Fifth edition 40k favors the quick and the bold... which generally comes down to who
has the best mobility and transportation. Is it any wonder that IG and Razor-wolves
are consistently at the top of the tournament charts? Mechanized armies are tricky
because it means you're going to have to face lots of mini-tank transports and often
some scary small squads inside that will continually inch close to your front lines.
One way to counter the plethora of armored might against you is to take advantage of
the enemy's tanks in order to pick off those squishy elite units inside. And you
do that with blast templates.
One often forgotten quirk of blast templates is that you do not have to squeeze
as much under the template as possible... unlike the flamer template. On page 29 of the
rulebook, under "Template," the rules provide:
Instead of rolling to hit, simply place the template so that its narrow end is touching the base of the model firing it and the rest of the template covers as many models as possible in the target unit...Conversely, the rules for placing the blast template on the following page (Page 30) simply provide:
When firing a blast weapon, models do not roll to hit, instead just pick one enemy model visible to the firer and place the blast marker (see diagram) with its hole over the base of the target model, or its hull if it is a vehicle.And that's it! No centering the marker, no putting as many enemy models as possible underneath, simply place it over the hull of a vehicle or the base of an enemy model. The question is then, how do you take advantage of this little tidbit? And the answer is, maximize the hit potential by targeting more than one unit at once.
Look at the picture below. This is a common scenario where you have multiple
enemy transports zooming up the center of the board. When you're smart enough to create
natural choke points on the board with terrain the more transports the enemy has, the more
likely you are to actually hit them... despite the scatter.
Obviously you might get lucky and get a two for one shot. As long as the
hole lands on one of the tanks, you'll get a full and half strength shot, which can be more
than enough for shots from battle and demolisher cannons against the majority of the lightly
armored transports on the current battlefield.
Perhaps an even more important use of this tactic is when the squishy troopers
on the inside of the tank are taking cover behind their transports. See the image below. This
may be a unit that has just deployed, or it could be a unit "running" alongside the mobile
cover of the tank. Either way, your enemy has wisely decided to put some steel between
his troops and your guns. Great in the real world... but perhaps not as effective on the
table top.
Here, let's just say the transported squad just stepped outside of the tank. Because of
two-inch deployment, most of the time your enemy is going to be bunched together - perfect
for a blast template attack. But the enemy is also more likely to deploy on the "safe" side
of his tank -- where you won't have a line of sight shot on that bunched up unit. But as
long as that transport hasn't already been wrecked, it's still fair game! Place that template
so that you cover both the tank and the squad and you not only maximize the liklihood that you're
going to actually hit something despite the scatter, on the off chance you get a "hit" roll,
you get full strength shots on the unit as well as the tank -- there is no half strength against
troops. Further, if you're shooting with a barrage weapon, such as a whirlwind or basilisk shot,
if that hole lands anywhere on the troop side of the tank, the squad won't even get a cover save.
But let's not forget another important factor about this shot. Who says you
have to be shooting with something that can actually penetrate the tank? So what if the tank
is a landraider and all you have are mortars, frag grenades and whirlwind missiles? As long
as that template lands on the squad, you've got a chance to hit a unit that is not in your line
of sight. And since that weapon isn't going to have a chance to hurt anything else anyway, you
might as well go for the possible kill. There is no rule that says you can only shoot at things
you have a chance to wound or penetrate.
And that's template manipulation. While these tactics demonstrate how to take out
squads hiding behind mobile cover, they can also work when attacking troops hiding behind target-able bunkers and buildings (technically, you can only fire at buildings that are occupied
by enemy forces: "Units may shoot at or assault an occupied
building just as if it was a vehicle..." Page 79 - emphasis supplied.), soft squads hiding behind
tougher units, etc. The point is simply that the blast template rules leave a lot of room for
fudging your actual target. Take advantage of their ability to maximize their ability to
hit an enemy unit by aiming at multiple squads at the same time, and by dropping those templates
into areas where otherwise hidden troops can be flattened.
