It's Crunch Time!
The Fourth Edition of Warhammer 40k has made shooting more effective, but assault is still a very powerful element. The fact that there are two assault phases for every shooting phase and that a minor victory in an assault can result in a massacre of the losers makes sure that assault is a very viable choice for winning games. There are a number of armies that specialize in assault and a number of players that do as well. With that in mind, it would behoove you to be prepared to repel an assault. Alternately, if you play an assault army, it would be likewise worth your time to understand better the pitfalls you may encounter on your way to turn your enemies heads into trophies. It has been a long time since I wrote the original article, and there have been a number of rules changes along the way, in addition to my improved knowledge and experience. Should you wish to read the original, check here. (Quick note: the picture below is not mine and is used without permission. You can find more pictures and information at http://panzar.com/)

Assault Styles
There are a lot of armies in Warhammer 40k that can assault fairly well, and there are a variety of ways to do it. Most of those ways can be broken down into three groups, Mechanized Assault, Fast Assault and Mob assault. As each one has important distinctions that let it perform well in assault, I'll discuss them separately. There is more difference between a Mob Assault Ork army and a Speed Freek Ork army than there is between a Space Marine Rhino Rush and those Speed Freeks.

Mechanized Assault armies rely on vehicles to transport their units into combat. (Some examples would be Speed Freek Orks, Dark Eldar in Raiders, as well as the familiar Space Marine Rhino Rush.) Mechanized armies tend to be based around more elite troops and equipment, and use the transports to protect their cargo from small arms fire. On the other hand, they are vulnerable to antitank weaponry, as transports generally don't have the same amount of protection as full tanks do. They tend to make up for this vulnerability through redundancy. Taking one transport isn't particularly effective. Taking 5 almost guarantees that a few will get through to unload their cargo. If you disable enough transports, though, the Mechanized army will be split up and in a lot of trouble. One of the goals of the game developers for 4th edition was to make the Rhino Rush less powerful, and they have by making it impossible to disembark and assault in the same turn from most closed-topped vehicles. Although the Rhino rush has changed a bit, it is certainly not dead, just a little slower than before. There are basically now two kinds of Rhino rush available. Either they get out behind the Rhinos and wait for a turn before charging, or they jump out and Rapid Fire into the lead elements of the enemy army, planning on charging next turn. Finally, there is the hybrid mechanized army that uses fast elements (such as Assault Marines or Terminators in a Land Raider or other vehicle that can disembark and charge on the same turn) to engage the front lines of the enemy while the assaulters in regular vehicles (Space Marines in Rhinos, for example) get set up to charge on the next turn.

Fast Assault armies use speed to engage the enemy, but they don't rely on vehicles for speed. They are less vulnerable to the anti-vehicle weapons that will stop a Mechanized assault army, but the lack of vehicles does make them more prone to injury from light weapons and templates of all kinds. Units in this type of army generally emphasize speed and mobility over power, meaning that they aren’t necessarily much better than most basic troops when it comes to combat, but their speed and the fact that several units can gang up on a single enemy tends to make up for it. Although it is theoretically possible for an entire army to be made up of fast elements, typically it has some fast elements and some slower ones. The fast elements (Assault Marines, Hormagaunts, etc.) move up to engage the enemy quickly and block a lot of the Line of Sight to the slower units, allowing them to get into combat more or less unscathed. This type of army will typically not do a lot of damage on their first impact, since the fast elements don't generally have either enough damage capacity or enough numbers to inflict major casualties. The fast elements are primarily there to lock up the enemy army (or at least the lead elements of it) in close combat to keep it from reacting to or damaging the rest of the army.

Mob Assault armies use sheer weight of numbers as their primary power. They move across the table slowly, ignoring casualties either through massive numbers or good armor/Toughness. The most stereotypical examples of these armies would be Orks and Tyranids, though other armies can use this method effectively as well. There are two things that weigh against them all, however. Time is their first enemy. Every turn they spend walking across the board is one turn less that they have to do their damage to you and one turn more you have to shoot them. In addition, not all units are created the same. This kind of assault army in particular generally relies on a few powerful units to do most of their damage, meaning that if you can eliminate or neutralize those units, you will be in good shape. Mob assault armies will generally use some means of keeping their more powerful elements protected during the initial assault, and use their vast amounts of basic, cheap fodder troops to absorb casualties, then tarpit as much of the enemy lines as possible. This will usually allow the more powerful assaulting units to concentrate their force on one or two units at a time.

Anti-Assault Tactics and tips
There are a number of ways to stop or slow down an assault, or make it less effective when it arrives. All the different kinds of assault armies are vulnerable to these tactics, but they differ in how they are vulnerable.

Set it Up
The first way is to set up a split deployment. When deploying your forces, group them into two firebases on the far ends of your deployment zone with a long killing ground between them. This forces the assault army into a Hobson's choice. (Both choices are bad.) They can split up their army into two groups, trying to attack both firebases at the same time. Alternately, they can try to wipe out one side first and then the other. If they choose to split their attack, pick a side. This side is the sacrifice side. The sacrifice side will use any firepower it has that can reach the other side of the board to target the enemy heading for the other side, essentially ignoring the enemy coming at the sacrifice side. With the firepower of both firebases attacking 1/2 of the enemy army, you should be able to put that side of the army down fairly easily. Then, as the enemy is closing with and wiping out the sacrifice side, shift your fire to target any transports and fast moving units on the sacrifice side. Once they finish off the sacrifice side, they should have at least two turns of your shooting to wade through to get to your surviving firebase, and you should have wiped out all their transports and fast-moving units. If they choose to have the entire army attack one Firebase, both firebases target their transports and fast-moving units. The enemy army will reach your lines, and as it is larger than the split force above, it will plow through them pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you've knocked out their transports and fast movers, they'll still have a hard time getting to you and probably won't even make it their before the game is over. (Note that this is a perfect lead-in to the concept of Attacking their Time!)

