40k: Knowing Your Opponent

Hey everyone. So today I want to talk about an aspect of the game that I feel a lot of people don't think about too much. Knowing your opponent. Now obviously if you're going to your local gaming store for a random pickup game, this might not always be possible, but for the sake of argument here we're going to assume that you have a fairly regular gaming group that you play with.

So first thing's first, lets talk about what I mean when I say know your opponent. What I mean by this isn't knowing what units they  have access to, or even what armies they play (though that is of course a big factor). I'm talking about their tactics. What kind of player are they? Are they aggressive? Defensive? Are they generally going to just try and wipe out your whole army, or play a more subtle objective based game? These are the things that you should be thinking about when building your army and playing against certain people.

For example, I know that Todd tends to overextend himself by sending his fast units right at me quickly, which allows me to concentrate fire on them and bring them down relatively easily. Now this may be because he's a new player to the game, and rightly wants to see some bloodshed, or it may be because he likes to play a little more aggressively, the thing that does matter is that it tends to happen at some point in the game, and I can use this to my advantage. There is a chance that I can throw out a cheap unit, something that won't hurt me too much to lose in order to bait him forward even more, or pull a previously supported unit away from it's friends in order to isolate and destroy it. Think something like a unit of Rangers. They're practically guaranteed to be killed in the initial charge, and can be used to pull something scary, like maybe some Assault Terminators out of a Landraider close to my firing base all alone, where I can jump them with some Fire Dragons and/or Dire Avengers and kill the unit.

Now obviously this isn't going to work all the time. He might not take the bait, and instead continue on his path forward. He might read this post and become more cautious because of this, but the fact that I know he tends to do these things gives me an inherent advantage right from the get go.

Now lets use Brennan as an example. There are certain units that I know Brennan loves to use, most predominantly the Defiler. We often have games that we call "Crab Battles" where we each take a Defiler or two and run them up the board at each other blasting away with our Battle Cannons, and sometimes even making it to assault. It's quite likely that if I'm playing Brennan and he's bringing Chaos, there will be a Defiler in the mix somewhere. So because I know this about Brennan I can make sure that I'm really remembering to spread my models out to mitigate any incoming blasts, and try and keep any of my weaker armour in the best cover I can. I also need to make sure that I have a reliable answer to a Defiler in my list. Something a little more potent than plasma, maybe some Meltaguns, maybe some Obliterators. Whichever units I choose to use, I need to make sure that I'm prepared in both my deployment and my list building to face what he can throw at me.

Another important note is regarding the so-called "netlist". I see lots of people on various forums preaching that certain units and certain lists are the only things worth taking, or saying that certain other units aren't worth their cost. Try not to fall into the trap of blindly agreeing to this mentality. It's important to take the advice that you read and try to apply it to your own gaming group. The Chaos Daemon Flying Monstrous Creature spam list may be very popular on the internet right now, but if you tend to face lots of Tau with Missilesides and skyfire everywhere, it's probably not going to work out for you too well. Knowing your metagame and your opponent will do wonders for you both when designing a list and when playing the game, so make sure to keep it in mind.