Going Tactical - Bring on the BIG guns

I love artillery and as a guard player, I really do have a lot to choose from, It's like been a kid in a sweet shop, but I don't really think any of them belong in the 40k game, especially in 5th edition.

Why is this? Well, it's down to True Line of Sight. In previous editions of the game, one of the founding rules concepts is that 40k is a game of abstract scale. IE 36" is not same as 3 sets of 12", when you looked at the table, you were looking at a map, that bunker wasn't a bunker, it was a bunker complex, those two tree's were a heavily wooded forest.

With the inclusion of True LOS, all this changed. That bunker was just a bunker, those tree's were just a couple of trees. Everything on the table becomes what is was, rather than a representation. What you see is what you get. Well, if that's the case, then abstract scale goes out of the window. You can't say that a building is just a building and then park an artillery piece behind it and fire over it to hit something in the other side, it just makes no sense.

You see the problem is that 40k isn't a wargame, it's a fantasy battle game. It's full of stuff that just wouldn't happen in a wargame. It's probably the reason why it isn't taken seriously by proper wargamers.

Now, I like tactics and strategy, and I often try to include these into my games of 40k by creating special rules and campaign rules that support these. So, with artillery, here's a few things that I've done in the past with friends to bring a bit of wargaming to 40k......

Artillery has been a major part of all modern conflicts from WWI onwards and played parts in many of the conflicts before the 20th century. The one thing that made artillery excellent was the idea that you could have guns safely in your rear echelon and still damage the enemy. There's no way in hell you'd have heavy pieces lined up with your infantry on the front line, so useless they could fire directly, we banned them and we also banned them firing indirectly. This didn't apply to troop weapons, just any that needed a vehicle to move it.

With them gone from the table, we needed to represent them in the game. This was done in a few methods.

Off Table support

We simply counted them as being behind the lines, and used a spotter much like the current MoO, which was more realistic if not a little annoying to the enemy, with them not being able to do anything about them, but then that's the point of artillery. An alternative to the MoO are preplanned strikes very much like the Grey Knights orbital bombardment.

There's plenty of playing around you can do with this option, from spotter rules to fire missions, to planning pretimed creeping barrages, even to coin a phrase, broken arrow fire missions. With a little effort you can add a whole new tactical level to the game with offensive and defensive artillery support.

Multitable games

Best saved for big point games and multiplayer games, but they're absolutely great fun and add a whole new level to the game. The basic idea is that you have another table setup to represent the artillery positions. You can then call in support fire from the rear table to the front line table using various spotter/fire mission rules.

Where it gets interesting is how you deal with this rear table. In the past we've allowed players to allocated deep striking units to attack the artillery positions. It becomes a whole new game, with player having to decide how much of their force they want to put aside for attacking/defending these positions. Too much and you could be lacking on the front line, to little and you'll be feeling the pain on the front line.

Campaign rules

Campaigns already add a whole new strategic level to the game and artillery is just one element. In past campaigns based on hex maps (the old mighty empires), we've allowed artillery pieces in forces neighbouring a hex currently in conflict to support their forces with off table artillery. Combined with a relaxation of the FOC, this encouraged the players to develop specially artillery support armies and artillery hunting forces. There's just so much possibility.

Give them a go, I'm sure you'll have a blast, a very large blast. Out of interest, have any of you guys used alternative rules for artillery support? I loved to hear them, feel free to add them in the comments or even blog about them. I'd love to hear how you making things a bit more tactical.

Mission - Paint it up ..

I've been chatting with my Tau mate about our upcoming Tau invasion campaign. We've decided to bin the army lists and the map and go completely narrative driven with each of us writing up missions for us to play. Which way this will go? who knows? but what I do know is that it ain't fare but it's going to be fun.

So, here's the first off our missions, not a bad start in my honest opinion.

Paint it up .....

In preparation for the impending planetary invasion, the Tau insert stealthsuit teams across the planet to mark up vital Imperial installations that must be destroyed before forces can be deployed on the ground.

Setup

The game is played longways (short edge to short edge) across a 6' x 4' table. Imperial player must deploy a scenery piece to act as the objective within 12" of a short table edge. Tau forces enter play via the other table edge at the start of turn 1. The Imperial player must deploy his sentries no closer than 18" to the Tau table edge.

Forces

3 Tau Stealthsuits, fitted with blacksun filters and Molecular Ionic markerlights.

10 Guard Sentries
Platoon HQ squad with 2 grenade launchers, mounted in a chimera with heavy bolter, multilaser and searchlight.
10 Guardsmen with grenade launcher.
10 Guardsmen with grenade launcher.

The guard platoon is held in reserve and will deploy once the alarm has been raised.

Scenario Special Rules

Sentries - as described in 4ed.
Night fighting - the entire game is played using night fighting rules.
Sssssh - to avoid detection, the Tau do not use their jet packs or Run movement until the alarm is raised.
Molecular Ionic markerlights - a range 12" weapon that leaves a residue that Tau weapon systems can track long after the target has been marked up.

Mission Objective

Tau major victory - Successfully marking up the objective and then extracting the stealthsuits off their own table edge.
Tau minor victory - Successfully marking up the objective but not being able to extract all the stealthsuits off their own table edge.

Imperial major victory - Successfully preventing all the Tau from extracting and also preventing them from marking up the objective.
Imperial minor victory - Successfully preventing all the Tau from extracting.

Reserves

Guard reserves enter play at a rate of 1 unit per turn determined randomly from a point on any table edge as determined by a scatter dice.

Game Length

The game continues until all the Tau forces are dead or off the table.

Design notes - I'm looking at this one as a sort of chess game to start off with, that has the potential at any dice roll to suddenly become a very fast and furious game. I'm planning to setup quite a lot of terrain on the table to restrict LOS (we still play 4ed rules on area terrain and LOS) but you don't have to as ranges are restricted by the nightfighting rules. On the win conditions, there were two factors I thought were important. The first being marking up the objective and the second was casualties. Alarms could be raised at any point for any reason including tripping over and letting a round off by accident but actual dead xenos bodies outside an Imperial is going to get the High command on their toes.

Well, there you go guys, hope you like it. Feel free to give it a go and I'd love some feedback on what you think of it. Once we've given it a go, I'll put up a battle report and a few pics.

Playing a bit differently

It's a lovely sunday afternoon, and I'm sitting in the garden on my laptop watching the kids play and the rabbit run for it's life. Well, I say run for it's life, in truth, it's easily running rings around my 3yr old lad and his baby sister - lol

Probably inspired by the old gamers article in the latest issue of WD, I've been thinking quite a lot about big games. I really like big games, and by that, I mean campaigns, multitable games, and scenario driven games. Don't get me wrong, I love a straight game of 40k at the club on a friday night, but that's all it is, a game. Big games are stories in action, they drag you in and then never let you go. Once it's started, you're in it to the end, and that's what I'm craving right now!

So, I've been chatting with a few friends and we're going to setup a campaign that's story driven, points are out of the window on this one. The basic story is set, the foul tau are attacking an imperial world. We've already decided that it's going to be mainly static imperial defences with the tau trying to seize the capital. We've also already decided that the imperium is likely to loss as they are facing overwelming odds. So, what's the point of playing a campaign that you know the outcome? Well, it's not about the fact I'm in all likelyhood going to lose, but how I lose. That's the Dunkirk spirit kicking in.

We'll be fleshing out the campaign over the next coming weeks, so I'll keep posting what we've got so far. Right, off to think about maps.