Good morning internet, it’s JStove here and rather than talk about how much you love/hate the new ork book or whatever shiny trinket GW is dangling in front of us today, I want to talk general tactics.
Something that applies to any army, regardless of whether or not you think your army is good/bad/unplayable/crying wolf on BoLS.
I want to talk about what I think are the two most important factors in any list building exercise in 40k, and its a general principle that applies over multiple armies and multiple generations of the game, from the time lash princes the time of shrouded princes, and all times in between.
These two main ideas named after a familiar concept- THE UNSTOPPABLE FORCE and THE IMMOVABLE OBJECT. What does that mean? Well, what it says in all caps naturally. It’s pretty literal. But let’s get into it.
There’s a lot of ways you can win or lose a game of 40k. You could play on a table with open line of sight and get hosed on turn 1 because you have no cover. You can deploy like crap or have a garbage deep strike roll and send 400 points worth of terminators to go have brunch with Tzeentch.
You could buy a lot of models at once without reading the rule book or codex, put them on the table, and figure out how bad your theory-crafting sucked when you finally started rolling dice and your opponent just got up on top of the table and started Hammer dancing.
But we’re not talking about that today, we’re talking about how you win the game in the list building phase. We’ll talk about why you don’t play with enough terrain another time- If you think you own enough terrain, you don’t.
The idea of the unstoppable force and the immovable object is not to make them meet each other in the middle and split the atom, the concept is that you must defeat your opponent by introducing him to a Catch 22- a scenario where he cannot win no matter what he does.
Ideally, you do this by either making sure he can’t possibly kill your biggest, baddest toy, or you have so many big bad toys that he can’t possibly kill them all. If he can’t blast your dudes off the table, and you can’t lose, then he can’t win. It’s the Joker logic- “I don’t have to win, I just have to make Batman lose.” That’s the IMMOVABLE OBJECT.
The other side of the coin is the UNSTOPPABLE FORCE. Put something on the table that’s so brutal and destructive that if he doesn’t immediately annihilate it, you will do the worm on top of his army and he will run crying to the forums about the time Scotty 2 Hotty beat him at 40k. Drop something in his lap that’s just so much pain he’ll spend the whole game dumping everything into it that he never actually has any chance to play the objectives or take out the rest of your army.
You can try to have both in the same list, and its a good idea to try, but if you can only get one or the other, or focus one to the exclusion of all else, that’s fine too.
Remember- The goal is not to split the atom, it’s to create a scenario where your opponent loses no matter what decision he makes. We don’t actually have to kill him on turn 1 or turn 2. We have six turns to kill him, we’re not in a hurry. What we really want to do is put him in a position where he has to attempt to accomplish impossible goals, and if he does not accomplish these goals, he will get hosed off the table, by the numbers.
The concept is all about applying pressure and dictating the opponent’s actions. In many cases, spamming a unit might be part of the agenda, but it doesn’t necessarily need to involve spam. Spamming is certainly the simplest way to do it, but it is not the only way.
Let’s talk about IMMOVABLE OBJECTS, because that’s the simpler concept. Put something on the table that can’t possibly killed, that the opponent can’t fight, but must fight around.
The original immovable object is the land raider. If your opponent can’t deal with AV14, a land raider and his 5 or 10 best friends (more with the loyalist variants) will just roll around erasing enemy units one at a time until you either own the table or the game ends. If you shoot everyone on the other team holding a melta gun, then the land raider is an immovable object and will dictate that the opponent can’t win. Another great immovable object is the Eldar Avatar- Sure, he’s kind of a featherweight when it comes to monstrous creatures, but he makes all the space elves around him fearless, which basically turns any space elf army into a nightmare blender of unshifting rending death that will just chuck buckets of dice at you if you come within shuriken catty range.
Spam tends to work out pretty great for immovable objects, and if one of anything is good, two must be better. Also, in some cases, a unit that is not normally an immovable object becomes an immovable object if spammed. For example, doubling up on land raiders is a great way to make armies that have low high-strength weapons cry. This can really hurt the tau because the hammerhead is the only reliable long-range anti-armor answer in the army, and suits with fusion guns not only aren’t as popular as rifle/pod suits, but will not get close enough to gas a raider without having the rest of the marine army jump on them.
The Great Unclean One is a pretty handy immovable object if he rolls up the right spells and perks. Combining an instant death weapon with a handful of biomancy spells will make that walking pile of turd into something your opponent really doesn’t want to get near.
As a general rule, an immovable object is any model your opponent can’t deal with, can’t remove, or can’t beat. A unit might not start the game as an immovable object, but it can become one later in the game if you remove the units that threaten it. Fearless infantry sitting in good cover, high AV tanks that the foe didn’t bring enough S9-10 or melta to fight, or fighty monstrous creatures that will eat vulnerable low model/high cost infantry with high strength AP2 hits all become immovable objects.
The tougher concept is the UNSTOPPABLE FORCE.
An unstoppable force can be an immovable object, or become an immovable object later in the game if it meets the above requirements, but the only real requirement of an unstoppable force is that it dictates your opponent’s actions.
Unstoppable forces don’t actually have to kill everything. As a matter of fact, if you’re winning the game, they probably won’t. Its perfectly acceptable for an unstoppable force to die during the battle- The only requirement to be an unstoppable force is that it has to be so evil that your opponent must kill it on turn 1 or turn 2 to stay in the game.
Remember, this is not about what you can or can’t do, its what you can force your opponent to do. If you force your opponent to react to your unstoppable force, you are winning the game whether the unstoppable force lives or dies.
