Reserving and it's useless....

I just peeped an article on Librarium Online about Deep Striking and its Uses by Karman_seaking (is he king of the sea or just bad at spelling seeking).  See what I did with my own title there.  Pretty clever, eh? 

So no, deepstriking isn't useless, but the Librarium Article sure was.  There are plenty of times where deep striking can be a key strategy for victory.  Hell, I'm even experimenting with some Tyranid stuff that Lauby has alluded to in an attempt to build a working deep striking Tyranid list.  Sans the double hive commander it's pretty fucking hard to pull off, but I feel like I'm getting close.  If only my tiny little brain could remember all of those Harpy rules.

Well this has barely started and I've already run off on a tangent.  Wasn't I supposed to be ranting against a Librarium article or something?  Hopefully this doesn't set a tone for the way my brain is going to be functioning this week, what with some job interviews coming up and all.  Oh fuck another tangent- this does not bode well for my fragile sanity.

Ok, after false start #2 hopefully we'll be off to the races.  I'll just go ahead and pull out some choice "advice" from Librarium and rail against it.  That should be safe enough.  You may want to take into account that the original author wasn't writing about plain Jane reserves when he wrote the article, but deep-striking, infiltrating, and out-flanking.

-Keep it cheap. Reserving units are meant for quick, brutal engagements that hammer your opponent and you. A good reference point is around 150 pts. If it costs anything more then that, you should seriously consider if the cost can be justified.

Seriously?  I've learned the hard way (meaning, getting my ass handed to me on a silver platter) that deep-striking is best seen as an all or nothing affair.  If you can't fully commit to jumping into combat a limited number of troops are just going to get the shit shot out of them when they come in.  Plus, putting an arbitrary points limit  without taking the army you're going to be using is just plain silly.  Tyranids?  Most of their deep-strikers and infiltrators are pretty expensive (except termagants in pods).  Daemons?  Well you don't have a choice, all your shit has to deep strike and most of it isn't cheap.  Marines?  Put in some equipment and your pod squads are already at or over your self-imposed points limit.  Assault Squads?  Unless you're playing Blood Angels you're about to get laughed off the table.

If applicable, take homers.

Great, let's throw away more precious points and split up our forces even more.  Good luck getting those potentially pricey homers into position.  After you're done splitting your force down the middle into deepstrikers and not-deepstrikers and are busying yourself with maneuvering the not-deepstrikers into position, your opponent will be greedily enjoying the opportunity to blow half your force away with the benefit of minimal targets and easy target priority.  You could maybe pull this off with resilient stuff like bike squads, but for the most part this is terrible advice.

Assaulty is better than shooty

Oh for fuck's sake!  So half your article is dedicated to deep-strikers and you're advocating assaults.  Good thing units can assault when the deep strike.  Oh wait, you mean they can't?  Well I guess we're pretty fucked then.

He then goes on to say that one of the best things that will happen is that your opponent will have to react to the new threat stating that this will

give you an oppertunity to get very close to your opponent, enabling you to put a lot of pressure on your opponent, particularly if the unit is dangerous/assaulty. In order to suffer minimal damage from the unit, they will likely be forced to direct resources that would be heading for the rest of your army and dedicate their movement phase for a turn, or maybe two, into dealing with the threat. Often the best idea is to take a cheap unit that looks scary, whack it in reserve, and watch your opponent go nuts when your unit turns up, hungry for blood.

First of all, way to edit- were you not given the oppertunity to do so?  Moving on, this is why this won't work- once your opponent realizes (or if they already knew) that your scary looking unit is a feint, your careful plans all go to shit.  You're also not taking into account the effect of splitting up your army.  When your reserves arrive there's a good chance that the rest of your army has already been scattered or crippled.  Your opponent is now free to get rid of your small contingent of reserves.  Who gives a shit if they might have to move a little?  Unless you've just done some epic maneuvering of your own and landed in such a way that your opponent has no chance of getting to you, but you can get to him, moving into attack position shouldn't be too hard for your opponent, with the heavy volume of fire most modern lists can put out.

These arguments don't even take into account how useless outflanking is most of the time.  Unless you are outflanking in fast vehicles, with bikes, or against an opponent who has no choice but to sprawl out across the deployment zone outflanking is just a way to ensure that a chunk of your army will be out of the fight for most of the game.  All your foe has to do is castle up in one corner if he knows that you're going out-flank and you stand a big chance being in the wrong place when you show up on the table.  Swell!