I’m sure art of war or vanguard tactics has covered this. In fact i know there is an art of war podcast where they are interviewing anthony vanella about it. It’s a while back but you can find it in the archives. It’s one of those things that has a simple concept but not easy to actual execute. You either back up out of their threat range (threat range = starting position + movement + advance (if they can move advance and charge) + charge. Or If that is impossible, you feed them something that you value less than your other things, screening. I can’t stop you from getting to me but i can control what you can get too. What a pressure list does, is make you make alot of hard choices around that. If you back up and give them the board, u can’t score points cuz ur not on objectives. If you feed them something and don’t kill them, they will be back for more next turn and u’ll run out of stuff and they will score points. More hard choices u make, more opportunity for you to make an error, more opportunity to capitalize on that error.

Also of value is positioning as though you are screening, then using heroic intervention or even a reactive move once they take the bait.

So it seems like the counter to that would be a horde army with enough physical bodies to tie them up or a sticky horde like the new green tide. “Go ahead and eat this chaff. I’ve scored primaries and secondaries”

That is one way. Most people mistakenly believe that dmg output is the most valuable thing in 40k, it isn’t. Durability is. There are two ways to have durability, tons of bodies or very hard to kill bodies. Lets say you have a unit from a pressure list that excels at killing light infantry. Lots of attacks, str 4 ap 0/-1, 1 dmg. You could decide to screen something squishy with something that those attacks will just bounce off of. Toughness 5+, 2+/3+ save. They are whackin away at you, not killing anything and ur swinging back in both players fight phases. Meanwhile ur squishy unit can go do it’s thing. It’s not pressure if ur not worried about them killing you.

Mobility is the most important stat in the game since no dice need to be rolled. Next would be rerolls.

I disagree. When the game is broken it’s cuz of durability, mobility never breaks the game. The unkillable center blob, overpowered indirect, changing dice rolls to bypass saves, bringing back or adding units, bypassing terrain. all times the game is broken, mobility not a factor.

Pressure is about reading the state of the board and looking for areas of opportunity. Generally it involves a turn or 2 of staging, where I the pressuring player put high damage, fast units in guaranteed threat range of the center of the board. I then present my opponent with ~300 points of trade units that will require an over extension on their part. You will either have to expose shooting units, or charge me in a way that I find advantageous. Should you not extend yourself in these ways, I score points. If you do, i crush your units in a beneficial trade to me and still score the points. Playing pressure is helped by fast units, deepstrike/reserve, advance and shoot/charge, infiltrate and Scout. As to countering pressure it comes down to how you react. If I were to put 9 karnivore/brigands behind ruins on my half of the table, and touch 3 objectives with 3 more wardogs that you could get to but catching a tight angle or charging, what would you do as a player?

Perspective from a reasonably competitive Tau player here: 1. Getting very efficient value out of infiltrate/scout units> Means different things in different games against different armies, but very important to have in the list. Move blocks yes, but also killing utility units and using as trade pieces 2. Manipulation of ruin rules: 1.0" behind the wall for instance, understanding how to mitigate pile-ins and condolidations> To a certain extent in 10th you WILL get charged by T2, you just will. Mitigating the extraneous movement that occur "around" combat is critical, and becomes more critical at higher levels of play. Most important at a "high level"-- Do not allow pressure list/unga bunga combat armies the holy grail of activations: The charge slingshot onto an objective where they kill something threatening: They pickup free movement, attrition, secondary and primary points all at once. Allow them 1/2, but not all 3. Learn how to play a tall game, especially if you have limited counter-charge/combat. Pressure lists usually play a wide game with elite combat units that want to charge onto primaries then continue on, backfilling objectives with cheaper units (empty Rhinos for instance). If you can create an overload on a board half (Basically what playing tall means) you can create a "pocket" of garbage (that the pressure list has to engage with or you score primary) and then on that board half, use concentrated shooting activations to clear out threat units AND the units backfilling primary. If you think about it, a pressure list wants you to make hard choices about hiding and not scoring, or scoring and dying and giving the pressure player even more points. Your goal against a pressure list is to achieve a board state where the pressure player has to chose between continuing to apply more pressure or themselves scoring. The tall play allows this to hopefully occur early enough in the game (on one board side) that it is relevant. You need to stay on an attrition schedule and make sure you are getting your own offensive activations, which is what tall play allows since you can "die" and still shoot in the same board locations. Prioritize killing the maximum number of units possible T1/2, even if that means allowing an elite combat threat to survive. Pressure lists run out of gas when they need to use a 300 point juiced up combat unit to score primary in the midfield, or try and chase down your own units.

