Bucking Conventional Wisdom
(or, If it's Stupid but it works, it's not Stupid!)

Surprise, Surprise!
Conventional wisdom is the standard, it's what everybody knows and expects. If you follow conventional wisdom when you put your army together or use your tactics, you are following in other people's footsteps and so you have the benefit of their experiences.

There is a purpose to conventional wisdom: It works. It's safe. People have tried it out and know how it works and you can generally count on it to do what it's supposed to. Everyone knows that if you want to take down a tank, you need to bring an antitank gun, or possibly a tank of your own. That's just how it works. If you don't bring a tank or an antitank gun, you can't really expect to deal with enemy tanks.

On the other hand, it _is_ exactly what everyone expects, which means there aren't any surprises. Sometimes that surprise is worth the effort of going against the conventional wisdom. If they don't expect your infantry unit to take out a tank, they won't try to kill it ahead of time, and they'll be left scrambling to catch up after it happens.

Armies that don't work in conventional ways are also harder for the opponent to understand. They may not know how to deal with the army. For example, when Matt Birdoff took his Thousand Squats to the GT, most opponents didn't know how to deal with them. They would start by sitting back and shooting, but they couldn't do much damage to all those Thousand Sons. Then they'd run into assault, but they'd still bounce off. All those turns spent being ineffective made his army much more effective. Similarly, an opponent may not know what units are the important ones to damage and thus not know what parts they need to target, or what order to target them in. For example, the first time I faced an assault army with my Tau, I didn't really have the concept of killing the fast assaulters. I initially focused on the heavy shooters (that were expensive and could do a fair amount of damage) and then I got cut to ribbons by a bike squad and a biker lord. If I'd understood the threat that they posed, I could have easily cut most of them down at range and kept them at arm's length.

So what is the conventional wisdom? Well, there's way too much for me to list it all, but here is some of it: It takes a tank or an antitank gun to take down another tank. Most people bring Space Marine armies, and if you want to take down a Space Marine you need a high-strength, low-AP weapon. Multi-shot heavy weapons are only good for taking down light infantry (Guard, Gaunts, etc.) Guard armies shoot, Tyranid Armies assault.

These are time-tested standards, but they are just that, standards. Tanks can also be taken down by grenades or bombs carried by fast-moving infantry units. They can also be taken down by lighter weapons that hit them in their side or rear armor. As an example, a Tau Piranha with a Burst Cannon (S5) isn't much threat to a tank, until it starts hitting the rear armor with 5 S5 shots per turn (2 from the Drones.) Suddenly that tank is on fire before the opponent realizes there's a threat.

Similarly, if you bring Space Marines, everyone knows what to expect since that's what most people play. If you play something else, either something that plays very differently than Space Marines (Tyranids or Guard might be good bets here) then they'll have a little harder time. A heavy bolter does almost as much damage to a Space Marine as a Lascannon (0.44 dead compared to 0.55.) If your Space Marine opponent looks across the table and sees lots of Heavy Bolters, he won't expect just how much damage you can do!

While multi-shot heavy weapons _are_ good for taking down light infantry, they can do some other tasks as well (as noted above, taking down heavy infantry or even tanks in their rear arc.) Likewise, there are other things than multi-shot heavy weapons that can take down light infantry. Massed Rapid-fire weapons is one. Large numbers of attacks in assault is another. (Orks have no trouble wading through masses of infantry, and Tyranids start salivating when they see lots of Guard!) Highly accurate fire can replace volume as well. For example, a twin-linked BS4 Missile pod only has 2 shots, but they hit 88% of the time and rip through light-medium armor easily. They can be highly effective at taking down light infantry.

Guard armies do shoot and they do it very well. On the other hand, with lots of inexpensive fodder units and a few units that can put the hurt on in assault with cheap power weapons and powerfists, they can actually run an assault, too.

Tyranids assault very well. They can also have some surprisingly nasty shooting that is capable of taking down Heavy or Light infantry (massed Devourer fire rerolling misses _and_ failed Wounds!) or Tanks (S8-10 Venom Cannons.)

One of the Tau armies that I am planning on using relies on large numbers of Deathrain configuration Crisis Suits. This is a configuration that is popular in small numbers because it is very inexpensive and can actually do some decent damage. Because it is used in small numbers, most opponents don't really understand either how much damage it can do or what it's really capable of. Let me elucidate...

My Rain pattern army uses 13 such suits, plus has 2 Fireknife-5 Commanders. (The BS5 Missile Pods of the Commanders are almost as good as the Missile Pods of the Deathrain suits.) That gives me approximately 15 of them. That'll take down 7.5 Space Marines per turn at 36" of range. Alternately, they can account for 22.5 light infantry such as Guard per turn. That's also 5 effects on light vehicles (AV11.) That's pretty decent damage for a unit that barely even shows up on most people's radar. In addition, these Crisis suits can do this damage from 36" away and can move and shoot. That means they can be completely spread out and still concentrate their fire on almost any point on the board. Their high mobility and long-range means they are hard to get to grips with. The fact that they can spread out like this means it's even harder to get to them. Finally, since each suit is inexpensive (most of them are 53pts for 2 T4 Wounds and a 3+Sv) it's hard to kill enough of them to make a difference. A list like this will play _very_ differently from other armies and will confound opponents, since they'll have a hard time figuring out how to deal with the army.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be putting out a few more examples of this sort of different thinking in different army lists so that you can buck the conventional wisdom and confound your opponents, enjoy!

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