Effective Objective Placement

Fritz here with another article that asks more questions then it answers- this time around we are going to look at objective placement and how it can help balance out your army.

In the standard seize ground mission, more then any other mission, the game is afoot once you roll that die to see who palaces the majority of the objectives. Sure it comes down to luck, until GW drops that special HQ in some upcoming codex that effects it, but winning the place off is key.
Having the ability to place more objectives immediately shifts your opponent over to a reactive game- they will have to react, and plan their game, according to where you place the objectives- and in 40K active always wins over reactive.

So now you have your three objectives in hand and the next two questions to ask are based on your army and your opponent’s army.

We all have out own little system of objective placement that we like but usually it only looks at half the picture- how objective placement will help our army. I want you to look at the other half- how can you place objectives to screw up your opponent’s army?

Examples, examples, examples…

Three land raiders with full tactical marines inside and I don’t have a single heavy destroyer on the table. The best I can do is glance with my destroyers at range and hope for an immobilization before my opponent delivers the tacticals into my warriors and phases me out. With objective placement I put two on one side of the table, and balance out what my opponent places with two on the other side and once in the center. With this the assault threat of the raiders was impacted since they sat on two objectives with the tacticals inside to claim them rather then surging forward and unloading on me. One land raider and capturing thee objectives I could handle.

Looking at my Necron army I know I can’t handle any type of assaults so by deploying objectives away from me when facing an assault army, it pulls elements from said assault based army away from crashing into my core full force.

What about if you are playing an assault based army like my Eldar harlequin list?

I don’t want to run across the table as I will take a ton of losses along the way. With the objectives that I can place, these go more towards the center, trying to build an objective line in the center of the table. This way I only have to meet my opponent half way- they are going to be moving forward with certain elements to get the objectives- objective placement brings them to me!

Think about what strengths your opponent’s army has, and how objective placement can take that away…

Eldar skimmer madness that you know is going to contest last turn? Objectives that you can place go in cover so there is a 1 in 6 chance of the skimmer getting immobilized and crashing on that last turn grab. (Unless they have vectored engines for this very reasons, but nobody takes those right...)

Mob of orks looking to just camp out and hold said objective. Place what you can out in the open for no cover saves…

You also want to look at objective placement as a way to boost the strength of your army- with wraithlords and the Deceiver being examples in my Eldar and ‘cron armies.

Wraithlords and the golden boy like to assault things. Problem is they don’t move very fast and running them is bad since you can’t shoot or use any powers. Everything and anything can just avoid the two…unless you place objectives in such a way that your opponent is forced to run past and through the models.

So what army are you playing and how can you use objective placement to gain the extra edge before the dice even start rolling?