Why Are Troops So Important?

Troops, the bread and butter of Warhammer 40k, most armies will include large numbers of them. They are your rocks, your most flexible unit and were most of your firepower comes from.

But why are they so important?

Sounds like a stupid question doesn't it?

First, to answer this question we need to look at the missions in the Warhammer 40k rulebook. Four of these missions are objective based, that's a 66% chance of getting one of the objective based missions. They are also vital in tournament play to gain those very important VP's that give you your ranking at the end of the tournament. Usually our troops try to stay back out of the thick of it (most of the time) and aim to keep a stable backline and provide fire support to the units that get up in your opponents face.

So what does this mean for us?

We have the potentially most numerous troop choices in the game (if you are willing to pay the points), they may not be the best man for man but for the same amount of points as other armies you can have a lot. Your basic troop choice is a platoon command squad (five man, scoring with an optional Commissar) and two ten man Shock Trooper squads. With the potential to add another three ten man Shock Trooper squads, Heavy Weapons squads, Special Weapon squads and the human grots that are the Conscripts you have the potential to field a huge number of models, precisely one hundred and twenty eight if you want to max out all the slots you want Chimeras go for it fill the table with bodies. All of this as ONE troops choice, ONE. All it takes to get that objective is for just one measly minion of yours to get close enough to it and you've got those oh so important victory points and that's without thinking of all the carnage that many bodies on the table will cause. This is just an example but think, the more troops you have the better your chance is at securing objectives.

What about non objective based missions?

Lots of bodies equals a better chance
of getting the objectives

Bodies on the table, simple. If you are going to be playing Purge the Alien or The Relic group the Shock Troopers into one squad. Your opponent will have to get through them all to get the relic or that elusive victory point. Even if he doesn't there massed fire is really going to put a dent in his plans no matter how many templates he has at his disposal and you can destroy the units shooting you.

What is the point of this post?

My point is with the Warhammer 40k meta shifting to specialist units like Heldrakes, Riptides and Wraithknights that have been tagged as "Game Changers" we should still think most about our troops after all they do the hard yards, they win the games and are still integral to our success. Of course these are extreme examples but I believe we all need to think about our troops more.