Is assault dead? Jstove doesn’t think so. Check out his breakdown of the 40k FAQ that may not have killed first turn alpha strike assault, just left it sitting in a Rhino…
Alpha Strike Assault was popular because it was cheap.
We all know that Alpha Strike was good because it let you lock up your opponent in melee and kill his plastic dudes before his plastic dudes could kill your plastic dudes. Catapulting spears, Tzaangor bombing, or just casting Warptime on any giant model with big spooky wings and a big axe to make it run across the table and murder anyone is pretty great.
But I have an alternate theory. I don’t think it was popular because it was strategically brilliant. Was it a good idea? Yes. But just as importantly, it was CHEAP.
A Psyker that can cast a spell and allow a unit to snort a line of warp dust and double time up the table to get a 1” charge, or a stratagem that does the same thing is more economic in terms of points and also less WALLET CASH MONEY than the alternative, which is buying a land raider or a storm raven.
You save points and you save money.
Let’s break it down like this, I’ll use a CSM Primarch catapult as an example. So you’ve got a Mortarion, and let’s call him 400 points. Then you’ve got cheapo the sorcerer, he’s ballpark 100 points because he’s just running around naked with his force sword. He has one job. He’s about a $25 model, but we’ll say he’s free because you’re a chaos player and you’ve had sorcerer models lying around for years.
Morty on the other hand, he ran you about 150 bucks. You cast Warptime on him, slingshot him across the table, and mop up. Warptime was free, command points are free, the sorcerer was free. You only ever had to pay for the one big fat model that did the work.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be Morty… It can be a fat stack of Tzaangors, or a bunch of Blood Angels covered in power weapons and golden armor, whatever you pick, we’ll just say you’re in for the cost of the unit because all the stuff that made your unit go fast on turn one was free.
Now let’s talk about what we need for units that can’t alpha strike on turn one. First of all, they’re probably going to need a transport that doesn’t die easily so they don’t get shot while they’re standing in the open for a turn. So we need a Land Raider or a Stormraven. That’s gonna be $65-75 out the door, and three or four hundred points. The next thing we’re gonna need is a nice fat support unit that can either live through turn one, or shoot away the opponent’s army so you can’t get popped on turn one1.
Because you don’t have an alpha strike assault, you actually need to let your opponent play the game for one turn before you jump on him. So let’s spend another brick of points and a wad of cash on something like a knight, or some Primaris Hellblasters, or a grip of Plagueburst Crawlers or Manticores.
The cash and the points are both stacking up. Despite the fact that our boy Morty is a fat $150 model, a first turn Warptime slingshot is looking really cheap. We haven’t even bought the unit to put into our Land Raider for our assault yet!
Holy crap, we might not even be able to afford it, we’ve already built half a gun line just to get a turn 2 charge.
Now we begin to see the real problem. It was never that planning a turn one charge was the alpha and omega of brilliant tabletop strategy. The real problem was that planning a turn two charge was cost prohibitive in terms of points and what you can sneak past your wife when you come home from the GW with a big bag of models.
But that doesn’t matter now.
A second turn drop was off the table because it hosed both kinds of players. Competitive players hate a lack of efficiency. A turn one drop slingshot was easy on points and super alpha. Working family man players hate the fact that you have to commit your wallet for backup. Really, it was a lose-lose.
Until now. Spam going off the menu put a lot of armies on a diet. Death Guard really took a hit, they lost about 300 points worth of plague mortars, and the free zombie buffet is over. Flyrant spam is dead, and even more classic Chaos flying circus lists that ran 4 princes had one prince deleted overnight. Dark Reapers? Extinct. Eldar will have to play the game again. (Somehow I don’t think Eldar players are actually sad about this since nobody actually wants to build and paint crummy old dated resin aspect warriors anyway)
A lot of people are going to come out thinking that since the first turn slingshot is dead, it will open the door for more static gun line armies. People will castle up and shoot even more now.
To paraphrase his royal highness the Brown Magic, people are going to think that, but good players will find a way.
Turn Two assault is the new Turn One assault.
There’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news is that assault armies are going to have to try. We’re going to have to spend points and money and not just phone in a Warptime or a sprinkling of command points to get an alpha strike.
