STRATEGY-What Does it Really Mean?
There is no true clean and concise definition of strategy. Strategy,
on a global scale, can include economic and
political alliances which effect the outcome of many a battle. Strategy
on the battlefield after deployment looks a whole
lot like tactics. Strategy in its most basic sense is generalship,
maximizing the use and effectiveness of forces.
Almost all strategy inloves an element of indirectnes. By that I mean
that to truely win a battle time and time again
against an opponent of equal strength (point value) you almost certainly
need to avoid taking the line of natural
expectation. Often times the long way around is the shortest way home!!!!
Imagine if you will a sumo wrestler trying to throw his opponent out
of the ring. Unless he has an imense strength
advantage, he must use the psychological to throw his opponent, surprise
his opponent, move his opponent of
balance in without either losing his footing or upsetting his balance.
So to must a WHFB general find ways of unnerving the core of the opponent's
army, game plan and defenses.
Hopefully, the following set of articles will help.
LESSON #1 Deployment
I will adress army selection as I look to each and every race, unit by unit and as a whole in later articles.
Deployment itself, next to army selection is the single most determinitive element of any WHFB game.
By this, I mean deployment "sets the stage" for whole will dominate
the flow of the game. Yet, all to often deployment
is a rapid fire, careless exercise.
Let me give you an example of particularly effective deployment. . .
. Wood Elves are natural masters of deployment.
With so many scouts and units that can hide and manuever through trees,
the terrain is an ally of these tree hugging
warriors. So how do you set up?
Well. . .one popular way is to set up a clump of trees in the middle
of the battle field, hoping to force the army to go
through or around the obstacle.
Problem is. . .once the trees are placed, what you desire your opponent
to do is obvious and if not easily avoided, at
least, the opponent will be prepared to respond.
I tend to place whatever clumps of trees I have all over the board,
anywhere with no real focus in mind BUT to keep
one or two clumps in my deployment zone. We play a little bit different
than most generals. If you can not see a unit,
we mark it on a piece of paper but DO NOT put it on the board. THe
God's eye view of field makes it too easy for the
opponent to know what to expect and to plan for it. Often my opponents
will deploy only to find that they can't see but a
single lone character or two on the board!!!! This has unnerved more
than one opponent, who didn't know where to
march or what to do!!!!! I have even had one opponent move his main
strike force into the largest clump of trees only
to find that the 2 units of dryads were on either side of him.
The primary advantage of terain is to move unseen, under cover and gain
the element of suprise. This works for other
terrain features as well. If you have a line of hills in the middle
of the field, there is no reason that your opponent should
have any idea what is behind the hills! Thus, are the forces evenly
distributed along a standard battle line, or are they
massed on one side or the other??? I have fond memories of learning
this the hard way as my Woodelves moved
carefully to the top of the hill to "see" what they faced, only to
find the opponent fielded a large contingent of calvery
and had moved them to be able to charge anything that clambered on
top of the hill.
Many times, I will take advantage of the 2" sight rule with forests
to set up as many sections of forest adjacent to one
another as I can. Thus, you know I am in the woods, but what piece?
I can move into charge position under cover, etc.
Take this to an extreme. . .Imagine having a forest stretch along the
middle of the table from edge of deployment zone
to edge of deployment zone. You could be behind the forrest, in the
forrest, or anywhere!!! Now how would the skaven
without fliers choose to advance?
Scenery aside, when finished with deployment the question you must ask
yourself is: Is my opponent able to
determine my intentions from the way I set up???? Some armies will
have a difficult time keeping the opponent
guessing after deployment. Bretonians will have the most difficult.
Their knights are straight forward
CHARGEEEEE!!!!!, their characters well. . ..again straightforward and
they lack the wide variety of types of foot
troops and elites to keep me guessing. Wood Elves have the easiest
time. . .. .Will the dryads attack or will the
wardancers attack by leaping over? If the wardancers attack will they
attack using shadow's coil. . .if so might I have
an unpleasant surprise on my flank? The incredible manuevrability of
the Wood elves along with the variety of attacks
they can present and roles the units can play should keep an opponent
second guessing your intentions all game long.
As a unit, perhaps nothing can compare to the giant for the sheer flexibility
of his role. Once out, what is he going to
do? Will he pick up your character, head butt your heroe's mount? Head
straight for the largest core unit of troops and
jump up and down????? Remember!!! Characters are the absolute hardest
items on the playing board to predict. I
will often take a low level champion on a small flying mount to harrass
my opponent's game plans, tempting him to
commit valuable reasources and time pursuing a trap! Leave 'em guessing.
The Empire's great strength is in the problems it causes an opponent
in creating his army to counter the threat. After
deployment, the use of each troop type is fairly predicatble. This
represents a distinct disadvantage, practically, to the
Empire general who plays with the same group of players week after
week. . .It is easy to predict what you are taking
when I know what you have purchased.
Let's look at some scenery and think of deployment and what to do if we roll one of these pieces.
