ne of the first things to consider when deploying your troops is the role for which you intend to use your infantry: for massed volleys of firepower or for wave upon wave of brutal close-combat fighting.

SHOOTY UNITS
If your infantry unit is a shooty one, deploy them in cover with a commanding view over the objectives in no-man's land. If possible, stick them in a building or terrain feature so that only a really determined assault can winkle them out.

ASSAULT UNITS
If your infantry unit is better off in an assault, you can break the golden rule of not deploying your infantry in the open. Because of the fact that your troops and those of your enemy are separated by a meagre 12" strip of no-man's land, this can mean that your assault troops are often in a position to launch an assault on the 1st turn of the game. You might think that a canny opponent will deploy as far away as he can from your assault troops, and many players will adopt this tactic — after all, it works well in normal games of 40K. But Apocalypse is anything but normal. If your opponent hangs back and puts as much distance between himself and your front-liners as possible, he is relinquishing any potential claim upon the objectives in no-man's land and your own Deployment Zone, and that will possibly hand you the game before the dice start rolling. This means that being belligerent with your assault troops is an even sounder strategy in Apocalypse than in a normal game of 40K.

Another reason to set up your assault troops as close to the enemy as possible is that your faster stuff can whiz around the side of your slow troops, whereas the footsloggers will have to trudge forward 6" per turn. Because of this limit, it is usually wise to deploy vehicle-mounted units behind your infantry units on foot, allowing you to coordinate your attack instead of going in piecemeal.

In the section of the Orkipelago pictured above, Alex has set up his slowest troops — the Ork Boyz and the Gretchin mob — as far forward as he was allowed. He has placed his Trukk Boyz and his Battlewagon-riding HQ unit centrally and to the rear of the formation, knowing that they have the speed to zoom through the middle of the footsloggers and assault the Eldar in a wave of unstoppable green doom! Note that Alex's Shoota Boyz have taken up a position in the drill pylon scenery piece so that they can take out any troops who close in on the infantry from the relative safety of the building.