The good news is, most of your opponents can’t shoot you any harder than they can right now.
A four Daemon Prince list lost its 4th prince. A four or five Plaguecrawler list lost a couple crawlers. Guard parking lots? Probably unchanged. They’ve got a deep bench of artillery units and what they lost in spamming one artillery piece they’ll just pick up in another.
But pretty much every spam list in the game that relied on one model lost firepower that it can’t get back. Was assault nerfed? Only on the first turn. But shooting was nerfed every turn. Do you think there’s anything in Death Guard that has as much across the table reach as a Plague Mortar? There isn’t. That’s their only model that ignores line of sight.
Do you think there’s any other Daemon that’s a character, a psyker, and a melee badass? Not unless you want to upgrade to a greater daemon, and you don’t. And Hive Tyrants… is there any other flying smite battery with Brainleech Devourers and Synapse? Not likely.
Spam models were spammed because they were efficient or even over-performing. Whatever replaces them likely won’t be as strong, because if they were as strong as the spam, they’d be the spam.
The death of spam gives the turn two assault list the breathing room it needs to set itself up. And unlike the turn one speed drop, the turn two assault can push the whole army forward all at once if you build for it. Furthermore, infantry screens that were once problematic to the turn one assault army are now severely mitigated for two major reasons.
- Weapons like heavy bolters, assault cannons, devourers, and similar guns that put volume of fire over damage and penetration are reasonably cheap and will have a first turn to do work. You now have 2 shooting phases to apply pressure on hordes before your big assault.
- Infantry hordes have been curtailed. Tide of Traitors, the stratagem that replenishes diminished Cultist units, is now once per game only. Poxwalkers can only replenish up to their starting unit size, and every model above that is now reinforcement points, effectively killing infinite zombies. The worst offenders in the horde meta are cut down to size, a few turns of cheap economic heavy bolter fire will put holes in the line where they are needed.
The Low Budget Assault Renaissance
In addition to waiting until turn two to drop the hammer, I think the door is open for cheap melee, or melee units that I like to call “bully units.” A bully unit is a melee unit that’s only barely good enough to outfight anything that isn’t itself a dedicated melee unit. For example, normal space marines or scouts with pistols and swords fighting stuff like Cultists and Gants.
In this new era of second turn assault, we not only have the potential to commit one badass unit but multiple units across the whole front to pin down the enemy. I think players that commit to cheap bully units to spread the butter across the gun line will see success, as they’ll keep the opponent locked in his deployment zone on a permanent back foot falling back.
A lot of stuff in the Space Marine book starts to look playable. Space Marines, despite being the poster child of GW have had it rough since they have a hard time getting value infantry but units like bikes and party buses full of scouts hitting the enemy all at once might be an interesting alternative to the standard Space Marine play of “15 Scout Snipers on a roof and a dream.” I also like that Land Speeder Storms are cheap, and have the potential for “I don’t need to get the actual troops if they never leave the transport play.” A strategy pioneered by Kabalites in raiders.
We also come back to Tyranids, who have the king of the low budget assault unit, the Mawloc. He’s so low budget assault, that he’s not even really assault. He’s just a whack-a-mole that pops up and down handing out mortal wounds, but the important thing is that he can be there causing trouble when everything else in your army shows up on turn two.
Tyranids have a lot of diverse cheapo assault with turn two charge options to get in the game, and the death of Flyrant spam set them free. Swarmy might also get to see the table too, but I’m not holding my breath because even with only three of them available and increased points cost, a Flyrant is still a great model.
On the Chaos front, the Maulerfiend is an insane, low budget turn two hitter. Give him tentacles and throw him in there. I think Kenny Boucher, Goatboy, and I have always been lifelong believers in the cult of the robot tentacle monster, and now that chaos lists everywhere are hemorrhaging plague mortars and quad princes, it’d be interesting to see old Mauly filling the void.
Of course, the army that really had this whole ‘everyone jumps on turn two thing really nailed down was Dark Eldar. Wyches are not only cheap, they’re scary as hell and can lock anyone, even fliers. If I didn’t hate the idea of painting 60 evil bikini elves, I’d already be playing this army and Daughters of Khaine.
But man, I sure did hate painting those Escher gangers.
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About the Author: Jack Stover
