Assassination & Scenario Are Part of Attrition
It is not enough to have an army that purely attritions. It must also be able to win by scenario or assassinate because in the end it will be one of those two things that wins you the game. If you have no way to kill your opponents caster they will be able to move right up and use all their powers and abilities, if you have no way to win on scenario then your opponent will have to waste less models and activations contesting scenario zones. You can be a lot more effective at attrition if your opponent has to be worried both about attrition and about losing due to assassination or scenario. If you can force your opponent to keep their caster back out of the game or you can force your opponent to waste activations contesting rather than killing your stuff you can get ahead in attrition. It will also let you finish the game quicker, rather than wiping out your opponents entire army you just wipe out enough that they can no longer stop the assassination or contest the scenario.
Alpha Strike
This is probably the most basic of the attrition concepts, the idea is to hit your opponent hard before they have had a chance to hit you. Ranged armies are generally very good at this but so are those with threat range extensions like Doomshaper2. The ranged alpha is very different from the melee alpha so I'll discus them separately.
Ranged Alpha - The first thing to look at when it comes to the ranged game is whether you are ranged dominant or ranged submissive. If your opponent has more ranged threat than you do you need to close and engage. If you have more ranged threat then you can hang back and shoot and wait for your opponent to come to you. The key in a ranged alpha strike is concentration of force. If you are shooting at a unit there is no point moving up so that the back members of the target unit are in range if you aren't going to be able to kill the front members of the unit. You just make it easier for your opponent to shut down your shooting. If you hang back and make sure all the closest members of the unit die you have greatly increased the amount of ground your opponent has to cover to get to you. Likewise when shooting multiple wound models you don't want to put a little bit of damage on a lot of models you want to kill something. Try and move so that you are as far away from everything else as possible and just close enough to the thing you want to kill. Then do the same thing next turn. Don't be afraid to back up, backing up is good but you see a lot of players who almost don't seem to realise that their models can move backwards.
Melee Alpha - you need three things, SPD and the ability to kill what you are hitting and something to keep you safe from retaliation. If you leave your models up where your opponent can kill them you are piece trading which will be discussed shortly. The other option is to hit your opponent so hard that they are no longer able to counter attack or that their counter attack is so blunted that you are able to stay ahead of your opponent in the piece trade.
Piece Trading
Whenever you go to attack something of your opponents you need to be aware of the counter attack that will happen on their turn. You need to be taking into account what they will be able to kill. The idea with piece trading is to ensure that you allow your opponent to kill less points worth of your models than you kill of theirs. It is very rare to be able to kill your opponents entire army in a single turn so if your opponent can pick and choose what to kill they will take out the biggest threats, even if you have alpha struck you will still find yourself at a disadvantage. The idea behind piece trading to kill models in your opponents army while exposing models that are less important to your army than the models you have killed. You always want to trade up, kill a 10 point model while exposing only a 6 point model to your opponents army.
Part of piece trading is list building. Good models for this are models that take more points to kill then they are worth, models that can kill more points than they are worth and/or models that enable other models to do either of those two. A good example in trolls - champions are a great piece trading unit, they can kill more than 10 points of models and have high ARM and 8 wounds each so it often takes more than 10 points of models to kill the entire unit. The Mountain King on the other hand is very bad for piece trading. It cannot kill 20 points of models and it does not take anywhere near 20 points of models to kill it. Troll heavies can use their support staff to both become more difficult to kill than their points and to destroy the world. A lot of cryx infantry also falls in this catagory, banes and mechanithrals in particular. Though Mechthralls are very easy to kill they are also half a point each so you generally can't kill them as cheaply as you can buy them and they can destroy heavies.
The other part is to recognise when you are making a trade and to make sure you don't make bad trades. There are quite a few players that will charge with their heavies as long as there is something in range, even if that something is not particularly valuable. Be aware of when your opponent is baiting you and bait your opponent. The best way to do it is to use models that are harder to kill than their points. The Warpwolf Feral (warping ARM) is a great choice for a bait piece, the Vanguard is probably my favourite (13/19 with 26 boxes and set defence). Generally when you are baiting you are also using the scenario, you run a model into the scoring area to contest and control and then you have another piece in range to charge and murder whatever kills that model. It's a great tactic too with second wave units like Forgeguard that are slow. When you commit a model recognise what your opponent has to strike back with, if you are likely to lose that model then make sure that what it kills is worth losing that model for (I'm not just talking points here, often taking out the choir for example is worth a lot more than 2 points).