Attack their Time
The assault army has to get all of it’s work done in a short amount of time. If it takes 3 turns to get into combat, the army is left with only 3 turns (5-6 assault phases) in a typical six-turn game to do all the damage it needs to win. The more you can add to the time it takes them to get into contact, the less damage they can do to you. Knocking out their transports or fast moving units is vital to this tactic. You can use terrain to slow them down by funneling them through small passages or having difficult ground between your armies. Wall units can be good here as well, but I’ll discuss them fully below. Simply moving your units out of charge range can be a useful device as well, even without firing on the enemy, you have prevented them from engaging your forces for another turn. (Note that this is a major argument against Assault Carnifexes. They may be powerful and hard to kill, but they won't reach the enemy until turn 4 even in good situations, and the enemy can simply back away from them for a turn or two, which puts them into combat about turn 5 or 6. Good luck getting those points back!) Another great way to attack time is to use their shooting against them! If the assault army shoots at your troops, remove the models closest to the assault if at all possible. The few inches gained by this can take the unit out of assault range on that turn, giving you one more turn to blast the enemy, and taking one turn of his time away. (I did this one time with my Genestealers against some Berzerkers. They fired their Bolt pistols before charging to reduce the number of Rending attacks they'd take before striking, and I simply pulled the casualties from those closest to the Berzerkers. Afterward, they were about 7" away and couldn't charge. My Genestealers made good use of getting the bonus charge attacks instead!)

Shoot Them
When shooting at an assault army, simply blazing away at anything that moves is usually ineffective. Most assault armies are good at getting into your front lines quickly and cutting down the time you have to shoot at them, meaning that you won’t usually be able to wipe all of them out before they get there. The key here is target priority, figuring out what you really need to kill first. Transports or anything that gets them to you faster are usually the highest priority, since a few transport losses can divide the army for you, while losing most of the transports will give you an extra turn or two to kill more stuff or maneuver where you want. Look for key units and models as well. These are the ones that do most of the damage to your army. That Space Marine Assault squad with the jump packs looks menacing, but if you are in good armor, only the guy with the power weapon will really do much damage, so gang up on him when possible, or try to target his squad with enough Wounds that you can force him specifically to make an armor save (often referred to as Torrent of Fire or "Die Mr. Lascannon, die!") That unit of Dark Eldar Incubi can unload a world of hurt, so you might want to ignore the Warrior squads with Dark Lances in favor of taking down the Incubi. Not all units are created equal, and every shot you spend on killing things that won’t do much damage is a shot that might have won you the game. Fire Discipline is when you have created your target priority list, but then you find a tempting target or a unit that is about to be overrun, but it's not at the top of the list. You have to make yourself stick to your list ruthlessly. You may be sacrificing that unit, but if that helps keep the rest of your army whole, it'll have been worth it. Don't give up your strategy for a few quick Victory Points, either.

Teamwork
If you have a plan ahead of time for how you will use your units together, it helps tremendously. In addition to simply shooting, there are a number of highly useful tasks that units can accomplish for you in a game against an Assault army. Typically, it helps to have several squads working together, so that one successful task can be capitalized on by another squad to make it even more effective. The units we'll be discussing here are Pickets, Walls and Counterchargers.

Picket units set up in the forefront of your army. Sometimes you want to get the assault army to charge a particular unit. Maybe that unit is a Wall unit, so you can tie them up for a while, maybe you’ve got some counter charge units waiting nearby to lend a hand, or maybe you want to keep a different unit from getting charged. You might be able to pull faster units further away from the rest of the assault army, allowing you to defeat the army piece by piece. You might even decide to sacrifice the unit to allow you to fire on the enemy unit in question. Picket units will be a little forward of your main lines, making them tempting targets for the enemy. If you are planning on sacrificing them so that the rest of your army can shoot when they die, make sure that they are at least 4” away from the next unit, since otherwise the enemy might try consolidating into the next unit when they win the combat. One key to this plan, however, is making sure that your picket unit loses during the enemy assault phase (ie: right before your turn, not his!) so that you can actually shoot! You may need to reinforce your picket squad if it looks like they will lose in your turn. As a final note on Picket units, remember that they can charge too, but should only do so if it will prevent the enemy from taking more movement than they would get in their next turn. Also remember that a Picket unit that charges will have to survive 3 assault phases to be useful instead of just 1.

Wall Units are units that will slow down or stop an enemy assault. They may do this by being very difficult to damage (Dreadnaught, Wraithguard) or difficult to wipe out (large Guardian squads, ‘uge Ork mobz, Spinegaunts) but either way, they help to keep the enemy contained. Even if the enemy can kill off those 20 Guardians in 3-4 assault phases, that’s more time you have to move out of the way and prepare for their charge, or just shoot the rest of the army.

Don't lose your head
The important thing is keep your wits about you and choose what you are going to do, rather than panicking and simply reacting to the enemy. They have to come to you, so you already know where they are going and you know what they need to do to get there. Disrupt their plans and send them back to Khorne with only apologies. He really, really hates that!

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