Age of Darkness-Warhammer 30k/2.0 Tactics/Fortifications

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General Rules

Here are the general tactics about fortifications so that we don't have to type, update and manage the same thing for each codex.

• Battlements: Allows models to climb to the top of a building without needing to go inside of it, but they do count as an entry point for any buildings with a transport capacity. Hiding here gives a 5+ cover save, but any blasts hitting this zone also deals a hit to the building those battlements are on.
• Firing Ports (Arc, X): Allow a unit to fire X of the squad's guns within a designated firing arc, allowing you to park some rotor cannons to pin the enemy from inside a building while another unit rushes them down.
• Emplacements: Unless otherwise stated, Emplacements can only be fired by a model from the unit that claims it. Fortunately, they can fire in any direction you see fit.
  • Thankfully, any firing it makes is done using the model's BS rather than the fortifications usually unimpressive BS3.
• Massive/Multi-Part Fortifiactions: Massive Buildings, being as huge as they are, take -1 to any vehicle damage rolls they need to make. If you have a fortification that's actually multiple parts that are attached to each other, you can have a unit hiding within one part travel to another by spending their movement.
  • Legacies gives you a different set of rules for massive buildings. First is that they will count to your 25% Lord of War allotment despite being Fortifications, which will seriously limit what you take in a smaller army. On the plus side, they ignore any result of the building damage table short of exploding.

Tactics

• New to this edition is the "claim" setup, in which a fortification can become property of anyone who occupies it. While you initially claim any fortifications you bought in your army, an enemy can easily claim it as their own just by going inside it, making it now fire anything on their command until you either reclaim it or blow it up.
• If you really want to be "That Guy" take any fortification with a nice gun that isn't automated, then have a Vindicare Assassin shoot that (non-blast) weapon, thus giving it BS8, Precision Shots, and Ignores Cover (goodbye jink saves). Sadly the Precision Shots only applies to the Aquila Macro Cannon; Vortex Missiles, Plasma Obliterators, and Battle Cannons don't roll to hit. A Callidus Assassin provides the same BS while messing with enemy Reserve Rolls. Or just bring Cypher at BS10 and (almost) never scatter off target.
• Support units can help to improve the longevity and efficacy of fortifications, as well, particularly if you're already dropping a land raider in points on them, anyhow. Also, any fortification can take advantage of psychic powers. Giving them invulnerable saves can make them even harder to take down (Force Dome, et all). Divination, likewise, ramps up the shooting aspects of a building. Punisher cannons in particular like re-rolling hits.
• All Skyfire weapons are fire snap shots against ground targets. Fortification AA guns are effective at downing fliers, but very expensive pieces of hardware if used for anything else. Carefully evaluate your needs before buying in on quad guns or the like.
• Actual artillery units make great additions to buildings. Techmarine gunners, as noted above, but also Castellax Automata, etc. The guns resist most building damage rolls and enjoy the extra safety and height of the firing possition.
• The big thing to keep in mind with buildings is the building damage table. AV14 is pretty great but one meltabomb is a very frightening thing to ignore because it has every chance of toppling your fancy tower. Keep your buildings well defended from anything that can cause a penatrating hit. Seeing your 250 point fortification take 500 points of the special units you put inside and on top of it down to a meltabomb is hard for any force to come back from

Fortifications

• Defence Line: Your classic Aegis Defense Line is your cheapest fortification, even if it is a wide-spanning set of walls. As a barricade, it offers a 5+ cover save to those hiding behind it and lets them also re-roll that cover save against Blast weapons. If you're feeling cheeky, you can also buy a Skyreaper Battery, a pretty average rapid-fire AA platform with S7 AP2 Skyfire and Twin-Linked.
  • Or course, that emplacement is going to stay there forever, omitting any rules that outright destroy terrain, but you should be more worried about the enemy deciding to use this against your flyers.

• Fortified Wall (Strongpoint): AV13 all around and Battlements give you a decent amount of protection on an obstacle, but the two Fire Points being inaccessible due to the Strongpoint lacking any transport capacity, making it a useless setpiece when the Defence Line at least has the option for a gun for far cheaper. The errata would eventually give it a transport capacity of 6, meaning it can hold a pack of Heavy Support marines and a character with an auspex for improved shooting.
  • You can also buy additional Strongpoints so you can hide more troops and freely move them from one structure to another.

