Tactica - Layering

G'day.

Layering is something I did unconsciously until I realised what it was. Now I do it consciously and it works very well for me no matter what army i'm playing with/against.
I'm sure many of you know this already or do it naturally like I was but I thought id bring it up anyway and see what other archons have to say.

For this example a Grotesquerie in raiders is your "focus". You could use many other units as your "focus".

And we begin...
Q1 - What does your “focus” AKA the Grotesquerie, want to do?

A - It wants to flat out turn 1 and charge turn 2 into an area with lots of light-medium infantry and vehicles it can blend in CC.  Some terrain for cover saves/LOSB is needed.  


Q2 – Why?

A - I want them to cause mayhem, kill alot of units, threaten his objs and draw fire and units away from the rest of my fragile army.


Q3 - What do they NOT want to do?

A - Get caught out in the open and be shot to shreds. Get tarrpitted by the “wrong sort”, ie. 2+ or better saves, S10, instant death, GMC stomps, etc


Q4 – How do we acheive this?

A – . In order to aviod the “wrong sort”  the Grotesquerie will often advance (flat out) up a flank with LOSBT but most importantly...  
Get the rest of the army to help them!


Units working together benefits them all. Thus they become more than the some of their parts



1ST  Layer – Close support - Multiple fast CC units. Reavers are my favourite.  

They help the Grotesquerie avoid the wrong sort by bubble-wrapping, screening, move blocking, tarpitting or simply killing the greatest or most immediate threat to the grots.  These units are perfect for this as they will close by.  They want to use terrian and terget saturation to hide and charge next turn just like the grots.


2ND  Layer – Tactical support – Multiple mid range units. Warrors, Trueborn, Scourge, etc.

They help the Grotesquerie by advancing into midfield, in the Grots wake. They provide close range firesupport and board control. They often have useful and powerful special weapons and again target the greatest or most imediate threat to your Grots.  


3rd Layer – Covering fire – Multiple venoms, raiders, ravagers, etc.

They help the grotesquerie again by targeting the greatest or most immediate threats (to the grots, not themselves), with powerful, long ranged fire while holding your backfield.


The whole point is that three layers of offensive-defence prioritise the greatest or most immediate threats to the focus rather than their individual survival.  The focus is made significantly more effective and the rest of the army receives less attention.  In turn this makes them more effective and they can achieve board control.

Your army is more than just the some of its parts.
It is a ruthless, implacable, single-minded, game controling machine!

These tactics have made me a far more formidable Archon... really, people are scared of me.

Cheers.
Please share any thoughts, exp, variations and or tactics that work for you.

That sounds a bit like "refused flank" if all your stuff is following the grotesquerie. Use 100% of your army to fight 50% of your enemy's army.
We are fast enough to achieve this.

Yes!

A refused flank is a deployment tactic often (but not always as you don't want to telegraph you intentions) used as part of this strategy.

This sounds really cool. I always focused my venoms and raiders and used grots to shield them, but they usually got totalled. I remember flat outing once against blood angels and just wrecking face turn 2.

When I finally get my real grots built (crypt horrors on route) I'll try this with beast spam for protection

Can this work if you like to deep strike a lot?

Very clever way of organising an army

Question is, would Aethersails be preferable to Night Shields given this tactic?

@ Redregicide - Yes it can.

Often on certain tables and vs certain armies You have to reserve alot or you just die.

Null/ish deploy is another deployment tactic that can work with this strategy. As its quite random you have to work with what you get turn 2.

I would prefer just moving on instead of adding another random factor (deep striking scatter fail) wherever possible.

Beasts can do close support well but may have trouble keeping up with the flat-out Grot raiders.

Ynneadwraith wrote:

Very clever way of organising an army

Question is, would Aethersails be preferable to Night Shields given this tactic?

Cheers mate!

Yep I go with cheap Aethersails or nothing, but that's not set in stone, just a personal preference.

So what else works for your 1st layer? I have not yet tried out Reavers (but I know a lot of people swear by them). I have been trying to make the beastpack work, but so far their best use IMO is as single beasts/beastmasters to harass objectives.

fisheyes wrote:

So what else works for your 1st layer? I have not yet tried out Reavers (but I know a lot of people swear by them). I have been trying to make the beastpack work, but so far their best use IMO is as single beasts/beastmasters to harass objectives.

With that approach, I don't think reaver suit best for the 1st layer. They are too fast, mobile and useful as support. Except maybe for a large unit of reaver (9+).

