6th Edition Warhammer 40k
Monstrous Creatures Tactics
Monstrous Creatures are by definition monsters and that stride
across the Warhammer 40k battle field crushing everything before them. But they are not invulnerable, There
are many tank busting weapons out there that will blow a big hole in your big guys.
Take Cover!
Your Monstrous Creature will be a prize target in your army that will draw a lot of attention and in coming fire
from your opponent. You can use this to your advantage by drawing fire away from smaller weaker specialist units
that have a specific job to do ( Gain an objective, blow up a tank & etc ). However with this expected in
coming fire you will want to place you monstrous creature in a location where it can move, but will have some cover
that will keep it alive longer. Being big, there probably not be too many choices available. This in turn means
that you may want to place your Monstrous Creature down first when you are setting up, so that you do not clutter
up the best spots with smaller models that can be placed elsewhere or around the base of your Monstrous
Creature.
Special rules
All monstrous Creatures have a number of special rules. These are Fear, Hammer of Wrath, Move Through
Cover, Relentless, and Smash.
Monstrous Creatures can shoot two weapons
This rule gives the monstrous Creatures the ability to become a walking gun platforms specially as many of the
Monstrous Creatures have access to big guns, many of these are long range weapons too.
Now if you add in the Relentless Special Rule (p41) that allows you to move, fire heavy weapons, and assault on
the same turn, you can see that you can get quite a bit of usability from your Monstrous Creatures each turn.
Monstrous Creature Movement
Monstrous Creatures get the Move Through Cover special rule. This can catch your opponant by surprise if
you are lucky. Otherwise Monstrous Creatures move as normal. If you are moving up the table, keep an eye on the
larger pieces of terrain that you can hide behind and gain some useful cover save from.
Cause Fear
Monstrous Creatures automatically fear. This is useful if you are in close combat with an army with lower
leadership scores like Orks and Imperial Guard. Not much to this one other than remembering that you have this
special rule when you get in to close combat and factor in a possible higher kill rate when calculating which units
you are going to use to assault which units.
Slow in combat
The Cause Fear special rule is important to a monstrous creature because they tend to be slow in combat. If you
can slow the enemy down too, then you will have a chance to cause damage before your enemy has chance to strike
you, or at least get the chance to strike at the same time. If you do not get the chance to slow down your
opponent, here are some other options.
Assault smaller units
Monstrous Creatures usually have a high toughness value and a few
wounds, this means that they will be able absorb an amount of punishment while it is waiting for it's initiative
round. However this ability has it's limits so you want to minimize the risk where you can. Assaulting smaller
units that do not have monster killing special weapons is a good example of this. Chose targets that you can beat
where you can, and use an y heavy weaponry to thin out the ranks of larger units from a distance before you
assault.
Get a Little help from your friends
Close assault always goes better if you assault a smaller force with a larger one. One way to do this is to team
up with other units to assault a single target. This will mean that you have to focus a percentage of your forces
to the one task, so make sure that removing this enemy unit is in line with your mission objectives. This will
require the ability to step back mentally ( and physically if it helps), and have a look at the bigger picture
before you dive in. Also it may take a turn or two to get the right units within striking range, so a bit of
forethought may be needed too.
Flying Monstrous Creatures
Some armies have Flying Monstrous Creatures instead of aircraft. I tend to think that Aircraft work better on
larger tables and larger pointed games, however Winged Monstrous Creatures can act as jump pack troops too. This
means that they can deep strike and move quickly around the table.
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