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The Choices we make: List efficiency and tradeoffs Back in Winning Games 2 I talked about unit efficiency. This is the concept that you can figure out the best possible configuration for your unit. You take the basic unit, put in only the things you absolutely have to have, then start playing around with it to find the best combination so that it will maximize it's effectiveness (usually killing things on the battlefield, but it's not necessarily limited to that) while minimizing expense. You generally want to look at it's offensive efficiency, which is the best combination of effectiveness and price. You also want to look at it's defensive efficiency, which is the best combination of survivability and price. When you combine the two, you have found the most efficient unit. However, there's another way of finding efficiency. List efficiency is when you use something from one unit to make up for a shortcoming in another. Let's use a Tyranid army for example. Let's say that you've got a bunch of Spinegaunts to run in and tie up the enemy, and you've got a bunch of Genestealers to follow along and clean up when they get there. Now, you'll usually find that getting Extended Carapace is a good deal for your Genestealers, despite it making them 25% more expensive, since it gives them saves against Bolter fire. On the other talon, if you give the Spinegaunts the Scuttlers upgrade, they'll be in combat on turn 2, which means the Genestealers will take less fire. At that point, you may decide you no longer need the Extended Carapace on the Genestealers, since they won't get shot as much. If the cost of Scuttlers for the Gaunts is less than the cost for the Carapace for the Genestealers, you'll come out ahead. Even if the cost isn't cheaper for those two, it might also offer protection to other units that now don't have to buy as much protection. Another way of looking at it is deciding whether it's worth more to spend 4pts on Carapace for the Genestealer or 7pts for Scuttlers and a Spinegaunt. I'll give another couple of examples of List Efficiency that I've used previously. Back in the beginning of 3rd edition, when the Tyranids used the list in the back of the book, the typical Tyranid swarm had a bunch of Hormagaunts and Termagants, followed by Genestealers and Carnifi and Tyrants. The Termagants block Line of Sight and took casualties for the Hormagaunts until they could leap into combat, which protected the whole swarm. Then the Genestealers and various Monstrous Creatures came in and cleaned house. At the time, Hormagaunts cost 10pts each. I thought about it and realized that a Carnifex only cost 105pts. Since the Carnifex blocked Line of Sight, it could be used for screening, and since it was a lot harder to kill than 11 Hormagaunts, it would be cheaper to put it in front instead of the Hormagaunts. I ended up doing just that. With my Monstrous Creatures as the front line, I could dispense with the Termagants as well as the Hormagaunts, so I just bought Genestealers. Doing this saved me the price of both the Hormagaunts and the Termagants, so I got to have more Monstrous Creatures and Genestealers in my army. After we got the 3rd edition codex, at some point I wanted to do a Genestealer army, and I wanted to involve Lictors in it, because they were pretty cool, and because most people said they sucked. (Sometimes I like to try to go against conventional wisdom, it's just more fun that way!) Anyway, I was looking at my list and I realized I needed something that didn't cost 16pts per wound and died like flies against a Bolter to take the shooting away from my Genestealers. My initial thought was Hormagaunts. I'd been running a fast assault list for a while, so I knew how effective Hormagaunts could be and I figured they'd work pretty well to keep the enemy off my back for a couple of turns while the Genestealers closed in. The problem was, this was a Genestealer list, and the more Hormagaunts that I took, the less Genestealers I'd have. After some time thinking about it, I realized I had an opportunity. Due to the special deployment rules for the Lictor, it could show up on turn 1 very close to the enemy deployment zone and it could have an incredible cover save. If a Lictor popped up near the enemy, it had a decent chance of tying up an enemy squad for a turn or two. It also had a decent chance to take out a vehicle or take down a character, if it wasn't stopped. Thus, people often made Lictors the first priority when they shot. On the other talon, A Lictor in the woods has a 3+ Cover save, which allows it to ignore an awful lot of enemy fire that gets directed toward it. At Toughness 4 and 3 Wounds for 80pts, it didn't sound like an ideal thing to be taking casualties, but that cover save meant that it could bounce an awful lot of fire. 3 of them cost 240pts and would stop a lot more fire than 24 Hormagaunts, so that meant I had more points to spend on Genestealers. In fact, since I had already been planning on including Lictors in the army list, it saved me more points than just what the Hormagaunts were worth. Okay, so now we have the concept of using one