Objective placement for fun and profit

Four of the six missions six allow the players to place the objectives. So, how can you best place the objectives to suit your game, and deny the enemy his?

The Spread

Dark Eldar are a fast army. We can effectively haul our butts around the table at a great rate of knots. Coupled with that, we are generally quite awful at holding objectives. We're great at taking them, but holding them... tends to involve dying rapidly.

These factors combine to make optimal objective placement a thoroughly spread out affair. Place your objectives on far flung corners of the table, away from other clumps or clusters of objectives, especially when playing against a slow army. Ignore it for four turns, then send a half-dead squad of troops over with just enough time left to get out of their Raiders to claim it at the death.

That's pretty straightforward. But there are plenty of other shenanigans that the enterprising archon can play with objective placement.

All your base are belong to... you?

Playing an assault army? Why bother leaving a unit home to guard the ammo when you can just take your enemy's?

Put all of your objectives in your opponent's half of the board. Make sure to give him some tough choices. For example, if he has an aegis with quad or something similar, you might be able to beat him to the punch - place an objective 3.5" in front of it. No more objective sitting cosily behind his front line, now he'll have to move a guy out from behind the line to claim it. And the best part, the 12" exclusion zone means that he won't be able to place another objective near it. Will he stick one down the line, or give up on it entirely? Either way his plan is already disrupted, and the game has barely started.

For another one, place the objective in the opposite corner of his lines, preferably one with decent approach routes. With any luck he'll split his forces to take advantage of the extra victory points, only to fall into the dark eldar's cunning trap! While half of his army sits uselessly camping on the other side of the board, the dark eldar cut straight to the pain.

Furthermore, the point for Linebreaker is almost certainly yours, and your opponent will likely not have enough units to send one into the quiet, objective-empty space of your own deployment zone.

Reserves are, of course, something to be wary of, as is the increased complication of coordinating your force deep in enemy territory. Balanced against this is a somewhat improved protection from flyers; due to the manoeuvrabililty constraints imposed on them they may have difficulty acquiring targets. Even if you can arrange for your forces to be strafed only every other turn, as flyers come and go to maintain their attack vectors, this can substantially limit the damage you suffer.

I'll make you an objective you can refuse
Of course, you can't do this in the Emperor's Will mission, where you must each place a single objective in your own deployment zone.

My favourite trick playing this mission's 5th ed analogue was to put my objective on an extreme flank, and deploy my army on the opposite extreme (or back then, null deploy and enter from the opposite side... we salvage what we can :). Thus, the opponent is wedged between the desire to take your objective, and presenting vulnerable flanks to your army. And when he spreads his forces to try and achieve both aims, defeat him in detail.

If you're lucky, he will commit elites to your objective to deny it from you, little realising that you have no intention of taking your own objective. Then, you apply the full weight of your fury to bear on his objective, capturing it and neatly inverting the cross board dynamic as his elites now try to cross the board back towards their own edge.

This can be particularly useful when going second. As objectives are placed before either side deploys, you can dummy your opponent into thinking that you will be deploying on one flank, only to leave your objective abandoned and his flanks exposed. And if you seize the initiative, well, the battle has been turned on its head.

Just be sure not to lose yours in the process.