alpha legion stratagem: Scrambled coordinates

[ciggaro]

played with a buddy who uses alpha legion and he used this strat on me. for those who dont know what it does, its a 1CP strat that is used in the movement phase when your opponent is setting up a unit as it arrives as reinforcements. Before the unit is placed, the player is forced to setup that unit more than 12" away from any Alpha legion.

 

ive never taken a look at the new PA stuff chaos got so i was surprised to be on the receiving end of this stratagem. How good do you guys think this strat is and how would you play around it? I found it to be pretty stifling and couldnt adapt properly. I hope the wiser and better players here can offer some tips.

 

as a side note, for that game my only deepstriking units were good ol' smash cap and a hammernator unit.

 

 

 

[Blindhamster]

played with a buddy who uses alpha legion and he used this strat on me. for those who dont know what it does, its a 1CP strat that is used in the movement phase when your opponent is setting up a unit as it arrives as reinforcements. Before the unit is placed, the player is forced to setup that unit more than 12" away from any Alpha legion.

 

ive never taken a look at the new PA stuff chaos got so i was surprised to be on the receiving end of this stratagem. How good do you guys think this strat is and how would you play around it? I found it to be pretty stifling and couldnt adapt properly. I hope the wiser and better players here can offer some tips.

 

as a side note, for that game my only deepstriking units were good ol' smash cap and a hammernator unit.

Nasty strat.

 

We are one of the few who can recover though as we have a 3d6+1 (or more) strat for charging

[ciggaro]

 

played with a buddy who uses alpha legion and he used this strat on me. for those who dont know what it does, its a 1CP strat that is used in the movement phase when your opponent is setting up a unit as it arrives as reinforcements. Before the unit is placed, the player is forced to setup that unit more than 12" away from any Alpha legion.

 

ive never taken a look at the new PA stuff chaos got so i was surprised to be on the receiving end of this stratagem. How good do you guys think this strat is and how would you play around it? I found it to be pretty stifling and couldnt adapt properly. I hope the wiser and better players here can offer some tips.

 

as a side note, for that game my only deepstriking units were good ol' smash cap and a hammernator unit.

Nasty strat.

 

We are one of the few who can recover though as we have a 3d6+1 (or more) strat for charging

 

 

correct me if i'm wrong but i thought we can only declare a charge if we are within 12" of the target? or am i mis-remembering an old edition rule

[SnorriSnorrison]

You’re correct, ciggaro. You need to be within 12” to declare a charge, so that’s a no-charge stratagem.

 

If you know you’re playing Alpha Legion, then perhaps instead of the Icon of the Angel you can field the relic that gives +2” to JP movement. Movement only, but now you can deploy on the board and move up faster, behind cover of tanks.

 

It’s not ideal, but at least you don’t have to see your deep striking units become sitting ducks.

[Charlo]

Is it only one unit it affects? As then you just need to play around it.

[Are Verlo]

And pay attention to AL’s powerfull ambush stratagem.

It is like auspex scan, but has range 18”, allows any AL unit to shoot, vehicles, inf and so on. And there is no -1 to hit, unlike auspex scan.

 

This combined with Scoords makes it suprisingly hard to get the drop on AL.

[Are Verlo]

And to provide my thoughts around the question from the OP

 

If the AL player has 1/3+ CP left he can disrupt 1/2 attacking units arriving from reserves each turn. (Scrabled & ambush)

Either you have to overload the AL capacity to deal with arriving units, and this is quite hard. You have to provide multiple actual/percieved threats and make him choose what to scrable, what to ambush and what to let slip through their net.

 

In reallity that means 3+ real threats arriving from reserves. And of those up to 2 units will be more or less stopped by stratagems.

 

That leaves 2 paths IMO: the knock out puch/overload wich can be hard or even impossible to achieve. How often can you deep strike 4+ potetnt theats? Or start on the table and move up in using fast movement and cover from terrain vehicles.

[ciggaro]

thanks everyone for the comments. thank you Snorri and Are Verlo.

so it seems like deploying on the board might be the thing to do since like Are Verlo has pointed out, overloading on the deepstrike threats will quite likely be a really difficult thing to do. It really felt like my hammernators were dead in the water that game. but i guess thats also a compounding factor that they arent a good unit to begin with.

