Pushing Big Blocks at Each Other

[heychadwick]

Someone was posting an army list on another forum and it consisted of three big infantry blocks and some chariots and such for support units. It had me thinking. Some of my local players have gotten bored with Warhammer and say it's nothing more than a few huge blocks (for Steadfast) that rush across the table at each other and then duke it out. Oh, you put hexes or buffs on each other and whoever rolls the better dice wins the game. The compliant is valid if everyone just takes 3 big units or so and play as above.

Now, I've been playing MMU (or Many Medium Units) and having a lot of fun and having it be pretty effective. Even 20 goblins in the flank of a unit have given me some good success in defeating the enemy quicker. It's not just grinding down quicker (though it does this), but it also drops rank bonus for CR. Even 10 goblin attacks adds in a kill or two against Chaos Warriors. So, deny the enemy any rank bonus, add in a some CR for flank and extra hits and the enemy is most likely losing. Even if the enemy is Steadfast, you can fail a Break test (even with BSB nearby). The more rounds you lose, the greater the chances of bricking your test and getting run down. It's also harder to keep Steadfast when you have a unit with 4 ranks in your flank.

I play Orcs and Goblins and I see a lot of other players out there wanting to go with 50-100 Goblin units. The most I would ever take is 40 and I wouldn't take that too often at all! I usually go with about 30. I also don't like to use Horde units. I find I like an anvil unit of 25-30 or so and then hitting the unit in the flank with a good support unit. I find this usually works for me and is more than just both sides having 2-3 big units that they push at each other.

Do people play with just big blocks? Does it just seem like who can get the best buffs or roll the best dice to win? Or do you guys play a more cagey game and actually use tactics (as in units moving into position as opposed to which spells you use)? I'm just curious as it seems like more people play this other way than those who don't. Am I in a minority? If this is the case, then I can see why people say 8th Ed sucks.

[walkstheweb]

I totally see where your coming from here. The skaven players here are just running huge clanrat units or plague monk units with a furnace or bell. Beastman are starting to get on board too with hordes of Gors. But aside from the beets hoarding flaming arrows it's not too bad.

I totally agree with your tactics. I'll use my Gobbos kinda like empire with a horde of 40 and a support unit of 20 right next to it. With fanatics, flanking and rank bonus denial I've destroyed huge units with minimal trouble. Couple that with Night Shroud and bricks 80-60 tend to break and run.

Were also getting into playing a lot of 1000pt games out here on half sized boards. Thats been great fun!

[heychadwick]

I would say that most lists of any army type (well, not Bretts) between 2000-2500 pts has about 3 big infantry blocks and a lot of chafe support units. These support units are usually really small and minimal size. When I see a lot of these armies and I see them play against each other...it tends to be really boring.

[murphy]

I'm glad to see you like watching/playing the Brets Nothing like my knights running your fanatic minefield like at Adepticon!

In terms of the main topic, I am not sure I see that many armies consisting of 3 big blocks and not much else, probably less than 25%. Majority of the time I do see them its a WoC army - 3 blocks, lvl 4 on disc, hellcannon or two. Standard and very tough to beat!

[heychadwick]

Ha! I got so frustrated with your luck on that one! I think that was the most frustrating thing to happen to me all weekend. Oh, no...I didn't pick my battles in the right order for my game against Demons and lost because of it. That was worse. I grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory.

Speaking of Demons, I do see that strategy with Demons a lot. Maybe two big blocks of Bloodletters and then a bunch of support stuff. When I mean support stuff there is always two units of flamers and then some other stuff.

