There are only two abilities that put the power to position enemy models into your hands (technically three if you count Deep Strike Mishap - Misplaced) and both belong to Chaos: Lash of Submission and Pavane of Slaanesh. Pavane has less potential power than Lash, but has some advantages:
Lash can be taken on Daemon Princes or Sorcerers marked with Slaanesh. In contrast Pavane can be taken on a Keeper of Secrets, The Masque, Slaanesh Heralds and Daemon Princes w/ Mark of Slaanesh. I am going to focus on tactics for enemy model manipulation using The Masque with a unit of Horrors and a unit of Daemonettes. Some of these tactics become even more powerful when coupled with other units (I will note some cases where appropriate).
In this tactica I will discuss:
1 - Avoiding Look Out Sir!
2 - Special Weapon Range Snipes
3 - Special Weapon Terrain Snipes
4 - Assault Casualty Avoidance
First, the participants in our demonstration!
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| The Lord of the Dance - The Masque |
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| The Feet of Flames - Horrors w/ Bolt |
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| Irish Dance Team - Daemonettes |
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| Our Exuberant Audience - Celestine w/ 2 Hand Flamers |
Now let's get the audience involved with the show!
Avoiding Look Out Sir!/Special Weapon Range Snipes
Celestine is joined to a unit of Seraphim - not a bad idea now that she can tank the wounds that come flying their way and allocate them away from special weapons on a 2+. They have jumped forward and those twin flame templates need to be eliminatred. Unfortunately, the Sisters of Battle player has deployed her units smartly in a ring to protect the flamers with Celestine facing out likely deep strike deployment zone.
The closest models to the Horrors are Celestine and then a Sister Superior. There is a slight mistake in this picture as it looks like I could have sniped one of the flamers, but then I would have blasted through a lot of the squad to get the second. Instead I have a better idea and The Masque drops in nearby.
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| The Masque, Horrors and Tricksy Sisters |
I do some premeasuring to see the ranges I need for my shooting and then take my three shots with Pavane.
I get a statistically good 2 hits, which means I can roll 1d6 to rearrange the models as I see fit.
In this case I snag a 6 on the dice (not shown) and both Hand Flamers dance closer tot he Horrors while the Superior follows up. Since there is no point in ever shooting Celestine, she ends up in the back where I can wipe most the unit before bothering with her. Further, if a Tzeetch Herald is with the unit packing Bolt and Gaze - those wounds can be selected for allocation first to mow down troublesome models before the bulk of the shooting hits the rest of the unit.
Special Weapon Terrain Snipes
A variant of this can be achieved by abusing the terrain nearby with the focus fire rule. If the Seraphim had been closer to the forest, then there is a chance to move them in/out of terrain.
Unfortunately the Masque messes with this plan, and now the Horrors can Focus Fire onto the two exposed models. They can at most remove those models in this case which makes this slightly worse than a Range Snipe for total casualties. There may be cases when the unit is too far to get it all into terrain as well.
In this case the Masque hits like a champ, but the dance roll of 4" is not adequate to get that last outside model into terrain.
Luckily, instead we can throw a few models into terrain and take them down instead with weight of fire - who cares if the power armoured enemy achieves a 3+ or 4+ cover save when our shooting is AP 4.
Assault Casualty Avoidance
The obvious moves with Pavane are to pull enemy units out of cover for an assault, but there are some more interesting applications. The new 3" pile in move at initiative provides a great opportunity to clear a combat zone for high initiative units by diffusing the enemy and placing high value targets up front. In this case a unit of 12 Daemonettes is looking to pile in:
Once again the enemy is in defensive formation, so the Masque messes with their positioning to put the high value targets up front and prevent any strikes back.
With the enemy spread out - in this case only through a 3" move - they are ripe for the picking. Avoiding casualties on the Daemonettes may be desirable - so in this case The Masque first declares her charge and eats the overwatch hoping her 3+ save will prevent death. To save the Masque simply reverse this.
With the Daemonettes turn to charge now, they roll up Box Cars like a champ. Unfortunately, we want to be sure they get into assault but do not want to engage those back models and a 12" charge is too much. Instead, we can re-roll one of the 6's and hope for a lower result due to the Fleet rule.
The reroll gets the Daemonettes just into assault range of the front Seraphim and they hit the fray and wipe out 4 models (no overwatch can be performed because: 1 -It has already been performed against The Masque, 2 - They are locked in close combat already!. For those doubters, check page 21 for Overwatch restrictions - "units that are locked in close combat cannot fire overwatch" and as per page 23 "Units that have one or models in base contact with enemies are locked in combat." This works even better with bait units like Nurglings or Plaguebearers that can pin a unit in place while more fragile Slaanesh units follow up.
Since no model is within 3" at I3, the combat is over and the Daemonettes have won by 4 - which does not matter with a Fearless Celestine but the Daemons have taken out the models they were interested in. More interesting is engaging an Imperial Guard blob and using this technique to minimize casualties, possibly keeping the combat alive with a more resilient unit to be piled into. That, however, is a discussion for another time.
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