Horde Shooting Tactics 101

So you bought a ton of imperial guard models, good job. And you fielded them, and you went to fire that squad in the rear, and your opponent blows your mind with the fact that, your men are firing through another unit, to get to his unit. Now, when you thought you had 100 guardsmen to fire, you just had the front rank of units, which is probably around 60, yet you paid for far more, in points, money, and well, when they all died.

SO how does one fix this!? simple, be smart with your deployment. Each model has a priority, heavy weapons, they're first in line when I deploy. Sergeants, right behind em. Special weapons, right beside them. Everyone else? well, hold them off. Make sure as you deploy the rest of your army, you give those models line of sight. The sergeant doesn't need it, but he does need to be close so everyone else can be killed off, and that group can stay together. Where's the logic in this for reality? well, if you notice the guy with the biggest gun goes down, what do you do? or, what are you ordered to do? if you're a coward. You pick it up! so one could say, that cluster of more valuable units dies, and the remainder take their place.

Another trick, because, not all models will have the good fortune of being those, is to build terrain with elevation differences. Models are always happier the higher up they go. one house rule we have is that models in the upper stories don't have to include the downward angle when measuring range. though, the lads getting shot at, in order to retaliate, must include the angle. It gives height a bonus to range, but not one that is overpowered, as we don't abuse this.

Lastly, take advantage of barrage weapons, nothing makes it easier to fire through a gunline, than firing over it. If you don't want to fork out for a basalisk, or heavy weapons teams, just to make them puny 60 point mortars, one of the things I like to do is just take two regular guardsmen, and give them mortar team arms, sometimes I wont even do that, and put the mortars on pokerchips, it works, and is still legal, as some of the other armies, are sold that way, i.e. mordian iron guard heavy weapons teams.

so there we go! nothing too complicated, just the basics of firing when there isn't room for everyone to have LOS.