Shooting Army Tactica
You've got big guns and lots of them. Your guys can blast away with the best of them, but things don't go so well when the enemy gets up close and personal. So what do you do? You want to make use of as many tactics as possible to keep the bad guys safely at arm's length.

Split Deployment
Most assault armies work best when they stick together. This is because their power is based on assault, which means their units can only support each other when they are close enough to move to them in one turn. On the other hand, the big guns of a shooty army can support each other from much longer distances. Make use of this by deploying your army in 2 halves. Make sure there's little or no cover between the two halves and have them about 24" apart (more if the bulk of your firepower has more range.)

If the entire enemy army goes after one half of your army, use the firepower of both sides to concentrate first on Fast Assault Units (such as Assault Marines or Hormagaunts) and on Transports. If they have a decent army, their units will still reach that half of your army. That's okay. Keep hammering them with your big guns even as they kill off that half. When they finish, they'll be looking at a long walk over to your other half, right into the teeth of your big guns. (You did take out their fast units and transports, right?)

If they split their army, putting half against each of your halves, you will actually do roughly the same thing. Pick one side to live. Use the firepower of both sides to support that one. Use the same target priority: fast assaulters and transports. After those, use as much of your firepower as possible to keep the enemy off of that one half of your army. The other half will go down, but if you've taken out their fast assaulters and transports, they will again be looking at a long walk across the board, straight into your remaining big guns.

Speed Bumps
Just because the assault units have reached your lines doesn't mean the game is over. If they beat the unit in their turn, they'll be left standing around in front of the rest of your guns for your turn. You can use this time to move further away, or to light them up with all your weapons, or a bit of both. If you put really large, tough units up front, this won't work. They'll be stuck in combat for your turn and you won't be able to shoot them. Thus, you want to put small, wimpy units up front. Since these units will be dying so that others might live, you'll want to make them as inexpensive as possible. It may be tempting to take the charge away from the enemy, but don't do it. That will let them win on your turn, then advance and charge another unit on their turn. On the other hand, if you have some heavy short-ranged firepower that you can light up an enemy unit with, these would be good candidates for it. (Flamethrowers would be a prime example.)

title

A Combination Plate
That covers taking on Assault armies, but what if they have a mix of shooting and assault? Well, the part of their army that is most dangerous to you is the assault part, so that should be your first priority. Treat a combination army as an assault army in terms of deployment and tactics, until the assault section is either eliminated or neutralized. (If you've blown up all their fast assaulters and transports and the regular foot-sloggers are more than 18 inches away, you've got 2 turns before they'll be in your lines.) At that point, you might consider starting to shoot their shooters. (See below for more information on how to do that the best.)

title

More Dakka!
You will, of course, run into other people with shooting armies. With assault being out of the equation, you want to kill them faster than they can kill you. Which means you really need to focus on your targeting priority. I've got an article on a targeting priority theory called Killhammer. The gist of it is that some units do more damage than others and some units are easier to kill than others. Basically, you want to target the things that can cause you the most damage and are the easiest to kill first, then work your way down the list. The Target Priority formula (no actual math required) is...

[(Damage Potential)-(Time until they cause damage)]-[(How Tough they are)+(How long it will take to kill them)]+Situational Importance= Target Priority. (Thus, the higher the damage potential, the faster they can cause that damage and the easier they are to kill, plus higher situational importance, the higher their priority.)

If you want to get more detail and information, please check out killhammer.

If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know

Return to Warpstorm!