Is This Your Card?

Or the fine art of the force.

I was watching one of the more competitive players at my LGS play a Mordikar Skorne list and was mildly enlightened by him talking through his thought process while playing. He totally possessed a tool I was missing. In the same way a magician can force you to pick the card he knows, the Skorne player called his turn...

You will kill 5-6 swordsmen, 2-3 Accurii, and hurt (but not kill) the Rhinodon. He even called it out and watched as it all went according to plan. I came to realize I was missing a tool, the ability to "force".

Knowing pretty much at all times what your opponent can kill and knowing how to maximize on those losses (which for some casters is easier than others), was a new way of thinking about the game that I hadn't actively thought about yet. I am used to doing all the calculations separately (threat range is X, damage output is Y, etc.), but watching him basically dictate his opponents turn was a bit disconcerting.

All and all I know he is a bit out of my league (he has placed highly in several major events), but the glimpse into his mindset for a moment showed me the next level of the game that I was only vaguely aware of previously.

Being a generalist in a specialists world

I tend to find by self drawn to the jobbers in any given army. For IG I love the grunts, Ork's the boyz, Cygnar the trenchers and so on and so forth. I have noticed that many times these generalists tend to be glossed over more often than not, as they are over shadowed by a unit that specializes in one thing. Often this seems to transpire for many reasons; specialists have a clearly defined roll,some systems charge more for the ability to do many things alright as opposed to one thing well, and they tend to get taken out if they try to play someone elses game.

With so many cards stacked against them, why would anyone in their right (OK maybe this doesn't describe me) mind want to play generalists? I have personally found their flexibility to out weigh their "limitations". In Warmachine, I love me some trenchers. Are they going to crush my enemies while I listen to their women lament... probably not. However, on any given turn I can:
* have a guy pop smoke
* shoot someone
* assault to get 2 attacks on the charge
* assault to extend their ranged threat range.
* fire off AoE's in hopes of a good scatter
* dig in to help them against enemy shooting and blast damage.
* dig in to remove them as a LoS blocker
* advance dig in and make a combat action
* CRA to put some hurt on a larger target

With the exception of the 2 orders (assault and cautious advance), I will often do some random combination of all of that when I have the trencher module going. Admittedly this works better in Warmachine than in 40K, given the way that unit activations work. But for the most part, generalists in my experience can try and play the counter point to the strategy on the other side of the table, or do their own thing.

No Retreat Baby, No Surrender

I have noted that in the last couple of games I have played that there came a moment where the odds seemed daunting, and (once for me, and once for my opponent) thoughts of throwing in the towel started to emerge. At the end of the day, the person with their back to the wall (again once for me, once for my opponent) pulled out a win.

The first time I actually saw the shot and walked him through the kill (he had wanted to give up at the end of my turn). I know Warmachine can be a discouraging game, and when in one turn you lose half your jacks and the other half are knocked down or autonomous, one can have a hard time seeing the outs. Long story short(ish) he ended up adding a notch to Caine's gun belt, and Durgen went off with some new battle damage in his armor.

Last time game I played I found myself in a similar situation. The only reason I even made it into the next turn was a missed scatter roll keeping Thor alive with 1 point of damage (but on fire). Start of the turn Thor put himself out, slammed with the avalacher, knocked everyone down, the lone remaining forgeguard got a charge off, and Durgen finished him off with a boosted pow 14. If I hadn't rolled that out and stuck with it, I would have lost.

The Art of War talks about the idea of dead mans land (or some such title) the idea that if your men have nowhere to retreat, they will fight to the last. In a similar vein when you are down to a hail mary (something that works better in some games than others), play it out. At worst you made a gallant last stand, at best you have one of those "there I was surrounded by..." stories that make those of us of a mathematical persuasion cringe as you beat the odds.  

Advanced Deploy - Are you doing it wrong?

Many games have a rule that lets you setup your little dudes on the table at some point after your opponent. On top of that there tends to be some kind of addition to your deployment area dependent upon the game you are playing.

From a Warmachine perspective most people seem to only view this as an extra 6 inches that your men have to move first turn and leave it at that. This seems a bit short sighted to me and often gets your scouting forces killed early (this can also hold true in 40k with infiltrators). I often see bemoaning posts about how I deployed my guys way out there, and they got killed. They will then often go off about how unit X is a bad unit. Often (as I have learned from personal experience) the fault lies on the Gigantic side of things, not the little.

Often we, as the leaders of hordes of plastic and metal armies, seek to maximize an "advantage" to the point it is detrimental to the fictitious lives of our charges. I would like to wax philosophical a bit about what goes through my mind when I look into pushing guys into no mans land.