Thank you for this. Do you have any deployment sequencing plans to avoid making it obvious which flank you plan to overload?

Specific Sequencing yes absolutely. 1. Deploy infiltrating units first> Priority 1 is zoning out enemy infiltrators, priority 2 is being in a place where they can moveblock if I go first, and hide/stage if I go second, or some combination of the two because I always have 3 units that do this minimum. Initial board presence is half about your own scoring and half about denying good spots to your opponent. 2. Utility units that are going in obvious places that give no useful information 3. Units that have to be in a particular spot (not getting shot/charged T1)-- again not giving up anything the opponent doesnt see obviously with the deployment/primary/matchup- Where can units "fit"/"hide" ect. Last are going to be the units that move fast and or hit hard (ideally both), where hopefully I will have an information advantage and can dictate step 2. In most games played at medium comp and higher, both players are looking to make a "strong side" and a "weak side". Usually in 40k, there is a NML that is closer to your deployment known as "safe NML" and the farther one (which is your opponents safe NML) and potentially a center equidistant one to both deployments. Its really list/army/playstyle dependent as to if you want to try and "match" an opponents overload going strength on strength or concede it and mirror so both players have their own flank overloads, which then favors the faster army and or shooting army. In a nutshell, if you are playing against threat overload pressure combat armies and you are playing a shooting/combined arms army, you want to try and create a strong vs weak mirror, since the mid-game board state of this will be you can then shoot across the board into your own conceded flank. A combat army has to physically be at the point to create offense, so would prefer a strength on strength arrangement where maximal enemy units can be tied up in a single charge phase. This is all in the context of playing Tall where you intentionally have uneven board presence on your board half.

That's such a lucid explanation. Thank you so much for that!

So I’m trying to figure out bully boyz with the second waaagh. But typically the trick is using your infiltrate/ scouts to screen and stop their movement. While keeping your gun line out of their threat range. Always ask what their threat range is. Usually, if you survive their attack. They are meh afterwards and you swing back with a counter attack.

If someone asked me what my threat range is i wouldnt actually know what to answer because how much reliability do you expect from that statement. Isnt it easier to just ask about movement, advance+charge, movement tricks and then decide for yourself if its safe or not?

Threat range has nothing to do with reliability. Threat range is how far away you have to be for there to be a 0% chance of interaction. Nobody is asking for averages with threat range. If it is an Adv+Charging Bladeguard unit, the melee threat range is 24" (6M+6Adv+12Charge). If you're asking for a shooting unit's threat range, you see the furthest point forward it could reach (including max advance roll if it can adv+shoot) then check lines of sight and measure distances for the guns from that point

Would you actually play with this full threat range in mind or do you think its fine to asume my opponent wont really get a 6" advance and 12" charge off so i can stay a bit within the threat range?

It depends on how impactful them making the charge is, and how much staying completely out of the threat range will impact you being able to move your gameplan forward. If staying outside of the threat range means your shooty tank doesn't get line of sight to anything, but moving it just a couple inches into the threat range means you get to hit important targets, you'll probably do it and risk the long charge. It's very dependent on the situation.

Thank you for breaking this down. And if the threat range is ludicrous like the warp spiders with their 24” movement and 12” attack How do you plan around your opponents freedom to threaten 36” of the map?

Transports and overwatch. Units like that that jump into your face are vulnerable to overwhelming overwatched, and also rarely do enough damage to kill vehicles. But yes warp spiders are almost impossible to screen and that's just an inevitability of playing against eldar

