Greetings, Warlords,

Here are some hopefully useful generalizations about Squats.


All of Squats long-range artillery is megacannon, hence your orders make no difference in determining the effectiveness of their fire. Thus you can spend most of the game on march with most of your troops as long as you space them to at most two stands under a barrage template. Thus even your slowest troops can be at the middle of the board in turn three. Small, high-quality detachments can be spaced to only one unit possible under the template.


Watch out for the checkered deployment of detachments. That will be bad since megacannon attacks individual stands rather than detachments. Thus in checkered formation a goliath will place more blastmarkers by hitting two detachments at once, since every shell puts a blastmarker automatically, and a hit would put another. Thus one shell can put two blastmarkers on each of the two detachments! Yak!


Squats have no flyers. Hence no need for flak or interceptors. Go Bombers!


According to a new rule, the units accompanying the artillery cannot absorb the blastmarkers if they are out of range of the target. Thus any blastmarker you put on a megacannon detachment shuts down a megacannon as long as you are outside 45 cm range. Thus it pays a lot to bomb the goliath detachments  even if you cannot score hits on them directly due to tacticals shielding.


Squats cannot take bikes as main force. Thus bikes are slowed down by accompanying infantry unless transports are bought. That basically assigns the bikes to escort duty of fast detachments. Squats can upgrade a hearthguard to a bike, which does give them a fast striking force; however, that becomes quite expensive very quickly. Thus, such cannot be numerous. 


I discovered that bikes are almost completely useless against Squats. The standard assault of Squats is 2. They have bigger range and more firepower. Thus close combat or firefight with bikes is out of the question. The only role still accessible is flanking to help in encirclements. 


Squats have no anti-tank. Thus War Walkers of mine were not completely wiped out, after impressive amounts of overwatch firepower were poured down on them from the Squats Horn of Plenty, singly due to 6+ armour. They have death rays on the Cyclops, but all have to hit one unit per turn.


Squat war engines are expensive and have comparatively small assault and damage capacity and high bonus damage for criticals. Thus they die comparatively easily in close combat, especially against titans. Fast titans with a close combat weapon are perhaps the best way to dispose of them 'with one swift stroke'.


Watch out for the Ancestor Lord. Squats will always take him since otherwise they have strategy rating of 2. Anti-tanking him and prep-disrupting big detachments really hurts for Squats since then they will usually be unable to shoot or go on overwatch, unless they pay through the nose to upgrade detachments to veterans.


Fast armies with good assault capabilities like Eldar and tyranids should really forget about trying to use their speed to squeeze through gaps of goliath firezones. I tested that; it does not work. The best strategy remains the same as for the slow armies - keep marching against the artillery until you are within 45 cm range of the Squat line, at which point switch to and stay on assault. You just get there faster.


I also tried the rabid charge completely ignoring objectives, since I did not want to do the out-of-command cheese and reasoned that silencing those batteries as fast as possible is the only way to victory. Even for such fast armies as Eldar this does not work. You either have to do the cheese or find other ways to secure objectives.


In the end, some  not-Squat-specific musings. 


I think I figured out a good use of infiltrators. They are comparatively cheep, move fast on the first turn, and they are in command within 60 cm of HQ. 


Pick 10 scouts, march them on the first turn. That will get them as deep as 30+3x15=75 cm on the first turn. Spread them out in a semicircle of radius ~60 cm centered on the HQ, which goes in the center of your half of the battlefield. 


Thus first you cover all objectives in your half perhaps even on the first turn. Second, this semicircle will contain most of your army, which provides cheep and effective flak through snap fire. Third, you do not need to worry about bothering useful detachments of yours with objectives duties or do the stinking cheese to leave somebody behind on an objective out of command. Fourth, the HQ is well protected against anything but death rays and megacannons and those are too useful to be spent to put infiltrators out of command since by that time they will be exactly where they need to be and they can snapfire and claim objectives even out of command. 


I came up with this scouts usage when trying to find effective flak, which my army lacks.


I also have to take back some of my unholy bitching and moaning about how downsized my titans are. While it is true that a new Phantom cannot stand up to an old one and that a new Warlock seems only a distant weak descendant to the old one, the new Eldar titans do a good job at a reasonable price. 


For those interested, my ideas on the proper Phantom stats are 3+ holo save, 6+ armour, DC 12, no automatic criticals, and the ability to customize wing weapons with two anti-tank or 4 firepower. To get this, they should be 50 to 100 points more expensive. That would ease up a great deal of the temptation to take two Phantoms on 2000 pt game, which I think is what Games Workshop shouts in my ears to do by sticking the current stats and price down my throat.


Eldar Farseer