The Three Levels of Generalship in 40k
Recently I've run across a couple of articles (which you can read here and here) that break down 40k Generalship into 3 levels of play, or understanding of the game. It's important to note that not everyone wants to 'level up' in this way. Much in the same way that some people are content to have very basic paintjobs or leave terrain-making to others, not everyone wants to improve their gameplay. For that matter, if they are happy with the way they play now, who am I to say that they should change? Personally, I want to improve all aspects of my hobby. Although I find painting to be a chore, I appreciate good paintjobs and I enjoy having good looking models that I painted myself. Similarly, I want to improve my grasp of tactical and strategic thinking, so I work at that as well.

That said, this is my understanding of the 3 levels of play in 40k. (As a note, I'm somewhere in level 2, but I can see how level 3 works and am working to get there.) I'll go into more detail on each level, but I want to lay out how I feel they break down, so you'll know where I'm going with this. Level 1 is raw numbers and hard counters. Level 2 is list efficiency and target priority. Level 3 is dictating the flow of the game and seeing the army as a whole in terms of strengths, weaknesses and synergy. Since I've already discussed each level in detail, I'll now be discussing how to improve within your level and how to level up. If you want to read the levels, please go here.

Level 3
Level three generalship is about seeing your army as a whole, and dictating the flow of the game. Level three armies take efficient combinations of units and add various utility units to give them multiple options. A thorough understanding of the capabilities of the units and how their abilities complement or supplement each other. However, once you have mastered that, there is still plenty of room to improve.

Level 3 Improvement
If level 3 is the highest level of understanding the game, why would I want to work at getting better? Well, you will come up against other level 3 players (and even some very, very good level 1 or 2's that will prove challenging.) If you want to come out on top more often and be the one dictating the flow of the game, you'll need to get better. Okay, so how do I get better at being a level 3 player? By better understanding different weapons, different styles and even how different armies operate. Also by practicing.

Weapons
Weapons capabilities are vitally important to your play as a level 3 general. The basics are pretty simple. If you know the ranges of weapons, you can set up outside of their range (preferably with longer-range weaponry that can pound them.) However, it gets a little more complicated when you add in movement. A unit with rapid-fire weapons does much better damage at movement+12 inches. Mike Brandt of _Whiskey and 40k_ (in the link at the top of the article) brings up the next level of that. The Chimeras have vets with meltas and they have hull heavy flamers. The ideal move is to get within 6" range for the melta guns and have that heavy flamer pointing at the enemy Chimera. Since you won't be able to fire if you move more than 6", that limits where you can start from and succeed. In addition, the hatch (from whence you fire the Melta) is 3" away from the front of the Chimera. Thus, you have to move 6"such that you are 3" away from the enemy Chimera. That means if you are 9" away or less, you are golden. If you are 9.5 or more inches away, you can't perform the ideal. You can get close, spin the chimera and shoot out the back, but the flamer won't be able to do it's job, and then the enemy vets can melta your ride. If you are further away, like he says, you want to adjust your distance so that they can't do it to you, but you could do it next turn. Pay attention to the effective range of various weapons (starting with your own, and then branching out to other armies' weapons.) Also pay attention to the capabilities and options for the various vehicles and equipment each army uses.

Styles
There's more than one way to skin a Catachan, and there's more than one way of running an army. The reason this is important is that by really understanding how a particular style of army works, you'll also understand how to stop it from working. Take a couple of screws out of a well-oiled machine and watch it grind to a halt or spin out of control. An obvious example would be a level 1 army: negate the deathstar by blocking it or sacrificing cheap units to it and the rest of the army is mostly useless. An example against a level 2 army would be to work out which part of the army is most damaging to your army and focus on elimating or negating it early on. Against a level 3 army, it will likely be much harder, but you might be able to focus on minimizing the utility units so that you can better apply your firepower or assault. Don't just read about the styles, study them. Practice making lists and even play a few games with them to know them inside and out. Also take a look at other styles of play. One that really opened my eyes was the a href="http://warpstorm.net/elementalclassification.htm">elemental classification.

Armies
Leafblower, Razorspam, Dual Raiders with Hammernators. There are a lot of lists out there on the internet. The ones that are most popular (often because they are very effective) tend to get silly nicknames because it's faster and easier to refer to them by that name than to spell out the whole list every time. Search them out. Study them. Proxy them. Really figure out what makes them tick. Basically, the same thing you did for the styles of play you should now do for specific armies. Buy the codex. Don't just read it, devour the rules. If you understand their army better than they do, they won't know what hit them when it suddenly grinds to a halt because you took out the linchpin. I'll mention proxying again, because it's important. You will learn far more about an army by playing _as_ that army, than by just reading about it or looking at it. Figure out the things that it does well and the things it doesn't do. Study what it needs to have happen to win. Playing _against_ a fast wave army (like Tyranids with Gargoyles or Hormagaunts and Termagants and Monstrous Creatures) you might think you need to stop the fast things. If you play as the fast wave army, you might realize that if you stomp on the Termagants, the fast wave will be unsupported and easy pickings. (Depends on the army, but you'll know the difference if you play as the army at least a few times.)

Practice
A tourist is driving around New York City trying to find Carnegie hall for a concert. He stops someone on the street and says, "How do you get to Carnegie hall?" The guy looks back at him and says, "Practice, practice, practice." Jokes aside, practice is vital if you want to be able to truly wield your army under all conditions. Practice deep strike defense. Practice using your infiltrators to defend against Scout moves and counter infiltrators. Practice shutting out Outflankers. Practice the different kinds of deployment and how they differ if you are going first or second. Determine if there is a difference in your deployment based on the mission. If there is, you want to practice it so that it becomes second nature.

Deep Strike Defense
There are two parts to deep strike defense. The first part is to protect your important units from enemy deepstrikers. This may take the form of bubble wrap to keep assault-oriented deepstrike units from assaulting on their next turn. It can also be directed at enemy shooting units. Deepstriking melta units can wreak havoc in your lines, wiping out important vehicles or shredding Monstrous Creatures. By putting infantry units around your vehicles, you can keep them from landing within 1" of the infantry. If the outside edge of your infantry is at least 5.5" away from the vehicle, deepstrikers will be outside of ideal melta range, which makes a huge difference against vehicles. If you can keep them outside of 12 inches, your important units will be even safer. The second part of deep strike defense is to lay traps. Without special rules, a unit cannot land on top of your models, or within 1" of them. If you leave gaps in your placment that are smaller than their unit size plus 1 inch on each side, they won't be able to land there. If you leave a gap exactly big enough for them to land (unit size +1") then you tempt them to land there. If they deviate, they'll be in a lot of trouble.

Scout and Infiltrator Defense
This is much like deep strike defense, except you have to worry about their movement. You can keep them from infiltrating into good positions by making sure you have line of sight to the best positions. You can also keep them from using their scout moves effectively by bubble-wrapping, like I described in the deep strike defense section.

Outflanking Army Defense
What happens if you run up against an army that Outflanks? Use your infiltrating units to block off one short edge of the board and set up on the other one. If they don't have a way of choosing their entry side, they'll lose about 1/3 of their units right off. The rest will have to slog the long way across the board to get to you. Ouch. If they do deploy but don't use both corners of their deployment zone, block off the side they didn't use, and follow the same plan. You can also use your utility units to protect you from nearby outflankers if you don't want to deploy away from the edge.

To be the best level three general that you can be, you need knowledge and practice. Like GI Joe says, "knowing is half the battle!" So get out there and start studying, practicing and learning.

If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know

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