"Lessons Learned"
This page is where I share nuggets of tactical knowledge and wisdom I've learned through games (usually the hard way, of course). I don't claim to be a master tactician, nor do I usually find lengthy discussions of tactics terribly useful--who can remember pages of minutiae in the middle of a battle? So here's the one part of the Jungle where I try to keep things short and sweet. 

Most of my advice is for Marines, but other armies may benefit, too. Just check the list below for topics and follow the links. Hopefully, you'll find something useful.
 

Alaitoc (Eldar) Cleanse mission Dark Eldar "Effectiveness" Eldar (generic) Fast HQ Fighting fire with fire is stupid

G-kit General strategy Imperial Guard Jungle fighting My favorite Marine weapons Necrons Orks

"Pick how you want to die" Space Marines Tau Tyranids Ulthwe (Eldar) Veteran Sergeants

Alaitoc (Eldar). I don't sweat Alaitoc Eldar; to me, they're a one-trick pony (two tricks, if you count Rangers and Pathfinders individually). Their long rifles do squat against vehicles, so if you know you're going to play against Alaitoc, mount up in transports and roll all over their skinny butts. 

Cleanse mission. When playing “Cleanse,” I operate by a saying I heard once on how to win this mission: “Hold two, contest one.” That is, if you can hold two table quarters and contest a third, you win. For "Cleanse" missions, I've found that mobility is crucial. Many players (myself included) have made the mistake of forgetting that the mission is about grabbing territory, not killing the enemy. Often, many players like to distract you by fighting a pitched battle as they hide fast (but fragile) units behind terrain for several turns. On the last turn, they move these fast units into play to take or contest a table quarter. So when I play "Cleanse," I take stuff that can move: tanks, jump pack troops, bikes, Land Speeders, etc.

Dark Eldar. Dark Eldar are like sharks: once they stop moving, they die. Take away their mobility: the fewer Raiders, Reavers, and Hellions they have, the better it is for you. A canny Dark Eldar player will try to use his superior mobility to throw most (or all) of his army against isolated units and then roll up your flank. Don't let that happen. Keep your men together.

Many DE players like to invest a lot of points in a tooled-up Archon with a large Incubi bodyguard, which they then mount on one of those ridiculous kites the DE call Raiders. Shoot down the kite and the Archon and his Incubi have to walk, at no more than 6" a turn because Incubi can't Fleet of Foot. Yes, it really is that easy to negate an expensive and otherwise terrifying close combat unit.

Some DE players rave about the number of heavy weapons (particularly dark lances) that they could field in a static, Shooty Army From Hell of little more than Warrior squads. While the numbers might sound good (12 dark lances just from Troops alone), I am skeptical: Dark Eldar are not Imperial Guard or Tau, who can field vastly superior firepower. I am inclined to believe that a DE SAFH is throwing away its greatest asset: speed. 

"Effectiveness." A lot of players like to judge how effective one of their units is by calculating how many points worth of enemy their unit has to kill to earn its points back. Thus, if a unit costs 300 points, it has to, in their opinion, kill 300 points worth of enemy units to be "worth it"; if it doesn't kill at least 300 points, it's "not effective."

That's one way to look at it, but I think that's a simplistic approach. You don't necessarily have to wipe out the enemy to win a game--sometimes all you need to do is trick them into moving out of position, make them forget the objective, or just distract them from what you're doing.

Eldar. Balance is key when designing an army to fight Eldar. It's usually their firepower that kills, so you'll probably want to take the fight to them and assault them as soon as possible. However, the Eldar have quite a few units that excel in close combat, so you'll want to take several shooty elements to deal with them before your troops arrive en masse. It doesn't do to rush in carelessly and get an entire Tactical Squad caught by a Wraithlord or some Howling Banshees. 

You can win a shootout with Eldar, but it isn't easy. The way to do that is to exploit the (relative) short range of most Eldar weaponry, usually 36" max. In contrast, lascannons and Marine missile launchers have a 48" range: if you can keep your big guns out of range of theirs, you'll win. 