[kenstubbs]

yup, thats me. I do push two to three blocks around. I play WOC, and they lend themselves to that. While our fast cav really does rock, its hard after 7th not to enjoy running a horde of infantry. I run a lvl 4 on a disc, he usually has to serve as everything from my casting support to my warmachine hunter. Other then him, I usually run two warshrines in a 2500 pt game and two warrior units with one unit of equally sized chosen.
I understand where you're coming from however. 8th does seem to push you to get into the biggest blocks you can. With terrain not hindering movement much there is very little incentive for me to run anything but large blocks. This may or may not be true of other armies but since my infantry are some of the best in the game I would have a hard time coming up with other builds. I've tried cav, I've tried monsters, and I've tried that greatest of all cheesy builds, a balanced army. As long as steadfast is what it is, your always going to have at least one large block of infantry to try to beat your opponents steadfast.
Metagame, currently whomever can destroy their opponents biggest block of infantry faster has a very good chance of winning the game.

[Erik Lindley]

I can see a little bit of what you are saying, but I am almost certain that the game will change noticeably with the release of the next couple of army books. O&G will have a pretty big impact that hasn't been realized yet.

Mark my words, _manglers_ will change how people view support troops in their own armies. People will start to build tourney lists with them in mind almost like you do ethereal troops now. Manglers will become as ubiquitous as DE Hydras and Skaven A-Bombs.

In the mean time I am playing Brets (knight heavy baby) and loving it!

-Erik

[walkstheweb]

I'm REALLY anxious to see how my Manglers work out. People where I play are sleeping on them very heavily but I see what your saying about them. After things calm down from the new baby and I can get back up to play I'll let you guys know my experiences with them.

[domus]

Apr 28, 2011 9:57:51 GMT -5 Erik Lindley said:

manglers_ will change how people view support troops in their own armies.

Manglers, pump wagons and chariots will all have this effect and goblins can bring lots of the above IN ADDITION to lots of troops + LVL 4 + MORE STUFF. OMG

I win games with support troops not with big blocks. I constantly LOL at the silly lists I see with just big blocks and little to no support.

[Chris M.]

Saw one at the bunker the other day..... 75 skaven in one block... I think storm vermin, some Jazails in 2 units (i cant spell that and am too lazy to go get my book) a few characters, and that was his whole list. If I had been playing a Slannesh Chaos wizard I think I would have fallen over and died from joy. Ecstatic Seizures anyone?

Manglers are already starting to affect the meta game. With the new Tomb King book there will be something in there that really messes with the way we play now. We'll adjust and the next book will have another thing. It'll be an endless cycle IMHO.

[kenstubbs]

What? No way. My big blocks are the best.

To quote AC/DC (err maybe paraphrase)

"You've got big blocks,
And He's got big blocks,
But I've got the biggest Blocks of them all!"

As you can see "I have the most support units" doesn't sound nearly as good. So using the argument that "Mine sounds better" I can definitively prove I am correct.

[mrpink]

Yeah anyone thinking big blocks don't win the day needs to go three rounds with Ken's chosenstar!

I think there's a valid complaint, that 8th swung the pendulum too far over to big blocks of infantry. It doesn't even really help playing bigger games - Ken and I have been playtesting for Ard Boyz and with an extra 500 points to play with, Ken's army has an extra warshrine and mine has another herald but after that we've spent all our remaining extra points on making our units even bigger and nastier.

There are certainly aspects of the game that are less than perfect in that regard. To my mind there are two big reasonf for this: firstly, the charge mechanic - if you can charge further (on average) than you can maneuver normally, then it makes sense to just build a couple of big smashy units and march forward - it's hard for enemy infantry to outmaneuver you because your charge move is so big and enemy cavalry/fliers can't threaten the big blocks. Secondly, the steadfast mechanic means that there isn't any incentive to winning big against an enemy unless you can strip their ranks away too. Fancy footwork with small units doesn't mean anything as you need giant units of your own to break steadfast. I think these are two of the biggest mistakes made with the 8th edition and limit tactical gameplay.

That said, I still like 8th and there's certainly plenty of tactics left in the game. Support units a necessary for most armies, even if only as warmachine hunters or warmachine hunter hunters.

As Erik says, the new books will (hopefully!) address this issue, cavalry have been nerfed but a simple points reduction will bring them back into line again and we should begin to see much more "balanced" armies in the future. Of course, we'll be lucky if even half the books have been updated by the time 9th edition rolls around, but so it goes!