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'll start with knowing the rules.

You Gotta Know the Rules
Warhammer 40k is a game. Games have rules. If you really understand the rules, you can get better results from your games. An obvious example would be a chess grandmaster playing against someone that has only been playing chess for a year. The newer player will certainly know all the rules, but the grandmaster will understand better how the rules work together and be able to spot opportunities more easily. However, simply reading the rule book from cover to cover isn't enough to cover it. You need to know which parts of the rules to pay the most attention to. I want to concentrate on the rules that can help you the most if you pay close attention to them.

Movement
For the most part, the movement rules are pretty straightforward, but one thing to pay attention to is the 5th paragraph on page 14. "Note that as part of their move through difficult terrain, models may move through walls, closed doors and windows, and all sort of similarly solid obstacles, unless the players have agreed that a certain wall or obstacle is impassable." This is a vitally important point, as most players tend to skip over it, and will tend to _not_ move their models through walls or other areas where the models cannot fit through. Use this to your advantage, since most players won't expect you to be able to move through walls. You should also be aware that walls (that haven't been declared Impassable) will not protect your units. Don't be surprised when that pack of Bloodletters comes through the wall and hits your Broadside unit! If you plan on using walls to protect your units, make sure you discuss it with the opponent before the game starts to make sure you both agree that those walls (discuss each one specifically!) count as Impassable.

A smaller point within the Movement rules is that units using the Run or Fleet rules are not slowed down by Difficult Terrain during that phase. Thus, you can plan your entry into difficult terrain to give you the best advantage. For example, if you start out 5 inches from Difficult Terrain, you might choose to only move that 5 inches in your movement phase, then use the Run/Fleet rule to actually move into or through the Difficult Terrain, so that you don't risk rolling low and not reaching the terrain at all during your movement phase. Another way to use the rule is to make sure that your movement and Run/Fleet will take you through the Difficult terrain, so that your assault movement is unhindered and you strike at initiative in close combat. Basically, plan your movement to make the best of this rule.

Shooting
The primary rule to pay attention to during the Shooting Phase is that of Casualty Removal. First off, realize that if a unit takes a casualty, _any_ model in the unit can be removed. Page 24, second Paragraph under Remove Casualties: "Note that any model in the target unit can be hit, wounded and taken off as a casualty, even models that are completely out of sight or out of range of all of the firers." This is important, because it means that if your Lascannon gunner is the only one outside terrain, and the unit takes a single wound, you don't necessarily have to lose that Lascannon. In the same fashion, it means you cannot "snipe" particular targets out of enemy units.

Another point within the Casualty Removal rules is wound allocation. This is where good understanding of the rules can really make a huge difference. Page 25, Paragraph 7: "Having allocated the wounds, all of the models in the unit that are identical in gaming terms take their saving throws at the same time, in one batch. Casualties can then be chosen by the owning player from amongst these identical models." In more specific terms, in the example section on the same page, last paragraph: "He goes on to roll the four saves for the Space Marines with bolters in one go, failing two. He should remove three models (two unsaved wounds plus one wound with no armour save from the meltagun), but as there are only two models in this group of identical models, he just removes them both." Basically, a good understanding of this rule can allow you to ignore a few extra wounds on your units.

For an example of how this works, try this: There's a unit of 5 Space Marines, including 1 Sergeant with Bolter and Power Weapon, 1 Space Marine with a Lascannon, and 3 Space Marines with Bolters. Let's say they take 6 regular Wounds and 3 Rending Wounds from a brood of Genestealers. Assuming average rolls, that would result in 5 casualties and, if you didn't allocate them properly, the loss of the unit. On the other hand, let's see about allocating those wounds (before the saves) This unit has 3 groups: the Sergeant, the Lascannon Gunner and the 3 Bolter carriers. With 9 Wounds to be allocated, 4 models will have 2 Wounds each and 1 model will have one wound. If we allocate 2 of the Rending Wounds to the Lascannon Gunner, and the remaining Rending Wound and 5 regular wounds to the Bolter Carriers and the single wound to the Sergeant, we get a different result. The Lascannon gunner goes down, and all of the Bolter carriers will probably die as well, but the Sergeant is likely to survive. Alternately, if we put all three Rending Wounds and 3 regular wounds onto the Bolter carriers, with 2 regular wounds on the Lascannon and one on the Sergeant, the Bolters all die, the Sergeant will probably survive and the Lascannon has a chance of sticking around. It may only be one or two models difference, but it's a pretty big difference from the whole unit dying. The smaller the unit and the more different kinds of models you have in it, the more that paying attention to this rule can help you.

Not my models, they belong to Jason "Doc" Dyer of the NWGaming Geeks!

Characters
Characters aren't a separate phase of the game, but they can make a big impact on the game. Thus, it is important to understand their rules so that you can protect yours and take theirs down. Obviously, any time a character is not in a unit, they may be targeted freely. When they are protected inside a unit, however, the only way to get them is by the occasional wound wrapped around the whole unit. In assault, however, any models directly engaged with the character may specifically target them.

Assault
While the same casualty removal rules apply to assault as shooting, there is an important point that you need to understand here if you are familiar with previous editions of the game. Each initiative step is no longer considered separately. Page 37, 1st paragraph: "When their initiative value is reached, models with that Initiative who are still alive must attack. It does not matter if all the enemies that they were engaged with have been killed -- if a model was engaged at the start of the fight (and is still alive when its turn to attack comes) it can still attack." This means that if you are facing a unit that has some attacks at a lower initiative (such as a Sergeant with a Powerfist) you cannot prevent the lower initiative attacks from happening except by killing the model in question.

Knowing is half the battle
Now that you know which areas to concentrate on, go back and look at those sections again. Try to put together examples, especially of more complex scenarios, so that you have a thorough understanding of each of these areas. At that point, you'll be ready to go on to Knowing Missions, which is what I'll be writing next in this series.

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