Many Eldar players take small Guardian squads, which aren't much to worry about. Guardians are pathetic except in mass quantities: a squad of 20 Defenders can fire 40 shurikan catapult shots a round. Aspect Warriors are hyper-specialized to either shoot really, really well (Dark Reapers, Fire Dragons) or assault really, really well (Striking Scorpions, Howling Banshees). So assault the shooty squads and shoot the assault squads.

Marine players like to whine about star cannons and Wraithlords. Star cannons are nasty but can be mitigated by using Rhinos and  Razorbacks to get your troops into hand-to-hand combat, whereupon the star cannons are nigh-useless. Heavier tanks like Predators and Land Raiders can ignore star cannons (but beware of bright lances). Wraithlords are overrated. They're slow and can't lay down a lot of fire: so long as you keep your troops away from them, you can concentrate your fire on more pressing targets. 

Fast HQ. HQ units in certain armies can be extremely deadly in close combat and extremely fast, a combination that means nothing but trouble for you. Archons on jetbikes or on Raiders, Ork Warbosses on bikes or Trukks, Winged Hive Tyrants--these should all be given top priority. You can't afford to have any of these rampaging through your battle lines. 

Fighting fire with fire is stupid. "Vanilla" Space Marines can do just about everything well, but they don't excel in any areas. Eldar, Imperial Guard, and Tau can outshoot them; Chaos Marines, Orks, and Tyranids can outfight them. Getting into a shootout with Tau or charging into Tyranids is stupid. Use the flexibility that your Marines have to take advantage of your opponent's weaknesses. 

G-kit. No, no "g-string," you pervs: G-kit, with a capital G. Named after my pal Paul "Gnome" Hill, who advocates putting the following package on all your Space Marine tanks and Dreadnoughts:

• Extra armor;
• Smoke launchers; and
• Searchlights.

You might want to forgo the extra armor and smoke launchers on a vehicle such as the Whirlwind, which is best deployed out of line-of-sight, behind some very large piece of terrain. For just about every other Space Marine tank and all Dreadnoughts, the G-kit is nigh-mandatory. 

General strategy. At its simplest, good strategy boils down to maximizing your strengths and minimizing your weaknesses. If your army is based on firepower, you want to have lots of guns and you want to stand still as much as possible so that you can shoot those guns to best effect. If your army is based on assault, you want to get into close combat with the enemy as soon as possible. 

You must also bear in mind what the enemy is capable of and minimize his strengths. There are armies whose strength is shooting, armies whose strength is assaulting, and armies (I call them "wild cards") capable of doing either very well but perhaps not as well as specialized armies. I tend to base my strategy on what the enemy can do best. If their strength is shooting, I try to assault them. If their strength is assault, then I try to shoot them. And if they are a "wild card," I'll assess the situation at the time and respond appropriately. 
 

Imperial Guard. Here are some tips on fighting the grunts:

Cover is your friend, if you can get it. Position units behind or among terrain features like hills, ruins, and trees in an attempt to block lines of sight or at least to provide cover. Take smoke launchers for every vehicle that can. 

Charge anyway. It's awfully intimidating to look across the board and see all those tanks and heavy weapons pointed at your guys, but you certainly can't sit in your deployment zone and hope the Guard will go away and bother some Orks instead. No army (with the possible exception of the Eldar or the Tau) is going to win a shootout with the Guard, so you might as well charge anyway in the hope of getting your troops into close combat, where the Guard's heavy weapons are useless.

Expect casualties as you move across the board, because blasting other armies to bits is what Guard do best. Battle cannons and Demolisher cannons have the painful habit of vaporizing entire squads at one shot--suck it up and keep going anyway. I've found it helps to:

Take lots of large squads to weather the losses;

 

Give the Guard multiple targets to worry about (Hit the advancing Rhinos? The Speeders headed for the objective bunker? The Devastator squad on the hill?); and

 

Present them with an irresistibly large, tough, and dangerous target like a Land Raider ("Yoo hoo! Over here!").