Deep River or Lake: I hear the dwarves groan as they know their little
stunty legs won't be able to keep up to get to the
ford. (Hmmm. . ..what about placing the river so it protects a flank?)
I find that this approach often helps those armies
geared towards quick assaults (orcs, chaos, skaven). . .Of course,
the WE general will try to gain rounds of shooting
off the river and if smart will locate their guaranteed clump of woods
right by the ford!
Shallow River: 1/4 Speed will cost your opponent an extra turn to get
through, or it could virtually guarranty their
inability to charge without very adequate warning. I prefer to march
alond a shallow river to avoid any flank attacks.
Difficult Terrain: We all know how to use this to tie up our opponent,
but what about tying up our own fleeing troops???
I love to put the difficult terrain at my edge of the table in my deployment
zone. If ever my troops decide to flee, they are
going to flee very very slowly, and hopefully will not leave the board!
Steep Hill: I have seen more than one dwarf commander jump for joy when
he got the right to place hills with cliffs.
Now how where those skaven with very few flyers going to get up that
cliff to my artillery? Depending on how you pay
that cliff can virtually assure your troops don't panic and leave the
table? After all, they aren't going to just jump to their
death.
Have any other great uses for terrain???? As I will later explain, Ariel's
Acorns I believe are the singularly most
powerful magic item in the game and all for 25pts!!!!!!
Wood Elf Grand Strategy: Are We Guerilla Warriors?
First for all you out there wanting to beat your WE neighbors, the risk
of guerilla warfare is that the menace can be
contained. If you can contain and diminish my ability to move, flank,
and "hit and run" you have frail, weak targets to
pick off. Think about it, the object is not to destroy but to control
the menace and then control the flow of the fight.
Nothing works better than boxing the WE's into one of two or three
fights they can neither avoid or want!
Now for a brief overview of Guerilla Warfare. Guerilla Warfare sets
the rules of normal engaement on its head and it is
this strangeness to it that often causes battles to be lost. It depends
entirely upon being dynamic and maintaining
momentum. I bet you never saw a WE general wait to absorb a charge.
Tactical evasion is as important as engaging
the enemy when the time is right. Standard military doctrine supports
the concentration of forces providing both
greater strength, and to the guerilla warrior an easy to reach target.
Guerilla warfare demands that there be a multitude
of targets, almost too many to know which target presents opportunity
and which target presents a trap or waste of
resources. Therefore, when engaged in Guerilla warfare with wood elves,
use the MINIMUM number of models in
units, spread characters around the battlefield and see the veins pop
on the Chaos general's forehead as he tries to
select a target. Your troops should momentary coagulate into a coordinated
strike and then scatter to the next
mission. The key to being effective at or against guerilla warfare
is knowing that its sucess depends on the ratio of
space to force. The guerilla needs to spread out. The wardancers and
dryads need to move around the enemy not
straight towards him. The glade riders need to outflank. . . ..and
the attack should be able to occur on both flanks and
the rear in a coordinated onslaught.
This poses a distinct problem. Most deployment zones are not wide enough
for a real guerilla warrior. You must must
must move your pieces horizontally at the beginning of the game and
not forward!!!! At the same time, the opponent
must think of a way to contain the manuverability of the opponent.
I love it when a well planned attack occurs. . .warhawks to the rear,
glade riders on the flank, dryads on the other flank
and wardancers charging into shadow coil.
Most unsucessful beginning WE generals forgot this next point and have
tooooo scatered an army. Guerilla warfare is
waged by the few but dependent on the many. That is to say, practically,
that the guerilla warrior can not win a battle
by himself. He needs to coordinate his guerilla strikes with a more
concentrated strike force, a set of units to inflict
damage should he be contained and to draw the attention away from the
vulnerable harrassing troops.
I often use either a block or two of glade guards or 10 glade riders
to either move down the middle of the battlefield or
hold position. My opponent then faces, breaking his battle lines to
go after the flanking treemen, scouts, dryads and
warhawks and possibly get charged in the flank from the glade riders
or to proceed straightforward.
The nature of WE's is AGAINST BLOCK FORMATIONS. . . of course, I have
known reformed archers to effectively
contain large blocks of orcs until the special forces could arrive
to make flank and rear attacks. Most importantly,
remember you need some concentration of force SOMEWHERE to present
to the opponent the option of ignoring the
strike force or harrassers. Otherwise, a good opponent will disperse
his troops to contain your highly manueverable
but individually weak units. Because everyone expects a Woodelf to
disperse power and "hit and run" some of the
most effective WE armies do just the opposite. Attack armies of dryads.wardancers
and knights in concentrated form
can ruin an opponents plans if he fields small units to chase your
small units! Remember if your opponent is kept
guessing or scratching his head, you are doing well.
Next Article will Focus on the Practicall Strategy for Creating and Using A Wood Elf Army.
Please tell me if this article was useful, a waste of bandwidth, and
most importantly areas you would like fleshed out!
Sincerely,