Power
We all strive to get more power out of our armies. The first part of this article was about building and evolving your list to make it more powerful. In that article I focused on effectiveness, efficiency and utility. Note that I have written a pair of articles that cover similar ground: Coordination and Coordination 2. This is meant to cover the topics in a little different way and can work as a complement to the previous articles.

Winning by the Numbers
A lot of people look at increasing the efficiency of a list as the epitome of power. The problem is that they look at the list as if the game was played on Planet Bowling Ball. No terrain (or equal for every unit) and every unit can affect every enemy unit. While this is a good way to compare the power in army lists (This list has 7 Lascannons and that list has 10) it's not the ultimate answer. This is part of why some seemingly powerful netlists sometimes get smacked down by lists that look significantly less powerful. It isn't necessarily the size of your army, it's how you use it, and that's where tactics come in.

I want to discuss the basic ideas of Focusing Power, Scattering the Enemy and Decisive Engagement. In each section I'll also cover the tactical ideas surrounding each and give examples of specific methods to achieve them. Hopefully that will give you some specific tactics to use and the underlying principles behind them so that you can create your own.

Focusing Power
The basic goal of all tactics is to achieve local superiority. If you have more power in one area of the battlefield than the enemy does, you will win that part of the battle very quickly and with less damage to your army. By winning quickly and with less damage to your forces, you conserve more of your strength to concentrate in another area and achieve similar results. A continuous version of this, where you concentrate in one key area, then continue down the enemy line is known as "rolling up the flank." It is generally achieved by using the bulk of your units to simply delay the enemy, while you concentrate several units against one enemy unit at one end of their formation. When you finish that battle, the survivors of those units help out the next friendly unit, and so on down the line. Even though the delaying units will potentially be getting weaker as the battle goes on (they will have been fighting for longer,) the flanking force will be growing stronger as the survivors from each successive unit join in. Note that even if flanking attacks have no added value, or if you aren't actually attacking from a flank, the result is the same.

Napoleon wasn't the first to use this concept, but he outlined it very well. If you and your enemy each have three units, use one of yours to block or delay two of his, while your two remaining units crash into his single unit. Because your units are fighting at a 2 to 1 advantage, they will win more quickly and suffer fewer casualties before they go to rescue the third. (Note that your third unit may not actually wish to directly fight the two enemy units. Its primary goal is to keep them from reinforcing the fight against your block of 2 units. If it simply throws itself away by attacking both, you'll end up with equal forces again.) The simplest way to do it right is to position it between the target unit and the other two.

The easiest way to achieve local superiority is to have units capable of better than normal movement. You don't need all of your units to have this capability, just pair slower units together with faster ones. Alternately, good deployment can really help achieve your concentration of force. Keep in mind that generals over the centuries have done it with simple infantry units.

Tarpit Units are one very effective way of keeping the enemy from reinforcing their own units. If you have a unit that can absorb a lot of damage, you can charge an enemy unit and expect your unit to hold for a few turns or even more.

Scattering the Enemy
If you are trying to concentrate your forces to achieve local superiority, it follows that you want to keep your opponent's forces spread out. If you can achieve this spreading of your opponent's forces, it will be easier to attain local superiority almost anywhere you choose. You can encourage this spreading out several ways. In the deployment phase you can spread your faster units out, making it appear that you are spreading out. Many opponents will follow your lead. You can then use the speed of your faster units to re-concentrate your force. You can also spread out enemy forces by delaying some of their units. This can be as simple as destroying some (but not all) transports or simply keeping some units tied up for a turn or two. Likewise, you can use some of your units to keep enemy units from moving through certain areas.

Jamming is a very effective way of scattering the enemy. You use some of your units to keep some of theirs from moving and keeping up with the others. A classic example of this would be a Tau force pushing a Piranha in front of a LandRaider full of assault troops. The LandRaider cannot move within 1" of the Piranha during the movement phase. It will have to try to turn sideways and go around the Piranha. This will cause the LandRaider to hit enemy lines at least a turn later than the rest of its army. Doing this even once will blunt an attack, giving you more opportunity to concentrate your forces. Repeating this method can keep the unit out of the fight until you are ready to deal with it. Vehicles are best for this, since they are less likely to take major damage from an assault. Even an infantry unit that will get creamed in the ensuing assault will cost that enemy unit their movement, however.