Jungle Fighting. By this, I mean using the rules from Codex: Catachans. Most people hate jungle fighting, but I love it. Some important things to remember in jungle fighting are:

• Take lots of infantry. You'll need numbers to soak up casualties. 
• Avoid bikes and jump packs. Difficult terrain checks will kill you faster than the enemy.
• Avoid vehicles, except Dreadnoughts and Whirlwinds. Land Speeders also work well.
• Movement and visibility will be hampered. Prepare for it and be patient.
• Like Murphy's Law, the Getting Spooked rule will hit you at the worst possible moment.

My favorite Marine weapons. Space Marines have access to many cool weapons, but these are my favorites:

• The boltgun (en masse). I never really appreciated boltguns until I began to play Dark Eldar, with their ridiculous splinter rifles. Massed boltgun fire, especially from a 10-man squad using rapid fire, is a beautiful thing, cutting down huge swathes of infantry and even taking out light vehicles. 

 
• The flamer. Placed over a nicely-clustered enemy unit, the flamer can put a serious hurt on even tough nuts to crack like Chaos Space Marines and Necrons. It's nigh-mandatory when facing Orks and Tyranids. The best things about flamers are that they're dirt cheap, lots of squads can have them, they ignore cover saves, and they can inflict lots of wounds without making a single "to hit" roll. It's such a good weapon that I often equip each Tactical Squad with a flamer, upgrade the Sergeant to a Veteran, and give him a bolter-flamer. Two flamer templates hitting an enemy unit in the same round will produce a LOT of kills.

 
• The heavy bolter. Many Marine players whine about star cannons, but to Eldar players, heavy bolters are just as bad. Like the flamer, the heavy bolter is cheap, available to lots of squads, chews through infantry, and is nigh-mandatory when fighting Orks and Nids. Thanks to its high volume of fire, the heavy bolter can even take out Wraithlords, as I've learned through personal experience. One of my most effective Fighting Tiger units is a Devastator Squad with four heavy bolters. 

 
• The missile launcher. Like the other weapons I've discussed, the missile launcher is cheap and readily available. Unlike the others, its beauty is its versatility, able to kill heaps of infantry with frag missiles or take out armor (even Land Raiders and IG tanks) with krak missiles. 

Necrons. Though they have some scary hand-to-hand units, the Necrons' strength is shooting, so try to assault them. Always remember to keep track of how many Necrons you need to kill to reach the Phase Out point: regardless of the mission, if you can Phase Out the Toasters, you win. Be happy when your Necron opponent brings a C'Tan like Nightbringer or the Deceiver: they're very expensive, very slow, and don't count towards Phase Out. Stay out of their reach and keep killing 'Bots. Nightbringer costs 360 points, the equal of 20 Necron Warriors. That's 20 less Necrons you have to kill. 

Orks. Greenskins often give me problems. When fighting Orks, I spend most of the game ignoring the mission objectives. Instead, I  just stand back and shoot: if the dice are going my way, there's usually been plenty of time left to grab table quarters or counters or whatever once most of the Orks mobs have been wiped out or broken. I rely on lots of flamers, heavy bolters, and missile launchers; the occasional lascannon or autocannon is good for cracking open Ork vehicles. And I avoid hand-to-hand combat like the plague. 

Speed Freeks are a bit easier to deal with than regular Orks. Basically, about half of the army moves at 24" a turn, the other half moves at 12" a turn (various vehicle upgrades and special rules can affect this). The Speed Freek player is faced with a dilemma: keep the army moving at the same speed and suffer more incoming fire? Or move all units at top speed and risk creating two "waves" (one moving around 24" a turn, the other moving around 12" a turn) that the enemy can attack piecemeal? If you can wax all or most of the Speed Freek vehicles before the Orks swamp you, you're pretty much assured the win, as the Freeks don't have the numbers that regular Orks do to sustain casualties.

"Pick how you want to die." This is one of my favorite tricks. How it works is that during a game, you give your opponent two or more bad options and let him choose which one he wants to die by.

