Friday, May 4, 2012

Learning from loses - Deployment

This is going to be a long series of articles about things I've done wrong in the games, hopefully to help me and others to learn from mistakes.

I remember well the last 20 or so games that I've played, with a level of detail that is surprising. And I especially remember well my loses, because I can't avoid thinking about those games and what went wrong.
It's part of my philosophy of life to get better at things, continuously. It's not that I need to win, or win more, it's that I have to get better at it.

This is the deployment from a game I played in the last Barcelona GT. My opponent was an experienced Eldar player with a mech list including Eldrad/Yriel, some walkers with multilasers and serpents/falcon. Mission was Annihilation, table quarters. He was going first and set ups everything close, ready to go. He has Eldrad so he could move things anyway.

My list was fairly standard with Grey Hunters in Rhinos, a Rune Priest, 4 LasPlas and missile Long Fangs. I know I'm going to be alpha striked in turn 1. Problem is, my long fangs are static, so I need to risk them and deploy them in cover, which in turn forces me to deploy the rest of the army, or go to reserves with the complete army. I elect deploying as the Eldar player can easily reposition his units due to his mobility and slowly take down whatever comes from reserve.

Turn 1, the walkers whittle the long fangs, some rhinos are stunned / destroyed. Game over. Of course the game carries on, I kill a couple of serpents and Yriel but never had any chance to win.

What could I have done differently? well to begin with, deploying the fangs meant getting them killed and my firepower diminished for the rest of the game. That's the more reasonable output unless dices do some crazy shit, which they sometimes do. If I deployed, I should have put them out of sight of the walkers, either behind the ruins (even though their visibility would have been very limited) or Rhinos. I should have played a game of hide and shoot, and not expose my army.

Alternatively, I could have gone to reserves and use my 4 LasPlas to shoot down things as they arrived. They have the range and strenght for it, and can easily get cover. Let the scouts come in, shoot/charge the walkers or a falcon too close to the border. Living lightning things from the other side of the board (unlimited range!).

Funny thing is, I'm sure I'll read this some time in the future and will think that my conclusions are completely wrong! which is great, because it means I'm learning.

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