In Case of Emergency, Break Glass
Sometimes our worst fears are realized. We run into a type of army we didn't plan for, a mission we aren't prepared to fight, or simply a circumstance that throws our army plans for a loop. We are talking about a disaster. Much like earthquakes and hurricanes, 40k disasters are much easier on you if you plan ahead and prepare yourself. As an example of this concept, I remember reading about a Dark Eldar player online. The army he is building has both of the characters that give you a bonus to take (or seize) the initiative, meaning he's got roughly a 5/6 chance of going first. His army is primarily built around this concept, and it looks really nasty. However, in his test games, he is choosing the second turn, for that 1 in 6 games where the dice make him go second and don't let him seize the initiative. If you plan for the worst case scenario, anything less will seem like a walk in the park. And if that worst case does come about, you'll know what you need to do to mitigate it.

If we base our army on the concept of lots of heavy antitank guns to crush enemy vehicles and heavy infantry, we will end up in a lot of trouble if the opponent brings only cheap infantry. (When I went to the Seattle GT many moons ago, I used a very fast Tyranid army with lots of hormagaunts and few big targets. One of my opponents took one look at my swarm and wailed, "And to think I brought Lascannons and Plasma!"

Maybe it's an objective mission and you have only the minimum troops and your opponent has six full squads. Alternately, maybe you end up playing a kill point mission and your army has 15 kill points while your opponent only has 5. Because of the focus of your army, you may be at a severe disadvantage here.

A very simple example of a circumstance that turns into a disaster is when you design an army as a glass cannon (lots of damage potential, but very fragile) and plan on getting first turn, but you end up going second. In a single roll of the dice, your army may well be doomed.

Most of these disasters can be avoided, or at least very heavily mitigated by simply planning a little more when you are putting together your army. I've written about the subject of preparing your army for a variety of threats and situations before, and I think I'll probably write some more about it soon. This article, however, is not about that. This article is about what happens when you've already got your army chosen and are ready to go when the hammer falls.

If Dreachon brings all of his Carnifi, you might wonder if you have enough bullets.

Identify and Protect the Important Units
Recognize what units you have that you absolutely need, and use everything else to keep them working as long as possible. What units will be vital to you if the opponent brings 3 LandRaiders? What units will be useless? Once you have decided what you desperately need to keep, you can use the plans outlined in the Alternate usage section to keep them alive by using your now-expendable units to keep them working for just a little bit longer.

Alternate Usage
Sometimes the disaster will render some of your units ineffective or completely useless. (If they have a bunch of tanks, your anti-infantry weapons will be useless until you can pry them out of their armor. If they only brought a horde of cheap units, those antitank weapons you brought will be worthless.) If you have units that are useless in their intended role, you might as well use them for something else. Even if they completely suck at their new role, it's still better than nothing. Incidentally, and I may well write a separate article about this, alternate usage is an excellent way to get good use out of a unit that is generally regarded as being crap. That's what I did with my Lictors in my 3rd edition Genestealer army. Their combination of improved cover save and sudden appearance close to the enemy made them very effective bullet shields for my Genestealers. If the enemy shot them, the Genestealers would get into combat. If the enemy shot the Genestealers, the Lictors would be loose in their lines assassinating characters, blowing up light tanks and tying up heavy weapons squads. All that stemmed from the realization that they cost the same as 24 Hormagaunts, but could actually absorb more firepower.

Blocking
One very effective use of seemingly worthless units is as blockers. They are basically there to slow down or stop some or all of the enemy units on their way to attack your useful units. A perfect example of this would be Piranha and Kroot in a Tau list. The Piranha move up quickly and place themselves directly in front of enemy vehicles. Since they are too close to ram, and the shooting phase comes after movement, the enemy vehicle will have to try to move around your blocker, keeping 1 inch away from it, which will definitely slow them down. If they aren't killed by this, they repeat the next turn. You can also use this against non-vehicle units. Even if they assault your blocking vehicle, they aren't likely to do much if they have to hit on sixes, and even if they do, you've forced them to waste an entire turn's movement in return for killing your worthless vehicle. Non-vehicle units can also block, but they are much more limited. Not only are they more vulnerable to assault, but a tank could potentially tank-shock them out of the way. On the other hand, non-vehicle units are very effective as bubble-wrap. Much like Kroot in a Tau list, put them in a formation surrounding the units you want to keep safe from assaulters. As long as there are no gaps between units, no enemy unit will be able to directly assault the useful units without having to go through one or more units of your useless ones.