Bubble Wrap is another way of keeping some of the enemy army off of your important units. You place a unit (either a unit that can handle the hit or a unit that can be a sacrifice) between your important units and some or all of the enemy force. This is a common Tau tactic. It allows their powerful shooting units to concentrate their firepower on important enemy units while keeping the rest of the enemy army at bay for a few crucial turns.

Area Denial is a different way of separating the enemy. Placing a powerful (usually assault-based) unit in an area that part of the enemy army has to cross can have a very powerful effect. Any enemy unit that enters that area will have to risk being shredded by your unit. That means that either the enemy will avoid the area, or only the most protected units will go there. If you move up the unit after the enemy has deployed or committed to a line of attack, it will force that part of their army to move around it, making those units take longer to get to their targets than the rest of the army, effectively splitting it up.

Decisive Action
Part of the reason that local superiority works so well is because it tends to create decisive action. This means that it destroys a chunk of the enemy army quickly. If the enemy units aren't destroyed quickly, the enemy army will have time to reinforce them, ruining your local superiority. You need to make sure that you have enough power to take out the enemy units swiftly. If you don't have enough available, you may have to bring in power from elsewhere (fast or long-ranged units) or you may have to target only part of the units in the area you want to hit, or you may have to give up on that area for now and hit another one. Targets of opportunity are okay. If you simply have the mass of firepower available and a target presents itself, it's worth it to pull the trigger. On the other talon, planned targets are an even more effective use of your time and resources. The ideal targets are ones that (through direct effect or support functions) enable their army to function more effectively or to kill yours. The best of these targets are the most powerful ones that you can still wipe out before your next turn begins. If you can finish them in 1 shooting phase and/or 2 assault phases, you'll be able to choose a different target on your next turn. In this way, you can seemingly munch through the enemy army with impunity.

Picket units are those that are setup betwen your forces and the enemy. They serve as an excellent way to distract and delay enemy forces from your more important units. If you set them up right, they can also be an effective way to hold an enemy unit still long enough that you can concentrate other forces on it. If your sacrifice unit takes a charge from the enemy elite unit, your elite unit will be able to charge them. That takes away their charging bonus and gives it to your elite unit (or units) instead. Alternately, you can use picket units as a style of Jamming (listed above) where you place the units to temporarily delay parts of the enemy force for a turn while you concentrate on the rest of the force. If you can delay half of the enemy force with a few inexpensive units, you'll be able to take on the other half with almost your whole army. If you do it decisively, you'll be in good shape to handle the rest of the enemy army after they finish with your inexpensive units.

Distancing is a way of keeping the enemy from performing decisive action against your units while setting up to do it to theirs. The idea is to monitor the threat radius of enemy units. A unit of Genestealers has an effective range (including movement and Fleet) of 13-18 inches. A Carnifex has an effective range of 12 inches. If you don't get within 12" of a Carnifex, it won't be able to snack on you in its next turn. A unit with a melta gun has a range of 18" for its maximum, but it is only really effective against heavy vehicles within 12 inches. If you can keep out of the threat range of some enemy units, you can limit the damage specific units receive. That keeps the enemy army from being decisive. Likewise, if you can keep your heavy vehicles out of the 'double-penetration' range of meltas, you limit what they can do. If you each have a vehicle-mounted unit with a melta (max range 24", best range 18") and you move your unit to 24" range, the enemy will probably move up the maximum to try to tag your unit first. However, at that range, their melta won't be any more effective than a missile launcher. If you can weather the hit, you can move your unit up to best range and get double-penetration dice against them, almost guaranteeing a kill.

Traps are the final tactic in the arsenal for decisive force against enemy units. The idea is to draw an enemy unit out where you can hit it with multiple units of yours. You are either attempting draw them out away from other units or out from an area where it is protected. For example, a unit of Terminators in a LandRaider really can't be damaged until you can get them to jump out of their LandRaider. They probably won't do this for just any old unit, but if you can offer them a juicy enough target, they will do it. The trick is to find a target that they feel is worth assaulting, but will be worth the sacrifice when you decisively shred the terminators.

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