Targeting and Shooting Priority

Target Priority and Shooting Priority

A vitally important skill for any aspiring archon (or any 40k player) is the use of target priority and shooting priority I will attempt to outline my thoughts behind both in the following post. Now to a lot of you this will seem like teaching a haemonculus how to dissect babies but bear with me as for some of you this will improve your game ten fold.

Target Priority - Simple in its idea you pick targets based on a priority this priority will change as the game progresses and requires constant re-evaluation. A target can be a priority for a number of reasons :

a) Threat - this is the most obvious form of priority you identify what units in your opponents force pose the biggest current threat. The important part to this is current threat as this can change from turn to turn even from one unit shooting to the next (for example once you‘ve stunned or shaken a target it drops down the threat list as it is unable to fire next turn). It helps to have a working knowledge of all codices but even without it you can always ask your opponent on items/weapons/units you are unsure of. My current army is mechanised but all with night shields so on the first turn of any given game the biggest threat to me is anything with a range greater than 36” (which is then further narrowed down by number of shots and strength) next is 36” to 24” range (again further narrowed by shots/strength) and transports carrying dangerous units (i.e. land raiders full of termies).

b) Scoring - another form of priority in this you target units in your opponents army that can score or give you a score (i.e. kill points). In kill points it is far more advantageous to put shots into already damaged units to finish them off rather than shooting at a fresh unit (the later the turn the more true this becomes). The flip side to this is targeting units that can destroy your own scoring units (protecting the weakest ones the most - though not always is usually is the best policy).

c) Disruption - messing with your opponents plans requires a reasonable knowledge of your opponents intentions but properly employed can be devastating. Identify your opponents lynchpin unit and destroy it (the best example I can think of is a WWP carrier being popped before he can deploy it).

Shooting Priority

When moving it is always wise to keep in mind what each unit can shoot at and be shot by but going further than this it is also good practice to use shooting priority. A lot of people for ease of remembering shoot all the units in their army from left to right this leads to bad tactics, when shooting at a target (defined by target priority) always try to have more than one unit that can ‘do the job’ shooting priority is the order in which you fire these units. For example if you have 3 units that can hit your chosen target; one can only see (or is only in range of) the target; the second and 3rd can both see more targets but one has one gun the other has three; what order do you fire in? The unit that can only see the target fires first (if you use another unit and destroy your target it will not be able to fire); the unit with only one gun fires next (providing you haven’t taken out your target or lowered it’s threat compared to other threats) as if this succeeds it gives you the greatest chance at effecting another unit. With DE there is a 2nd layer to shooting priority if your shooting is likely to kill an infantry unit it is always better to try and let an infantry unit finish it off for the pain token.

Sorry if I’ve waffled a bit but hopefully you’ve gained an idea or two to help you out.

All are nice and valid points, but I want to add that sometimes, it can be better to shoot at a transport vehicle even if it is lover on your "priority list", just to get all that meat out, for your Venoms to have a target.

speedfreek wrote:

All are nice and valid points, but I want to add that sometimes, it can be better to shoot at a transport vehicle even if it is lover on your "priority list", just to get all that meat out, for your Venoms to have a target.

I guess this idea all depends on what you've got to face on their next shooting phase...

sticky?

It's usually a good idea to start by doing what you can to affect a stun or shaken on anything big and ugly hugging the back end of the table. There're alot of artillery vehicles and anti-tank gunboats going around in most codices.

Even if the landraider carries termies, let's face it, we can usually handle termies well enough, and even so, they're usually not a problem until turn 3. Loosing your boats in turns 1 and 2 is a problem.