Of Guns and Cannon

For months, I have been telling I would be writing down some thoughts on my playstyle... and then 2017 came to an end.

So what better moment then the first day of 2018 to actually put down these brainspinnings to virtual paper...

Artillerist.  Defensive player.  Cowardly player.  Points Calculator.  It all are terms I have heard about myself over all those years of wargaming, in all sorts of game systems or environments (campagnes, casual play, tournaments).

And they are true.

I am a player who hates having to move forward.  The art of gaming to your best is not playing to the uberstats or units of your army, but to your personal playstyle's strength's and weaknesses.  It just isn`t simple to recognise them.

Now, from early on, I rather quickly found out what I "loved" doing on the tabletop.  Hiding behind spread ranks of missile troops and cannons, with some small combat units to countercharge where a line is breaking, or a blob of cheap useless troops to speedbump.  For me, Quantity is the biggest Quality, so I rather take 500 points of Chaos Cultists over Terminators.  Yes, those Terminators can cause severe headscratching for my opponent, and they have high survivability, but those small units of cultists can give me a layered defence.

Layered defence... the first of the terms of my playing style has fallen.  This is basically the act of having speedbumps that get charged, then (in the new 40k for example) fall back allowing the rest of the army to blast away at the agressors.  Layer the field with two lines of these sorts of speedbumps, and you can pull of victory by slowing and slugging down the enemy's scoring units, while aiming to kill off enough of the rest of his army to secure the win.

And that is where my big guns come in.  I love cannons.  Not just fielding "a cannon" or even two, no, take as many big guns as a list allows and blast away like crazy.  Nuln Gun train?  Yes please.  The same was way back in 5th edition Fantasy, my infamous (and often winning) Chaos Dwarf army sported 3 Death Rockets and 2 Earthshakers, the maximum I could take back then in 2000 points.  And my Empire often hit behind an assortment of Helblasters, Great Cannons and Mortars. 

Just ask Willie at our club of that big ACW battle where I footslugged my only, non-limbered, cannon across the huge table, only to get a shot off at the final turn.

The same it was with my Italians in Flames of War.  No flashy Bersaglieri, Folgore or tank divisions for me.  No, I went for the lowly infantry force, riffled with Semovente and artillery pieces.  That way, I could saturate the field while holding the line with the cheap infantry who could oppose the more elite armies by sheer amount of dice.  Again: big guns coupled to cheap quantity.

Babylon 5?  Nova class and twin-linked heavy Earth Alliance for me... in a way, it is a wonder I never ended up playing 40k with either an Imperial Guard or a Tau army as main choice... but that Heretic guard force is seriously tempting to supplement my Emperor's Children.  And I got already about 70 cultists painted or worked on at the moment for the quantity part...

Refused flanks, oblique lines, castle formation deployment, layered defence... that is my game, and that is my strength.  I possess the ability to analyse threats to my victory (read victory, not army.  You can win while half your force is slaughtered) rather well, and I`m constantly making calculations of target selections, sometimes out loud (sorry dear TSA opponent), sometimes in my mind.  And then focus fire on taking them out, instead of damaging things a bit every time.

And that brings us to my weakness: going on the offensive.  I admit that I have serious problems when I need to take the fight to the enemy.  Fast Attack choices, light cavalry, scouting units, they are the units I usually severly manhandle.  I can`t get my charge coordinations just right to do the damage where I need to do it, I keep botching up Alpha Strikes,, and usually end up with units running in the wrong direction.

This is for example one of the things why I`m not a fan of Age of Sigmar, apart from the visual appeal I did a piece on about a month ago.  In the current game, there is no flanking and outmanouevring, so the speed bumps and such are useless.  Also, with Panic being gone and now the units just shrinking further if they take casualties, they still keep coming, even if it's just one or two models reaching your line, they ruin your volley sequences.  In the old days, you could focus on causing them to panic and throw their line in disarray, something AoS doesn`t allow anymore.

This is also the reason I struggle in Dux.  A four man archer squad isn`t going to bring my style to the fore, and in a game relying on cavalry charges, I am struggling and far out of my water.

So there you have it, my playing style strengths and weaknesses as I see them for myself after like, 20 years of wargaming.