Getting Inside Your Opponents Loop

Bill Whittle wrote a very good essay recently, that I blogged about earlier this week, talking about an idea that was created by John Boyd. John Boyd was the man responsible for bringing our kill ratio of fighter pilots in Korea and Vietnam from 1:1 back up to 10:1. He then further expanded this idea into modern warfare. He studied everything from Sun Tzu to Patton. He studied an idea called Fingerspitzengefuhl or fingertip control and his first real break through was that a fighter jets best characteristic was agility. Not speed, or armor, or killing power, but the ability to change its energy state rapidly.

Bill goes onto write an excellent essay on how this idea is being used today to turn the tide in the war in Iraq. What I am going to attempt to do is explain how this idea can be implemented into the world of Warhammer and more specifically into the Wood Elf army.

Fighting a battle of Warhammer is not significantly different than fighting in a fighter jet. There are four steps everyone goes through:

1. Observe: Each general observes what the other is doing. Whether it is just how they are deploying their army. If they are taking care to how units are angled. How they moved on the first turn. What seems to be the critical area of your army the opponent is targeting?

2. Orient: You assess where your army is, where it is heading, how fast it will get there. Likewise where the other guy is heading and how fast he is getting there. From this you will build a mental image of how the battle will play out.

3. Decide: Now you must decide what to do. Are you in a good position to go on the offensive? Or do you see the battle slipping away and need to go on the defensive? Now you must decide what to do.

4. Act: Finally you act. This is when you put your choices into action by moving your units into combat, or to avoid combat. And here the physical skills of your troops will play out. But Boyd realized that there are 3 mental steps before the actual physical step. But more importantly he realized that the 3 mental steps were far, far more important.

So in the Game of Warhammer you Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. Then you do it all over again, and again. It is a loop and it has been termed, the OODA loop. Here is where Boyd made another breakthrough. It wasn’t necessarily the person who makes the best decisions; it’s the one who makes the fastest decisions.

Agility, Speed, Precision, Lethality, Fingertip control. Making a move, and then before your opponent can react, making another move. By the time your opponent re-orients himself, you have made another move. Now your opponent is so confused and afraid of making the wrong move he panics. But really at this point he has no good moves left. This is called getting inside his decision loop.

At this point you are probably saying, “This makes sense for a fighter pilot, but we are each playing a turn based game. How can I make faster decisions and moves when we each have the same amount of time? I can’t do anything until he finishes his turn?” I know this seems counter-intuitive at this point. So let me see if I can guide you through this to help you understand what I am grasping at.

A better example is chess. We each have pieces; we can each only move our pieces 1 at a time. We have to take turns. So why is a grandmaster able to beat even an expert player 9 times out of 10 and more often 10 of 10? It’s not so much his better understanding of the pieces. That is a very simple concept. It is about thinking ahead. I use to play chess and got to where I would routinely think 8 to 10 moves ahead, in a chess game. A grandmaster can sometimes look 15 or more moves ahead. When you are doing this, you can see what your opponent cannot. You can see possibilities that they cannot. You can make moves now that may seem meaningless to your opponent, and make perfect sense later. This is in essence getting inside his decision loop because later it is too late for him to respond to the trap you have laid.

Let’s take this same concept to Warhammer. If I plan out what I think is going to happen in the first 3 turns of the game. While my opponent is only thinking about what he is going to do right now, then I can see what my opponent cannot. I can act faster than he can. And I can get inside his decision loop. I can make him try to react to me, but if I am good enough at it, he will hesitate and not know how to react. Panic and fear will soon set in. He will hesitate and he will lose. Agility is the key to our army that makes this possible.

A wood elf army is the best, bar none, of being able to do what no other army can do. We can change tactics on a heartbeat. We can strike and jump out of the way to avoid the counter-strike. We can move the entire battle from one side of the field to the other. We can move where our opponent does not expect.

So here are some examples of how you can do this.

Glade Riders: Nothing says maneuverability like fast cavalry. Players no longer fall for the ‘flee and flank’ tactic. Sure some do, but I am finding more and more who won’t take the bait. So what do you do then? Fast cavalry are great in this situation as they are able to slip between battle lines and end up behind his units. Nothing makes a general panic more than having rank breakers behind his lines. Having an option after your opponent doesn’t take the bait is getting inside his loop. If he takes the bait great, but if not, he doesn’t know what is going to happen, you do. Don’t just sit in a static state, make things happen.

Wild Riders: This unit can epitomizes what I am talking about: agility, speed, precision, lethality. They can be threatening one flank and in a second, they can be on the other side threatening another flank.
Warhawk Riders and Eagles: Flying units. Enough said. They can go anywhere fast and be all over the field. Hit and run ability makes them able to be deadly and efficient.

Way Watchers: Even during deployment, you can go where they cannot. Setting up 2.5 inches in front of a unit in the woods. Deploy behind his lines. There is nothing like a woods or hill in his deployment zone that screams blind spot. These guys can go where your opponent does not expect scouts to go and you can be inside his decision loop before the game even starts.

Tree Singing, Calaingor’s Stave and Deepwood Sphere: Wood elves are the only army in the game that can literally move the earth. Being able to move woods around or enhance your ability to do it, is incredible. This also allows you to move units that are in the woods. So while he was expecting his units to be safe from the terror of the Treeman for another turn, he comes moving 10” into a woods, then surfing over with 2-3 treesinging spells, to not only get in range of terror next round but strangle root attacks right away. Now your opponent is in a panic to pull his general from one side of the board to the other. You are getting inside his loop.

Other Spells: Hidden Path, what he thought he would be able to shoot, now ignores his shots, and you are able to run right over that difficult ground he put the warmachine in.
Call of the Hunt and Wolf Hunt, both are great. Any spells that give your units extra movement are the best in the game. And allow you to go and do things, you were not expected to be.
Beast Cowers and Mistress of the Marsh, Only thing as good as giving your guys extra movement is preventing him from moving.

Moonstone of the Hidden Ways: As long as there are 2 woods on the board more than a foot apart, this may be the most powerful magic item in the game. The ability to completely pick up a unit and move him somewhere else is just incredible. Agility, quickness, seeing what your enemy does not, this is what it is all about.

So next time you setup for a battle. Play it out in your head. Know the outcome before you ever push a model or roll the dice. Plan those surprise moves like using the moonstone. Or the feint that will move half your army over to hit one flank. Don’t be afraid to try some things you never have before. One of the best parts of agility is that even if you make a mistake, you can often correct it before the enemy can take advantage of it.

Remember, Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. Be quick about it and get inside his decision loop.

Until next time...