Beat the Shooter
A long time ago, one of the first tacticas I wrote for Warpstorm was one on how to beat a Shooty army. If you wish, you may take a look at it here. It has been a very long time since I wrote it. While most of the advice is still correct, there are some new developments that need consideration, and like most of my early tacticas, it could use additional depth.

You look across the board and see a massive array of heavy weapons or tanks, or a deployment zone bristling with gun barrels. You know that the enemy plan is to turn your units into a fine pink mist before they can get to grips with the enemy. Thankfully, you have a plan.

A shooting army is predicated on the idea of using ranged weapons to destroy the enemy. More specifically, they spend a lot of points on those ranged weapons, so they want to keep the enemy at range so they can use them. This means that one of their primary targets is your mobility relative to them. Classically, this means that they want to destroy your vehicles and fast-moving troops. It also means that they want their army to have some mobility so that if you get too close, they can move away and shoot you some more.

I will focus this article primarily on tips for assault or mixed armies, but the elements herein can also be used by shooting armies in shootouts with other shooting armies, to prevent it simply being a bloody war of attrition. These tips can help you weather the storm as you carry the fight to them. Many of these tips involve army composition, and thus must be incorporated in some way into a list as you are building it. Others are simply tactics that you can use with whatever force you have at hand. Obviously a force that is built to handle a shooting army _and_ is played with tactics to match will have the best result. On the other claw, in a tournament you take what you can get and do the best with what you have.

Stop the Shooting
The most important thing to do against a shooting army is to stop the shooting. There are several ways to stop the shooting. The first method is to attack their time.

Time. There are 6 turns in the game. If you give them all 6 turns to shoot at you, you will lose. The fewer turns of shooting they get, the better off your army will be. If you have fast elements to tie up their front lines, it will severely limit their continued shooting. Even better, if you mobilize much of your army to be on top of them in turn 2, you force them to give up valuable shooting time. If you are using fast elements, make sure that you either have enough of them to reach the targets, or that you can keep them hidden until they jump into combat. (Nobody is afraid of 10 Hormagaunts. Most people are afraid of 50 of them.) Units with fast movement types (12" charge, Flying, Fleet rule) are generally your best bet here, though fast vehicles can also be trouble for your opponent. If you can get a unit that has a fast movement type and a special setup rule (Infiltrate combined with 12" charge, for example) then you really have something to give them pause. Just make sure that you have enough to get to the lines and to hold whatever it hits for a full turn. If you hit their lines and die immediately, you've done nothing but throw away a unit.

Antivehicle firepower is the second method. Given that most vehicles can move and shoot, they have a huge advantage over Heavy Weapons squads. Many vehicles have substantial firepower as well. On the positive side for you, that means a single shot can take down a significant chunk of the enemy firepower. Provided, of course that your shot can damage the vehicle. While armies can often get by with a small amount of antivehicle shooting, bringing larger amounts gives you some significant advantages. For starters, you can quickly cripple a mechanized enemy army. As an example, take Armored Company, which is a very powerful shooty army. If you can't kill a tank every turn, you are in huge trouble. If you can kill 1 per turn, you can fight it out. If you can kill more than one tank per turn, you will almost certainly win the game. Each tank is a huge portion of the firepower available to an armored company list, and every loss or turn lost from being stunned makes a vast difference in how many Battle Cannon shells you suck down. In addition to taking out enemy firepower, you can also destroy the enemy's mobility. If you reduce their list to ground-pounders that can only move 6 and assault 6, they'll have a hard time running away from you as you get closer.