I am not left handed... (or getting to deploy once you have seen some of your opponents strength)

This is the biggest strength (IMHO) of an advance deployment, you get to place your models after your opponent does. WHAT?!?!?

In my mind and experience, the ability to deny a flank, take an objective early or that will be hard for your foe to get to, and/or show up to the party with all your friends is a much bigger part of the ability than just the extra deployment. Several armies across game systems use this strategy well and often.

In the 40k universe Deathwing and drop pod armies actually are toward the top of this list for me. Not only do these guys deploy after you, but they do so during their first turn. How many of them do so is up to you. In Warmachine, the ability to set up in cover, on a hill, or overlooking an objective or choke point can be the difference between victory or defeat.

You should be aware of the counter to this mentality "I am not left handed either". This is basically where your wily adversary has units he gets to deploy after you... the big thing here is to not over extend yourself and leave some easily exploitable weakness for someone to exploit.

Location, Location, Location

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. This builds on the logic above, once you know where your opponent is and how you are to crush them, look at the terrain. Can you set up where you aren't walking into a death trap? Even better can you deploy somewhere there is a strategic advantage? Are you denying some thing, threatening something, or just there because it is 16" out?

Basically, wasted movement is bad, make sure you have a reason for what you are doing.


A little bit of real estate

Finally we come to the first thing people think of, so it will probably what I talk about the least. Hey look I get an extra X" of deployment... IF your army consists of blood thristy savages who's soul purpose in the universe is to get into hand to hand as quickly as possible (Doom Reavers spring to mind), by all means deploy as close as you can to your opponent and run screaming into their lines. I would like to point out however, that this is using both countering your opponents deployment (GAR ME NO HAVE TO GO AS FAR TO SMASH) and probably location (GAR MUD ICKY AND SLOW ME DOWN... NO KILL FAST).

Rooting for the Underdog

How competitive is competitive? I tend to be a bit frustrated with the forums these days as there are a few very vocal members of the world who instantly and loudly let the opinion be known when someone is playing a "sub-par model" (or over priced or crappy or anything but playable). I started Warmachine in 2008, when my buddy started Skorne. We both chose army's based solely on the way they looked. At the time nothing in Hordes really called out to me, and I started poking around in the magic land of Warmachine. I was quickly drawn to teleporting gunslingers and the trenchers (come on how can you hate anyone who's nick name is the Gravediggers).

Fast forward a couple of years and some fortunate turns of events, and I started expanding into merc's to diversify the scene my LGS a bit. In all that time I continue to be drawn to playing the models I find the coolest more than the most competitive. I will be the first to admit that I may not be the "Man to beat" at the gaming store, but I seldom have trouble finding a game, and at least in my opinion I tend to give as good as I get. That being said, I have gotten millage out of models often overlooked by Cygnar players (most notably Trencher Infantry) and find it tragic that people shut things down so quickly.

To kind of riff of my earlier posts, The Book of Five rings has a couple of ideas that I think can apply to playing with some of these less desirable models.

1. Keep your foe off balance. For all the cry's that half the world has hunter and sprays, I have not met a single list designed to counter dig-in, and unless pigs and trenchers take over the world you are not going to. I also am a big fan of what I think of as the trencher shuffle. They can do so many things well that I often find myself changing gears at random and going in a different direction with them then what my opponent expects.
2. Don't deny yourself a weapon. Musashi was all about having a sword in both hands and using them both to overwhelm one's opponent. Trenchers may not be the sharpest sword for any one thing, but damn are they pretty good at most of them. Assault in and of itself means they make 2 attacks on the charge. Once you add in snipers, grenades, the ability to move dig-in and shoot their abilities (in my bizzaro land of playing under powered units) start to shine. Add it the fact that with a bit of support (from casters and other solo's), the things they used to be pretty good rapidly start becoming really good.
3. Practice with the tools you have. You are not going to get the most out of anything you don't play the hell out of. When you can do 8 different things at the same time, knowing the when and where to do them becomes critical. Trenchers are prime example of this. When I was playing them more often (have switched mainly to Highborn, which doesn't let you take them), on any given turn I might:
1. Push one grenade porter forward to fire an aoe
2. Have a couple of guys pop smoke to block Line of Sight to stuff behind them
3. Have a couple CRA (Combine Ranged Attack) to pick off a model that got to close
4. Dig one or two to clear LoS

I suppose I have rambled about Trenchers enough. The moral of the story is if you like something play with it, figure it out, and use that to put up the best fight you can. I would try to listen to more to the people who try and make the best of things when you ask for help making things work, and less to the people who say it is not worth playing out of hand, and refuse to think out of the "competitive" box.