 

feels like alpha legion strats can be pretty oppressive and will require us to change approach quite a bit.

also, seems like the death company and/or sanguinaray guard combo with a 'upon wings of fire' stratagem on a chaplain/astorath is basically just a giant pipe dream against alpha legion

[Indefragable]

@ciggaro sounds like a rough game. It’s never fun learning about a rule or ability, especially a new one, until you’re pants are already down. Fortunately it’s a lesson I think we all only have to learn once, so I wouldn’t sweat it too much.

 

I have been deep striking less and less in my games (few though they have been) even before this book dropped, with UWoF being more of a mind-game to move a unit to another flank and such.

 

What I did like about the you-deploy-I-deploy-you-deploy-I-deploy setup (as opposed to one side deploys everything at once) is that you can really impact your opponent’s deployment by holding off usual deep strike offenders until the end, then make a call on whether to put them on the board or in DS.

[ciggaro]

thanks everyone for the comments. thank you Snorri and Are Verlo.

so it seems like deploying on the board might be the thing to do since like Are Verlo has pointed out, overloading on the deepstrike threats will quite likely be a really difficult thing to do. It really felt like my hammernators were dead in the water that game. but i guess thats also a compounding factor that they arent a good unit to begin with.

 

feels like alpha legion strats can be pretty oppressive and will require us to change approach quite a bit.

also, seems like the death company and/or sanguinaray guard combo with a 'upon wings of fire' stratagem on a chaplain/astorath is basically just a giant pipe dream against alpha legion

 

it was indeed a pretty rough game, but at the end of the day it was still pretty enjoyable. im a pretty fluffy player and the idea of my angry deepstriking boys being denied their signature deepstrike charge was quite saddening though, i admit.

 

i'm interested that you find yourself deepstriking less and less. do you reckon that's a result of the matchups that you play or that you generally find deepstriking to be less useful nowadays? 

[Are Verlo]

You might be able to work around the scrambled coordinates with a drop pod. Based off the FAQ regarding auspex scan/forewarned, those stragagems will not enable units to fire at units disembarking from a drop pod. The scanning/forewarned units only get to fire at the drop pod, then the unit(s) inside the pod disembarks.

 

If that gives precidence to how scrabling works, one may assume that drops pods would be interacting with scrabled coordinates like this:

A: I want to place my drop pod at the end of this movement phase.

B: AL playes scrabled coordinates on the drop pod

C. The drop pod deploys 12.01" away, THEN the unit(s) embarked in the pod gets to disembark and then can be set up more than 9" away from the enemy.

 

Edit: grammar/spelling

Edited December 8, 2019 by Are Verlo

[Panzer]

You might be able to work around the scrambled coordinates with a drop pod. Based off the FAQ regarding auspex scan/forewarned, those stragagems will not enable units to fire at units disembarking from a drop pod. The scanning/forewarned units only get to fire at the drop pod, then the unit(s) inside the pod disembarks.

 

If that gives precidence to how scrabling works, one may assume that drops pods would be interacting with scrabled coordinates like this:

A: I want to place my drop pod at the end of this movement phase.

B: AL playes scrabled coordinates on the drop pod

C. The drop pod deploys 12.01" away, THEN the unit(s) embarked in the pod gets to disembark and then can be set up more than 9" away from the enemy.

 

Edit: grammar/spelling

 

If people start doing that I can almost guarantee for GW FAQing that so the disembarking unit can't get closer than 12" either.

[SnorriSnorrison]

 

You might be able to work around the scrambled coordinates with a drop pod. Based off the FAQ regarding auspex scan/forewarned, those stragagems will not enable units to fire at units disembarking from a drop pod. The scanning/forewarned units only get to fire at the drop pod, then the unit(s) inside the pod disembarks.

 

If that gives precidence to how scrabling works, one may assume that drops pods would be interacting with scrabled coordinates like this:

A: I want to place my drop pod at the end of this movement phase.

B: AL playes scrabled coordinates on the drop pod

C. The drop pod deploys 12.01" away, THEN the unit(s) embarked in the pod gets to disembark and then can be set up more than 9" away from the enemy.

