Give Every Unit A Role | How to Build Warhammer 11th Edition Army List | Part 2
VANGUARD TACTICS | LIST BUILDING SERIES, PART TWO
In Part One we picked a disposition before touching a single unit. You audited your army, narrowed it to a Plan A and a Plan B, and used the reverse matrix to find the detachments that unlocked them.
Now you know what your list has to do. The next question is simple: what is each unit actually there to do?
This is stage two of my list building process. Every unit gets a job.
Why a copied list falls apart
Here's where people who chase the meta can go wrong. They take a list that won a tournament, put it on the table, and it feels terrible. The units might be the same but the results aren't.
That's because the list was never really the units. It was the roles the player gave them and more importantly new how they would use them.
In my LGT Black Templars list I ran two units of five Intercessors. Ask most players where those go and they'll say the home objective. That's not where mine went. They had a different job, and if you copied the list without knowing it, you'd have played them completely differently.
Of course success leaves clues, but without a deep understanding or practise then expecting the same result might be foolish. And I would argue, less rewarding compared to writing your own list and using the models you own.
Primary, secondary, tertiary
Most units can do more than one thing, so give each one a primary, secondary and tertiary role. That tells you what to take it for, and how to deploy and position it.
Take my Land Raider Redeemer:
- Primary: Executioner Role. It has Devastating Wounds, strength 6, AP2, 2 damage, with Blast. It's brilliant into elite infantry.
- Secondary: Zone Denial. Come within range and it will overwatch you. My opponent has to play around that space all game, which gives me freedom everywhere else.
- Tertiary: Anchor. Toughness 12, a 2+ save and strong OC, so it can lock down an objective when its threats are taken out.
The order matters. If Anchor were its primary job, I'd park it on the middle objective turn one and watch it get shot off the table. Because it's tertiary, it only becomes an Anchor once I've dealt with the threats that can kill it.
The roles
I group them into three families. You won't need every role in every list, but you should know which ones your disposition leans on.
Roles that remove enemy units
- Reaper. Kills hordes. You'll want some of this somewhere in your army.
- Slayer. Kills monsters and vehicles.
- Executioner. Kills elite infantry, ideally with weapons that bypass saves, like Devastating Wounds or mortal wounds.
- Headhunter. Kills characters, usually with Precision or similar abilities.
- Hammer. A dual-role unit: very good into one target type and still good into another. It's defined by what it kills, not whether it does it in combat or shooting. This is usually very effective into one type and can also be used to help destroy another type.
What kills 20 Hormagaunts usually doesn't kill an Imperial Knight. They sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. Bladeguard can scratch both, but they're really built for elite infantry. Thirty Hellblaster shots at strength 8, AP2, 2 damage, though, will clear the Gaunts, kill elites, and take a chunk out of the Knight with some support. That's a Hammer. But point for point will be the most effective and efficient into the elite unite as it has a chance to whiff against a tougher target and down trade into the horde unit/
Roles that hold ground
- Anchor. Plants on an objective and keeps it, ideally all game. Usually the unit on your expansion.
- Storm. Takes an objective off your opponent. It isn't expected to survive; it chops the enemy off the point, brings the OC, and denies their score.
- Lure. A tough unit that wants to be attacked, so your opponent overcommits to remove it.
- Utility. Cheap and flexible. It screens, trades, does actions, and goes wherever the game needs it that turn.
Roles that shape the board and score
- Ingress. A deep strike threat that does its job while still in reserve. Your opponent spends all game screening their backfield because they have to respect it. It doesn't need to be amazing, just dangerous enough that they worry.
- Zone Denial. Taxes an area of the board just by being there, like my Redeemer.
- Infiltrators. Deploy forward, push enemies off key ground, and claim space before turn one starts.
- Endgame Scorer. Leaves the table and comes back late to score. In this edition, if you can have one, take it. If your army doesn't have one, look for a detachment that gives you the option.
The Lure, up close
This is the job my Intercessors had. I moved them into the middle, made the objective sticky, and put them into cover. Now my opponent has a problem. In the new codex I will beed to use an Ancient unit to achieve the same.
Five durable models with a 3+ save in cover take real effort to kill, usually more than their points cost. And if they shoot my unit off the objective but don't put anything on it, it's still my objective. I keep scoring.
So they need two units: one to kill the Lure, and one to take the point. Two units pulled into the middle of the board, right where my army is waiting. That's a job, and it's a very different job from sitting on the home objective.
Same unit, different job
Unit size changes the role. Five Strike Squad Grey Knights and ten Strike Squad Grey Knights are not the same unit doing the same thing.
Five Strikes are a mission unit: a backfield holder, maybe a Lure. Ten Strikes put out around forty shots, so they become an Executioner or a Reaper, with OC 20 to hold your expansion as well. When you assign roles, classify each size separately.
The same goes for points. Cheap units can do one job. Once a unit climbs past roughly 200 points, it has to earn its cost across several jobs. An expensive unit with one role is a points efficiency trap.
Every role needs a backup
A unit that's only useful in one matchup is a liability in every other one.
Take a Gladiator Lancer. Most people put it at the back every game. Against a combat army with lots of bodies, though, two big shots won't achieve much. So use it differently: drive it onto the middle objective and do an action with it turn one. Toughness 10 and 11 wounds in the centre of the table becomes a Lure. Your opponent has to deal with it, or it's your objective.
Same tank, different matchup, different job. That's what a backup role gives you.
Don't buy a Hammer on purpose
Hammers sound great, and everyone wants one. The problem is that they cost more points, because units that are good into lots of things are always expensive. They also don't trade efficiently. Send one into a cheap horde and you'll win the fight but lose the points.
What you want is the most efficient unit for each job. If a unit turns out to be good at two things, brilliant. Use it as a tiebreak when two options cost roughly the same. Just don't build your list around chasing one.
Your homework
- List every unit in your collection, with five-model and ten-model versions as separate entries.
- Write a primary, secondary and tertiary role next to each.
- Check them against your disposition from Part One. Does every heavy requirement have a unit covering it?
- Note anything a unit can't do alone, so you know what it needs alongside it.
You'll spot gaps straight away, and you'll probably find duplicates too: three units doing the same job and nobody doing another.
Coming next week: Part Three, spending your points
You know your disposition, and every unit has a job. In Part Three I'll show you how I split 2,000 points across those jobs: the core that almost every army needs, the 25% flex you tune to your disposition, and what to do with that last awkward 100 points.
If you'd like to go deeper on unit roles and building a list you can take to any table with confidence, that's exactly what we teach in the 11th Edition Academy. You'll also get the VT Army Canvas, the spreadsheet I use to map every unit's role and check the balance of a list.
The Academy starts on the 2nd November.
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