Warhammer 40,000/7th Edition Tactics/Fortifications

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General notes

Here are the general tactics about fortifications so that we don't have to type, update and manage the same thing for each codex.

Upgrades

For buildings only

Small buildings can take one, medium buildings can take two and big buildings up to three of these upgrades. But you can take only one of each (so no three void shields on your macro cannon).

• Ammo store - Re-roll ones to hit when firing out from the building's fire points (but not the battlements). Useful, if you for some reason have a plasma gun team hiding in the bunker, instead of driving around in a transport.
• Booby Traps - The first unit to occupy the building would be blown up with 2D6 bolter hits (they also ingore cover saves). Only should be considered if you're planning of leaving the building unoccupied. Gets slightly better if you combine it with Magos Machine Spirit. Generally should be avoided.
• Escape Hatch - Extra access point for a building, you can place anywhere within 12", with the downside that you cannot assault out of it. One of the uses for it is to provide your snooty squad a nice escape rout once the enemy comes close and personal, but generally ammo store is preferable for that purposes, as it allows you guys to kill things faster, rather than escape them when they cannot kill it fast enough.
• Magos Machine Spirit - BS3 for unmanned emplacement guns. Great.
• Searchlights It's searchlights. Mostly useful for the shooty armies without their own sources of searchlights or night vision. By which I mean Necrons, especially with the Imotekh.
• Void Shields This is often forgotten but all buildings can buy personal void shields with AV 12 all around. Making them just a bit harder to kill with ranged D weapons. Smart opponent would pop the shield with S6-7 guns before unloading the heavy hitters on your building, but even then the shield would take that autocannon or scatter laser fire from your other units for a turn or two.

Battlements & Battlefield

You can only take one, so choose wisely.

• Ammunition dump Re rolls 1's to hit this is a great upgrade in combination with units that like to use overheating weapons, but even without overheating weapons, it adds a sizable chunk of firepower to the squad holding it (you get 1.17x your normal average number of hits, regardless of BS). Also remember that models with BS 5+ still get to use their full BS on a reroll.
• Comms Relays Cheap upgrade that modifies reserve rolls, these are a must for each army that relies havely on their reserves such as flyer heavy army or drop pod armies.
• Gun Emplacement With Quad-Gun - Nice little piece of anti-air. Being twin-linked and packing a lot of dakka, it can overcome the BS2 of being unmanned, if you don't want to waste the shooting of an entire squad holding it. Thanks to RAW, models using Interceptor to fire this and the Icarus during your opponent's phase can still use their own guns to shoot in your phase, enjoy the fun.
• Gun Emplacement With Icarus Lascannon - cheaper, punchier and longer ranged cousin of a quad gun, it suffers from being one-shot and non-twinlinked. Unless you are absolutely certain there will be flyers with AV13 (!!!), it generally should be avoided.

Obstacles

Any fortification can take up to SIX of any of these in any combination. All of can be up to 6" long, and can be placed anywhere within 6" of a fortification.

• Tangle Wire - Lines of dangerous terrain that grants 6+ cover. Meh. Take these if you just want to slow an enemy down while they try to approach since they don't give (good) cover to the enemy so you can just use these as a speed bump.
• Barricades - Line of difficult terrain and 4+ cover. Basically a sections of ADL without that GtG cover bonus that you can spread more freely. Noting regulates their height, so make sure yours are high enough to hide at least 25% of your tanks' profile.
• Tank traps they give a 4+ cover thats great, but not the real reason. The real reason to use these is hilarious, as they are Impassible terrain for all non skimmer vehicles, including super heavy walkers.

Fortifications

Buildings

• Imperial Bastion: Ridiculously cheap, can mount a Quad Gun that can pop transports and flyers, gets 4 free heavy bolters which can be legally placed all on one facing, gives your men the advantage of height and cover.

• Void Shield Generator: Big ol' AV12 bubble to hide behind and shoot with impunity. 50pts. Want two more layers? 100pts. Goody gumdrops. Just remember, the Void Shield, quite unfluffily, does not block movement or Deep Strike, so remember to fill the gap with Terrain or bodies, lest your limited edition terrain piece gets Alpha Stricken.

