Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

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Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by Strongbow »

So, the placement phase is supposed to be really important, but I don't find much in the way of discussion about it. I definitely feel that I could benefit from some wisdom from the elders of the Glades. I'd like to have some advice on how you handle the placement phase.

I know there's a LEAF article about it, and it's really good. However...I'm looking for actual situations, not hypothetical stuff.

1. Tell me what you have found that works, and why. Also, tell me what you have found that didn't work for you, and why it didn't.

2. Tell me about the army composition considerations and enemy troops involved.

For example, how do you go about placing troops in order to deal with enemy flanking units, like fast cav? Hydras (I play against an opponent who fields two in every game)? Stuff like that...

Are there particular units that you you find work particularly well together? If so, how do you place them during that first phase, and what are you trying to accomplish?
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by lune »

Might not 100% hit your spot, but maybe my wayof deploying might help a bit.
Usually, I first place the units that are expected, expandable and have regardless of the enemy's deployment their fixed position. Means: Archers, screening Dryads (or just Dryads if I feel like playing 3+ units in a game).
After that it's a question of personal preferences: Either start to react on threats placed by your opponents or place threats yourself so that your opponent must react (WHR,WR,TM, in reacting also WD, EG).
Usually fast and fragile units are placed after that.

However, if I try to play a denied flank, I'm placing faster units more in the beginning (as well as slower but still maneuvrable units in the middle of the board - e.g. Dryads), sometimes with a distraction (lone archer unit on the other edge of the board).
Heroes and waywatchers are usually the last units placed on the Board after my opponents are finished deplyoing 2-3 placements and thus nearly only reacting (Ok, alter and TMA can also offer a new threat when there is a gap for them to particulary be a potential threat with few counter units).

Hope that helps a bit :)
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by Strongbow »

Your thoughts on actions/reactions and placing/reacting to threats reminds me of the LEAF article on Actions and Reactions, which I thought was great.

Can you give me a situational example or two?
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by Beithir Seun »

Firstly, it's the deployment phase ;)

Secondly, you don't want specific examples. What you want is advice based on actual experience. Specific examples can only ever apply in their own context; outside of that they are obsolete. Actual experience can be applied to whatever situation arises, and that is what the LEAF article is based on and tries to share.

It's important to understand the difficulty with discussing deployment; specific unit deployment will often change every game and it is heavily dependent on terrain, the opposition army composition, your own army composition and your own playstyle. What works for one player will not necessarily work for another. There are too many possible situations that could dictate your deployment to allow anything more than broad and generalistic advice.

I can give a few general pointers, but they're nowhere near as specific as you seem to be asking for. I don't think anyone can be that specific unless they turn up to each of your games and tell you what to do :smirk:

Anyway, my general deployment pointers:

~ Deploy to utilise terrain as much as possible. By that, I do not mean that you should always deploy in cover or anything like that. I mean that you need to consider the terrain on the battlefield and examine the effects in will have on the game, and how you can use those effects to your advantage. Examples: use terrain as cover for your units to protect them from shooting, position missile units to cover empty areas of the battlefield (i.e those areas with no terrain for the enemy to hide behind), position units so that they can use cover as they advance etc.

~ Expendable or fast-moving units are good first placements; expendable units because they don't matter, and fast-moving units because they can rapidly redeploy if needed. Eagles, Glade Riders and Dryads are ideal expendable and/or fast-moving units. Use these to draw out a few enemy deployments to get a better idea of where they might place the rest

~ Deploy those units that cause the enemy to react; I usually use Glade Guard for this in order to force the enemy to either advance under a hail of fire, or deploy elsewhere. In addition, Glade Guard do not need to reposition in order to bring their weapons to bear.

~ Deploy those units that are intended to react to the enemy. If you have specific units included to deal with specific threats, make sure they are in a position to do so (for example, deploying a MGA so that he can shoot at high AS troops like Knights, or Dryads so they can charge Ethereal units).

~ The rest of the units deploy where needed to fulfil their best role and depending on enemy deployment.


I try to leave my key units until later in deployment so that I can place them in an optimal position. If you place key units (particularly non-missile units, such as Wild Riders) too early the enemy has chance to deploy elsewhere and completely avoid them, thus rendering such units largely useless for the first two or three turns as they reposition. I generally place fast-moving and expendable units first regardless of strategy because that allows me to change my plans midway through deployment without having put down any/many key units.
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by lune »

Beithir has summarized the general advice on deployment really good (though I personally tend to use GG like expendable troops early since it doesn't really matter where they are - with 30 inches range there's always something to shoot at ;) ).

So:
Strongbow wrote:Can you give me a situational example or two?
I'll try to make a bit more specific examples just to picture things a bit.

