1750pt Battle Report, Practice-NOVA Mission

[CitadelArmyGuy]

Advantage and Initiative are completely separate concepts. You can have Both, One of, or Neither of them. There is no hard rule-of-thumb as to how you manage them. Any truism you attach will have exceptions, and it really is totally METT-TC dependent.

 

Many commanders are Type-A personalities, so you get a lot of literature from adherents to the 'Cult of the Offensive.' However, sometimes relegating the Initiative will actually produce better results. It just sticks in the craw of gung-ho Real-World commanders.

 

(Note: METT-TC stands for Mission, Enemy, Terrain and weather, Troops and support available, Time available, Civilians. Its an acronym for real-world military battlefield variables... obviously civilians doesn't apply to 40k but everything else does)

[Storm Dragons 3rd Company]

Advantage and Initiative are completely separate concepts. You can have Both, One of, or Neither of them. There is no hard rule-of-thumb as to how you manage them. Any truism you attach will have exceptions, and it really is totally METT-TC dependent.

 

Many commanders are Type-A personalities, so you get a lot of literature from adherents to the 'Cult of the Offensive.' However, sometimes relegating the Initiative will actually produce better results. It just sticks in the craw of gung-ho Real-World commanders.

 

(Note: METT-TC stands for Mission, Enemy, Terrain and weather, Troops and support available, Time available, Civilians. Its an acronym for real-world military battlefield variables... obviously civilians doesn't apply to 40k but everything else does)

 

I've never really believed in the cult of the offensive.... Well, not since reading The Guns of August years ago and then learning more about Gettysburg. Where I get confused is that it is always hard for me to work out how to retain initiative while on the defensive.

[trukkster]

Excellent explaination of OODA and how it is applied.

 

The real crux that kept me reading was that there was literally no spam in this list and a lot of your army is very role-specific:

 

AC/LC pred anti armour fire support

DC anti infantry in melee

Baal - fire support

etc

 

And yet you came up smelling of roses.

 

the things that i have really learned from this are (with the exception of applying OODA):

 

Encouraging your opponent to play in a certain way based on how you deploy throught the game.

Thinking about how a unit is defeated, rather than the traits that unit carries (eg. Thunderwolf cavalry vs. DC).

Think about the objectives rather than simply attacking the enemy.

 

Both articles are very well written, so thank you for your time and sharing your thoughts (literally!) with us.