Quote: (captPiett @ Feb. 04 2010, 19:04 )
I'm not sure how useful this battle was as a playtest. Unless you consider "punching bag" a viable strategy.
Heh. You did seem to get a lot of really bad activation rolls.
Quote:
About the warlord: I had every intention to use it where it couldn't be avoided (my objective placement was just over 30cm apart almost in the middle of the board), but Dave's drop got in the way... Since most of his army was now on my half of the board...
I'm also not intending to pick at you, but this is a perfect position for a big titan. You have lots of high value, slow moving targets close enough that they will have a hard time getting away from you.
At the risk of being pedantic and telling you things you already know, a big WE needs to both fire and support assault to make its points back. You need to get it close to something you intend to assault, but have it shoot elsewhere so it effectively gets 2 sets of attacks - normal shooting and 8 FF3+ attacks in support.
If you can't use it directly to kill the opponents with support fire, the secondary role is area denial. No enemy formation can afford to stay in 15cm of the titan. If you run it up in the middle of the enemy and have the support to threaten an assault they will have to back off.
Finally, for any of that to be effective you need to keep several formations close enough to the big boy to actually threaten Engage actions. If you take something that big it pretty much has to anchor your line. I can tell you were trying to avoid the Blitz-bombardment but with your forces dispersed you didn't have the capacity to take advantage of the titan's full force (on top of the normal disadvantages of a dispersed army).
So, with respect to the titan in this game...
Obviously, the initial deployment and the SM drop position was not in your favor. Once that was done, though, I think it was recoverable. It's easy to armchair general and, again, I'm not picking at you but I have some suggestions on things you could have done differently.
In Turn 1 when the infantry failed to activate, I would have moved them to follow the titan. The air assault was over, so you didn't need to worry about having 0BM. You had a Leader in the formation and they were highly likely to rally back to 0BM. Regrouping was safe but kept them farther from the fight and out of support range of the titan.
I think you should have Doubled the Warlord in Turn 2. If you had doubled in Turn 2 to get closer to the Marines, you would still have had enough firepower to crush the Speeders but would have been in a better position for Turn 3. Between that and the infantry on turn 1, the entire flank would have been ~15cm closer to the action. You might even have been a distraction during Turn 2 (especially the titan). The Warlord would have threatened to capture/contest 2 objectives, been close enough to that stand of trees to enter or cross it for wide open fields of fire, and close enough to reach support range for an assault. You would have had more options with the infantry as well.
In Turn 3, I would have assaulted the Speeders with the infantry instead of Sustaining. He voluntarily moved into support range, practically begging for it. ou might have lost an infantry stand or two, but you would probably have wiped the speeders. Even if they weren't wiped out they would have had to withdraw, removing that annoying Scout ZoC, leaving the titan free to move. Also, it would have given you a normal move and a consolidation move to reposition the infantry. I can't tell from the pic, but 20cm
might have gotten them in a position to contest the Blitz, giving the titan even more strategic flexibility.