Let's say, your opponent has deployed 2 RBTs close to each other. That usually leads me to either avoid them if they have a restricted LoS on the battlefield due to terrain or flood them with targets to hunt them down (means: multiple units of: GR, WHR, Eagle, covered by a Dryad screen in the first turn unless on a hill where the Dryads render useless).
If the same RBTs have a Hydra or RxBs close to them however, I'd try to get a Treeman and if I'm magic heavy enough a Singer on that side and treesing my way towards them, followed by a fast cav or flying unit for support, but in cover and get closer while blocking LoS and offering a bigger threat b my TM hidden savely in the forest and stranglerooting while getting into position that he'll have to take only 1 round of shooting.

Something else: Let's say we have a terrain low table to play on and my list is close combat orientated. When faceing Empire, I'd try to misdirect him by placing fast units on both flanks, slower skimishers in mid and when I see where his focus of troops will be I'd choose the other half of the table to get mmore numbers on a sole part of his army, thus denying one flank and getting an advantage in numbers & point cost on a part of his army, having often to deal with 50% less of his army during the first 2 or on a terrain denser table even the first 3.
Playing against WoC on the same battlefield could lead me to place my units all over the board with the aim to surround him due to the lack of shooting..

Hope these examples were specific enough to show differences in deployment by examples but general enough that you can actually use them :)
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by Beithir Seun »

lune wrote:Beithir has summarized the general advice on deployment really good (though I personally tend to use GG like expendable troops early since it doesn't really matter where they are - with 30 inches range there's always something to shoot at ;) ).
That is true, but it's not the same as being expendable ;) Expendable means that it doesn't matter whether they live or die, or whether they take part in the battle or not. I like to save Glade Guard until later so that I know they have something to shoot at. It's all very well having a 30" range, but if they can't see anything they're useless.
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by BNRT »

Another tip: try to figure out what you want to do with the units you are fielding and make sure they can do it.

Two specific examples from my last game:

- There was a building within easy reach of my HE opponent. I deployed a unit of dryads directly opposite that building so when he placed some archers there it took only a short while for my dryads to get there and stomp them out, which was their primary role.

- The shooting of some of my Glade Guard units was practically mitigated by clumsy deployment. They had no line of sight, no room to maneuver and were out of range. If I had thought a little more during the deployment phase, a lot of this could have been prevented.
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by lune »

Beithir Seun wrote:That is true, but it's not the same as being expendable ;)
I was reffering to my own post where I stated that I place expandable units as one of the first. I didn't mean that GG are expandable in general (though in my games they tend to be that - against VC and such some arrows won't do much).
Sorry for the fuss :o
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by thelordcal »

A brief comment on saving the key units for later as Beithir mentioned. saving your bad boys for last really allows you to focus your battle "line" (term used loosely because we rarely have a distinct line) to wear you're going to want to focus more of your attention to. This also allows you to exploit your opponents deployment decisions as well.

Wood Elves main strength is probably their mobility, now i know that's arguable but is something that has proven quite helpful over the last few years. Because we're so fast we're able to bear down on flanks fairly quickly and get in combat even faster. If that was confusing i apologize. But lets say your opponent has a relatively weak flank, i would start to place my bigger guns towards that exposed or weak flank. why? Because once a Wood elven army has turned their opponents flank the game is basically over. An example would be my wild rides flanking a unit of grail knights, then running down the rest of his army. seriously one unit took out close to 1500 pts in either models killed or running off the table with panic checks. Your opponent now has to either redirect his force to deal with the break through, which can lead to seperated and lone units, or continue advancing towards your soft units. Either way the opponents line tends to dissapate rather quickly leaving you, with a quick way to a nice juicy victory. now things can go wrong, and i assure you they will! For instance, i one time had a vampire opponent beaten, but lost in the few turns as my entire army failed to roll above a three on the dice, except on leAdership tests where my sixes finally appeared >.<

anyway that's my two cents, i guess to summarize would be to look for exposed or weak flanks and exploit them with your big and scaries.

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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by The Virgin Forest »

Beithir Seun wrote:
lune wrote:Beithir has summarized the general advice on deployment really good (though I personally tend to use GG like expendable troops early since it doesn't really matter where they are - with 30 inches range there's always something to shoot at ;) ).
That is true, but it's not the same as being expendable ;) Expendable means that it doesn't matter whether they live or die, or whether they take part in the battle or not. I like to save Glade Guard until later so that I know they have something to shoot at. It's all very well having a 30" range, but if they can't see anything they're useless.
as the glade guard is the only ranked unit in my army, they usually play the role as bait, as they are the only 'easy' target for my opponent. So when my opponent moves towards them, the rest of my army will envelop and destroy them :)
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by Strongbow »

Beithir Seun wrote:Secondly, you don't want specific examples. What you want is advice based on actual experience. Specific examples can only ever apply in their own context; outside of that they are obsolete. Actual experience can be applied to whatever situation arises, and that is what the LEAF article is based on and tries to share.