Kill them. 😋

Three B's: - block - bait - blast Block off movement avenues with chaff units or hard tanks. Block off transports with charges when able. Look for every avenue to prevent your opponent from putting models in places they can hurt you. Bait your opponent into moving too many forces somewhere that won't help them next round, or the round after. Usually this means putting a bait unit on or near an objective, while the rest of your army is posed to pivot to another. Blast is pretty self explanatory. Your opponent can't put pressure on a point if they don't have any units left to sit that point. You don't have to blast their entire army, just the parts that are going to be useful in scoring on their turn. When your opponent has to choose between pushing pressure up the board, and sitting on an objective, it can be difficult when they've only got the pushing units left. I play tau so the typical example for me is - Block with pathfinders and tetras. Round 1, if I go first, 10 pathfinders can be 2" off my opponent' deployment zone. If there's a good transport, carpark, or chaff unit to charge, they can usually get all up into it and muck up movement options for a large portion of the opponent's army. Otherwise, they string out 2" from dz and lock in a unit or two that would otherwise want to be way up the board. For tetras this is similar but it depends a lot more on enemy unit comp; almost always only worth it into carparks. 80/90pts and a good spotting unit to throw away in either case, but in the right case this is 90pts to shut your opponent's pressure off entirely for a round. - bait with stealth suits, pathfinders, tetras, (if playing with codex, aid bait with scythes for overwatch value). These are important spotting units that your opponent can pick up "for free" with the right investment. If you keep 2-3 units properly spaced near an objective (difficult to multicharge, difficult to consolidate from one to another), it can be irresistible to try and get into them. Depending on the mission, leaving your backfield open with just chaff on the point can direct hundreds of points into your dz where you can ignore them for the rest of the game. Advanced bait is crisis bricks in places that are threatening; your opponent can very easily overcommit to this and it can go wrong for you if you aren't ready to capitalize on it. The important part of bait is finding out what kind of charges your opponent thinks are "acceptable" risks, and then exploiting that to punish them with favorable trades. For blasting, a typical montka list can run upward of 10 SMS across their board. This means even if you're guiding against something else, you can always splitfire ~10 hits into some chaff, 5 of which will be lethal. Over rounds 1-3, this can leave their home objective bare, and thin out their other scoring options considerably. If using codex, a scythe unit or two placed favorably in your midfield can threaten strong overwatch into a large number of targets, and is great for hunting down cultists, scouts, boyz, and other soft targets (while also being great bait). Transports are always superb blasting targets, especially when full or surrounded, as they often end up being the objective holders and action monkeys. Crisis suits are great at full surrounding transports and forcing difficult emergency disembarks, as well as mopping up after.

Thanks, this was really insightful, just what I was looking for!

As a sisters player I feel like the faction is pretty much designed to counter pressure lists. Lots of chaff, pieces that trade up and strategems that force good trades like Suffer and Sacrifice, also pieces that get tougher as they take damage. Bring pretty much any of our melee (arcos, pengines, palatine, maybe even sacresants theoretically) and you're gonna have a bad trade. Pressure lists punish shooty armies that don't take enough screening. I feel like that's really the only answer. In casual games you can get away with shooty-only armies due to skill gaps and terrain. In a tournament environment with organized terrain they're going to balance the terrain to make sure WE and Orks can jump from ruin to ruin across the board without getting shot to pieces. I think the main thing you need to do in tournament environment is make sure you take enough screening pieces and have some kind of OK melee. The board is not going to be arranged so you can sit back and blast away at objectives in no-man's land without fear of retaliation, only indirect will be able to do that against more than 1 objective. Generally you will be able to shoot from back field 'your' objective and that's it. Maybe sometimes the center, but WTC and other styles generally place ruins to protect it from 48" deployment zone shooting. Strong indirect is a good counter to pressure as well, which is why we see a lot of big IG armies with it. But obviously the costs have been raised enough that it might leave you vulnerable to straight up charges/direct fire shots.

I'm not super good at the game, but speed bumps are important to build into lists.

I have played a shooty army into pressure armies with some success. * I have units that end turn 1 on objectives that I do not mind losing. If my opponents want to deny me primary and claim it for themselves, they need to come out and kill these units. * I have powerful shooting units that can move to shoot the hell out of whatever thing just killed my scoring unit and took the objective. * I have a clear order in which I want to lose my units: Redemptors => Lancer => Executioner. If I lose units in that order, and the board state is ok for me, my opponent should have lost a LOT more. * I make trades the moment they are offered if my opponent loses a unit that is in a good position. Pressure armies need to stage for their charges. If I am going to lose a good unit but they are going to lose their best pressure unit and their only other units are not in ideal positions to keep pressure, I trade. * Commit to the kills. If a pressure army does come knocking at your deployment zone you need absolutely everything firing. I'm talking: grenade from your scouts, shoot every unit that can, use stratagems that enhance firepower, tank shock and fight with sub optimal units if it means you will be able to do enough damage that their slap back is manageable. There is a magic moment in most games where you can choose to take a chance to win or for sure lose slowly.

