Night Fight Tactics

[Lord Retribution]

I know this sounds kinda obvious to the veteran players, but it struck me recently.

Night-fight is in nearly all missions and In 6th, everyone reworks there army, but now I'm considering more search-lights.

The cheapest avaliable I think is scout sentinals being 35pts ish.

Lighting up the opponent is now key to long range armies such as ourselves, those of us who use artillery frequently need to remember to spam those search lights agianst targets each and every turn.

Stragegically lighting up enemy units then lets your units who normally wouldn't see in the dark the ability to target them.

only disadvantage is those tanks that light up enemies being seen by the enemy as well, might you a camo and a cheap ageis wall could provide a 3+ cover to your tanks.

im considering running the cheap avaliable search-lights on vehicles being the scout-sentinel at 36pts.

what's your thoughts on searchlights being a essential aspect to imperial guard gun-lines?

[WestRider]

Most of the time, Night Fight is only going to affect one Turn in the Game, or maybe a couple at the end. What this means is that you can afford for your Searchlights to be kind of disposable, if they're cheap enough.

If you're not using your FA Slots for Valkyries and Vendettas, disposable Searchlight Sentinels aren't a terrible option.

I'm not sure that they're the best way to go, tho. Since you no longer have to get close to reliably light something up, it's perfectly reasonable to get some Chimerae just a little ways ahead of your line, in a relatively solid position, and light some targets up that would otherwise be Shrouded or entirely out of sight of stuff in your Backfield.

Or something like a Russ Variant Tank. It probably won't do much damage itself, which is unfortunate, but at the ranges where Night Fight has much effect, it's very hard to do significant damage to a Russ anyhow.

When going second, the fact that you're illuminating yourself as well as the target often won't be an issue at all, as during the next shooting Phase, the sun will be up (if first Turn Night Fight), or the Game may well end (if it comes in at the end).

Remember that you have to use Orders before any Units not using Orders fire, so you're not going to be able to take advantage of the Searchlights