At a recent Rogue Trader Tournament (a local 40k tournament, since the original game was called Rogue Trader) I saw an army that caught my interest. It was a Chaos army following the god Khorne. The reason it caught my interest was not the paintjobs, though they were good. What caught my eye was it’s composition or selection. Composition is a term for the various units that are taken as part of the army, or not taken, as the case may be. The force featured: 3 units of 8 Terminators, including the Chaos Lord, 2 Units of 8 Bloodletters (Daemons of Khorne) and 2 units of 8 Flesh Hounds (Fast Daemons of Khorne.) This gave him 1 HQ, 3 Elites, 2 Troops, and 2 Fast Attack selections on the Force Organization Chart, and 56 models in 1700pts. I have seen people field armies along these same lines before, just not this particular configuration. Many people that saw this list would scream about how cheesy it was. I would disagree. I would say that it was a Limited list.
Those of you familiar with the standard Force
Organization
chart know that you must have at least 1 HQ unit and 2 Troops units.
You then have the option of taking an
additional HQ unit, up to 3 Elite units, up to 4 additional Troops
units, up to
3 Fast Attack units and up to 3 Heavy Support units. While it is legal
to stock up on other units and ignore Troops
aside from the first 2, some people look down on this as being Cheesy
or
over-competitive; not sporting, as they say. I say, there
is no such thing as Cheese. There
is, however, such a thing as limiting yourself. If you load up on
non-Troops, you buy yourself some inherent
limitations in the process. One thing
that you buy is the loss of some points to Army Composition, a portion
of your
score at a Rogue Trader Tournament, designed to keep people from
bringing
armies that are too competitive, since other people will be bringing
less
cutthroat armies. Depending on how you
use your army, or how badly it mauls the other army, you may also be
buying
yourself a loss of sportsmanship points. Even if you are very well
behaved, the other players are unlikely to
have fun with a game that is a complete massacre of their side, which
can show
up in the sportsmanship scores that each opponent gives at the end of
each game
in a tournament like this. Incidentally, this is a not-inconsiderable
number of points. At least in Grand Tournaments this year, the
two categories combined are worth 50% of your total score for the whole
tournament.
While I laud the idea of promoting sportsmanship
and fair
play and interesting armies that follow the “fluff” or storyline of an
army, a
storyline can be written to include anything you want.When I talk about
limitations, however, I'm
talking about more tangible things. I'm
talking about something that will affect game play. Fortunately, GW
designed this into the rules. Tournaments often feature some very
unusual
scenarios to play, meaning they will typically favor flexible
armies, since they can adapt more easily to different situations. (If
the only tool you have is a hammer, you
won’t get very far dealing with a bunch of bolts and screws.)
Tournaments also often feature a wide
variety of armies, meaning you may be up against a bunch of tanks and a
lot of
grunts from an Imperial Guard list one game, then take on a very small,
elite
force of Space Marines the next game, then be assaulted by waves upon
waves of
Orks, then run up against a lightning attack from Eldar with psychic
powers. If your list is flexible, you
will have one or more units that can be effective against each of
these.
If it is not flexible, you may end up
twiddling your thumbs as the enemy routs your poor, beloved models.
There are other limitations that can bite
you as well. The most common of these
is a limited number of models. If you
only have a few models on the board, every loss hurts a lot more, and a
little
bit of bad luck can ruin your whole game plan.
When I’ve run into Limited armies before, it has generally been really easy to defeat them, as long as I’ve got the flexibility to do it. A little while back, a member of our group was trying out a Khorne army. He took 2 minimum Berzerker squads (Troop squads, effectively totalling 10 close combat Space Marines) and a Bloodthirster (Greater Daemon of Khorne that cost almost as much as both his squads of Berzerkers. He also took a powerful Chaos Lord and a Retinue of 5 Aspiring Champions. Each Champion was expensive, then he tacked on tons of upgrades and gear on each one, so they were extremely tough and powerful. Each of his champions cost more than the Bloodthirster, and was designed to really smash things in close combat. That was his total army, 17 models in 1500pts. He didn’t have any vehicles and had slow movement. He didn’t have any real way of taking out vehicles. He didn’t have a lot of troops to absorb casualties or block line of sight to his powerful models. He didn’t have very many units, so he’d have a hard time claiming objectives or contesting table quarters. Despite all this, he was totally confident that he could slaughter other armies. Sure, I was playing my Tyranids, so I didn’t have any vehicles for him to worry about, and the only objective in the scenario (we randomly rolled for one) was victory points, so that didn’t cost him particularly. On the other hand, his lack of mobility (or long-range shooting) and his low body count cost him. The Tyranids are not known for their massive shooting attacks, but I do have a few, and I used them all on him. Since his Berzerkers weren’t large enough units, they didn’t block much line of sight to his big command squad, so I just started shooting. Wouldn’t you know, he got unlucky once and failed an armor save, POOF, there goes 150+ points in a single shot. A few more armor piercing shots later and the squad was down to half. At that point I had gotten close enough that he could charge me, so he did and took down a Hive Tyrant, losing another model or two in the process. At that point, my Hive Tyrant and a bunch of Genestealers (having just finished lunching on one of the tiny squads of Berzerkers that they outnumbered so badly) charged in and wiped them out. Due to reserve rules, I’d only had about half my army against his, but it was still a complete massacre.
