40k: Dirty Tricks (No. 7) - Central Position

This installment will feature actual tactics from the historical military genius, Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon was famous for devising tactics based on speed and shock -- a tactical mode that has been echoed time and again ever since (e.g.the German Blitzkrieg, and the United States' Shock and Awe campaign in Iraq are modern examples of the same tactical theory). Napoleon tailored his army to accomplish the speed of his tactics by organizing his forces into smaller divisions that could act quickly and independently. These formations could move from one objective to another without needing top-down instruction.

The game of 40k is perfect for the application of Napoleon's tactics as each unit in an army generally acts independently of the others (although some armies rely more on mutual support than others), and most forces also have the ability to build speed right into their lists. To demonstrate just how easily some of these tactics apply, let's look at Napoleon's tactic of Central Position.

The concept behind Central Position is actually fairly straightforward. The concept is to put your army in a position where you can cull enemy detachments one at a time. Basically, you utilize one small portion of your army to tie down the bulk of the enemy and then rapidly redeploy your forces against a smaller portion of your enemy's army to gain local superiority (i.e. a numerical advantage on one part of the battlefield) and thus overwhelm another portion of the enemy's forces.

The Right Pieces

In order to perform this maneuver, you're going to need at least two important elements:

(1) Fast Moving Assault Units
(2) Tough Tie-Up Unit

When available, you should also consider bringing the following:

(3) Mobile Fire Support
(4) Hit-and-Run Units

The key to this tactic is mobility. You have to be able to switch positions quickly. You begin the move with a feint forward:

Your forces surge forward into the main enemy line while simultaneously choosing a smaller target that you will overwhelm once the enemy has committed his forces.

Once the enemy has committed, you leave your tougher 'tie-up' units in place and withdrawal the rest of your forces to join the smaller attack element that has peeled off one of your enemy's units.

Withdrawal the bulk of your forces from the feint and then overwhelm the target squad.

With your guns and attack units now trained on the target unit(s), you can overwhelm the enemy piecemeal and then select another target unit to overwhelm. Obviously the quicker you can move to your next enemy squad, the better... and the longer your tie-up unit can hold out against the bulk of the enemy forces, the more likely you'll be able to continue taking out enemy units in this fashion.

Note that having mobile firepower is also an important element as you can quickly redirect your firing to overwhelm the smaller portion of the enemy's army. While the opening salvo may be directed towards the bulk of the enemy's forces in order to sell the feint -- and to make things a little easier on your tie-up unit(s) -- ultimately you're going to want to be able to bring that firepower to bear on the real target the very next turn of the game. Note that if your already locked in an assault on that target unit, and you don't have an enemy supporting unit to dump fire upon, the fire support squad can always keep its guns trained on the bulk of the enemy forces.

Here the fire support unit can choose to eliminate the lone squad supporting the target unit, or it can continue pounding the heart of the enemy forces to make things a little easier on your tie-up unit.

Obviously some armies are going to be better suited to this kind of warfare than others. For example, the new Dark Eldar codex offers lots of units that should be able to pull this tactic off. Hit-and-run hellions, coupled with jet bike squads and raider units of grotesques/wracks and wyches should be able to pull this off very well. The speed of this kind of army means you can aim your tough units (grotesques/wracks) at the center of enemy forces while peeling off your jetbikes to grab an isolated enemy squad. The Hellions can then jump out of combat and join the jetbikes while the wyches, who initially looked like they were going to join the grotesque/wrack fray are redirected to overwhelm the lone enemy squad. 

Even space marines have some ability to do this using a combination of bike/assault squads, Kor'ssaro Khan, and a tough unit like terminators in a landraider. Blood Angels, Orks, Eldar, Space Wolves, Chaos, Tyrannids -- all of these armies have the ability to combine fast assault units and tougher tie-up units to pull off this tactic fairly handily. But the key to making this tactic work is a fast moving redeployment and some kind of tough tie-up unit. Without these elements, you simply won't make this work.