Here's an example that my friend Micah used on me. In one game, Micah kept his Devastators well back from my defending troops and fired krak missiles into my guys, leaving me with two bad choices. I didn’t have the firepower to outshoot the Devs, so I could either:

a) Ignore the Devs, and suck down 4 krak missiles each turn;

b) Charge the Devs with a 10-man Tactical Squad, moving out of position to defend the mission's objective, and leaving myself vulnerable to counterattacks by Micah's Space Marine Hero and Dreadnought.

If you can set up situations where your opponent has to choose among two or more bad choices, you're virtually assured of victory. 

Space Marines (Loyal or Traitor). Normally when I play I rely on my Tigers of Rudra (Tactical Marines) to engage the bulk of the enemy, but not so against Marines (Chaos or Loyal). Marines are so tough that I prefer to use as many heavy weapons or power weapons as I can against them: hence, my Devastators, tanks, Dreadnoughts, and Assault Terminators do most of the fighting, with my Tacticals mopping up survivors or securing mission objectives while the "heavy hitters" distract the enemy.

Tau. The Tau are a Shooty Army From Hell, so when fighting them, I prefer to take lots of Tactical Squads in Rhinos and rush them. There's no need to bring tooled-up Veteran Sergeants or Big Bad Heroes to deal with Tau: if your Marines can make it into close combat with them, you shouldn't have many problems. 

Many Tau players try to mitigate their weakness in close combat by taking Kroot. I've never been impressed by Kroot--at best, they're a "speed bump" to slow down your Marines. Kroot Shapers are bad, but can be dealt with. The rest of the Kroot are unremarkable. Gun them down or charge them--they'll drop either way.

I've found that Crisis Suits (particularly Broadside suits) are very tough in hand-to-hand combat. They won't kill a lot of your guys, but you'll be hard pressed to kill them without using power weapons. But that's okay: so long as the Crisis Suits are in close combat and not shooting, you're doing well. 

Tyranids. I don't have a lot of experience fighting Tyranids, but I think one should approach them the same way one would fight Orks. It seems to me that the task of all the "little bugs" (Hormagaunts, Termagants, etc.) is to hold your troops in place for the "big bugs" (Raveners, Warriors, Tyrants, etc.) to eat. Bring lots of bolters to cut down the little bugs before they get to your lines and devote your big guns to blasting the big guns. Sounds simple in theory, but I've found it difficult in practice..... 

Ulthwe (Eldar).  Two things about the Ulthwe to look out for: Black Guardians and the Seer Council. Black Guardians are some annoying pointy-eared bastards. Don't expect your Marines to easily chew through them like they do other Eldar Guardians. The Defenders will actually hit with their guns (BS 4) and the Storm Guardians will actually hit with their swords (WS 4). And they come in large numbers. Indeed, if you aren't careful, you might find that it's the Black Guardians who are chewing through your Marines, not the other way around. Show them some respect.

Canny Ulthwe players will use the Council to tie up your heavy hitters, relying on those 4+ Invulnerable saves (from rune armor) to slow your guys down. Witchblades wound on a 2+ and tear most vehicles to scrap; they're not the worst close combat weapons your Marines will face, but they are darned annoying. I advise you to stay far away from the Seer Council, not so much for the damage it will do, but for the considerable time it will take to kill it. If you must deal with them, shoot them. A lot. 

As for the Ulthwe Strike Force (detailed in Codex: Eye of Terror), it hardly needs to be said that one should concentrate on wiping out as much of the army that was initially deployed on the table. Once the USF's reserves arrive through the wraith gate, the battle will become much, much harder. 

Veteran Sergeants. Many Marine players use Vets for squads that are intended to assault the enemy. The Veteran Sergeant has an extra Attack and can purchase items like power weapons or power fists, which can provide his squad with a substantial advantage. 

Veteran Sergeants can also be useful for shooty squads; in this case, you're upgrading the Sergeant to a Vet to gain a point of Leadership. That helps for Morale tests and for targetting units. 
 
 

Next page (pg 9): Index to Fighting Tiger Army Lists Previous page (pg 7): Fighting Tiger Heavy Support

Last updated: May 2006 

Top