Progressing the Portal Upfield

What are your favorite strategies for progressing the WWP up the field? I think that simply putting a haem in a raider with wyches is a cost effective yet valid solution. This allows the WWP to move up about 12" round one, leaving a raider full of wyches to ride to the slaughter.

Wracks in a venom may be a cheaper choice, but I don't think the bring as much to the table, and the benefit of the haems pain is less than for the wyches, since the wracks have one already.

There a great thread on this:

6th edition and WWP

Hope that helps

I was never one to use small units to escort the wwp into position. I always used a decent size escort like 8 wracks in a raider and found they were more than adequate to not only get the portal where I wanted it but to also survive the ensuing opponents shooting phase.

The number of portals is also a factor and having 2 is still recommended from the times of 4th edition but it is more of an insurance policy than anything else, some can function with 1 portal but that is for the more experienced.

As fpr wyches, never tried them as the method of deploying the portal slows them down considerably and would give the opponent plenty of time and reason to wipe this squad out no matter what. I do love having my wyches in raiders and although I did use them in the portal I found that they were vulnerable no matter what you did so I always tended to use wyches outside of the mechanics of the wwp - they didn't escort or use the portal in 5th edition.

If you are set on using wyches and using a wwp list then I would suggest keeping the wyches in a raider and either starting them on the board or in reserve. Let the escort of the wwp be something else and run them normally on 1st turn to do their thing and either advance the wyches at the same time as the portal deploying or just let the wyches arrive from reserve.

What I do like about running the wyches in a raider in reserve is that I tend to deploy the wwp units that are coming out that turn first and then maneuver the wyches based on what is happening on the board. Sometimes I run the wyches straight at the opponent or positioning them behind other screening units or I hang them back, put them behind cover or out of range and have them wait for an opportunity.

When starting them on the board I will sometimes advance both the wych units and the portal deployers at the same time depending on the mission and deployment and make the opponent choose his targets. This was mostly a 5th edition tactic where the wyches were more survivable but the idea was to saturate the board with targets and encourage the opponent to spread his fire and not really focus on one element. The unit I do this now with is Urien, a haemy and 3 grotesques and I pretty much just sail them inches away from the opponents line while a portal haemy is behind them dropping the portal somewhere. Urien and company were usually tough enough to survive the entire opponents shooting phase with both wwp units arriving 2nd turn and Urien and co. ready to charge something that was dumb enough to not get out of charge range.

Getting back to your suggestion with the wyches, remember the raider of wyches are only going to move 6" in the raider while the haemy gets out and walks 6" by himself. So yes, the haemy will move 6" in the raider, separate from the wyches and disembarks from the raider and walks another 6" for a total of 12" while the wyches sit in the raider 6" behind. If you leave the pain token with the wyches great, meanwhile the haemy that is now sitting solo without a token better be in cover or hiding behind the portal as he/she is an easy victory point. I am just not a fan of using wyches in this way, they need to be free of the wwp mechanism and free to move rapidly on their own.

Wracks, on the other hand, are tougher and come with their own token - they are natural meat shields and are very tough to uproot if they find cover. Once the portal has been placed, the Haemy and Wracks have 2 tokens between them and as units emerge from the portal the haemy is free to leave the wracks and join whoever may need a token. The wracks at this point are also free to start moving towards the closest objective. Wrack are not a high threat unit that the opponent will take much time to shoot at, usually, the opponent is more worried about the portal units coming out of the portal and can not spare many guns to fire at a lowly troop choices that just has flamers as weapons, no power weapons or even have fleet or grenades. Trust me, the opponent should be busy with the more dangerous units in your list than 7 or 8 wracks wandering through difficult terrain.

So no, not crazy about using wyches as escorts - I think it just makes the decision for the opponent pretty obvious to pour all his fire into that one unit and the chance of wiping them out even if they do get the portal down pretty easy, 3 victory points to the opponent by the end of the first turn (4 if he gets first blood).

You make good points about the wyches. My thinking was that there is no way for wyches to get a first turn charge, and they don't do much out of the portal. Therefore if they join up with a haem, round 1 the boat can progress 6", fire, drop off the haemonculus. It will then sit 6" behind my newly installed WWP. I do see how that could be a vulnerable and valuable target there though. Hmmm.

If you think about it, doing a wwp drop of any kind is going to set you up to get shot at one way or another - I would rather see you use something that will survive instead of donating a couple victory points to your opponent on the opening turn.This is why you will see people forgoing the raider altogether and as far as I have been playing wwp lists, this raider is surely a goner.

So the next question needs to be asked, "What is going in reserve that will need a good aggressive portal location?". Can a simple 6" progression work? Since you can not assault straight out of the portal, are you going to use shooting units through it or are you still going to use assault units that will have to wait a turn?

Just something to think about.

I think assault out of the WWP is probably not an option. The only way I theorize it might work would be to have a simply overwhelming amount of wych units...I mean like 9-12 of them at 2000+ points. Since I don't think that's optimal, I would rather have a shootier army come out. I want blasterborn, warriors with splinter cannons and blasters, heat lance reavers, and haywire scourges! Essentially I would like to be able to create a zone of death around the WWP's, hopefully extending over a majority of the objectives.

That doesn't mean I want to have no assault elements whatsoever though. Since wyches aren't a very good choice for the wwp, it seems natural to start them on the board. Now you make an interesting point on just not using the raider. This would mean losing a whole 6" though. I would therefore like to look at blaster coverage under both scenarios.

A: Starting at the front of the deployment zone, the haem moves up 6" in the raider then another 6" on his own. This puts him at roughly the middle line. Assuming a standard board and two wwps placed on both flanks, blaster coverage is theoretically the entire width of the board even in dawn of war. Blaster coverage penetrates one foot into the enemy zone, meaning the entire zone in dawn of war and half of the zone in hammer and anvil.

B: Starting at the front of the deployment zone, the haem moves up 6" on foot. This puts him 6" shy of the middle line. The coverage on the width of the board remains the same, but blaster coverage is different. The penetration is now only 6" into the deployment zone, meaning half in dawn of war and 1/4 in hammer and anvil.

I think that for a list as aggressive as wwp having the chance to suddenly fire blasters into the enemy deployment zone is critical. I realize this take is highly theoretical but I believe it shows that the extra 6" of movement are critical.

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I think assault out of the WWP is probably not an option

Clearly, with reestriction in the FAQ.

What i think about it, the only units that should come from Webway are those that can do some ranged punch and suffer retaliation. Which means Coven stuff with liquifiers. That way at least they will have some defense against being charged. Something like full Wracks unit with 2 Liquifiers and Haemy with it. Make for a thorn in the ass.

Add Talos and you can have some serious short-ranged firebase, which cost a reasonable points, compared to our skimmer mounted units.