When to hold em...

One of the gripes I've more frequently about 5th ed is wound allocation. Nob bikers, TWC, wolf guard, etc. There's not much you can do about it in CC (usually where these guys end up) but you do have options in the shooting phase to counter-act their advantage.

Say there's a 5 man(?) Warrior unit with VC and a Prime holding an objective in cover and a sternguard squad with 3 combiflamers and 2 heavy flamers toasts them with all they've got. depending on how the wounds turn out(of course) the Tyranid player could allocate the ap 4 shots alternately to the VC, who would die, and to the prime, who saves on 3+, while taking the AP5 shots on the warriors 4+. Had he only fired the heavy flamers, only the prime would've made saves; everyone else touched would've been wounded. Alternately, had he fired the combi's first, and the nid player took saves before the heavy flamers went off, he would seriously short-change himself in terms of saves. It's therefore very important to
a)not take saves as he makes wounds
b)expect the same.
Maybe its only a local problem but it could change your game.

Which brings me to the title. Sometimes you have to hold back. If you want those ap2 shots to do damage, then think twice before firing your bolters. It seems counter-intuitive, but it becomes almost second nature after one gets used to the system.

HQ Tax

HQ's are an easy place to overload on points. They have such extensive wargear lists, its easy to pop on 5 point upgrades, or otherwise "just in case" wargear. Consider, say

Captain - 175
-Relic Blade
-Artificer Armor
-Digital Weapons
-combimelta
-Hellfire rounds

"Makes him a pretty dastardly character"

or does it? If you instead look at a Librarian, for a lot less, you get a boost to your whole army, depending on the powers. (I'm looking at you null zone) It's certainly less 'killy', and in toe to toe, my money is on the captain. But then consider that with the points saved, that the libby could buy a plasback to ride around in (well, hijack one)and that null zone plus 3 ap2 shots makes for a dead character real quick. This goes double for taking multiple HQ's. Say you decide to toss in Cassius (admittedly a steal) at 125 points. Does he really do more for your army than a rifleman? Do you need to tack a ~200 point character into a CC squad? What are you charging that needs (Or is worth) throwing another couple hundred points at?

It's all about efficiency. By spending less on your characters, you have more points to go around the rest of your army. Which brings me back to the title, HQ Tax. Consider your mandatory HQ slot as a 100 point 'tax' on your army, and build the rest of it from there. I can't imagine an army that can't get a par HQ choice for around 100-130 points, at least for those unfortunate enough to not get 100 point psykers with hoods and 2 powers.

Later this week I'll post my thoughts about overall army efficiency, and tomorrow (with luck) I'll have my full collection dusted off for a photo shoot.