The other thing to take into account when piece trading is to use the depth of the table. You don't want your whole army in a line, again it will allow your opponent to pick what they want to kill and ensure that they are ahead on the piece trade. Spread out forward and backwards, particularly with units. Make sure your Officer is at the back of the unit where he has some protection. If only 3 models can make the charge don't move up the rest of the unit next to them where your opponent can easily kill them, keep the bulk of the unit back with a few models forward that your opponent has to kill first before they can clear a lane to the unit. Often this leaves your opponent blocked by their own models and you can charge the rest of the unit in.
Things That Keep Your Models Safe
Some abilities allow you to attack or at least move your army into threat range of your opponent without losing models and these abilities are key to attrition. These can be simple ARM or DEF buffs but also include things like the Choir of Menoth (who can sing no shooting), Vassals (who can allow your jacks to walk away from charges) and Janissa (walls). The best pieces are those that keep your models completely safe but following up from that are pieces that make your models much more difficult to kill, enough that it is very unlikely that your opponent will kill them. I know it does sound obvious but every single game I have won against Menoth I have benefited from my opponent choosing to ancillary attack (jack makes an out of activation attack) rather than enliven (jack makes a full advance in any direction first time it is damaged). If you are playing circle remember that the warpwolf stalker has sprint for an animus and use it, hit and then move away out of threat range of the majority of your opponents army. Too many players ignore these abilities and they are the key to winning via attrition. In the circle case in particular you may not be able to kill as much stuff if you are relying on sprint but you kill it for free rather than trading those models for your heavy warbeast. Make use of refuge, of soulgate, spirit door, teleport, gate crasher to kill models and then move back to safety.
Throw away units - this one blends into the next section which is tarpitting. There is a lot of value in cheap 10 man units, these units aren't in the list to kill anything (it's a bonus when they do) but they are there to die in preference to your more expensive models. Generally the unit is a speed bump, forcing your opponent to spend activations killing cheap models that aren't particularly dangerous, possibly blocking off charges with their own models they send to kill your guys. The basic way you use them is you put them in front of your better models, blocking off charge lanes and if they are small based models blocking LOS. Against some lists, especially low model count lists this tactic can make your valuable models completely safe. I use this tactic a lot with Legion, Legion beasts are very easy to kill but if I can put my legionnaires in between my models and my opponents models that are threatening them then I can make it much more difficult for my opponent to get to my beasts. If your opponent tramples then they lose all their initial attacks and have spent a focus/fury which is often enough to ensure that they don't kill the model they were sent after. The other thing these units do well is kill cheap units my opponent has put in the way of my beasts.
Tarpitting
So this is something I don't see that much but which is very useful both in attrition and in scenario play. The idea is to put something your opponent will struggle to kill in front of either the scenario zone or something you don't want to deal with. Boomhowlers are the ideal mix of a tarpit and a throw away unit, especially when you put arcane shield on them. There are other great tarpits though, the Centurion is a great one (again particularly with arcane shield), Tiberion with defenders ward and a krea and an agoniser is pretty much invincible. The difference between tarpitting and piece trading is that your tarpit is not supposed to die, at least not for a turn or two. It slows up your opponent and allows the rest of your army to take take out the rest of your opponents army while key pieces are tied up with your tarpit. A lot of casters that camp focus like to do this themselves as well (at least in SR 2012), they contest scoring and simply stand around killing a few models but mostly just being invincible (in SR 2013 the rumour is that casters will no longer be able to contest). If your opponent cannot score in scenario because of your tarpit then you are free to attrition as much as you like while pretty much ignoring the scenario. Tarpits are also great for protecting ranged threats. I mentioned recently a Caine2 list that I really liked. If you have Caine2 behind a unit of Boomhowlers you can allow him to take a lot more shots at your opponents army and he'll be able to wipe out a unit himself pretty much every turn. It works particularly well for units like gun mages, long gunners and the black 13th that lose a lot when they are engaged.