The idea behind a Limited list is that it
completely
emphasizes one thing, which the player hopes will allow them to
dominate the
game. Admittedly, sometimes people play
Limited lists because they like the Fluff, such as Dark Angels
Deathwing (all
Terminators) or Ravenwing (all Bikes and Landspeeders) or Imperial
Guard
Armoured Company (all vehicles.) Some
armies are more limited than others as well. In any case, this
overwhelming emphasis on one thing often leaves them
with big blind spots, spots that can be taken advantage of if you have
the
right tools. The Terminator-based
Khorne army that I mentioned at the top of this article does have
certain
limitations. It has a limited number of
anti-vehicle options. (Two, perhaps
three Autocannon are the only ranged threats to vehicles, though
Powerfists and
Chainfists excel at taking out vehicles if they can get into close
combat with
them.) In addition, the only fast
moving units are Flesh Hounds, which move normally, but can assault 12”
instead
of the usual six. This pair of
limitations mean that the army would have a hard time dealing with an
army that
featured lots of vehicles, would have a hard time getting to grips with
a fast
enemy, and might have a hard time claiming objectives. Although the
army featured a relatively low
model count, it had enough bodies to get most jobs done. One
disadvantage of relying on Daemons is
that they must be summoned from the Warp, which means you don’t start
with them
on the board, so the army is at less than half size for at least the
first
couple of turns of the game, which may also mean that a random turn
length game
may end early with very little of the Daemons appearing. All those
Terminators look pretty menacing,
but they have fairly limited ranged weapons, which means almost any
army can
stand back and outshoot them as they close. Terminators have incredible
armor saves, but those saves will fail at least
1 time in six, and there are a number of weapons that allow them only 1
chance
in three of surviving. One option for
taking on this army would be to focus on the mission objectives. If the
objectives require to capture terrain
or find hidden counters, having fast moving squads (or more squads)
would give
you an advantage here. Another option
would be to count on out shooting it. Since the Terminators have little
long range firepower and will be alone
for the first several turns, armies with lots of firepower can wail on
them
almost at will. Armies with good
mobility will be able to move away from them as they shoot, keeping
them at
arms’ length for most of the game. Even
less mobile armies could use some advance units to slow them down,
since Terminators
cannot make sweeping advances after a close combat. Additionally, those
Terminators have huge numbers of Powerfists,
which are strong in close combat, but they are also slow, so models
with
weapons that ignore armor will always strike first, giving them a good
chance
of cutting down the Terminators that can strike back.
As an example, my Tyranid force would primarily hang back and shoot as the Terminators approached, with the smaller assault constructs (Genestealers or Slashers, depending on which Army List I was using) forming a line just in front of my Larger ones. My shooting would kill off about one from each squad (more on this later) as they approached. When the daemons were summoned, they would have to charge my smaller assault constructs first, which have a much higher number of attacks and would be better for carving up the daemons than my larger ones. The Terminators would also charge into this mess, a turn or so later. At that point, my Larger Assault constructs (Hive Tyrant or two, two Carnifexes, possibly 3 Lictors) would counter-assault the Terminators, attempting to concentrate against a single squad of Terminators. Since Powerfists go last, all my Larger constructs would go first, killing an average of 4-5 Terminators, likely leaving the others out of Powerfist range, until the next turn, at which point the rest would die before getting in a single swing. This is the reason that I would try to gun down 1 from each squad, instead of concentrating on a single squad. That one gives me much better odds of wiping out the whole unit during two phases of close combat, protecting me against a couple of unlucky rolls. At that point, most of his daemons and most of my smaller assault constructs would be gone, but I could move in against the next Terminator squad and rinse and repeat. Here is the dangerous point, however. If both of his remaining squads are no longer tied up by my smaller assault constructs, they could charge in to help each other, leaving more in base contact than my larger assault constructs could kill off right away. Even if this occurred, however, I’d have a good chance of winning at this time, even if I had to lose a couple of my larger constructs. There is, of course, no guarantee that this would work, but I’ve included several buffers against bad luck and good enemy tactics here, so I think I’d have a pretty good shot, even without concentrating on the mission.