It's important to understand the difficulty with discussing deployment; specific unit deployment will often change every game and it is heavily dependent on terrain, the opposition army composition, your own army composition and your own playstyle. What works for one player will not necessarily work for another. There are too many possible situations that could dictate your deployment to allow anything more than broad and generalistic advice.

I can give a few general pointers, but they're nowhere near as specific as you seem to be asking for. I don't think anyone can be that specific unless they turn up to each of your games and tell you what to do :smirk:
I disagree, Beitheir Seun. I'm trained as an anthropologist and as a sociologist, so the specifics really do hold the key. The devil really is in the details. I think that a lot can be learned from looking at actual situations, and generalizing from that (call it experience) takes us a step away from the actualities.

I see your point, however, and I'm appreciative of your comments and thoughts!
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by Beithir Seun »

In that case, it's merely a confusion of terms. Looking at actual situations and analysing them is exactly the sort of thing you should be doing (and it works far better than simply trying to describe what to do...), but that is not what I thought you meant. Apologies :)
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by Strongbow »

Beithir Seun wrote:In that case, it's merely a confusion of terms. Looking at actual situations and analysing them is exactly the sort of thing you should be doing (and it works far better than simply trying to describe what to do...), but that is not what I thought you meant. Apologies :)
S'cool. No Apologies necessary, really!

There's always the very real possibility that I didn't communicate adequately. <.<

General comments are always welcome. What's interesting to me at this point is how easily this discussion has blended into comments on strategy.

Let me show you what I mean, though (and remember: really, I'm still quite a nubie! I'm getting to the stage where I can beat other nubs, but have obvious difficulty with more experienced players, so my thoughts here are an attempt to work through basic principles of the game).

I recently played a veteran of 10 years, who fielded his Druchi army. There was a two-story building to the right of my deployment zone. I placed my glade guard and a unit of 12 dryads+wraith over there. The GG were to go into the building, and the dryads were to provide some support. On the other side of the building (which was sort of in the right corner of my deployment zone), I placed a unit of 7 wardancers, so that they could support to the middle of the board, or to the right side, swinging around the building or flanking anyone who assaulted the building.

My opponent deployed several units on this side of the board, including a hydra, a mounted sorceress and some fast cav, if I remember correctly. In any event, the combined strength of his hydra and the fast cav were obviously too much for my lone dryads, who broke and ran. My glade guard failed their terror test and ran out of the building, promptly to be ran down by his fast cav.

Lessons learned: a strong center might be good, but I didn't follow the pressure on my flanks. As a result, I lost the battle, due to inadequate deployment on my sides.

Questions: How do you quickly neutralize enemy fast cav best?

Also, and maybe more importantly for for me, how do you make wise deployment decisions when you can expect to be outnumbered in most games?
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by lune »

Strongbow wrote:Also, and maybe more importantly for for me, how do you make wise deployment decisions when you can expect to be outnumbered in most games?
This comes down to army comcosition. When you know such a thing, you can try to squeeze in some units in your list that will be able to cross a great distance in a short time - means: fast & heavy cav, runner characters and flyers. This allows you to keep pressure on your opponent due to a temporary outnumbering on one flank /the mid/ whatever and will provide long range support (not only shooting could be called with this term ;) ).

Apart from that, you could try to put pressure on your opponent early in the game, e.g. placing a treeman as one of your first deployments (though still after some by no means important deployments are made already).
I've used this to some success e.g. vs. Vamps in under 2k and against the old skaven to some success, since your opponent has only 2 possibilities left: either ignore your deployment which leads to an advantage for you due to a weak point in hist battle line (or let's better say a not for your threat prepared part of his line) or to react (which means you can draw out some of his more important deployments, giving you a chance to either react on them or use that they can't be everywhere and place your next threat.

Finally, you cannot cover every part of the battlefield with the optimum composition of your units. Kearn to deal with it. Before the battle starts, take a deep breath and take a look at where you expect the heaviest losses and where you see chacnes to score more easily VPs. Thus, play the first mentioned for denial and to slow down until support arrives.

A good opponent will try the same, though :p

Hope that helps a bit.
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by Strongbow »

Ok. Proof positive that I'm still a nubie.

I played a game against Tomb Kings this weekend, and I lost pretty resoundingly.

My opponent did something that 1) seems straight out of our playbook, and 2) I've actually seen in a documentary on Alexander the Great.

