Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Shooting(7e)

Basic Notes

• When using ballistic skill, your to-hit number is 7 - BS. Ie you roll 3+ to hit at BS4 and 4+ to hit at BS3. This caps out at 2+ and will "wrap around" at BS 6 to 2+/6+ which gives you a reroll if you miss that hits on 6+. This also caps at BS 10 at 2+/2+ at which point if you miss, you might as well sacrifice small furry animals to the dice gods because they obviously hate your guts.
• You inflict instant death if the strength of your attack is double that of the target's toughness. Good way to remove HQs that lack the Eternal Warrior special rule. When rolling to wound, if your strength and their toughness match, you wound on 4+. For every point of strength higher than toughness you need to roll 1 less which caps at 2+. Likewise for every point of toughness over strength, you add 1 to the target number to wound up to 6+. A weapon has two 6+ to wound slots and thus can harm units with a toughness of up to 3 points higher than its strength. Most infantry longarms are strength 4 and thus can harm units of up to toughness 7. Anything toughness 8 or above will need special weapons to wound.
  • Strength 1: Sticks and harsh language. Even a guardsman can punch harder than this. Usually seen in weapons with the Poisoned or Haywire special rule so that you can't really use the weapon for anything but its intended purpose.
  • Strength 2: Grot Punches. Same as above but at least now you can sorta harm GEQs on a 5+.
  • Strength 3: Flashlight/Lasgun. The lowest strength for most weapons, harms MEQ on a 5+.
  • Strength 4: Bolter. Standard infantry longarm. Lowest strength that can damage a vehicle, though only on a 6.
  • Strength 5: Heavy Bolter. The weakest level for a heavy weapon, wounds GEQs on a 2+ which is useful for thinning out hordes.
  • Strength 6: Krak Grenade. The weakest level for any dedicated anti-tank weapon with a 50% chance to glance AV 10. However, weapons with this strength and a high rate of fire are dangerous. See: Scatter Lasers, Deathspinners.
  • Strength 7: Plasma Gun. Omnivorous diet of destruction. Wounds MEQs on 2+ and is decent at punching holes through transports.
  • Strength 8: Meltagun. Dedicated anti-tank weaponry, earliest level than can glance AV 14. Will inflict Instant Death to most infantry.
  • Strength 9: Lascannon. Misbegotten weapon that wishes it were strength 10.
  • Strength 10: Demolisher cannon. Smash heavy infantry to pancakes.
  • Strength D: The D. For "Delete" as that is what this does.

• There are two ways to kill a tough unit: Either you use a weapon to negate the strong defense, or you can attempt to overwhelm the unit's defense and fire enough dakka into it to make it fail a save. Bring the appropriate amount of dakka to combat a heavy unit, lest you be the one shot to hell.
  • Example: Space Marine Terminators hate Guardsmen, Necron, and Tau bricks because they put out a fuckton of weak shots that will make them inevitably fail armor saves. Or rather than rely on 50 lasgun shots the guardsmen can instead bring a plasma gun that can negate the terminators armor save making them much easier to kill, even with only two shots, the plasma gun only needs to cook one terminator to make its points back. Conversely the Terminators can bring a Heavy flamer, negating the guardsmen's or other bricks cover save, armor and numbers thanks to its AP and template nature.

Advanced Notes

AOEs

• Generally speaking, don't rely on blast or flamer weapons to rack up large numbers of kills, as an enemy general can easily spread out his models to minimize potential damage. More than anything, they exist to keep the enemy honest and prevent an extreme concentration of forces. That said, there are four major scenarios for enemy models to bunch-up.
  • When the enemy is displaced from one or more Tank Shocks.
  • When a unit emerges from Deep Strike, and either rolls poorly to Run, forfeits running to-shoot (though a lot of Deepstrike units can reliably "Fire & Run" with the right power combinations), or is targeted by an Interceptor Weapon beforehand.
  • When the unit rolls poorly to consolidate after an assault (of note is the fact that models cannot consolidate after assaulting a vehicle). Don't forget your flamers for the second wave.
• When the unit loses its transport, either to a wreck or explosion. A classic "one-two-punch" for a Marine army is to use heavier weapons to destroy enemy transports, then immediately follow-up with the Thunderfire cannons before the surviving passengers can spread out!
• If you want to maximize the amount of damage done to bunched-up models, four AOE weapons firing from the same unit will inflict more damage, than from four different units. To use a (very vacuum) example, let us compare two (vacuum) scenarios, with Orks as target practice:
  • Four units of Chaos Space Marines, each with one flamer and 4 Bolters, fire at a unit of 20 Orks. All other things being considered, each flamer-equipped model can hit roughly 5 Orks apiece. The first unit fires, with one flamer hitting 5 Orks. After rolling to-hit and wound, the flamer kills about 2-3 Orks. The remaining models fire their Bolters, and probably kill another 4 Orks. The next unit fires, and is lucky if there is even one Ork in range of its flamer.
  • On the other hand, let us suppose a unit of Chaos Chosen with four Flamers was firing at the unit of Orks. Each one hits 5 Orks, for a total of 20 hits. You now roll to-wound and the flamers themselves kill an average of 10 Orks, for a fraction of the investment.

Sniping

• Many squads gain a disproportionate amount of strength from any special/heavy weapons they are carrying with them, or from the occasional superior character leading said unit. As a result, there are some occasions where you can mostly neuter the strength of the unit if you kill those specific models.
• Although Characters can get "Look Out Sir" rolls, troopers armed with upgraded weapons do not. Thus, a competent player will generally hide such models in the "Center" of a formation, where they are shielded by their buddies (since the closest models from an attack vector are hit first).
• There are two main ways to single out enemy models in a unit: The first is to use weapons which can single out specific models. This includes attacks with the Precision Shot rule, or Beams/Focused Witchfires. These attacks tend to have inefficient economy of force.
• The second way is to force key models to be the the closest visible ones singled out by your firepower. This is generally more efficient, but is situational and requires more prep-work to pull-off. Several ways to more reliably force your attacks to wound the models you want dead include the following:
  • Using "Barrage" weapons (Mortars/etc) changes the attack point of origin from the firing unit's location, to ground-zero of the blasts
  • Though it's basic, it bears repeating: Always keep careful track of the order in which the models in your unit fire. A good motto is: AOEs first, "basic weapons" second, then "big hitters" last. (Of course, if your opponent is running a Wolfstar or other unit full of tanking characters, adapt accordingly).
  • If you have ready access to powers that let you move and fire during the Shooting Phase (Battle Focus, Feints & Ambushes, the "Fire & Move" order for Guard, Marines in a Stormlance Demi-Company, etc), you can line troops down one attack vector. Units that can move after firing can move aside so they don't grant the enemy cover from your next firing squad (think of center-peeling and you're not too far off). Units that can move-then-fire in the shooting phase, you can further reposition your models based on any opportunities to hit the "next closest model".
  • If all else fails, you can aim to block visibility to the parts of the enemy unit you don't want to shoot. This is yet another reason why Rhinos and convoy formations can be nasty. You can play "Space Invaders/shooting gallery" with your troops forming a triangle, and firing at a distinct subset of models they wish to remove.