 

Edit: grammar/spelling

 

 

If people start doing that I can almost guarantee for GW FAQing that so the disembarking unit can't get closer than 12" either.

It’s RAW so far, no? Drop pods seem to be an exception from auspex scan, so it’s possible to think that GW will in fact not FAQ this.

The stratagem only applies to the drop pod, the unit inside should be good to deploy outside of 9” away.

[Panzer]

 

 

You might be able to work around the scrambled coordinates with a drop pod. Based off the FAQ regarding auspex scan/forewarned, those stragagems will not enable units to fire at units disembarking from a drop pod. The scanning/forewarned units only get to fire at the drop pod, then the unit(s) inside the pod disembarks.

 

If that gives precidence to how scrabling works, one may assume that drops pods would be interacting with scrabled coordinates like this:

A: I want to place my drop pod at the end of this movement phase.

B: AL playes scrabled coordinates on the drop pod

C. The drop pod deploys 12.01" away, THEN the unit(s) embarked in the pod gets to disembark and then can be set up more than 9" away from the enemy.

 

Edit: grammar/spelling

 

If people start doing that I can almost guarantee for GW FAQing that so the disembarking unit can't get closer than 12" either.

It’s RAW so far, no? Drop pods seem to be an exception from auspex scan, so it’s possible to think that GW will in fact not FAQ this.

The stratagem only applies to the drop pod, the unit inside should be good to deploy outside of 9” away.

 

 

The unit only has to be deployed outside of 9" because the FAQ clarified it that way too. Ultimately it comes down to how GW intends the Stratagem to work, not what we think makes sense.

[SnorriSnorrison]

 

 

 

You might be able to work around the scrambled coordinates with a drop pod. Based off the FAQ regarding auspex scan/forewarned, those stragagems will not enable units to fire at units disembarking from a drop pod. The scanning/forewarned units only get to fire at the drop pod, then the unit(s) inside the pod disembarks.

 

If that gives precidence to how scrabling works, one may assume that drops pods would be interacting with scrabled coordinates like this:

A: I want to place my drop pod at the end of this movement phase.

B: AL playes scrabled coordinates on the drop pod

C. The drop pod deploys 12.01" away, THEN the unit(s) embarked in the pod gets to disembark and then can be set up more than 9" away from the enemy.

 

Edit: grammar/spelling

 

 

If people start doing that I can almost guarantee for GW FAQing that so the disembarking unit can't get closer than 12" either.

It’s RAW so far, no? Drop pods seem to be an exception from auspex scan, so it’s possible to think that GW will in fact not FAQ this.

The stratagem only applies to the drop pod, the unit inside should be good to deploy outside of 9” away.

 

The unit only has to be deployed outside of 9" because the FAQ clarified it that way too. Ultimately it comes down to how GW intends the Stratagem to work, not what we think makes sense.

Yeah, that’s what I meant. If the stratagem only applies to the drop pod as GW’s deemed intended for stratagems with the same mechanic(targeting a deepstriking unit), then it’s logical to apply it to this stratagem as well.

 

I’d go over this with an opponent before the game though, to avoid “oh snap” moments in a game.

[FormelyKnownAsSmashyPants]

If you've got the orportunity to build around your opponent, in cursors will be your friend, ass will scout bikers, eliminators (to keep popping off the inevitable chain of warlords, and a large unit to forlorn fury up the battlefield, plus traditional Astarte's rhino rush.

 

Edit: basically I think you're going to have to play old school against AL.

Edited December 8, 2019 by Captain Smashy Pants

[Indefragable]

 

<snip>

i'm interested that you find yourself deepstriking less and less. do you reckon that's a result of the matchups that you play or that you generally find deepstriking to be less useful nowadays? 