• Imperial Bunker: AV14 makes it tankier and at least this has heavy bolters on each firing arc and the option to buy an Icarus Lascannon as an emplacement, making the issue of it also having no transport capacity despite having firing points (Until the errata gave it 12 spots) sting less. The unfortunate part of having the firing points only allow two models to shoot out of each end, and you can't do anything about those heavy bolters. If that bit still bothers you, do remember that it also has Battlements so you can have your squad just camp up there with the emplacement.

• Firestorm Redoubt^Legacies: Absurdly overcosted for what's worse than the Bunker, but that's the Legacies docs for you. AV13 and 3 hull points is absolutely not worth 200 points, that 6-man firepoint and pair of Icarus Lascannons be damned. Add the lesser transport capacity and you've got an absolutely pointless building. Just proxy it as a bunker and be done with it.

• Vengeance Weapon Battery^Legacies: Essentially buildings with turrets strapped to the top. Each one provides a Skyreaper battery but you can swap that for an Icarus Lascannon if you're expecting heavy aircraft to be posing trouble for you. Don't expect these to last longer than a turn or two, as each only has AV13 and 2 hull points, but at least you can buy up to three of them in a slot.

• Void Shield Generator^Legacies: Comes with a single Void Shield to protect the AV12 structure and its three hull points. Uniquely, this also provides the controlling unit a special reaction that gives them Shrouded (4+) during the Shooting phase provided that it isn't too massive (so Knights, Titans, Thanatars, etc. are out of the picture). Even better is that this reaction can be done on top of any reactions the unit itself would make, meaning that any army-specific reactions in the Shooting phase can be used on top of the gift of Shrouded for extra protection while firing back.

• Skyshield Landing Pad^Legacies: A basic AV 12 building. Its battlements serve a second function as anything that deep-strikes onto it cannot scatter. However, you do need to roll a d6 after this arrival. On a 1, your deep strike is disordered and the enemy can deep-strike units of their own within 24" without needing to scatter. On a 2+, you can deep-strike your guys within 6" of the pad.
  • This goes without saying, but a Legion army using the Angel's Wrath Rite or something similar benefits the best. Not only does this give you a reliable way to get your jump packs and drop pods on the field, but it also gives them some protection against any Interceptor shots.

• Fortress of Redemption^Legacies: The Dark Angels' super-special playset, though anyone can take it. It's got a big useless tower with battlements and two side-annexes that can store 12 models each. All of them have AV13 and 4 hull points, so at least it's not something that can collapse to an odd lascannon.
  • Each annex has a choice between either buying an Icarus Lascannon for AA purposes or the Orbital Defenses rule, allowing you to fuck with enemies using any manner of Deep-Striking in case you need that denial and your Master of Signals has their jammer turned off.

• Hammerfall Bunker^Legacies: Yes, this fucking Primaris mishap is on the Legacies document. No, we have no fucking reason WHY this is here. All it does is act as a Tarantula that can actually work as intended. The issue is that a TL heavy bolter or TL heavy flamer on every arc won't do as much as you'd expect. The cyclone launcher isn't too shabby though, but at BS2, you're not hitting shit.

Massive

• Aquila Strongpoint^Legacies: A huge building, capable of carrying 30 models inside of it, though they can't do much else besides going from entry point to battlements. Its main draw is the Orbital Defenses rule, which give you a once-per-game ability to force a -1 to enemy reserve rolls and any deep-strikes/outflanks/subterranean assaults to become disordered on a roll of 1-3 instead of merely 1. If they try to use drop pods, then you can instead roll d6 - You pick a number of drop pods with the Orbital Assualt Vehicle rule (so the Kharybdis and Dreadclaw don't count) equal to that roll and deal S8 AP2 hits to each one. If you're lucky, this might make them explode right on top of the legionaries inside them and give them a middle finger.

• Primus Redoubt^Legacies: A massive base that carries a whopping FIFTY infantry models, one of whom can fire the Turbo Laser Destroyer. Not like the rest can do anything else though.

Warhammer 30,000 Tactics Articles
General Tactics	General (7E) Movement (7E) Psychic (7E) Fortifications (7E)
Imperium	Legiones Astartes (7E)
	Legio Custodes (7E) Sisters of Silence (7E) Mechanicum (Legio Mechanicum • Taghmata Omnissiah)
	Questoris Knights (7E) Solar Auxilia (7E) Imperialis Militia (7E)
Chaos	Ruinstorm Daemons (7E • 7E Codex) Warp Cults(7E)