In a follow up to my recent article about cover and focus fire, we’re going to dive even deeper into Focus Fire and how it can make or break your shoot phase. Make no mistake, this edition of 40K is a shooting game, and maximising the impact of your shooting is absolutely key to dominating the battlefield.

Get it right and you can

[] Kill more enemies

[] Have more control over what gets wounded

[] Exploit mistakes opponents don’t even realise they are making

[] Have more control than you imagined over what models take the hits

[] Use the movement phase to set up your shoot phase for some bullet-bending tricks

Get it wrong and you can end up wasting too many shots to kill too few enemies.

40K is not a one dimensional game and hopefully this article will be about ways to increase the tactical aspect of the game beyond ‘bring lots of guns, shoot lots of bullets’. Focus Fire is much more than a gimmick; in fact on the contrary it is one of the parts of the rules that does the most to link the impact of manoeuvring to the results of shooting.

Whatever else happens, much dakka will be dakkaed. Let’s get stuck in.

To recap, the relevant rules are:

Focus Fire (page 18)

“Sometimes, a target unit will only be partially in cover, with some of its models in cover and some not. In this case, you have a choice: your unit can either shoot at the squad as a whole, or you can declare that they will Focus Fire on the enemies who are less hidden. If you choose to Focus Fire, you must state your intention before making any rolls To Hit.

If you choose to Focus Fire, choose a cover save value. This can be between 2+ and 6+. Your opponent can only allocate Wounds to models with a cover save equal to or worse (i.e a higher value) than the value stated. “

This article will look at applications for this rule and tips to make it work for both shooting and assault orientated armies, and the next will look at some of the more advanced tactics involving the movement, shooting and assault phases.

Using Focus Fire to kill more enemies

The first use of Focus Fire is the simplest and the most universally useful one; increasing the amount of enemy models you kill per shot fired. If any models in the unit you are firing at do not have cover, or have a lower cover save than the closest model to your unit, you can increase your chances to kill enemies by focusing fire on the low/no cover models.

In a game that not only features cover saves and bonuses for Going to Ground but also allows players to bring their own fortifications, this is an incredibly useful and criminally under-utilised rule. Cheap light infantry from Tau to Guardsmen to Orks make up for their poor armour saves by using cover, and it’s easy to miss opportunities to take them out much more efficiently by focussing on the members of units that don’t have cover.

I guarantee that once you start looking for these opportunities you will start to find them on a regular basis.

Focus Fire against specific models

Any time the enemy unit has more than one level of cover it creates opportunities to pick and choose specific targets. The most common is a chance to take out a specific non-character model – usually those armed with special or heavy weapons, or upgraded close combat weapons. The downside to be aware of is the chance to over kill them because only those models with the worse cover save can be hit, but it’s usually worth it to take out models with plasma, meltaguns and flamers.

The most common case is where the model with the special weapon is in the open at the back of the unit, but as shown below this could also be a model in area terrain while the rest of their unit is behind an aegis defence line, or a model behind barbed wire while the rest of the unit is in a forest.

This type of focus fire is also good against Characters. Independent characters get to “Look out, Sir!” on a 2+, but the far more common sergeant-class models only pass on a 4+, making them good targets.

Tip: If the enemy focus fire on your character, remember you can Look Our Sir! onto models from his unit that have better saves. There is nothing in the rules to say that a model with a better cover save can’t take the hits even though the opponent focus-fired on models with worse cover.

Focus Fire and Assault

Charges in 40K are so unreliable that I will sometimes avoid shooting at the assault target at all in order to ensure I don’t accidentally shoot myself out of assault range. This issue is magnified when the target is in difficult terrain.

Attacker’s Tip: Premeasure the distance you will require to assault a unit before you decide to shoot it. This means measuring in the Shoot Phase instead of waiting for the Assault Phase.

In this case, the distance will be 5”, and if the nearest model is killed, the charge range leaps up to a considerably less likely 7”. Add in the possibility that a model or two could be killed by Overwatch and even a unit with Fleet could be looking at shooting themselves out of a charge.

Defender’s Tip: Most players with poor saves will go to ground against shooting – before you do, quickly pre-measure during your opponent’s phase to see if your unit would be more likely to survive if the closest model made the ultimate sacrifice for his friends to make the assault more likely to fail. (In a perfect world the next Guard codex would come with an order “Stick Your Heads Out, Boys!” to reduce your own cover saves in the opponent’s shoot phase, lol.)

By using Focus fire, to shoot at models without cover saves, the fragile Swooping Hawks can reduce the amount of overwatch and combat hits they will take when assaulting the remainder of the unit, but do so without reducing the chance that their charge will succeed.

In this example, the defenders have lost 2 models without saves, but the Swooping Hawk’s charge distance has remained the same.

Focus Fire and Assault – Advanced

Taking Focus Fire to the next level requires planning ahead during the movement phase. If you plan to shoot the unit you intend to charge, you need to move towards the models in hard cover, not towards models in soft.

In the example below, this means the Swooping Hawks move directly towards the men behind the Aegis line that they do not intend to shoot. Their shooting is going to be focused on the men in area terrain, so moving towards them would reduce the chance of the follow-up assault succeeding.

This will seem counter-intuitive when you first try it, especially if it means moving at an angle other than directly towards the enemy you know you want to assault. The important thing is to plan ahead sufficiently so that your assault units move closest to the enemy models that are going to still be alive at the end of your shoot phase rather than simply moving towards the closest enemy models.

Fun Fact: You can’t charge the dead.

Coming soon

Watch this space for the final article in the Focus Fire series, which will cover using these rules to exploit weaknesses in several 40K power-builds, and an example of using more than one unit to combine the movement, shooting and assault phase into one smoothly orchestrated manoeuvre.

You know, like Tactics.

-Matt