 

I can't speak for everyone, but in my case, it's a combination of things:

-depending on exact battlefield conditions (mission objectives, deployment zones, board setup, enemy composition) I often find it more advantageous not to Deep Strike. I.e. if there is enough cover that I feel confident getting to where I want to get alive, or if the deployment zones are such that I feel comfortable bashing into his lines by Turn 2, then more often than not I will not DS any units

 

-often I go for Target Saturation by having all of my "good" units on the board at once. The con is that this exposes them to that vicious Turn 1 shooting (duh!), but the pro is that it spreads the hurt out more rather than having a single unit nuked. For example, if you have both Death Company and Sanguinary Guard in your army, if you have DC on the board and SG in reserve, your opponent will likely burn down the DC since they are the scariest threat on the board...you've essentially made his target selection choice for him. But if you have both DC and SG on the board at the same time, now he has to choose which threat is scarier, and if he dumps fire into one, that gives the other one a better chance of making into his lines. Why I adore the Forlorn Fury Stratagem...it often makes the opponent's decision for him even more, even with SG staring him in the face. And sometimes you get lucky and the enemy repositions trying to get a better angle on your SG that are mostly hidden behind LoS-blocking terrain and thus further exposes himself and/or suffers movement penalties going for that juicy T1 kill on one of my big shiny (literally) units.

 

-BA have a reputation for Deep Striking. Use that fear to your advantage by deliberately NOT putting dudes in reserve. Opponents will often see you play BA and immediately castle up or deploy in such a way to negate DS'ing on flanks as much as possible...to which you respond by not putting anyone in Reserve and instead jump up the board and smash a weakened flank, punishing him for over-preparing for the DS.

(within my local meta, I have been the "BA guy" for sometime and all throughout 7th Edition I was always finagling new ways of Deep Striking units in...so the reputations of both my faction and myself precede me and probably makes this angle a bit easier for me to pull off, but there's no reason others can't do the same, especially against opponents' who think they know BA just based off of netlists or youtube videos).

 

-...and after all of the above is where Upon Wings of Fire becomes one of the best Stratagems in the game: you can essentially Deep Strike any jump unit at any point in the game. So your opponent prepares for you to Deep Strike T1, only for you to start all on the board and start crashing his lines on flank. He responds by pulling all those units in to face you...only for you to pop UWoF to a unit and land behind him, in the very spot he was guarding T1, but now exposed to respond to your push. You son of a :cuss ! :) One of my favorite moves, since even once they get wise to that trick they have to be on the back foot since you have that option in your back pocket. I've used my last 5CP to pull a UWoF + Descent of Angels in Turn 4 to nuke a unit off an objective or get a kill for VP.

 

Example of this in action:

Hidden Content

I played a 2500pt game against a World Eaters + Khorne daemons list a ways back (battle rep buried in BA Today somewhere).

 

While being a likewise hyper-aggressive army, he spread out many of his non-berzerker units to protect his flanks against my SG or DC Deep Striking in. Instead, I put everything on the board (in cover). He thus blitzed up the board to the middle of the field where my Scouts were hanging out. He proceeded to smash into my scouts (brave, brave, scouts!), doing what Berzerkers do best, letting me then pounce on him in my next turn. Further more, since he pulled his forces in towards the middle of the board to meet me, and also DS in his own Bloodletter bomb, I was able to UWoF my DC away from his Bloodletters, stranding them in the open while simultaneously getting behind his flanks to mop up easier targets and eventually smash into him from behind.

 

Now, it wasn't glamorous by any means...nor should you ever expect it to be when fighting World Eaters. I lost 2/3 of my army and all but one character (including giving up Slay the Warlord), and things were messy for most of the game, but in the end his bracketed Lord of Skulls was the only thing left as I pulled out a victory.

 

Take all of the above with some tactical salt: there's rarely a one-size-fits all way to victory, and every battle is unique in terms of terrain, mission, opponent, etc... and so the most important lesson is to adapt and remember what options you have an choose what you feel best fits the circumstances. 40k is not a rocks-papers-scissors game (and thank the Emperor its not!) where one option is always going to beat the other every single time...yes certain matchups are better than others, but choosing to start on the board can be just as effective as Deep Striking if you consider particular battlefield conditions.

[Jbird]

If you've got the orportunity to build around your opponent, in cursors will be your friend, ass will scout bikers, eliminators (to keep popping off the inevitable chain of warlords, and a large unit to forlorn fury up the battlefield, plus traditional Astarte's rhino rush.