Deep Strike and Melta Defense
You can also use your useless units as Deep Strike or Melta Defense. All you need are some bodies. With Deepstrike defense, you want to fill up as much area as possible where your army might be vulnerable to enemies deepstriking in. Space out your useless units to keep deepstrikers away from your useful units. You can increase your area coverage by leaving holes in your formations. As long as the hole is less than an inch wider than the deepstriking unit, they won't be able to land there. For Melta defense, we want to keep our important vehicles just barely further than half-distance away from any potential Meltaguns. Assuming they don't have Multimeltas, that's only a fraction more than 6 inches you need to keep them away. Indeed, since an enemy unit cannot come within 1" of your units without assaulting them, that means it's effectively only 5 inches. You can also keep about 3 inches away from the vehicle, meaning you only need to cover an area 2" wide around the vehicle. (You could decrease this further, though it might offer enough space for a tiny unit to deepstrike in between your useless squad and your important vehicle.)

And the Last shall be First...
In the case of an army designed around getting the first turn, but actually going second, you might consider reserves. If you can move and still shoot or assault effectively, coming in from the board edge will give you a chance to get the first shot off, even if you do have to deal with the randomness of reserving troops. As a rather extreme example of this, I only need to point to one of my early experiments with Dark Eldar Webway Portals. I had 1000 points against 2 1000 point armies. I started with one unit (the carrier) hidden on the board and everything else in reserves. Turn 2 I opened the portal. Turn three virtually my entire army came out onto the board. By the end of turn 4, my army was essentially wiped out. In those two turns, however, I'd done about 500 points of damage to one army and 600 points to the other.

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
Often the best way to take on that opponent or circumstance that your army isn't ready to handle is to simply play the mission. In an objective mission, you don't have to kill off their army. You may not need to even kill a single model if you can claim even 1 more objective than them. Even in a Kill Point mission, you don't necessarily have to kill off the enemy army, just 1 more unit than they killed of you.

Objectives
Tank shock them off of objectives. Park really tough units or vehicles on top of objectives to keep them away. Use any "useless" models to block them from claiming an objective. Attack their scoring units to prevent them from having the edge in numbers. Hide your scoring units wherever possible until the last few turns.

Killpoints
Killpoint denial is the name of the game here. You want to take out a couple of easy units quickly, then hide as much of your army as possible. You can also pull units back once they are damaged. Get them behind cover, then keep moving so that they are out of line of sight. Remember, you don't need to kill a lot of the enemy army, just one more unit than they killed of yours.

Total Annihilation
If you are completely unequipped to handle the mission but you can take on the opposing army effectively, remember that if you wipe out the enemy force, you automatically win. Once you realize that this is your victory condition, act as aggressively as possible as soon as possible. Don't wait until later turns, hit them as hard as you can right away and keep hitting them. Forcing units to run away when under half strength (aside from Space Marines) is a very valuable tactic for this strategy. Every model that runs off the board is one less model you'll have to track down and kill.

Don't Throw in the Towel
Even if you are getting totally beaten down and you think you have no chance of winning, don't give up. If you give up, your chances of a miracle recovery are exactly zero. Even if you don't recover, remember that experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. How many times have you played with your army? Chances are, it's not enough. You could probably use some more experience with it, which is just what this game is. In addition, it'll give you insights on how the particular type of enemy army plays, and allow you to try some experiments and see which ones work and which ones go up in flames. Try to analyse the game later to see what information you can get out of it. It's an old saying that we learn more from a loss than we do from a victory, so make use of it.

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