Squad Formations: How to grab some cover.

Hello World, or at least the important parts, today we shall discuss the merits of squad formation. This article really is intended for 40K but no reason some of the soon-to-be mentioned points couldn’t be used in conjunction with Fantasy.

                I know that today’s games are Mech games, we all know this undeniable truth, but at times our troops will have to hoof it across the field, especially my fellow Hive Mind followers. So I pose the question, how do you place your squads? Do you just drop them on the board and move them along? Or do you give them the formations they deserve? To help with your musing let’s consider the following.

                There are three formation types that I like to use; the V, the O, and the Wall. To start, the V is exactly as it sounds. You make a wedge or spear tip of units that can either hold their own to gunfire or have portable cover and inside that V you place your escorted squad. For example, from time to time I will forgo vehicles or if my Berserker squad loses their tank to a dastardly opponent with a Lascannon right before they had they were about to assault and I have a squad of Thousand Sons nearby to help them out.  When something like this happens I will make a wedge out of Thousand Sons and place the berserks inside that wedge. This gives the Khornes 4+ cover and the Thousand Sons get their invul.

                The O shape borders on the same principle but is a bit more defensive. It gives you 360 degree cover but tends to make the units hard to move and squeeze into places. I find it works better with Nids for objective holding. Let’s say your last Warrior is down on his luck and your enemy is looking to kill your last bit of precious Synapse. You take your gaunts (of whatever flavor you like) and form up around him.

                The Wall is my favorite personally. It advocates small blocks of units to work well but for us Horde guys it couldn’t work better. You basically make walls or lines of units, one in front of the other. To give a bug’s perspective on it. Rather than taking a large unit of gaunts you take many small ones, assuming you have the slots for it, and form the up line by line. Now instead of having a 30 man unit get blasted to dust and slag because 6+ basically means no save at all you have 4+ cover on everything that isn’t monstrous except one small frontal unit.

                These scenarios are not absolute in their design. I am sure that many more examples of the importance of squad formations exist. What do you all think? Any good stories or examples?

                This was ZombieJoe, “What do you mean I can’t take of my sweater? I’m hot!”