• Wall of Martyrs Imperial Bunker: Cheap, tough with 14 armour, you can get inside, on top and it has holes for up to 8 dudes to fire out. And pretty safe to fit a squad in. Put inside someone like Noise Marines, or Dark Angels with bolter banner, throw in an ammo pile inside for extra accuracy and you can bet no troops will wanna get close to your dakka box.

• Wall of Martyrs Firestorm Redoubt: For a few points less than a Land Raider you get an Imperial Bunker but bigger and with anti air guns. (though you may change either of the Icarus Quad Cannons for different weapons if you own them) with four twin-linked 96" range interceptor/skyfire lascannon shots. While being forced to fire at BS2 seems like a pain, being twin linked means that you hit approximately 55% of the time, but you can upgrade it to BS3 if you want to pay more points on the machine spirit, but then any enemy aircraft on (or coming on to) the table has to worry about the incredible amount of dakka heading its way since massed S9 AP2 skyfire is extremely rare. Remember that while 96" sounds great on the paper the guns always have to fire at the closest Flyer (Automated Fire). Even with 'Priority Target' the enemy just hast to keep his expensive units behind a screen of cheap units. Even interceptor fire can be screened just by deepstriking a drop pod closer than the flyers. Sadly, only six models can fire from the inside, so it's more suited for heavy weapon teams.

• Plasma Obliterator: Oh my...a simple building at AV14 all around you can get inside it has fire holes and has a Plasma Obliterator which fires a 7" Massive Blast at S7 AP2. Want to obliterate its point cost in heavy infantry? Look no further. However, it still gets hot (luckily since it's a fortification it gets a 4+ save against it), and it has a new rule called Plasma Overheat which means if it takes a glancing hit due to Gets Hot! a unit embarked takes D3 randomly allocated wounds (just as with classic gets hot! allow saves). You'd think a building the size of a Bastion would have an external cooling system to prevent this fucking rule...still, at land raider cost it's quite an expensive Fortification, but oh man will this thing melt hordes, regardless of how good their save is. You will not want this building to use 'Automated Fire', especially later in the game so keep it occupied at all times.
  • After running this building a couple times you have to be very careful what you attack first, because the building damage chart is unforgiving to this Fortification, a lot of results force you to Snap Fire which neuters the purpose of this building. So take care of any threats to it quickly, and run it with void shields that are purchasable through Stronghold Assault. That said it's a hilarious, if expensive, DISTRACTION CARNIFEX.

• Wall of Martyrs Vengeance weapon battery You can't get in or on top but it is cheap, you can fit two in a single slot and fires clasic battle cannon or punisher cannon shots. But they can only fire using automated fire so keep your own guys away if you use the battle cannons, lest they get hit by a bad scatter roll.

• Fortress of Redemption: Expensive both in points and actual cost, this huge model doesn't exactly bristle with guns as you would expect. But now, you are able to dominate everything on the table - tanks will be sniped with the '96 lasgun, fliers will be decimated by AA guns.

• Macro-Cannon Aquila Strongpoint: 2-shot Str D AP1, large blast or apocalyptic mega blast a weapon on a large imperial Bunker with AV15. It is even more expensive then the fortress of redemption. Comes with a bunker annex, which is mostly useless other than to provide more battlements. Despite being a blast weapon, the shots actually have an effect on flyers by FWOOMing past them, so the whole thing has a lot of utility.

• Vortex Missile Aquila Strongpoint: Its all in the name. It's the Aquila strongpoint except this version fires vortex missiles that linger on the battlefield and have the potential to cause havoc behind enemy lines. Don't use them anywhere near your own units for that reason.

• Plasma Obliterator Aquila Strongpoint: The Plasma Obliterator can also be taken as and "upgrade" making the whole thing 115 pts. cheaper and for some reason it also loses the annoying plasma overheat rule (it still gets hot though).

