.

C Tier

Outmuscle

Kill an enemy Galletian Veterans unit on a proving ground. Hard to achieve as you need your opponent to have Galletian Veterans, for the proving ground to be in a favourable position and to be able to kill that unit. Likely to only be picked if you've deliberately set this up and are going second.

Head to Head

Requires both you and your opponent to have Galletian Veterans and for you to kill their Galletian Veterans with your own. The most specific scenario.

Priority Calls

You can conclude that you should always be able to score the three passive tactics in your games. They can be scored even if you table your opponent on turn one and even if you are losing on the primary objectives.

You therefore need to plan to score two other battle tactics in your games.

In most cases one of these will be an eye for an eye. This is especially good if you lose a screen and can strike back into a valuable unit you wanted to kill anyway. Be aware that against elite armies this may be harder. It can be worth deliberately leaving an opponents easy to kill unit alive until you can score this in such games.

If you are doing so well that you aren't losing any units. First of all, well done! Secondly, replace this with Gaining Momentum as you should have board control and the ability to wipe out your opponents units in such a game.

This gives us one more we need to score from the last four.

Outmuscle is a really good pick if the opportunity does come up. You can often set this up by forcing an opponent to score a primary using their Galletian Veterans and then kill them in return.

Head to Head and This One's Mine are best picked reactively when the opportunity comes up. For instance, is your smash king going into a cluster of support heroes with low wounds and saves? Pick this One's Mine. Do you have a block of 30 Reavers that is only going to be in range of a screen? Head to Head.

The Golden Rule

The golden rule is to save your passive battle tactics for when you can't score anything else. If you are confident you can score something harder, then pick that first.

The one exception is if the scenario is favourable for getting the extra point from Barge Through Enemy Lines. By favourable I mean you know you can do it, and you also want to do so for your wider game plan. For instance, teleporting two units of Tree Revs into your opponents territory to capture an objective and score Barge Through.

Looking Ahead

Come back next week when we'll be talking about building IDK lists that are designed to score battle tactics!