Out of Formation Troopers
There are quite a few abilities in the game which require at least some members of the original unit to be alive. Makeda1's feat is a good example, it requires returned to life trooper models to be placed in formation and you can't do it if the unit is dead. What you can do though is leave 1 trooper model way back with your caster and not care that he is out of formation. If the rest of the unit dies you can still return them all to play just way back near that one model. This also works the other way, if you run models towards your opponent so they are out of formation they can't make free strikes or attacks but they can use other abilities that are not attacks and do not require them to be in formation. Rangers are a good example of this, you can run 1 ranger forward to be within 5" of what you want to shoot giving your whole army +2 to hit while the rest of the unit hangs back in safety. Spell effects also effect trooper models that are out of formation so you can use an out of formation legionnaire to deliver chiller or an out of formation bane thrall to deliver dark shroud (if the banes aren't in charge range you can run that one model and keep the rest of the unit safe).
Models that Generate More Models
Great for attrition as when you are playing attrition games tend to go a bit longer, they will have a lot of time to generate more models. The spawning vessel for Legion is a fantastic example, stitch thralls, Tartarus (although Tartarus does tend to just die), Alexia1. They also give you interesting threat vectors so you can take out key models that your opponent has thought was safe.
Moving Your Opponents Models
This one is a common mistake. There are a lot of spells and abilities that allow you to advance an enemy model and then use that model to make an attack. The mistake people make is using that spell/ability to use make an enemy model attack an enemy model. The best way to use that ability is to advance that model directly towards your army and then turn it around. That will generally allow you to kill it without suffering retaliation. You can still have a shot at your opponent if you have a ranged weapon. If you waste that spell or even feat having a swing at an opposing model you can almost never get anywhere near the same points value. This is particularly true of Rampager as you are casting on a beast. Some trooper models can get more value making attacks against other stuff but still you generally get more value picking expensive stuff and moving it towards you. (If you are playing against Rampager have your heavies hold hand, if one heavy is arm locked neither can be moved by rampager, it also works against pushes).
Attacking your own models
I don't know that this necessarily goes in attrition but I'm putting it here anyway. There are a lot of great tricks you can pull off if you remember that you can attack your own models. If you are up against non-reach infantry you can shoot your own heavies with a scather template (Ravagore, Desecrator) and they will auto-die if they charge it. A trick I often see with cryx is to run a death-chicken up and slam another death chicken through it to knock down an important model. Remember that this avenue is available to you. Lately I've been attacking the storm pods Stormwall drops a lot. It lets you put down extra covering fire using the black 13th and lets you drop a pod in the middle of a stealth unit and take half of them out.
Ranged Alpha - The first thing to look at when it comes to the ranged game is whether you are ranged dominant or ranged submissive. If your opponent has more ranged threat than you do you need to close and engage. If you have more ranged threat then you can hang back and shoot and wait for your opponent to come to you. The key in a ranged alpha strike is concentration of force. If you are shooting at a unit there is no point moving up so that the back members of the target unit are in range if you aren't going to be able to kill the front members of the unit. You just make it easier for your opponent to shut down your shooting. If you hang back and make sure all the closest members of the unit die you have greatly increased the amount of ground your opponent has to cover to get to you. Likewise when shooting multiple wound models you don't want to put a little bit of damage on a lot of models you want to kill something. Try and move so that you are as far away from everything else as possible and just close enough to the thing you want to kill. Then do the same thing next turn. Don't be afraid to back up, backing up is good but you see a lot of players who almost don't seem to realise that their models can move backwards.
Melee Alpha - you need three things, SPD and the ability to kill what you are hitting and something to keep you safe from retaliation. If you leave your models up where your opponent can kill them you are piece trading which will be discussed shortly. The other option is to hit your opponent so hard that they are no longer able to counter attack or that their counter attack is so blunted that you are able to stay ahead of your opponent in the piece trade.
Piece Trading
Whenever you go to attack something of your opponents you need to be aware of the counter attack that will happen on their turn. You need to be taking into account what they will be able to kill. The idea with piece trading is to ensure that you allow your opponent to kill less points worth of your models than you kill of theirs. It is very rare to be able to kill your opponents entire army in a single turn so if your opponent can pick and choose what to kill they will take out the biggest threats, even if you have alpha struck you will still find yourself at a disadvantage. The idea behind piece trading to kill models in your opponents army while exposing models that are less important to your army than the models you have killed. You always want to trade up, kill a 10 point model while exposing only a 6 point model to your opponents army.