I knew that he would place that altar that kills everything in sight thing (its actual name escapes me at the moment) on a hill to the right (from my perspective). He placed a unit of chariots, a unit of fast cav and a unit of heavy cav with spears way to my left. He did place the altar on the hill, with a big block of skellies and some ushabti and chariots (with hero) in front of it. He placed a flying hero and some carrion birds in the middle, along with two units of 10 archers.

To my left, facing his chariots/fast cav/heavy cav, I placed a treeman, flanked on each side by two units of 7 War Dancers with musicians. In the middle, I placed my free wood with my lvl 4 weaver, so that she could get to both the woods in the right side of his deployment zone and the wood in the right of my deployment zone. I put a lvl 2 singer in the woods to my right. I also placed a unit of scouts at the very edge of that wood to my right, and a unit of 5 glade riders behind it. There was an alter noble in the woods to the right of my deployment zone.

Near to the right edge of my deployment zone, I placed a unit of 3 Warhawks and an Eagle, with a unit of 5 glade riders w/ musi behind them. I think I should have put the glade riders up front and the more expensive, more manuverable warhawks behind them instead.

In the middle of the board, I placed a unit of 12 dryads with wraith, accompanied by a unit of three tree kin.

My thought was to hold up his chariots/heavy cav on the left with a superior force, finally comming around his flank to sweep up. However, he never actually engaged me, playing a cat and mouse game that ensured that my tree man and the two units of wardancers really did nothing for most of the game. In fact, the tree man did something eventually, but the wardancers really did nothing.

I think that I could have done better by paring the treeman with more resilient units to support. Plus, I should have been more agressive with that element, forcing him to engage and pushing him toward the center, when I could eventually come into the main combat zone.

The dryads ended up swarming the heavy cav, which my opponent didn't expect, and killed them off, but the tree kin didn't make it over to the right side of the board in time. Plus, I ended up splitting the dryad/treekin combo that I set up.

On my right side, things went down the tube. His altar-of-kill-everything went off, destroying my alter noble. I couldn't get my warhawks and eagle over his hump to go attack the altar on the hill. They both ended up running right off of the board in an unlucky turn of events on turn 4. Then, the glade riders got shot to pieces.

Lessons learned: Really, I should have deployed everything concentrating on the right flank of my deployment zone, in order to crack that nut. I could have put the eagle, glade riders and warhawk riders to the left (near to the center) and concentrated the heavy hitters, such as the treeman and the tree kin more squarely to take on the units protecting that darned altar. I could have deployed the dryads and the wardancers to the left of them in order to watch my left flank and to wrap around his right flank, after mowing down his archers.

Ahh, but hindsight is 20/20. Any thoughts?
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by lune »

Strongbow wrote:Any thoughts?
Become familar with your opponent :)
A bit more detailled: Think of where your opponent is strong in and where are the general weaknesses of an army. In case of tomb kings, they're slow as hell, thus need something to force you coming to them in order to engage. With Archers that have low BS but always hit on a reliable result and the dreaded skull catapults, supported by pretty good magic and a spell that allows a unit to shoot more than once per turn, you can be pretty sure that you must anihilate a) the mages ,b) the shooty elements and c) everything that can prevent you from doing so.
To become more specific:
left flank: his momentum force, comparatively speedy and hard hitting, but only on the charge. your idea to counter them with heavy hitters is ok, though as long as you're not sure where he positions the rest of his army, placing only something like an eagle that turns his movement into crawling due to a redirecting, sacrificial unit that takes a unit out of game for 2 turns for cheap as chips is a good answer -and with flying movement can be fast anywhere else if not needed.
In order to overcome his solid mid, you could have used your heavy hitting forces to slowly fight your way through his refilling forces - or ignore those blockers and fly over them, only take out what is a) easy to kill and b) causing you the headaches :)
His archers are best dealt with your own archers - concentrate fire to extinct one unit a turn and be sure you force him to get moving. When you can make your opponent react to your moves you have already won some ground, since you make pressure instead of being under the same.
What it seems from what you've written, you've tried to counter your opponent with rock-scissor-paper - unfortunately do gunlines and cavalry forces not care for such things. They only try to keep the momentum on their side and force you to react. With your solid magic, you could have simply blocked the chariot units and other heavier stuff, whilst dealing with the easier meet and after getting the easier VPs focus on the rest.
Try to get some pressure on your opponent that forces him to either loose defense or put units where he doesn't want them to be in order to maintain a stable core.

Hope this helps, though we're using a thread that is almost 3 months old <.<
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by ArchMagosAlchemys »

I missed this thread the first time. This might be better handled as a discussion of WFO battles where actual terrain and armies can be discussed along with the reasons for doing things.
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Re: Thoughts on the Placement Phase?

Post by Strongbow »

gotcha AMA.
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