• Primus Redoubt: The bigger brother of the Aquila strong point. Forgeworld sells it as a terrain board, but there's no need to model it as such if you wanted to make your own. Comes standard with a 2-shot D large blast and rather than suffering BS2 like most buildings the main gun has BS3 as standard (BS4 against superheavies). It is incredibly survivable, being AV15, with a 4++ save against shooting attacks (3++ against barrage weapons), the gun can never be destroyed or made unable to fire short of removing the entire building, and it also has 10 hull points which is more than other large buildings. Added to that all of the options: you can put a single turret on it, choosing from a variety of options that range between inconsequential (heavy flamers) to downright awesome (battle cannons and Icarus quad guns). You can also buy building upgrades, so give it a void shield which coupled with the inbuilt invulnerable saves will mean very few things short of titans can ruin your day. On the downside, it will cost you most of you army's allotment of points and unless your opponent fields death star units or expensive lords of war (like knights), it's unlikely to make its points back by the end of a game. But it will still be there at the end of the game unless you do something stupid like leave it unmanned.

Other

• Aegis Defense Lines: This is the standard wall of cover for all gun line armies, and generally the most useful of all fortifications. It gives 4+ cover, which is boosted to 2+ if you go to ground, and is cheap. One interesting thing is that the 6th edition FAQ that made you connect all the pieces is gone and overruled by stronghold defense that doesn't say this. As a bonus you can also buy comm relays or the anti air guns. Sections are precisely high enough to grant the cover to most imperial vehicles save Sentinels, but if you're playing xenos, try to mount your skimmers as low as you can.

• Wall of Martyrs: Defence Line The 40k version of a trench, Rules wise a larger aegis Defence line that gives stubborn, but have no access to Battlements & Battlefield. Unless you're expecting giving a last stand in a glorious trench close combat Krieg-style, go for ADL instead.

• Wall of Martyrs: Defence Emplacement Smaller version of Wall of Martyrs with a bonus on overwatch. ADL with an ammunition dump can do the same thing better.

• Promethium Relay Pipes: 4+ Cover save, like the Aegis but can burn those behind them if they are unlucky. Now the good part. If a non vehicle model within 2" of a pipe is armed with a Flamer weapon then it can be used as Heavy and Torrent. May be incredibly effective with flamer-heavy squads, like Legion special teams, Crisis suits, Burna-boyz, or even Pyrovores (don't ask how they managed to use promethium pipes - It's obvious, they slurp out all the fire-juice and spew it out at enemies), creating a 20" bubble of fiery doom that no infantry save TEQs and Wraiths would dare to close on. The common trick is to buy a few sections of barricades to hide behind, leaving pipeline to your back, so it doesn't go boom.

• Skyshield Landing Pad: This is one of the cheapest cheesiest things around. It gives a 4++ to anything on top of it. ANYTHING from guard blob, to tzeentch deamons, to Ork Stompa's. Just put it on there and it is 2's as tough.
  • With the "Ready For Take-Off" upgrade ( Only 5 points ), this becomes a very good fortification that is probably a must have if you planned to use it and a Vendetta. Deploy the Vendetta(s) in it ( In Hover mode for the first turn ) and don't move it/them : You got yourself AV12 4+ Invuln Twin-Linked full-BS lascannons all around with a very good LOS. Next turn ( It is quite unlikely a Vendetta has been taken down by now ), zoom out and do Vendetta stuff as you would normally. This gets you a guaranteed 2nd turn Vendetta for the "cost" of having it sitting on the landing pad with a 4+ invulnerable save on first turn, during which it will still be able to fire its payload at full BS. If you plan on taking Vendettas but don't like spending points on reserve roll trickery ( Which puts you on par with Skavens concerning reliability ) you can easily rationalise incorporating that Skyshield into your army ( Park your officers, heavy weapons teams, tanks, artillery on it, whatever : 4++ is GOOD - AV14 4++ isn't going anywhere ) for a fine piece of fortification that will act as an excellent Vendetta force multiplier.

