Monday, August 3, 2009

A Tactical Survey

I wanted to mention a phenomenon that occurred during my games at 'Ard Boyz. The reason that this is a survey and not tactical advice, is because it is really only an observance from a limited number of games. I thought I would mention it to you and see if you have experienced something similar.

You all know that I run a mechanized list. For the big 2500 pts at 'ard boyz, I added 2 veteran assault Squads and one honor guard, all with jump packs. Partly because those are the models that I had, and partly because I wanted to see them in action.

As part of my mechanized tactics, I was reserving everything for last second objective grabbing. The funny thing that I observed (and I was not expecting this at all) was that my opponents came close enough to my board edge (in search of objectives) that the Jump Troops could assault on the turn that they entered play.

I suppose it is obvious then that I was not deepstriking them, but jumping in from the table edge.

Well, it worked out really well. I call it a phenomenon, or merely an observance, because I have not tested it over enough games to know if it is truly effective or something that you can count on.

In reality, there are an infinite number of variables that could influence your opponent to come close to your table edge or to stay away from it.

So, I wonder if this is your experience? What do you think? Is this viable, or was it just a fluke? Please post your comments, and lets collect our thoughts on this gaming phenomenon.

5 comments:

Dverning said...

From my experience, it's one of those things that everyone does once...

You're playing aggressive... you're wanting to get into their lines... you're focussed on that terrain/objective/target... and totally forget that something went into Reserves rather than Deep Strike.

If your opponent's smart, they'll learn from that mistake. If they're brilliant, they'll learn to use it against you. (Example: moving to 20" from the edge and waiting or moving to 17.5 but behind a bunch of difficult terrain.)

It's the kind of thing that someone will make when they're not thinking straight or over-excited, but not one I'd count on as a strategy. At least, that would be my anecdotal experience with it.

eriochrome said...

I could see this happening a lot. 18 inches is not that far from the center of the table so aggressive players could easily cross that especially with deepstriking forces very quickly.

Carl Brown said...

It's a clever little trick.

As a regular tactic I guess it depends on your opponents. Close combat orientated armies will be pouring towards you so you should be able to pull it off against them. Against the sit back and shoot forces you'd be better off doing something different (either Deep Strike or regular deploy).

It's a good one to have in your play book though - thanks for sharing!

Feldmarshal Goehring said...

I think you have all brought up great points.

I agree with Dverning that if I try to do this frequently against the same opponents, they will learn to exploit it. Or they will at least remember to stay out of range.

Eriochrome and A Thousand Hats seem to agree that this is a nice trick to use when the opportunity presents itself.

As usual, the battlefield and the opponent will dictate at least a portion of the tactics.

Feldmarshal Goehring said...

Oh, I almost forgot to mention this: thanks for reading, and thanks for your comments!