Threat ranges

This is an article to discuss something that I rarely see mentioned on the internet.  It concerns the effective threat range of units and indeed in some cases armies.
A models threat range is pretty easy to calculate.  It is its movement, combined with the maximum range on the weapons.  A model will also have a close combat threat range, which is typically its movement plus the assault move and adding in anything extra.

Now I know I have not mentioned anything incredibly new and exciting.  After all being able to work out where a model can go on in your army and where it should be in two or three turns time is part of playing the game.  What I am talking about is being able to work out the enemies own threat range.  This is important to take into account and will probably require you to be familiar with the units in the opposing players list.

Ill lead with an example.  A foot hive tyrant armed with a set of scything talons, bonesword and lashwhip has a seven to twelve inch threat range running but a twelve inch close combat threat range.  This is fairly terrible and outside of being slow and purposeful is the slowest movement generally available.   It should be relatively simple to stop this particular hive tyrant doing anything particularly destructive to your own side as you can at least match pace with him, and he can only influence a tiny circle of the board.

So lets improve him.  Give him wings.  This increases his movement to a much better thirteen to eighteen when running and the ability to jump over obstacles and terrain.  When charging he has a eighteen inch close combat threat range, making him much more dangerous throughout the game, and it should mean it spends less turns walking between battles, and more time in close combat where it is not only effective, but also prevents him being shot at.

Still it has no guns.  To increase his regular threat range, give him a gun or two.  Probably one as you will want to use a psychic power.  Looking down the list, the Heavy Venom Cannon sticks out as a worthwhile tank suppression gun and pretty reasonable at shooting infantry.  It boosts a flying tyrants effective threat range to forty-eight inches and keeps its close combat threat range at eighteen.

As you can see, these upgrades improve the models usefulness beyond just adding movement and a decent shooting attack.  It means the enemy has to deal with it several turns earlier and this means it is having an impact earlier in the game, giving you more value for points.

This article is continued in the following article Threat Ratings