Race specific

• Honoured Imperium: Ok, no. While it might be nice to place a giant statue or church rubble and receive Stubborn for your Imperial Forces (actually the statue gives Fearless to models in 2" as per the 'Imperial Statuary' rule, so it gets interesting for blobs), think about your choice. If you are playing Xenos or Chaos well, just skip this thing... For your ONE fortification choice, you would take one statue that CANNOT fire back over fortifications THAT CAN FIRE BACK! And while fearless is nice for guard, units have to be within 2 inches to even benefit from the Stubborn rule. Best used with gun-line guard and even then you will have the problem of blast templates. You do get a 3+ cover save if behind the fortification, but chances are you are using the giant statue that breaks LOS making the cover save basically unnecessary. Use your points on a Commissar. If you are truly wanting to use this fortification, then go all in and get the Imperial Strongpoint. In fact, if you want Stubborn, get a Commissar!
  • This might be slightly useful with vehicles, if you have a predator positioned just right that you don't ever plan on moving for example, otherwise you will never use this cover save ever. Fuck everything- park a Baneblade behind it and laugh maniacally.

• Tomb Citadel (Forge World) - Broken. Stupidly so. Two AV14 Structures, killed on a 5+ with a penetrating hit. One has Eternity Gate and Scarab Hive, the other gives everything (including the structures and emplacements) on it a 3++ invulnerable (does not specify Necron Units), and all Necron units on it a re-roll to RP of 1. This is ridiculous considering it is nearly 2x2 foot, so you can now reliably bunker down and NEVER DIE. It can have emplacements (up to 2) with Skyfire and Interceptor - Twin-linked Tesla Destructor for 65pts, or Gauss Exterminator for 100pts. The Fortification without the upgrades (and it can have Comms Relay for 20pts) is 300 POINTS. Give your Warriors a Lord with Resurrection Orb, stick them on here, and THEY WILL NEVER DIE.For maximum cheese bring the lawbringer phalanx formation, give the praetorians particle casters, then stick a lord with as res orb in each unit. be ready to catch your models as your opponent flips the table in response to your 2+ REANIMATION, RE-ROLLING ONES!!!(Sorry, new codex says RP can never be better than a 4+) remember, this thing is 2x2 feet so you can reach a pretty large area even with the praetorians crappy 12 inch range.It's important to note for only 200 more points, you can bring a second one. A Tomb Fortress is only 500 points, offers you a second Power Crucible, which means if for some reason the enemy wants to remove the 3++ effect, they have to burn through both of them to do so. 2 Eternity Gates. 2 Scarab Hives. It's madness for only 200 more. And then finally of course, there's the City of the Dead, but at 1500 points, you won't be bringing it at sub-5000 games. Still a fun version though, since you deploy the City anywhere on the field, oh and that whole 4x4 Fortification is considered your deployment zone. Trolltastic. Also notable for being the only *stationary* fortification so far that isn't affiliated with the Imperium somehow.

Formations of Fortifications

• Imperial Strongpoint: Can't decide whether you want the Imperial Bastion or Aegis Defense Line? Why not take both. With the Stronghold Assault expansion, you can take both and more. For just one Fortification slot, you get a required Aegis Defense Line, a Imperial Bastion, a optional Skyshield Landing Pad, optional Honoured Imperium, and options to include more of the listed. For IG gunline armies, this is beautiful. This is basically the poor man's Fortress of Redemption. The major problem though is IG ballistic skill. With all this heavy ordnance, you want to get as many Vets as possible to man these guns. Also, don't expect to move that far. With most of your cover and weapons unmovable, you will just have to wait for the enemy to reach you.

• Wall of mathyrs Defence networkDo you like your entire deployment zone to be filled with imperial trenches ? if so this is the formation for you. 1-3 bunkers, 1-4 defence emplacements, 1-4 lines, 0-2 batteries and 0-2 firestorms

• Void Relay network Formation of pipelines, void shield generator and 0-1 imperial statue. This is for you if you like gun lining with lots of torrent flamers.