Deploy, Boss, Deploy!
Recently there was a discussion on Warpshadow about the benefits of the Weighted Flank Deployment. A poster felt that it was being given as the only deployment tactic to ever use and touted as a silver bullet that would always be the most useful way to deploy. It is correct that other types of deployment are useful, and that Weighted Flank is certainly not the only option out there. On the other hand, I think of it more as a good starting point for people that are unfamiliar with anything but the Balanced Line setup. Not the silver bullet, but the gateway to other deployment tactics. Most players have only ever heard of the Balanced Line and Weighted Flank is a great way to introduce them to thinking about how they deploy and why they might want to do different things. That being said, let's take a look at the Balanced Line deployment, then we'll work our way through Weighted Flank and a few other deployment tactics.

Balanced Line
This is sort of the default deployment strategy. Spread everything more or less evenly across the board. It's what most players do almost by reflex. Many of them do it without understanding why, however. A Balanced Line gives a lot of flexibility to respond to the enemy's deployment and also his movement as the battle progresses. It also allows for grabbing multiple objectives at the same time. In addition, centrally deploying strong units allows them the greatest possible sphere of influence (the area of the battlefield that they can immediately threaten) and can make it difficult if not impossible for the enemy to simply avoid them. The disadvantage of a balanced line is that it spreads your army more or less across the board equally. This makes it more difficult to concentrate your firepower or your assault power.

Weighted Flank
A Weighted Flank deployment means you have more or better units on one flank than the other. This allows a concentration of firepower or assault power in one area, giving you local superiority. Ideally, you will end up with almost your entire army against about half of theirs. This will give you a quick victory over that half, leaving more of your army around to hit their other half. A variation on the Weighted Flank is to have your fast units on one flank and your slower units on the other. One reason to do this is so that your fast stuff hits first and starts (hopefully) winning combats. By the time the slower center and flank arrive, the fast units should have finished up their combats and are then free to begin charging into the side or rear of enemy units just as your slower units engage their front. This basically turns your "weighted flank" into an Oblique Line (see below.)

The Refused Flank is an extreme version of the weighted flank. In the Refused Flank formation, you don't put anything down on the weak side of your deployment. This allows an even heavier concentration of firepower or assault power, but it also allows a greater possibility of being flanked. Even though 40k units don't have sides and aren't vulnerable to simply being attacked from the side or rear, having an open flank allows for multiple units to hit a single unit of yours. This is usually a recipe for the single unit being defeated handily. Anchoring your open flank with impassable terrain can be very helpful here. (Make sure it is impassable, remember the German army in World War II advancing through the forest around the heavily fortified Maginot line!) Alternately, you might make your flank unit either extremely dangerous or a tarpit unit to tie down enemy units that try to flank your line.

Empty Center
Just what it says on the tin. Put units on both flanks, but leave the middle open. Offensively, this is a pincer maneuver where your forces go up the sides (often being able to take advantage of better cover) and fight through the enemy flanks. An advantage of this on the approach is that the sides of the board often feature better terrain than the center and it limits the number of enemy units that can fire on you. (This is partially due to line of sight being potentially blocked by terrain, as well as range issues and the fact that you don't have to worry about being shot from the board edge, since there generally won't be enemy units there!) Once you reach their lines, their own units will start getting in the way of their reinforcements, making it easier for you to hammer their lines. Defensively this is a split deployment. With a split deployment, you force the enemy into either splitting up to hit both sides of your force (in which case you use as much overlapping fire from one side as possible to wipe out that section of the enemy army, then you damage the other side as it takes on your "sacrifice" side and slogs across the killing zone to try to reach you.) or into putting all the enemy units into attacking one side, in which case, you again get more time to shoot at them as they go down one board edge, then across the length of the board. A defensive version of this only works if you have good long-range firepower so that your sides can support each other.

Oblique Line
This involves advancing your army (or simply placing it) in a diagonal line that allows each unit to support the next unit in the chain. One or more fast counterassault units are often placed behind the angled line to provide additional counterassault and protection against the line being flanked. It offers some advantages over the balanced line in that it concentrates firepower on the inside of the line. In addition, any attempt at breaking the line will be met with a heavy counterassault, as the units are set in supporting distance of each other.

The Sicilian Dragon (named after a chess opening) is a variation on the standard Oblique Line. The firebase is located on the outside of the line. This forces any enemy units that come toward the firebase to run a gauntlet of most of your army. Otherwise the setup is much like the Oblique Line and it has the same strengths.

Homework
Now, with your new understanding of deployment tactics, go experiment a bit. Try setting up in an Oblique Line or a Refused Flank. See what units make the most sense to place in different areas and how the different deployment tactics change your options. You don't even need an opponent for this. Simply practice deploying your army in different ways to see how it changes!

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