Editing Warhammer Army Project/Tips (section)

===Deployment===

I've seen many games where games are lost on deployment alone. Picture for a second that your opponent puts down a unit of heavily armored Chaos Knights after you put your White Lions down far away from them. If those White Lions were your only defense against heavy armor, then I'd say you're in a world of shit once those Knights come crashing on your flank.

That's why you see players taking units whose sole purpose is to give them an edge in deployment. Some might be good enough to be used as re-directors or warmachine hunters too. These units are also known as chaff. Chaff is important because it allows you to put these units down anywhere you want for the most part. They pretty much always go to the same place or have outrageous movement speed that they can relocate and not be troublesome for the movement of your army. Eagles can be used as chaff, Sabretusks and Fellbats for example, and all can act as chaff for your army.

The key to deployment is matching your opponent's units pound for pound. You don't want to put down a unit that doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell against another unit he put down right off the top. Your unit must have support or is capable of holding the line against whatever he puts down, or your side is just going to fold. The best example is the Knights scenario I presented above. You want to be able to match your opponent in deployment or be superior to him in deployment. I call these "drops." If your army has greater or equal to the number of drops he has (the total # of units he can put down during deployment), you're in a good place. This minimizes the chance your army will be out-deployed. The person with more chaff will have more chaff that he can put down, forcing you to put down your last unit of White Lions so he can purposely drop a power unit on your flank. Unless your army is designed to fight uphill battles, you should never let this happen.

If you know you will be out-deployed, you should analyze which units on his side you don't want in your flanks and deploy your answers last. This is where knowing your enemy comes into place.