Please note that this is the third in a series of three articles and I assume here that you've read the first one for tips on what it means to have trenchworks and forfications in your games and how to make the best use of them and the second one for information on how to hold the line if you are in the trenches. If you have not, go read them now, I'll wait...

Speed Kills (the other guy!)
Okay, so the defender is holed up in a bunch of trenchworks and fortifications. Once you get in there, you can mostly sweep from room to room, running them down like dogs. Obviously, you want to maximize the amount of time you get to spend stabbing them and minimize the amount of time you get to spend playing catch the bullets. There are basically two kinds of speed, direct point-to-point velocity and moving around or through obstacles.

Straight out velocity is a fairly easy one. Put everything that you can into transports or otherwise give it the fastest move capacity possible. This will get some (hopefully most) of your forces up to enemy lines in the least amount of time, which results in fewer casualties for you. Transports are usually the cheapest and most common way to achieve this sort of speed. Other options are Jumppack troops and cavalry-type units or flying units. Most of these are less common and usually more expensive, but they can serve to bridge the gap quickly and then block shooting with their assaults while other troops follow on.

Moving around or through obstacles is an extremely important and often-overlooked part of getting over there fast. It is very handy in a standard game to have some units that can zip over or through obstacles quickly, and in a game with Trenchworks and Fortifications, a game that will almost certainly have quite a bit of difficult terrain and cover and other obstacles, it can mean the difference between life and death for your force. This may include innate abilities (Tyranids get an extra die on Difficult Terrain rolls, Kroot can move unhindered through Woods, etc.) or it might include additions to the units (Tyranid Flesh Hooks for scaling vertically impassable terrain, frag grenades for assaulting into cover, etc.) or it might even mean using different units (Jump pack troops and skimmers can move over difficult terrain as if it wasn't there, which makes them a very handy addition to a force.) I can't emphasize enough the importance of being able to assault into cover _without_ a huge disadvantage. On a board where _all_ of your initial assaults will be into cover, not bringing frag grenades or the equivalent is a truly huge disadvantage. As an example, several times I have lost units of Genestealers to Guardsmen in assault because only 1-2 Genestealers reached the unit and the unit was in cover. The Guard got to strike first, and killed off the Genestealers that could attack. Ouch.

Not all obstacles are part of the terrain. One of the best ways for a defender to slow down an attacker is to use a Roadblock unit. These come in several shapes and sizes. The first is the vehicle that is thrown out in front of the enemy to make them move around it. If you shoot it down, it will create some difficult terrain. If your army can easily move through Difficult terrain, then shoot away. If not, you may want to ignore it where possible and simply move around it.

The second is the picket unit, a light unit that moves out directly in front of one or more of your units, forcing them to move around or charge. A properly set-up picket unit will be designed to die on the first turn of combat, forcing your unit to waste it's movement and be stuck in front of the enemy firing line for an extra turn. The best way to deal with these units is to shoot them so that they are out of the way, or (if the unit is small enough) move around it with your lead units and allow follow-on forces to deal with them. If you must charge them, try to do it with as small a unit as possible to a) keep the disruption of your movement to a minimum and b) potentially extend the combat for an extra turn, keeping your unit safe through the enemy turn, then freeing you to advance and get a full movement in your turn.

The third is the stall or shredder unit. This unit (often actually a single character) is designed to either stall one of your units for most of the game through being very tough to kill, or to shred some of your units in CC, disrupting the momentum and cohesiveness of your attack.

Concentration of Force
I mentioned in the original article that current military thought puts a troops in a fortified position at a 3:1 advantage over their attackers. That means that if you have an equal-sized force, it will be suicide to simply run straight up and try to engage on a wide front. You'll have to concentrate your forces, and try to get as large an advantage as possible in one area. Local superiority is the game here, and there are several ways to play it.

First off is tight deployment. To keep your army as contained as possible, you want it to fit into as little real estate as possible. This basically means to clump your army together in a very tight space and have it move together. This will limit the amount of fire the enemy can throw at you if the fortification are widely spaced, since the further ones may be out of range or line of sight. The biggest trick here is deploying tightly such that your forward units don't get in the way of your rear units, and such that you can still maneuver around obstacles without losing too much time.

The next way to play the local superiority game is to use alternate methods of deployment and movement, such as Infiltrate and Deepstrike. As Infiltrate allows you to setup anywhere outside a certain distance from the enemy, you can almost certainly find an area of the fortifications or trenches that isn't covered very well (hint, look _behind_ the fortifications!) similarly, use Deepstrike to avoid part of the firepower of the fortifications or to enter the trenchworks in an area uncovered by fire. Either way will be most effective, however, if you use the specialty force (the deepstrikers or infiltrators) to attack an area either directly in front of your main attack, or that would be supporting the defenses holding back your main attack. This sort of local superiority is very, very hard for an attacker to deal with.

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