unit to cover a weakness of another unit or to make the unit more efficient in some way. We can now make our units individually efficient and our whole armies more effective, which means we get more army to take to that next game, or it means that we've got a more effective army. There's another step to this, however. Once you start thinking in terms of list efficiency and tradeoffs for one unit or another, it means something bigger. Let's say you've got 15 units in your army. If you manage, through unit efficiency or list efficiency, to save an average of 5pts per unit, that leaves you 75pts. That's a whole 'nother unit you can add in to your army! If you did it right, that means your 1500pt (or whatever) list just got 75pts meaner! This also brings up another concept, tradeoffs. Building on the concepts of unit efficiency and list efficiency is the idea of the tradeoff or switch. The idea is to look at every purchase for your army as a tradeoff. If I buy that 113pt Devourerfex, that's 22 Spinegaunts or almost 3 Raveners I could have had, depending on what I wanted. Most of the time we look at our army choices in terms of what we are getting for those points (4 T6 Wounds with a 3+ Save, 8 S6 shots per turn at 18" range.) On the other talon, we can also look at it in terms of sacrifices (I'll be leaving out 22 T3 Wounds or 3 Turn 2 Rending assaulters.) This can create a very fluid and effective understanding of your army list. Let's take a look at my standard 1500pt army list and see what we can do and where the points can take us. Note that this list has already had unit efficiency applied to it, as I've taken a hard look at the options for each of the units and striven to take the most efficient choices comparing both defense and offense. It has also had the concept of list efficiency applied, as I've left the Genestealers without Extended Carapace to account for the fact that they will be typically hidden by a wall of Monstrous Creatures... 184 Tyrant VC/TLDevourer BS4 S6 2+Sv Warp Scream Okay, that's the basic list and it's quite shooty and has a solid backup of rending counterassault. It works using a wall of Monstrous Creatures to block Line of Sight to the Genestealers and Raveners. Let's look at some tradeoffs, unit by unit. Okay, let's look at some options instead of the Devourerfexes. That's 339pts and it's also a good chunk of the "Wall" of Monstrous Creatures that I use. In their place I might take 3x22 Spinegaunt broods. That would provide 66 T3 Wounds and let me soak up a lot of fire. Once I was within 18" of the enemy lines, Target priority tests would be impacted by the Psychic Screams from my list, which would force the enemy to waste a lot of shots at Spinegaunts. This would give the list less shooty power, but the Spinegaunts would tie up the front lines quite well, letting the Genestealers and Raveners be more effective at their assault. 184 Tyrant VC/TLDevourer BS4 S6 2+Sv Warp Scream On the other hand, perhaps we should replace the Devourerfexes with Genestealers. Bulking up our current units and adding a couple of units of 6 with Extended Carapace and Scuttlers gives us... 184 Tyrant VC/TLDevourer BS4 S6 2+Sv Warp Scream We could also replace our wall of Elite Carnifi with a couple of Megafexes. Take our one Heavy Support Carnifex and give it Toughness 7, 5 Wounds and Regenerate with a 2+ save, then give it a twin brother. Put them up front and stomp toward the enemy. You'll have more antitank firepower and a very, very tough wall... 184 Tyrant VC/TLDevourer BS4 S6 2+Sv Warp Scream Instead, we might choose to replace our protective wall of Elite Carnifi with a wall of another kind... Tyrant Guard. 3 Guard for each Tyrant gives a lot of defense for those two Tyrants and improves our close combat ability, at the cost of losing that shooting and losing some scoring units. Those Tyrant Guard let our Tyrants drop Carapace, and with the points saved, we could even buy back one of the Devourerfexes. 294 Tyrant VC/TLDevourer BS4 S6 Warp Scream, 3xTyrant Guard Let's say we want to keep the Devourerfexes, what else could we change? What if we got rid of the Genestealers? We still need Troops, so we'll have to use them, mostly. We could go for more shootyness and use Toxic Devourergaunts (These guys are offensively more efficient than Devourerfexes!) 184 Tyrant VC/TLDevourer BS4 S6 2+Sv Warp Scream We could also change them out for Hormagaunts to tie up shooty stuff faster and let you outshoot what's left. Spinegaunts could fill a similar role. You can also use this same concept to completely change the entire army. Replace the Devourerfexes and the Tyrants with a Winged Tyrant and 3 Lictors and give the Genestealers Carapace and more bodies and it looks like this... 194 Flying Tyrant, lots of upgrades Now let's take out the Genestealers as well as the Elite Carnifi from this list and replace them with Spinegaunts and some Raveners... 194 Flying Tyrant, lots of upgrades So... next time you are playing around with your list, see what it is you are sacrificing to get what you have right now. It might just open your eyes to a new understanding! If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know |