Surgery
A while back I was reading a chat exchange between a number of good players on The Millennium Gate forum. They were discussing a recent tournament where a particular player with a strong army was acting like a total ass. He was rude and a bit shady on his moves and challenged rules frequently if he thought he could get away with it. One of the players that hadn't been there said he would definitely play the guy, but it wouldn't be a fun game, just surgery. Today, I'd like to discuss the surgery idea, the concept of taking the enemy army apart one piece at a time. Hopefully you'll be able to use it in more pleasant circumstances.

The basic idea of surgery is to find a weak spot in the enemy army and just target that spot, instead of attacking the army as a whole. The first step then would be to find a weakness and figure out how to exploit it. After that, I'll cover why some armies that seem strong can actually be rather weak, and why some armies that appear weak can actually be strong. Read on and be enlightened.

Finding a Weakness and Exploiting it
The easiest way to find a weakness is to categorize the opponent's army. I usually break it down by what it can be best used against. For example, a Lascannon would be Antitank and a Heavy Bolter team would be anti-Infantry. I like to know what they have to take on vehicles and infantry, and I break those down further in terms of light and heavy. Light vehicles are things like Rhinos and other transports. Generally the best things for dealing with these are moderate strength, multishot weapons like Autocannon or even Heavy Bolters. Heavy vehicles are generally the larger tanks with AV13 and 14. Monstrous Creatures can also be included in this category. These usually require very high strength weapons such as Lascannon or Brightlances. Light infantry is generally low toughness and light armor, such as Imperial Guard or Tyranid Gaunts. For these, you typically want medium strength, multishot or rapidfire weapons such as Heavy Bolters, Multilasers or even Bolters. Heavy Infantry is either medium toughness and good armor or high toughness and medium armor. Examples would include Space Marines, Tyranid Warriors or Ogryn. For heavy infantry you generally want high strength weaponry with good armor piercing capability. Lascannons and Plasma Rifles are great examples for this category. So, look across the table and see what they've got and what it can be used against. Let's take an example of a somewhat typical Space Marine army. Terminator Chaplain, 3 squads of 8 Space Marines with Missile Launchers and Flamers, a Predator with Lascannon Turret and a Whirlwind. Now, let's take a look at what all that means.

Against Light Infantry, this army has the three squads with their Bolters and flamers, they've also got the Whirlwind. Against Heavy infantry, the squads have the Missile Launchers and the Predator has it's Lascannon. Against Light vehicles, the squads have the Missile Launchers. And finally, against Heavy Vehicles and Monstrous Creatures, the army has primarily the Lascannon, though the Missile Launchers have some use here. Looking at this army, it's biggest weakness is against vehicles. It would be fairly simple to take out the Predator, which would leave only the Missile Launchers to take on vehicles, and they are stationary, which makes them easier to avoid. Taking out a single squad would make that even easier. Thus we'd start by really concentrating fire on that Predator first, then concentrate on one of the squads. (This is assuming that you have some vehicles to protect until the Predator dies, then to run rampant over the Space Marines once that is done.) But what happens when you run up against a super tough army?

The Deceptive Weakness of "Strong Armies
For as long as I've played 40k, there have been armies that other people simply cried over how tough they were. While a few of them were in fact overpowered in the rules, most of them simply limit themselves in one way to gain a lot of power in another. A great example of this would be a Khorne army a friend of mine tried a while back. He took 2 minimum Berzerker squads (Troop squads, effectively totalling 10 close combat Space Marines) and a Bloodthirster (Greater Daemon of Khorne that cost almost as much as both his squads of Berzerkers put together. He also took a powerful Chaos Lord and a Retinue of 5 Aspiring Champions. Each Champion was expensive, then he tacked on tons of upgrades and gear on each one, so they were extremely tough and powerful. Each of his champions cost more than the Bloodthirster, and was designed to really smash things in close combat. That was his total army, 17 models in 1500pts. He didn’t have any vehicles and had slow movement. He didn’t have any real way of taking out vehicles, except in close combat. He didn’t have a lot of troops to absorb casualties or block line of sight to his powerful models. He didn’t have very many units, so he’d have a hard time claiming objectives or contesting table quarters. Despite all this, he was totally confident that he could slaughter other armies. Sure, I was playing my Tyranids, so I didn’t have any vehicles for him to worry about, and the only objective in the scenario (we randomly rolled for one) was victory points, so that didn’t cost him particularly. On the other hand, his lack of mobility (or long-range shooting) and his low body count cost him. The Tyranids are not known for their massive shooting attacks, but I do have a few, and I used them all on him. Since his Berzerkers weren’t large enough units, they didn’t block much line of sight to his big command squad, so I just started shooting. Wouldn’t you know, he got unlucky once and failed an armor save, POOF, there goes 150+ points in a single shot. A few more armor piercing shots later and the squad was down to half. At that point I had gotten close enough that he could charge me, so he did and took down a Hive Tyrant, losing another model or two in the process. At that point, my Hive Tyrant and a bunch of Genestealers (having just finished lunching on one of the tiny squads of Berzerkers that they outnumbered so badly) charged in and wiped them out. Due to reserve rules, I’d only had about half my army against his, but it was still a complete massacre.

Most high-powered armies aren't quite that limited, but it does provide a good example of identifying the limitations of an army and using some of those weaknesses against it. One common weakness is the low model count. That means that each model killed is a huge loss. (In my Terminator army, a few unlucky rolls can reduce a squad to half-strength.) That also means they will have a harder time taking and holding objectives. Another common weakness is mobility. An army that cannot move fast will also have a hard time with objectives and can easily be taken advantage of by using terrain to block line of sight. The two most common problems that high-powered armies face are low model count and mission objectives. Simply by playing the mission, you can have a big advantage. Now that we've covered strong armies, what about the armies that don't look very strong, but somehow manage to pull off wins on a regular basis?

The Hidden Strength of "Weak" Armies
They may not look like much across the table, and they don't seem to add up on paper, but some armies seem to do awfully well anyway. One example would be Jake's Daemon-heavy Word Bearer's army. It didn't look like much on paper, with lots of weak Daemons and it was very definitely not as heavily number-crunched as my army was. Going into the game, I thought I was going to wipe the floor with Jake's army. At the end of the game, I had managed to kill 8 Chaos Marines, 2 furies, 3 Bloodletters and a Bloodthirster. In turn, he had managed to kill 2 Hive Tyrants, 2 Carnifi, 2 Zoanthropes, 4 Tyrant Guard...and 146 Gaunts! Geeze! What happened? The short version is that they had a huge number of attacks and shredded all my poor Gaunts. In general, he had a lot of fast summoned units, which gave him the opportunity to outmaneuver me. In addition to all that maneuverability, he also just had a solid number of troops, which is something his army shared with Adam's Thousand Sons army...

Looking across the table at Adam's army, I wondered what his plan was. All he had were tons and tons of basic Thousand Sons Space Marines. Not much in the way of heavy weapons or vehicles or maneuverability. At the end, he seemed to have the same number still there and managed to keep us from breaking his lines. As with most underestimated armies, Adam had lots of Troops, which meant he could absorb casualties and keep on trucking. Having lots of bodies means you have a better chance at being able to roll with the punches and if you get unlucky one turn and lose a few, it doesn't make a huge difference. It also means that you can easily claim multiple objectives and have a better chance of winning those games.

So, now that you understand the concept of surgery, and how deceptive armies can be, try to apply it to your army and see what you find out!

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