"Statistics, Logistics, Economics, Tactics, Luck, and Determination or How To Be A Good Theoretical General." Post 005
"Be resolute, fear no sacrifice, and surmount every difficulty to win victory." Mao Zedong
We all know the meaning of sacrifice. But in game terms I am referring to those units of warriors that you put in positions where you know they are dead meat. Why would one want to sacrifice any unit in his army? You would think that in an equal point game you need all your army to win the game, however this is not always the case. If you were to keep track of the kill to death ratio for each of the units in your army you will find that some of them kill other units more often than they die (my Lootas for instance have a 6 to 1 ratio over the last few games). For those units that tend to be on the field to soak up more damage than they dish out or are used to kite your opponent, these are what we call sacrifices.
There are a few different types of sacrificing units out there. You have your “Hey, shoot at me or else I'm going to annoy you,” the “I'm going to piss you off all day unless you come deal with me,” and the “Hey, half my army is defenseless. Just don't look at whats happening over here.” This can be summed up into units that are large but don't have the killing power to win a game for you, powerful units that you bait with, and the half your army approach.
Some examples of large, relatively useless units are:
- Imperial Guard Conscripts
- Nercon Scarab Swarms
- Tyranid Spine Gaunts and Rippers
- Ork Gretchin
- The Nightbringer (Sadly, yes)
These units have their own advantages and disadvantages, but normally people don't use them because they don't do enough damage. Those that do field these kind units use them for primarily sitting back and holding objectives. In terms of sacrifices, these units are excellent. My Tyranid playing friend before (I will call him Oz from now on) will use full units of Spine Gaunts to sit on an objective the whole game (out of Synapse range and in cover they gain Lurker and Going to Ground giving them a +2 cover save in ruins and buildings) or use them to rush in and hold up walkers and basic infantry. In one of the more annoying cases, back when I played Chaos, he would give them leaping and have them assault my Defiler. He couldn't hurt me, but I could only kill two or three a turn. So my only options where to go assault them with one of my more powerful units or forfeit my Defiler for the rest of the game.
With the new Imperial Guard codex and Commander Chenkov, Conscripts make great run in and die units (seeing as how the unit comes back into play after it is destroyed. But another more combat efficient Conscript sacrifice squad is one that has all 50 models in it and is lead by a Lord Commissar (or worse Commissar Yarrick).
Special example for this part of sacrifices, the Nightbringer. A large, scary, point heavy model that has the stats to make any player wish he never has to see close combat with it. The big problems with the Nightbringer are his inability to be effective at ranged combat (so running him as fast as possible is your only viable option) and his lowly 4+ armor is just sad for a Star God. The up side to him is his large wound count and toughness 8 (meaning only strength 5 weapons and higher can even hurt him). Use him to be a figure head of your army, run him in to your opponents units as fast as possible and hope they are foolish enough to spend a turn or two firing all their heavy weapons at him trying to bring him down.
No comments:
Post a Comment