Play the Player

There will always be complaints about units or entire army lists that are considered over powered and there is not much a person can do about it. To an extent that is true, especially if you do not have a decent counter unit. If you are playing against Space Marines and do not have any ap1-3 weapons your chances of winning drop significantly and the same thing goes if you don't have any anti tank weapons and your opponent is fully mechanized you will have a very hard time. What do you do when you run into an army that you are completely unprepared for? There are of course a few options available to you,; simply tell the person you don't want to play against that list, walk away to find another game, or hunker down and figure out a way to win. This post will focus on more psychological tactics that will hopefully assist you in at least making a game competitive. 

I have not been in many situations where I have felt I had little chance but when those instances do occur all that matters to me is gaining a moral victory. There is a better way to go about it than I do and that is to find your opponents moral weakness. In my Space Wolf days when my Wolf Guard terminators would get wiped out it crushed my fighting spirit, as well as my fighting ability since Blood Claws are terrible. What you need to be able to do is find your opponents equivalent of my Wolf Guard terminators.

 

Some signs to look for that may target a unit as special to your opponent is if they are painted or based to a higher quality than the rest of his army. If you can observe your opponent setting up his army and is babying a unit and being rather delicate with it it could mean that the model itself is fragile or that he loves it, if the case is love train your guns. You may be asking yourself what is the use of being able to kill your opponents favorite unit if you sill lose the game and that is a fair question. I think most war gamers will agree that when our favorite unit is getting battered, especially before it can do what it is designed to do, there is the potential to go to the extreme to protect it. The goal of this is to throw your opponent of his battle plan by doing something silly to protect a unit that has by now been rendered combat ineffective which will then allow you to take advantage of opening weaknesses. An example of this is someone would be shooting at my Wolf Guard and killing them off steadily, I forgot about my 5+ invulnerable save a lot back then, and in response I would alter the path of my Blood Claws who would have had a charge that turn to target a unit they won't get to until next turn just for a bit of revenge. If you are playing a disciplined opponent this may not work but it's better than just waiting for the beating to commence.

If your opponent is a cold blooded person and has not favorite unit and is happy to throw them all into the meat grinder without a second thought there is still another option to give yourself a chance against an army that has out classed yours. My 1500 point Blood Angel list is probably the toughest list I have developed and so far it has been working for me, however it took a lot of working to get to it's current form. Now I have never come up against an opponent who has looked at my army list and said there is no way they can beat it which makes me happy because I don't want to be that kind of player. I bring up my list because we all have that list which makes us feel very good about our chances so what you need to do as an opponent is figure out the key to my battle plan and counter it. This may seem overly simple but allow me to go into detail further. My battle plan relies almost entirely of winning combats and maintaining movement and momentum. If my assaults stall out and last a turn or two longer than I expect it throws off my battle plan because I have to free up another squad to assist the stuck squad which is one more unengaged enemy unit. This happened to me a lot when playing against weapon skill 4 guardsmen, also known as the Death Korps of Krieg. I was thrown off balance and did not adjust as well as I should have which allowed my opponent time to hold objectives, get line breaker, or any number of different things that allowed him to win a game he previously might not have. Sadly he has not played against my fully developed 1500 list but I think I know how it would end ;) If you know your opponent has a lot of shooting and you can't match it pull off an unexpected charge, if they assault let him deploy first then counter his deployment and counter charge him to stall his guys for a turn.

If you are truly feeling outclassed by some opponents I hope this gives you a chance at some revenge in the future. When all else fails just throw his models on the floor and smash them. Please don't do that, that's incredibly disrespectful and nobody deserves that except maybe people that bring a dozen flyers and never paint them...Thanks for reading and have an Emperor blessed day.