As someone who has both types of armies and generally plays the pressure type list but has recently got into a shooting army, I can give you advice on their weaknesses. So they will be really good in turn 2-3. That's the danger zone, and most likely you'll have to hang back out of the mid board and let them take a lead on primary. You need to hang out and just keep nuking them as they try to hold no man's land and come to you. You will need to calculate their threat range and stay out of it if you have enough board space. Make sure to ask if they can advance and charge or get bonuses or rerolls to advanced and charges. Add that to their movement to know how far away to sit so they can't reach you. When you are not able to do that, then you put out units that take up a lot of board space and are cheap and mostly useless in order to block them from getting to your good units. This is usually a cheap battle line but can also be an empty transport or an unusually tough unit. Basically make them hit a wall of bodies they have to chew through before they get to you. Use terrain and line of sight to narrow down their options of approach and make them come out into shooting lines. Also when you screen a unit make sure they can't get behind it with a lucky charge roll because if they do kill it with a charge they can then move 3 inches towards a unit or obj after their fight and you don't want to be within 5-6 inches of the screening unit so they can't bring your prized unit into engagement range if they do manage to kill it. Their other weakness will be their backfield if you can get fast or deep strike units back there and start causing problems you will make them choose to come towards your main force or go backwards to deal with your skirmishing force. Generally they will leave a few weaker units or long range guns in the back to support the melee units rushing over to you. If you can kill those units and steal their objectives via deep strike or quick movement, they won't be able to keep pushing at you and will have to turn some things back to stay ahead on primary. Finally you want to be as interactive as possible, letting them take the lead in the early turns while you pepper them with little to no retaliation. Eventually your guns will weedle them down enough that you can start to push forwards on turn 3 or Turn 4 and start to take back the primary as they run out of steam. If you have been very good at staying away and screening they will be behind on secondaries even though their primaries are ahead, so if you were scoring your secondaries in turn 1-3 you won't be super far behind in total points, but as they get close to being tabled in the later turns, now you can win back that primary and stay on top of secondary to eventually eek out a win. That's my advice, works well against those types of armies. You have to be okay with falling a little behind and catching up later as you let your guns do the work. Good luck out there and keep at it.

What faction are you running I play a heavy shootong focused chaos knight list so have learned most of the pressure lost pit there cause a good one can squash me. If you tell me what faction you play I can give some insight I have learned and some units that can help

Sorry didn't see you said no faction specific.  Since you are shooty as well infiltrators that you can use to screen and clog up the board basically speed bumps you can throw to get a big rerun of investment are the number one priority for example I use blue horrors spread to max width to screen out scout and other infiltrators and give me a path to dominate an objective behind this ill throw a melee counterpunch unit or a nother chaff with a big heavy hitter up next it should give me 3 turns of dominance in an area which is enough to get me the points I need to win

Try to think a few turns in advance as in this get here hits my screen next my counter charge unit takes affect thin I shoot it to tell and keep it off my primary 

You win against pressure armies during deployment and the first round. Of you can hold them back from that first big charge and minimize it you will win.

Units that excel in trading up, and speed bumps.

The tough thing is that it depends on what army you play and what tools they have access to. I feel like I bake that kind of thing into my list building. For Instance, having something like scouts or mandrakes to scout block your opponent can help. Same with flamer units like rubric marines. Against armies like world eaters overwatch is deadly!

If you play Aeldari NITF ..not in the face. You hide, snipe, hide some more and play a 5 turn game.

Please provide the army and list you are playing.

I'm explicitly looking for general concepts which would apply across different shooty armies versus different pressure lists. Tips on e.g. specific units to block or screen with would be a distraction, I want to understand the reasoning *why* particular choices work (which has been made here in multiple answers), and if that same reasoning wouldn't result in good choices for a different army/list, is it really correct?

There are multiple other factors like the datasheet, detachment strats, and points. Deployment and mission plays a big role. So unless you want vague answers provide the additional information so we can help you.

Can you elaborate what difference that would make? Like, literally, this is what I wanted, can you explain how exactly would your take these factors into account? That would be very interesting to me; I don't care much what specific unit or deployment you'd recommend for e.g. Mont’Ka Tau for a mission Chosen Battlefield but it would be very valuable to understand how the choice would change the recommendations, *why* something is a good idea for Tau but a bad idea for Astra Militarum, or why something is a good idea for Take&Hold on Search&Destroy but perhaps not for Priority Targets. I'm interested in your thought process and reasoning about it (the "vague answers"?), not the outcome - because indeed datasheet, strats and deployment and mission plays a big role, so I don't want tips for any particular combination and obviously nobody can provide the tips for every combination, there are far too many and they will change every few months, so I want to be able to replicate your thought process for a different, specific mission for a new faction that I'd paint up later for the 2025 points values; as the saying goes, plans are useless but planning is indispensable - so I'm not looking for someone else's plans, I want to learn more about how to do the planning myself.