Friday, June 25, 2010

Distraction Units, What do they do for you?

Old School here to talk about distraction units and their uses and also to ask you what you run to distract your enemy.
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I think my tyranids have the ultimate distraction unit and if you have met him, then you already know who I am talking about; The Doom of Malan'tai. The doom normally hangs out in a spore pod in my list and tries to drop in near objectives in order to force the enemy to either use S8 weapons on him instead of my MCs or to pull the defenders into assualt with him and closer to the fleeting Snake-monsters of my army. Sometimes he really shows off and kills a ton of stuff by draining their life, but most of the time, he kills a couple things and distracts the enemy for a turn or two so my army can live to get across the board.
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In my Chaos Space Marine army, I use the Nurgle Daemon Prince as a distraction, pushing him way too far ahead or in places where I am obviously putting him in harms way. Sure, he takes a couple lumps, but in the end, it buys my rhinos and my Land Raider a few less dice to roll and allows them to get across the board.
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I have noticed Eldar players using their Pathfinders to pull enemy units out of the fight to deal with them, I have seen Guard make a hell of a distraction with Marbo. So my question to you is - Do you run distraction units or use units in your army as big distractions and if so, what are they and how do you pull it off? If you don't, why not? Is it a matter of preference or are there no real need to distract the enmy in your army? Let's hear about it!

6 comments:

  1. I've used infiltrating / outflanking scouts as a distraction before. They really make a good speedbump, or diversion away from your main force!

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  2. I am starting to use a thunderwolf cavalry armed with a storm shield so he can take maximum damage from high strength low ap weapons

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  3. The Thunderwolves a a good and potent distraction. I have also seen the old Lone Wolf distraction work out pretty well before too.

    Scouts are really a classic distraction unit that can also score and from time to time add in some nice fire power - in cover, they even get a degree of survivability.

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  4. Deathwing baby! They are fearsome enough that you almost cannot ignore them, but they divert shots away from much needed troops running in the open to claim objectives. It's not a perfect system. lol

    Deus

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  5. Pathfinders do make for a good distraction, especially with a 2+ cover save.


    Fire Dragons make the best distraction though. load them up in a falcon and its a big but potent distraction, especially for those that play Guard.


    They don't like a squad all armed with melta guns with the tank hunter ability for some reason :-)

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  6. AC/HB Predators and HF/MM Speeders in my SM Biker army. The Preds are an 'ooh, shiny' type of target that is worth a whopping 85 points yet put out some nice anti-trans and anti-infantry, and the Speeders are a nice 'deal with it or else' unit. Meanwhile, the bikes make their way across the board...

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