Destroyer units are the final method. Destroyer units are single-purpose units. They are usually small and have good movement in some way, either through natural speed, Deepstriking or other deployment adjustments such as Infiltrate or the Scout special rule. They take a lot of different forms, depending on what army they are part of, but they are fairly inexpensive and focus on killing one thing. They could be Tank Destroyers, such as a group of Scout Bikes with Meltabombs or a Deep-Striking Crisis Suit with Twin-linked Fusion Blaster and Plasma Gun. They could be Assault Destroyers such as a small group of Raveners with Rending Claws and Scything Talons or Rough Riders with Hunting Lances. They quickly move in on a specific target, and tear it to pieces. Since Destroyer units are typically unsupported, they are generally destroyed immediately after they accomplish their mission. If they were given a proper target, however, a single successful attack can make their sacrifice worthwhile. This might be in terms of direct points. (If a 130 point Scout Bike Squad takes out a 185 point tank, you are 55pts ahead.) However, sometimes the direct point comparison isn't so advantageous, but it performs a necessary role which makes it worthwhile. Let's say that Scout Bike squad hits an indirect-firing Basilisk costing 125 points. While you may be losing 5 points on the exchange when the Scout Bikers are taken out next turn, you've deprived your enemy of a powerful weapon early in the game, and it may be a weapon that you would have otherwise had a very hard time taking out. Those 5 points saved you from another 3-4 turns of shelling.

Minimize the Shooting
For those times when you can't completely stop the shooting, making it less effective is vital. The first method here is using terrain to your advantage.

Cover is your friend. Maneuver around it to prevent the enemy from shooting you as much. If there isn't enough cover for all of your units (there rarely is) you can put your more important or more vulnerable units behind the cover to protect them better. You can also be in cover to let it absorb some of that firepower. A Carnifex in Forest is 33% more durable against Lascannons and Plasma Rifles than if it was just standing out in the open. Use the terrain to dictate what the enemy has to shoot at, by putting your most vulnerable units behind cover and your less-durable units in cover to take advantage of the cover save. Then the enemy has to decide whether to shoot less effectively at the (presumably more important) units in cover or to shoot at whatever you've left out in the open. Cover is especially important before the first turn of the game. Many players will deploy so that if they win the roll for first turn, they'll have all their guns ready to fire on the enemy, or so that all their assaulters have good lanes to charge the enemy. When they win the roll, things generally go pretty well. It's when they lose the roll that everything goes sideways. If your units are exposed to enemy fire before they can move, you've given the enemy a big gift. Start behind or in cover to lessen the effects of that roll. Think of it this way. If you normally assault on turn 3, the enemy will be able to shoot you on turns one and two. If you won the roll, they won't get to shoot you on turn three. If you lost the roll, they will, making them about 1/3 more effective in terms of shooting your units before they get to combat. If you deploy so that you've minimized their shooting on turn 1, you will have cost them most of one turn's shooting. Friends don't let friends deploy in the open.

Cannon Fodder is another way of minimizing shooting. Present the enemy with a target that they have to shoot, but make it a lousy target. For example, 3 units of Obliterators can easily wipe a brood of 8 Spinegaunts from the board with a turn's shooting, but those Spinegaunts are only worth 40pts. If the Obliterators fired their Twin-linked Plasma guns at a Monstrous Creature instead, they'd cause up to 5 Wounds, which would be worth a lot more points. Left to their own devices, they will obviously pick the better target every time. That's where planning comes in. If the Monstrous Creature is in a forest, those Plasmas will be less useful. If the Gaunts are close enough to the Obliterators that they can charge next turn, the Obliterators have to decide whether to shoot a Monstrous Creature now and be trapped in close combat for a couple of turns, or if they need to clear out the Gaunts now so that they can keep shooting next turn. Suddenly those Gaunts become much more important to them. That's one way of using Cannon fodder. If they don't shoot your Cannon Fodder units, they'll get stuck in combat and maybe never get to use those guns anymore. A related method of using Cannon Fodder is to gum up the enemy units. If you have a large number of models get into enemy lines, most of the enemy units will be stuck like they were in tarpits. Once they are stuck, not only can they no longer shoot, but they can't reinforce other units, either. Any counter-assault that they have will be quickly mired as well. That allows you to bring your heavy hitters into play on a flank and take on one unit at a time with no fear of reprisals. Just take down one unit, consolidate into another and watch them have to sit there stuck in close combat while you romp through their lines.

