Planning to Win
I'm putting together a new army and I'm making plans for how to use it effectively. I've written a number of articles about how to play better in a variety of ways, but I want to put together a coherent plan for this edition. This is partially to set it in my mind. It should also help you to get a better grip on your own games as well. This will cover Knowing the Rules, Knowing the Missions, Knowing your own Army and Knowing the Enemy. I have already written Knowing the Rules and Knowing the Missions. This week I'll be covering Knowing your own Army.

To Thine Own Self Be TrueAny plan to win a game has to involve a very good understanding of your own army. If you don't know what your units are capable of, you won't really be able to make the best use of them. If you don't understand how they work together, you won't be able to plan appropriately. You need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your army, plus their capabilities against a variety of targets and what units work best together and how the army operates as a whole. Let's start with Strengths.

Strengths
While I designed this army to be a Water Army, meaning that the units should be able to move, shoot and assault at full capacity, all those powerfists mean it has a definite strength in close combat. Almost any close combat this army goes into should be over quickly, and unless the unit is very understrength or against well-equipped close combat specialists, they should win. This is handy because it means that my units won't get bogged down in close combats, leaving them free to maneuver away from the rest of the enemy army. There's nothing worse than having your elite units caught up in a combat while the rest of the enemy army surrounds them. It will also be helpful in that I can weaken a unit with shooting, then finish it off with a charge. The things I have to watch out for are enemy characters, Monstrous Creatures and assault specialists with power weapons. Those can quickly turn my expensive Terminator units into a pile of hamburger. Against those, I'll have to use my shooting and maneuvering to wear them down or take them out.

Weaknesses
Again, this is a Water Army. It is designed so that units shouldn't have much in the way of weakness. However, there are weaknesses inherent to all Water Armies. Generally, they are Elite armies, meaning they will have a small number of expensive models, so every loss hurts more. In the 1100pt version of my army, I'll only have 13 models on the board. While 2 of those are LandRaiders and the rest are in Terminator armor, a few lucky shots here or there could nearly cripple this army. I'll also have to pay attention, because the low model count of this army make it vulnerable to being outnumbered. The mobility of the army should be able to prevent this, but only if I pay attention and maneuver the units properly.

Capabilities
If you have a good understanding of the capabilities of your units, you will know what you can expect them to do. This should factor into your planning. It's helpful to know how much damage you can expect them to do and what their threat envelope is. Each Terminator Squad should average 1.92 Dead Space Marines in shooting out to 24" plus 6" for movement. They should also average 5.75 DSM on the charge. This means that a Space Marine (or equivalent) squad numbering 7 or less models should be wiped out in a single shoot and charge combination. Alternately, I can expect a 10-strong squad to hold up to the shoot and charge, but then die during the opponent's assault phase, leaving my squad free to do the same to another unit on my next turn. The same squad has about a 30% chance of damaging light vehicles and a 25% chance of damaging heavy vehicles (AV13,) again at 24" plus 6" for movement. Within assault range, their combined shooting and assault yields 1.66 damaging hits against light vehicles and 1.25 damaging hits against heavy vehicles. The LandRaiders can add a little to this capacity, adding either 1.48 DSM or 0.59 damaging hits against light vehicles or 0.395 damaging hits against heavy vehicles each, at 48" range.

Do these Match?
An important consideration when putting together your army is figuring out if the units can work well together. If half of your army is a static gunline and half are combat specialists, you may have difficulty putting together a coherent game plan. Equally important is making sure you can handle different kinds of threat. If your whole army is combat specialists, but you have no ranged antitank weaponry, you can be in for a lot of hurt in some games. LandRaiders are designed to transport Terminators and give them the option of driving up inside their armored protection, then getting out and shooting, then charging into close combat. This makes them work pretty well together. In addition, the fact that each unit can take on pretty much any target type means that I should have all my bases covered in terms of different threats the enemy can bring. If they have lots of tanks, every unit can handle heavy armor. If they have lots of heavy infantry, every unit can handle them. If they have lots of Monstrous Creatures, I'm still covered. The only area that I might have potential problems is with hordes of light infantry. While the Stormbolters and Powerfists will chew through a lot of bodies, the LandRaiders don't have much that they can do against light infantry aside from tank shocking and blocking them.

How do I Work This?
The final part is to put together some plans for how the units will operate together to achieve an objective. While some armies will have kind of a Standard Operating Procedure for how they expect to win most games, a Water Army is designed to _not_ have an SOP. While it does not have a standard battle plan, it will have a number of general plans to cover a variety of situations. First off, against a large number of assault specialists that are closing in, the LandRaiders will move to block the path to the Terminators. They might even have to pick up and carry the Terminators for most of the game, relying on the LandRaider's AV14 to keep them safe. In turn, against a lot of heavy antitank weaponry, the LandRaiders will be reduced to a sniping role while the Terminators work on shutting down the enemy antitank weaponry. A more general tactic that the Terminators will use against stronger enemy units is Kiting. Moving backward while shooting will allow the Terminators to whittle down an enemy unit to a manageable size before engaging it or allowing it to engage. Another general plan is using cover, LOS and distance to limit what units the opponent can bring to bear on mine, while mine concentrate on one part of the enemy army. While good deployment can help that, so can redeployment. By hopping in the LandRaiders, the Terminators can relocate to the other side of the battlefield quickly. That sort of mobility and re-thinking is what I am counting on to help me win games.

A little Self-Knowledge Goes a Long Way
My challenge for you is to take a look at your army and see how well you know it. Identify it's Strengths and Weaknesses and actually sit down and hammer out it's capabilities. See how the various units match up and try to find different combinations and make sure all your bases are covered. Finally, write out your general plans and tactics. Even if you've been been playing the army for a while, you might find a few surprises once you look at it in detail. At that point you'll be ready to tackle Knowing the enemy.

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