TACTICS TALK: TARGET PRIORITY

Hello everyone, today we are going to talk about a really difficult subject, target priority.  The reason it's so difficult is that every army treats every threat differently.  This thread is going to stay pretty basic and keep it's focus on choosing targets, but it should give you what you need to make an informed decision and hopefully make you a better player.

NOTE:  I will not be discussing exactly how you will kill the targets, but how to choose your target to optimise your chances of winning the game.  How you kill the target is going to be up to you.  You will find that as you determine your target priority, you may need to adjust your list in order to be able to accomplish these goals.

There are a few things to take into consideration when choosing your targets.  At the most fundamental level you need to ask yourself 3 things, "What is the mission, will it kill me, can I kill it?"

There are 3 types of missions typically played, end game, progressive, and a combination of the 2.  End game missions have a win condition that is determined at the end of the game,  This means that the whole 5 turns before don't necessarily mean anything, what matters is who is scoring the objectives after the last turn is played.  Your average objective based missions that we all grew up on are the perfect example of these.  Progressive missions score points for players as the game goes on.  Maelstrom of war and the ITC missions are Progressive missions, each turn being critical in earning points and denying them to your opponent.  The third type is a combination of the 2 earning points both throughout the game and at the end.

So step one when choosing your targets is to figure out what units your opponent is using to win the mission.  For example, if your opponent is charging up the table with everything he has except for a few "deck chair" units holding objectives, then you need to take out those units.  Prime examples of "deck chair" units are nurglings, scouts, cultists, and guardsmen.  In end game mission you have til the end of the game to deal with them, but the longer you wait the less army you will have to deal with them.  On the flip side, if you are playing progressive scoring, then you are going to want to take those units out ASAP as they are scoring your opponent points every turn you ignore them.

Next on our list of things to kill is things that are going to kill us.  Those units that are charging up the table, they are looking at taking your objectives from your model's metaphorical, cold, dead, hands.  If those things are going to kill you NOW, then you have some adjustments to make.  Sure, killing those deck chair units is going to help you win the game, but so is having an army.  You do need to make sure that if you are going to change up your priorities, you actually need to.  Trying to bring down a Hive Tyrant to stop it from killing an attack bike is not a smart change of priorities.  What you want to focus on is the things that can actually hurt you on the next turn.  These are the units that you will generally want to target if you get the first turn, if you can.

Our last question is "Can I kill it?"  Well, this isn't entirely the best way to phrase this question, more like what is the best way to kill it?  Quick example, if you have a Carnifex and a bunch of Termigaunts nearby, you would direct your anti-infantry weapons at the gaunts and bigger weapons at the Carnifex.  Simple, right?  Well, not entirely.  Lets throw out a different scenario.  Your opponent is playing Ynnari and has a bunch of Grostesques and Shining Spears both ready to wreck your face.  Lets assume they are both in position to do equal amounts of damage, so there is no difference which unit you wipe out.  You are playing Marines and have 10 Helblasters, but don't know what to shoot at.  Lets take a look at the profiles, and we will see really quickly which unit we should target.  The Grotesques have T6 (when they are next to a Haemonculus), 4W, a 4++, and a 6+FNP save while the Shining Spears are only T4, 2W, and 4++.  Odds are you will only kill 1 (maybe 2) Grotesque but you will kill 5 Shining Spears.  Guess what, 5 is higher than 1.  I double checked.

Of course throughout a game you will be presented with several options and you may be able to act on many of them at the same time.  Multiple units will be able to engage multiple units, which now brings us to what to shoot first.  Once you have determined the order of what targets you will engage, start shooting with unit that have the fewest options.  For example, if you have a Tactical squad that can only see enemy unit A, and a Devestator squad that can see enemy unit A and B, fire with the Tactical squad first.  That way, if by some run of luck the Tactical squad does a significant amount of damage that unit A is no longer a threat, you can then put the Devestator squad into unit B and eliminate 2 units.  Had you fired the Devestator squad at unit A and wiped it out, the Tactical squad would not have a target.  Or if you fired the Devestator squad at target B first and the Tactical squad wiffed it's shooting, unit A is still alive.

There are times where you don't want to kill a unit.  Yes, it sounds crazy, but if you're playing a good player, and he puts something that's kind of important somewhere you could kill it if you move out of cover, or jump forward, you're being baited.  I won't tell you specifically not to kill it, but you are going to have to weigh your options and decide if you want to sacrifice something to kill his sacrifice.

My last word of advice is to play a ton of games.  Practise, practise, practise.  I've even played against myself.  I actually kind of like those games because I can reset a turn and choose a different target, or intentionally fail to kill unit I should have killed or a charge I should have made just to see if I could come back from it if it happened to me in a real game.  Failing that, there are a ton of big events with amazing players streaming games live and posting games on Youtube.  Watch and learn.

That's it.  It's pretty basic and fairly straightforward when you type it all out.  But there are so many other features to the game that I can't possible cover them all in a single post, so keep a eye out for other such tactics articles.  If you have any thoughts or questions feel free to leave a comment.

Until next time, keep them dice rollin.

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