Ideally, you should multiply your unstoppable force into multiple threat vectors. Always have more than one. Spamming helps, but unstoppable forces are different than immovable objects in that they get exponentially better the more variety they have, so that a weapon that defeats one might not defeat the other. These are the models your opponent has to take off the table early in the game in order to stay in the game. If he cannot take off any of them, or only a few of them, you will eventually close the gap and spend the last 4 turns of the game mopping up.
The original 6e unstoppable forces were the riptide and the heldrake. Both of these models started hurting people with giant template weapons that scoured whole units off the table the minute they showed up, and have to be removed immediately to stay in the game.
Another great unstoppable force is anything with a demolisher cannon, but a blood angel vindicator is a favorite. Nobody likes staring down the barrel of a S10 AP2 pie plate. Other, fatter unstoppable forces are the stormlord, and the Typhon and Hellhammer or Stormsword superheavies, all with giant guns that have great ability to erase units with overwhelming dakka or ignore cover templates. Make no mistake, these days I’d skip D and go for ignore cover with how easily Shrouded is getting handed out.
There are 2 great unstoppable forces in the game right now that exemplify the concept, and they’re both used by people you see online.
The first is Reecius from Frontline’s Living Artillery nid formation, the sleeper hit from rising leviathan. While everyone was whining about flyers and licking their chops to skyblight, Reece started cranking biovores, and it’s heinous. For those that don’t know, living artillery is a 3 pack of warriors with a barbed strangler, an exocrine, and a 3 pack of biovores. Every blast template in that shopping list gets twin-linked and pinning.
This means that if you put those bugs in a ruin with a venomthrope, you have a shrouded hate-cloud of bio diesel dropping fat templates that don’t miss all over your opponent’s army, and one of them is S8 AP2 and can stand still for BS4. If your opponent does not kill the living artillery immediately, it will rain spores on him. Since this formation drops in at just under 400 points, you still have plenty of room left for dakkafexes, tervigons, crones, and flyrants to do work.
The second pick for unstoppable forces is Kenny’s patented Maulerfiend spam. An immovable object doesn’t have to be a giant gun or a bunch of guns that can’t miss that can threaten a whole unit every turn. As a matter of fact, faster, more maneuverable and punchy choices are often better immovable objects because they force the opponent to recognize them immediately as they book it up the table. Maulerfiends are the epitome of the concept- for 125 points you get a giant disposable robot that ignores terrain and puts the hammer down 12″ every turn and gets bonus melta gun shots every time he hits a line drive.
At AV12, he’s not looking to live forever, but a maulerfiend’s job is not to survive the whole game. As a matter of fact, any maulerfiend that ends the game still alive and not immobilized did not do his job. MF’s only purpose in your army is to run into stuff and make your opponent shoot him first.
Remember, the unstoppable force’s job is not to kill everything, it’s to dictate what your opponent does. Killing stuff is just a bonus, making your opponent do what you want him to do for the first 20 minutes of the game is the real deal. A 3 pack of hellhound flame tanks can do an insane amount of damage, but generally won’t live through the whole game. However, if they become a priority target for your opponent, it leaves your lemon russians and manticores to fire on the foe unopposed.
While spamming can create results, its generally a good idea to multiply your unstoppable forces with other variables. Your opponent might have an answer for one but not the other, and if you have 3 things that you consider to be unstoppable forces in your list, you only really need to land 1 or 2 of them to do business.
Chaos looks pretty good for this right now. You can create multiple threat vectors that will be game ending events for your opponent. The same list can have a helturkey, a shrouded nurgle prince with an instant death weapon or a black mace depending on codex choice, a land raider full of pain, super quick neshi grinders, and of course, every maulerfiend Kenny and Goatboy can get their dirty little hands on.
The nice part is these guys can all move at the same pace, and they’ll all cause a lot of hurt if they aren’t stopped. Its a parade of hatred that congeals into a single brick of pain- The land raider is an immovable object that can only be killed by dedicated anti-tank fire, and if it gets anywhere on turn 2, a chaos lord and/or a 3 pack of plasmanators are going to come out guns blazing and start swinging.
The nurgle prince is effectively invincible unless the opponent has ignore cover, the maulerfiend is a speedy punch that can keep pace with a prince and a land raider that they can both hug for a dirge caster, and the heldrake is of course the biggest pain in the ass to ever fly out of any codex. Throw in some cheap troops like Typhus and friends, nurglings, or a nice big blob of daemonettes, and you can create a lot of punch that needs to be off the table by turn 2 or your opponent’s next visit to the bathroom is going to look like the Eye of Terror.
Of course, its not uniquely a chaos trick- Chaos just has a lot of ways to punch and big, fast, punchy stuff are often the most ideal units to play unstoppable force.
Other platinum hits for unstoppable forces are the dark horse necron and ; friend lists- A chewy shooty gauss and tesla standard cron army with croissants and a Dlord with a pack of wraiths backed up by either a battle wagon full of angry S10 ork warboss, or a fat pack of grey knights with a boatload of psycannons.
Orks by themselves are of course a perennial sleeper hit in this category, as open-topped vehicles and power klaw assaults on disembark are a hot way to get fists into faces.
At 2 attacks base across nearly every model in the codex, any kind of ork jumping out of the back of a trukk or wagon is never a bad choice. Dark Eldar tend to be a wildcard and can be very dangerous against an ideal matchup, and a raider full of re-rolling rapid fire poison is either a non-event or a total hoser, depending on which army you ask.
Checkout what else I have to say HERE!