Part of piece trading is list building. Good models for this are models that take more points to kill then they are worth, models that can kill more points than they are worth and/or models that enable other models to do either of those two. A good example in trolls - champions are a great piece trading unit, they can kill more than 10 points of models and have high ARM and 8 wounds each so it often takes more than 10 points of models to kill the entire unit. The Mountain King on the other hand is very bad for piece trading. It cannot kill 20 points of models and it does not take anywhere near 20 points of models to kill it. Troll heavies can use their support staff to both become more difficult to kill than their points and to destroy the world. A lot of cryx infantry also falls in this catagory, banes and mechanithrals in particular. Though Mechthralls are very easy to kill they are also half a point each so you generally can't kill them as cheaply as you can buy them and they can destroy heavies.
The other part is to recognise when you are making a trade and to make sure you don't make bad trades. There are quite a few players that will charge with their heavies as long as there is something in range, even if that something is not particularly valuable. Be aware of when your opponent is baiting you and bait your opponent. The best way to do it is to use models that are harder to kill than their points. The Warpwolf Feral (warping ARM) is a great choice for a bait piece, the Vanguard is probably my favourite (13/19 with 26 boxes and set defence). Generally when you are baiting you are also using the scenario, you run a model into the scoring area to contest and control and then you have another piece in range to charge and murder whatever kills that model. It's a great tactic too with second wave units like Forgeguard that are slow. When you commit a model recognise what your opponent has to strike back with, if you are likely to lose that model then make sure that what it kills is worth losing that model for (I'm not just talking points here, often taking out the choir for example is worth a lot more than 2 points).
The other thing to take into account when piece trading is to use the depth of the table. You don't want your whole army in a line, again it will allow your opponent to pick what they want to kill and ensure that they are ahead on the piece trade. Spread out forward and backwards, particularly with units. Make sure your Officer is at the back of the unit where he has some protection. If only 3 models can make the charge don't move up the rest of the unit next to them where your opponent can easily kill them, keep the bulk of the unit back with a few models forward that your opponent has to kill first before they can clear a lane to the unit. Often this leaves your opponent blocked by their own models and you can charge the rest of the unit in.
Things That Keep Your Models Safe
Some abilities allow you to attack or at least move your army into threat range of your opponent without losing models and these abilities are key to attrition. These can be simple ARM or DEF buffs but also include things like the Choir of Menoth (who can sing no shooting), Vassals (who can allow your jacks to walk away from charges) and Janissa (walls). The best pieces are those that keep your models completely safe but following up from that are pieces that make your models much more difficult to kill, enough that it is very unlikely that your opponent will kill them. I know it does sound obvious but every single game I have won against Menoth I have benefited from my opponent choosing to ancillary attack (jack makes an out of activation attack) rather than enliven (jack makes a full advance in any direction first time it is damaged). If you are playing circle remember that the warpwolf stalker has sprint for an animus and use it, hit and then move away out of threat range of the majority of your opponents army. Too many players ignore these abilities and they are the key to winning via attrition. In the circle case in particular you may not be able to kill as much stuff if you are relying on sprint but you kill it for free rather than trading those models for your heavy warbeast. Make use of refuge, of soulgate, spirit door, teleport, gate crasher to kill models and then move back to safety.
Throw away units - this one blends into the next section which is tarpitting. There is a lot of value in cheap 10 man units, these units aren't in the list to kill anything (it's a bonus when they do) but they are there to die in preference to your more expensive models. Generally the unit is a speed bump, forcing your opponent to spend activations killing cheap models that aren't particularly dangerous, possibly blocking off charges with their own models they send to kill your guys. The basic way you use them is you put them in front of your better models, blocking off charge lanes and if they are small based models blocking LOS. Against some lists, especially low model count lists this tactic can make your valuable models completely safe. I use this tactic a lot with Legion, Legion beasts are very easy to kill but if I can put my legionnaires in between my models and my opponents models that are threatening them then I can make it much more difficult for my opponent to get to my beasts. If your opponent tramples then they lose all their initial attacks and have spent a focus/fury which is often enough to ensure that they don't kill the model they were sent after. The other thing these units do well is kill cheap units my opponent has put in the way of my beasts.