As a 1st layer, I think those units are good candidates:
-Incubi,
-Dark Artisan
-Corpsethieft claw
-maybe non-deepstriked haywire-scourge
-Court of archon


All those units have several points in common:
-They can lay waste if the good conditions are set.
-They will fail horribly if the good condition are not met.
-They either lack survivability or mobility. So they either need protection or support to help them to get in position.
-they are expensive enough to justify dedicating other units to support them.

Same issue though, they can't keep up. Except maybe incubi in a venom. I'd rather use scourge as layer 2, and court as a deep striker to melt face (medusas)

Hmmm, Scourges would work nicely as a second layer if you could rely on them Deep Striking in time.

As far as I see it, the second layer should be there to smooth the passage of your big ball of Grots. There's two ways of doing that (which needn't be mutually exclusive). The first is to be killy enough to take out threats to your Grots and their Raiders. The second is to provide a distraction and absorb fire so your Grots don't get shot to pieces.

So, a couple of options for that. Incubi in Venoms would do that nicely. They'd be able to keep up with the Raiders and would be decently killy enough to draw some fire.

However, why try to keep up when you can just be there in the first place?

3 healthy squads of Mandrakes infiltrated close to the enemy would do the trick. Not 3-man min squads either, ones that are big enough to put out a decently scary amount of firepower and worry the other player into diverting fire at Mandrake blobs with decent cover saves.

Allied Striking Scorpions would do well as well as would a Scalpel Squadron with their guaranteed 1st turn Deep Strike. Rock up turn 1, pop 24 poisoned and 2 AP2 Fleshbane shots (that explode and wound other members of the unit) into something juicy backfield. That'll get some attention.

Remember, these squads don't actually need to be point-efficient killers. They just have to be scary and up in your enemy's grill on turn 1. Your Grots are the ones that will do the real damage, alongside the Venoms for fire support.

In these terms, I like to use Grotesques as my first layer; my opponent blunts their force against the anvil of the grots.

The second layer is a fast firepower grouping. This is most recently allied scatterbikes, but can also be venomspam or reavers.

The third layer is my Freakmasters. This is usually a mini-deathstar, almost always containing psychic support (most recently it's been a Seer Council).

The great part about this is that the layers can shift depending on where my opponent focuses his firepower. If he ignores the grots to shoot the bikes, they can jink and turboboost him in circles while the grots lumber up unmolested.

Great to see ive got ppl strategizing! That what i'm after!

fisheyes wrote:

So what else works for your 1st layer?

Your "focus" could move 30-36" up the table. So it really has to keep up to be in the 1st Layer.
If its fast but not THAT fast like beasts or jump infantry its in the 2nd Layer.  

1st Layer is close support.  
move-blocking,
screening,
bubble-wrapping,
tarpitting,
sacrificial charging to drag the "wrong sort" away
or simply killing the wrong sort if they can.

Reavers are great for this as they are
long models, really helps with some of the above movement tricks.
super-fast,
ignore all terrain,
skilled rider,
hit and run,
easy to hide,
deadly on the charge and can take special weapons too.  

Jimsolo wrote:

In these terms, I like to use Grotesques as my first layer; my opponent blunts their force against the anvil of the grots.

The grots are your "focus".  
Note that anything tough and fast could be the focus (jet seer star?) and the grotesquerie can perform 1st layer duties - close support, see above.

Jimsolo wrote:

The second layer is a fast firepower grouping.  This is most recently allied scatterbikes, but can also be venomspam or reavers.  

The third layer is my Freakmasters.  This is usually a mini-deathstar, almost always containing psychic support (most recently it's been a Seer Council).

Ide swap these 2 around except for the reavers who can do 1st or 2nd Layer duties.

That way your scat packs and venoms can use their range and hold backfield objs aka Layer 3 duties.
The freakmasters mini star can move into midfield and do Layer 2 duties.

Jimsolo wrote:

The great part about this is that the layers can shift depending on where my opponent focuses his firepower.  If he ignores the grots to shoot the bikes, they can jink and turboboost him in circles while the grots lumber up unmolested.

Couldn't have said it better myself!

I think we're using our grots differently. I definitely tend to use my grots more like you use your layer 1. My 'focus' is the seer council.

I don't think we are using our grots differently at all.

Ive already even suggested using a seer star as "focus" and grots as 1st Layer.

During the ebb and flow of the game units will switch Layer duties. Flexibility is to be encouraged.
There are no hard and fast rules here.

The whole point is that all your units are working together with layers of offensive-defence.
Thus they become more than the sum of their parts.