 

Edit: basically I manage think you're going to have to play old school against AL.

[brother_b]

Honestly they should make this a 10 or 11” by bubble; this stratagem and the marine versions are far too powerful and affect melee bases armies much more than gunline armies. As you can’t charge over 12” it smacks down melee centric armies quite hard.

 

I guess dropping in a pod and shooty units to clear an area is one option I can use in my BA army.

[ciggaro]

 

 

I can't speak for everyone, but in my case, it's a combination of things:

-depending on exact battlefield conditions (mission objectives, deployment zones, board setup, enemy composition) I often find it more advantageous not to Deep Strike. I.e. if there is enough cover that I feel confident getting to where I want to get alive, or if the deployment zones are such that I feel comfortable bashing into his lines by Turn 2, then more often than not I will not DS any units

 

-often I go for Target Saturation by having all of my "good" units on the board at once. The con is that this exposes them to that vicious Turn 1 shooting (duh!), but the pro is that it spreads the hurt out more rather than having a single unit nuked. For example, if you have both Death Company and Sanguinary Guard in your army, if you have DC on the board and SG in reserve, your opponent will likely burn down the DC since they are the scariest threat on the board...you've essentially made his target selection choice for him. But if you have both DC and SG on the board at the same time, now he has to choose which threat is scarier, and if he dumps fire into one, that gives the other one a better chance of making into his lines. Why I adore the Forlorn Fury Stratagem...it often makes the opponent's decision for him even more, even with SG staring him in the face. And sometimes you get lucky and the enemy repositions trying to get a better angle on your SG that are mostly hidden behind LoS-blocking terrain and thus further exposes himself and/or suffers movement penalties going for that juicy T1 kill on one of my big shiny (literally) units.

 

-BA have a reputation for Deep Striking. Use that fear to your advantage by deliberately NOT putting dudes in reserve. Opponents will often see you play BA and immediately castle up or deploy in such a way to negate DS'ing on flanks as much as possible...to which you respond by not putting anyone in Reserve and instead jump up the board and smash a weakened flank, punishing him for over-preparing for the DS.

(within my local meta, I have been the "BA guy" for sometime and all throughout 7th Edition I was always finagling new ways of Deep Striking units in...so the reputations of both my faction and myself precede me and probably makes this angle a bit easier for me to pull off, but there's no reason others can't do the same, especially against opponents' who think they know BA just based off of netlists or youtube videos).

 

-...and after all of the above is where Upon Wings of Fire becomes one of the best Stratagems in the game: you can essentially Deep Strike any jump unit at any point in the game. So your opponent prepares for you to Deep Strike T1, only for you to start all on the board and start crashing his lines on flank. He responds by pulling all those units in to face you...only for you to pop UWoF to a unit and land behind him, in the very spot he was guarding T1, but now exposed to respond to your push. You son of a ! One of my favorite moves, since even once they get wise to that trick they have to be on the back foot since you have that option in your back pocket. I've used my last 5CP to pull a UWoF + Descent of Angels in Turn 4 to nuke a unit off an objective or get a kill for VP.

 

 

wow.. thank you for your detailed reply! i appreciate it a tonne.

what you're saying really makes sense to me, especially the mind games of playing around a castled opponent who is expecting you to deepstrike alot. after reading all this i feel really foolish for thinking that deep striking is always the preferred method of deployment. i confess i rarely ever consider deploying my sang guard on the table. the only jump pack unit i deploy on the table is death company and thats pretty much only because of fury of the forlorn. i think that aptly demonstrates that i have way too narrow a mindset 

 

its gonna be a long road for me but your words have given me hope. 

[H311fi5h]

How exactly are both of the strategems in question worded? Do they trigger on the unit being set-up or coming in from reserves? Can you simply deploy your deathblob unit on the table and UWoF them to get around those strats?

Edited December 9, 2019 by H311fi5h

[Are Verlo]

Sadly, no

 

The FAQ page 9 clearly states that abilities such as wings, gate and so on will not bypass the stratagems. The units counts as if they were arriving from reinforcements.

 

So units «winged» may be scrambled and/or ambushed.