Tarpitting
So this is something I don't see that much but which is very useful both in attrition and in scenario play. The idea is to put something your opponent will struggle to kill in front of either the scenario zone or something you don't want to deal with. Boomhowlers are the ideal mix of a tarpit and a throw away unit, especially when you put arcane shield on them. There are other great tarpits though, the Centurion is a great one (again particularly with arcane shield), Tiberion with defenders ward and a krea and an agoniser is pretty much invincible. The difference between tarpitting and piece trading is that your tarpit is not supposed to die, at least not for a turn or two. It slows up your opponent and allows the rest of your army to take take out the rest of your opponents army while key pieces are tied up with your tarpit. A lot of casters that camp focus like to do this themselves as well (at least in SR 2012), they contest scoring and simply stand around killing a few models but mostly just being invincible (in SR 2013 the rumour is that casters will no longer be able to contest). If your opponent cannot score in scenario because of your tarpit then you are free to attrition as much as you like while pretty much ignoring the scenario. Tarpits are also great for protecting ranged threats. I mentioned recently a Caine2 list that I really liked. If you have Caine2 behind a unit of Boomhowlers you can allow him to take a lot more shots at your opponents army and he'll be able to wipe out a unit himself pretty much every turn. It works particularly well for units like gun mages, long gunners and the black 13th that lose a lot when they are engaged.
Out of Formation Troopers
There are quite a few abilities in the game which require at least some members of the original unit to be alive. Makeda1's feat is a good example, it requires returned to life trooper models to be placed in formation and you can't do it if the unit is dead. What you can do though is leave 1 trooper model way back with your caster and not care that he is out of formation. If the rest of the unit dies you can still return them all to play just way back near that one model. This also works the other way, if you run models towards your opponent so they are out of formation they can't make free strikes or attacks but they can use other abilities that are not attacks and do not require them to be in formation. Rangers are a good example of this, you can run 1 ranger forward to be within 5" of what you want to shoot giving your whole army +2 to hit while the rest of the unit hangs back in safety. Spell effects also effect trooper models that are out of formation so you can use an out of formation legionnaire to deliver chiller or an out of formation bane thrall to deliver dark shroud (if the banes aren't in charge range you can run that one model and keep the rest of the unit safe).
Models that Generate More Models
Great for attrition as when you are playing attrition games tend to go a bit longer, they will have a lot of time to generate more models. The spawning vessel for Legion is a fantastic example, stitch thralls, Tartarus (although Tartarus does tend to just die), Alexia1. They also give you interesting threat vectors so you can take out key models that your opponent has thought was safe.
Moving Your Opponents Models
This one is a common mistake. There are a lot of spells and abilities that allow you to advance an enemy model and then use that model to make an attack. The mistake people make is using that spell/ability to use make an enemy model attack an enemy model. The best way to use that ability is to advance that model directly towards your army and then turn it around. That will generally allow you to kill it without suffering retaliation. You can still have a shot at your opponent if you have a ranged weapon. If you waste that spell or even feat having a swing at an opposing model you can almost never get anywhere near the same points value. This is particularly true of Rampager as you are casting on a beast. Some trooper models can get more value making attacks against other stuff but still you generally get more value picking expensive stuff and moving it towards you. (If you are playing against Rampager have your heavies hold hand, if one heavy is arm locked neither can be moved by rampager, it also works against pushes).
Attacking your own models
I don't know that this necessarily goes in attrition but I'm putting it here anyway. There are a lot of great tricks you can pull off if you remember that you can attack your own models. If you are up against non-reach infantry you can shoot your own heavies with a scather template (Ravagore, Desecrator) and they will auto-die if they charge it. A trick I often see with cryx is to run a death-chicken up and slam another death chicken through it to knock down an important model. Remember that this avenue is available to you. Lately I've been attacking the storm pods Stormwall drops a lot. It lets you put down extra covering fire using the black 13th and lets you drop a pod in the middle of a stealth unit and take half of them out.
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