High Toughness/Armor Save units are sort of the opposite end of the spectrum from Cannon Fodder. Instead of presenting the enemy with a lot of cheap little targets that don't matter much, you present the enemy with a line of hard-to-crack armor that they can't get through, or that wastes most of their fire. A squad of Space Marines with a Lascannon and Plasma gun firing on a Monstrous Creature basically wastes all the Bolter shots, since they only Wound on 6s and they don't get through the armor save. A heavy weapon team with 3 Heavy Bolters is murder on Space Marine Scouts, but it won't even scratch a unit of Terminators. Put something up front so that they have to deal with it, but make it really hard for them to get through. If you have a large number of these units, you will have a huge advantage against enemies that didn't bring enough of the right kind of weapon. A perfect example of this is the Tyranid Godzilla army. At 1500pts, it generally features around 6 or 7 Monstrous Creatures with 4 T6 wounds and a 3+ or 2+ armore save. Only antitank weapons have a good chance against them, and not everybody brings enough antitank guns.

Multiple Vehicles in an army are much like High Toughness/Armor Save units. Because you have a lot of them, you have a good chance of overloading the enemy capacity for antivehicle shooting. Again, you are basically rendering much of the enemy firepower useless.

Distractions are ways to keep the enemy from getting to pick what it wants to shoot. Much like the example of Gaunts versus Obliterators, you give them a target that they cannot afford to ignore, so that they don't get to shoot a more important unit. Extremely fast units are great for this, as they will be a threat quickly, even if they can't do much damage. Hormagaunts or Scuttling Gaunts are a great example here. Destroyer units are another one. If you deepstrike a Crisis suit in behind a tank, even if you don't manage to blow it up, you are forcing the enemy to react to that unit, when they might want to fire at a different one. All of the different movement and Deployment options are good examples here, provided you use them well. A Lictor appearing in the lines won't really do much damage, but it's very hard to ignore. Infiltrating Scouts with close combat weapons and a Sergeant with a powerfist are another example of something that the shooty army will have to pay attention to instead of your main line of troops or your Elite squads.

Control the targets
The final important thing to use against a Shooty army (which I have already touched on slightly in some of the other sections)is to control what targets they shoot, instead of letting them pick and choose. You can use range or Line Of Sight blocking to make sure they have to shoot at what you want them to shoot at. (For example, you may be able to use vehicles to block line of sight to the troops behind them.) If you concentrate on one flank of the enemy army, the opposite flank may find that most or all of it's weapons are out of range. If this is the case, you've now got most of your army against about half or 2/3 of theirs, which is a good advantage to have. In addition, If the enemy has a limited number of weapons that will effect the targets you give them, concentrate on those weapons. (In other words, if the enemy has a bunch of Heavy Bolters and some Lascannons, put the vehicles in front to block all those Heavy Bolters from having good targets, then concentrate any firepower or attacks that you have on the Lascannons that can threaten the vehicles.) In a further example of this, RedArmySOK suggested using differing armor values the same way. If you've got a line of Monstrous Creatures, some of which have a 3+ Save and some of which have a 2+ save, you take a look at whether the enemy has more AP3 or AP2. If they've got more AP3 firepower, put the 2+ Save models in front and concentrate your firepower on taking out the AP2 stuff which can damage you more easily. This way you are keeping them from shooting their ideal targets, thus rendering their shooting much less effective.

Putting it all together
Using a mixture of all of these options gives you a wider variety of ways to defeat a shooting army, and gives you more tactical options against other armies as well. So hide your important units, make everything fast and distract them with Destroyer units and Cannon Fodder, then use cover and differing armor values to protect your most important units and destroy their vehicles while you roll into their lines. Then shake their hand and tell them it was a good game!

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