Tactic of the Week

As usual its Monday morning. Time for Tactic of the Week. Today we are going to go back and look at one of the easiest tactics to use, the basic "Flee and Flank."

Here is a picture to start:


I have run into a very large Orc unit. Supported with 3 ranks, and a character in front, this unit will be very tough to beat in a straight up battle.

So I move my slaves up to a position to where the Orcs have 2 options. charge the slaves, or try and back up. Orcs and Goblins are not a very controllable race and trying to do sneaky maneuvers with them often will get you in trouble.

When the Orcs charge, the slaves flee. In the last edition, this tactic had the flaw that the Orcs could now redirect into the clanrats. This is gone in 7th edition. Now the Orcs must follow the path of the fleeing slaves. And only if an enemy happens to be in the way, may he "redirect" into them.

Here is the situation after the flee. I rolled a 7, so my skaven slaves fled 8" and got away.


As you can see even only wheeling 1" and moving up 3", will leave the flank of the Orcs wide open. You need to be careful and watch your opponents move. I've seen many opponents try to move their guys straight, or not nearly enough for their 4" move, to try and keep the clanrats in their front arc.

Barring that cheesy cheating move, this tactic works great, over and over again.

Finally, the clanrats charge into the flank:


Now my 25 clanrats are up against his 24 Orcs. So I have +6 CR (standard, numbers, flank & 3 ranks) to his only +1 (standard). In addition, I have my characters and champions in the fighting rank while his Orc boss is stuck in the front rank at least for the first round of combat.
Barring some lopsided dice rolls, this should be an easy win for the skaven and likely break for the Orcs.

I have won entire games where all I did was flee and flank.
It works great on ranked units as they often rely on their ranks to give them the CR they need.
It also works great on cavalry as now they only get 1-2 models into combat instead of the 5-6 they need to overcome ranks.
It works great on chariots, Ogre units and even monsters.
About the only thing it doesn't work well on is skirmished units.

And it is the bane of the Bretonian army. These guys love to charge, and hate to flee. If they ever run away for any reason, choose to flee, break, panic, whatever, they lose their blessing and get so much easier to kill. Add in their small fronts, so easier to not be in the way of their charge, and huge flanks, and this tactic was written to take them down.

Good luck