Warhammer 40K: Tactica: Move Blocking Your Opponent
Goatboy here with some 40K tactics on how to control the game by Move Blocking your opponent. Here’s how to cut them off on your path to victory.
Monday’s thoughts are about Move Blocking your opponent. This can happen in multiple ways beyond just getting your models in the way. Let’s look at the three ways you can control the flow of the game with just movement and careful placement of your toy soldiers and giant aliens from the darkness of space.
1: Get In the Way of Where Your Opponent WANTS to Go
This is a skill I will say I am not the best at. I end up playing too much MSU or giant stompy things so move blocking isn’t something I am always able to do and think about clearly. This technique is just as simple as moving something to get in the way of the opponent’s units and hopefully leave them stuck or out in the open after killing those models. A bump in the road of devastation they want to bring to your army can allow you to score that extra primary or set up that secondary to win the game in the end.
Getting in the way and making sure your opponent must waste time on your “easy” models is a great way to control the game. You are hopefully placing your units in a way that a secondary won’t be easily score, an objective isn’t too easy to get to after a consolidation, or you are just not giving up anything too good for the opponent to pounce on. This could also be as simple as placing a model just a hair too far away so even a charge won’t allow them to hit your model, kill it, and then move further to an objective or area they want to be in.
2: Jail Your Opponent In their Deployment Zone
You see this style of move blocking with some of the armies that utilize fast units that are slightly hard to chew through. This could either be due to having a rather large unit, a unit with a good save, or just some other stack of abilities that make it harder thatn average to kill them. The idea here is to not let the opponent move further into the center and start scoring their primary points during the game. A lot of the time you are not even killing the enemy and instead or just ensuring they can only kill what you are feeding them.
This is the type of movement and army that I like as I enjoy playing aggressively. My plans are to come in, get near your army, and see if you make the wrong decision. It is also an army that is usually faster to play as a lot of the decisions are just movement based instead of trying to figure out how much damage you can do to a target.
3: Offer Your Opponent Shiny Bait
This is another bit of movement you can do to try and tempt your opponent away from an area. You will try to feed something simple enough to push your opponent to engage. A lot of the time it is something that might take a bit more work to get rid of so just sending a single unit or two might not get the job done. This bait could be set in an area that will force a player to overextend a bit and become exposed to whatever damage you can throw out.
This could also be set up to just give your army a powerful overwatch or another stepping stone to move into the enemy. There are some armies that have a longer Consolidation movement ability which allows them to chain into the enemy in a way so giving up a unit to allow your units to “quickly” jump into the enemy is an important bit of movement to always think about when playing the game.
These are some of the simple ways to “move block” or tempt your opponent into playing the game you want them to play. If you fully control their movement phase you have a better chance at winning the game without every depending on successful dice rolling. It is always better to win without needing to roll that 4+.
Tell me about your Movement Phase tips & tricks
