Monday, July 18, 2011

The 10th Foundation Of Vengeance: Adaptability

Well laid plans can come to ruin quite quickly. This is especially true in a battlefield environment or a table top battlefield environment as the case may be. It is important to have contingents when your plans go awry, but more importantly you have to be able to adapt when the weird situations happen. You must be able to react effectively to a changing situation that you have not planned for, this my friends is Adaptability. The 10th Foundation of Vengeance.

Adaptability is one of the most important things to have when you play 40K. Situations can change very quickly and if you let the shock and awe of the moment sweep you up it can be something you can't recover from. The key to adaptability is working with what you have and making the most out of it. This means if you loose your prized unit or tank killing super vehicle or transport you have to improvise and work around it. You still have to carry out the mission despite losses. This does not include throwing away your units in suicide missions that have little chance to turn the tide of battle.


One of the real keys is building a list that has units that are multi rolled. Its pretty inherent when you are an Eldar player. You build a list with units working in concert for a common goal, but still build in a little over lap in case you loose those Dark Reapers or you loose the Fire Prism. This way you have units mutually supporting one another and have a little redundancy so the loss of one is not a major thing. The same principles are used for Dark Eldar. You may have 3 Ravagers and a bunch of Raiders for anti tank, but it does not hurt to have a unit of Scourges with haywire blasters or arming your Wych squads with Haywire grenades to deal with armor. Essentially you plan. A good all comers army list can adapt to any mission. Be it kill points or objectives or a multi tiered mission. Spamming a list may be effective in some situations, but a well built, well thought out army list is what you need to be adaptable.

In my recent game against CVinton I had valuable lessons in adaptability as I failed to adapt to the changing situations. I had deployed in such a way that allowed me to deal with his out flanking army no matter which side he came in on. This normally is a good thing, but it left me totally out of position with the rest of my army as 2 wych squads and a squad of wracks engaged his whole army. He wanted no part of the Beast Master Pack. The should have been in the center of the table from the beginning. I failed to see what was happening and did not adapt my game to the situation at hand. I charged head long into a blob of Imperial Guard when the other had not yet arrived.. Bad move.


So remember you have to stay cool and collected and formulate plans on the fly when the situations change. You must be adaptable and the real key is making a list the facilitates this. One trick or even 2 trick ponies do not get you very far. Relying on the “Power Level” of your army also does not facilitate this. Only a well thought out and jack of all trades list gives you the tools to adapt to any situation.

Next time I hope to get in another battle report with the newly changed Webway list. I will also be posting up some Ebay auctions this week for a few things. I have an Armorcast Eldar Tempest tank and some War machine, rulebook and Protectorate starter box plus 2 figures, stuff for sale. So keep an eye on out or just contact me if you are interested in it. Also I reveal my Ork list. It will be a slow build as I have to finish building the Webway List, but a good distraction. 55 Wychs to paint could drive me nuts.

Until next time...........

Blood Runs, Anger Rises, Death Wakes, War Calls..............................WAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!

2 comments:

  1. I'm going to assume that the Foundations are in an arbitrary order. The importance of "Adaptability" as a trait in a battle plan/army list cannot be understated. I'm glad you put it in there.

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  2. Yeah the order is pretty arbitrary. I may put them in rank order when I am done, but some of the later ones are definatly at the foundation as it were.

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