Self, How do I work this?
I'm getting my DeathWing army ready to go, now I've got to figure out what to do with it when I get there. The problem is that I've never played in the Water style that I hope to do. In case you haven't noticed, I tend to be kind of an analytical guy. While the Water style is very flexible and holistic, I think that I can analyze the capabilities of the units and work out how they can be used in flexible ways, singly or in groups.

What do you mean by Water Army?
First, let's look at what I need the army to do and how I can use it. A Water army is a relatively small, elite army that is very flexible. The concept goes back to the old idea of doing whatever the target isn't good at. In other words, shoot the assaulters and assault the shooters. With it's eliteness and flexibility, there will always be something that each Water unit is better at than any given target. If the target is a Space Marine Devastator squad, my unit will be best served by assaulting it. If the target is a brood of Genestealers, I'll want to shoot and keep away from them as long as possible. While this is a good start, it's not the entirety of the Water philosophy, and this won't always be possible. I may be unable to perform the optimal action (such as being unable to assault those Devastators.) I may also have to sacrifice a unit in order to achieve a particular objective.

Okay, what can the units do?
Unit Damage Capabilities. The first place I'll start is trying to understand how much and what kind of damage each unit can do. In shooting, each squad can do 1.92 Dead Space Marines per turn at 24" range, while still being able to move and assault. The Assault Cannon also allows them to take on vehicles under the same conditions. Against light vehicles (AV11) they have a 30% chance of a damaging result, and against heavy vehicles (AV13) they get a 25% chance of a damaging result. In assault, the same squad can threaten a 12" zone with 5.75 Dead Space Marines on the charge. In the same (assault) threat envelope, they can hand out vehicular damage as well, about 1.33 damaging hits against Light vehicles and 1 damaging hit against Heavy vehicles. The LandRaiders can add 1.48 DSM each at 48" range. They also each get 0.59 damaging hits against Light vehicles and 0.395 damaging hits against Heavy vehicles.

Mobility is the Key to Flexibility
I touched on movement briefly above, but for a Water army, mobility is vital. The fact that the squads can move and shoot and assault is vital to their viability as part of a Water army. It also means that they can threaten a range of 12" with assault and up to 30" with Shooting. Also vital, they can threaten targets up to 18" away (from their initial location) while moving backward at 6" (This is a method of fighting known as Kiting, where you backpedal while moving away from enemy assaulters as you shoot them down to a manageable size.) While the LandRaiders aren't as effective at shooting when they move, they can still be effective using their Power of the Machine Spirit. They are also very effective at moving the squads of Terminators, simultaneously increasing their threat range and improving their protection with their AV14.

You Can't Hit Me!
Target Denial is also very important to the Water army. Water armies are Elite, so they can't afford to take many casualties. There are two basic methods of target denial. The first is to make sure that the enemy army cannot see your units. Hiding behind protective terrain or being out of range are two good ways of doing this. You can also use a diluted version of this by "plinking" an enemy unit. In plinking, you move your unit so that you have line of sight to part of the unit, but their heavy and special weapons cannot target you. You then do a little bit of damage to the unit and preven them from shooting at your unit with the really dangerous weapons. This can force the unit to move after you (which will likely prevent any heavy weapons from firing for the next turn as well.) The other method of target denial is to offer an enemy unit only targets that it has little or no hope of damaging. If the enemy unit has no weapon stronger than a missile launcher, but it can damage the Terminators (either through number of shots or Plasma-type weaponry) then simply put the Terminators inside a LandRaider, or position the LandRaider between the enemy unit and your own. Voila! Instant invulnerable wall.

More Than the Sum of it's Parts
Now, a Water army needs flexible units and those units generally want to maximize their effectiveness. Simply making tactical decisions based on the best results for individual units can result in winning games, but not all the time. The units may also need to work together to achieve a victory condition, or one or more might even have to be sacrificed (typically not regarded as the best possible result for an individual unit) to create a favorable condition or victory. An easy example would be to have a LandRaider park itself in front of a 4-Lascannon Devastator squad to keep them from wiping out a squad on an objective. Losing a 250pt vehicle to a single volley isn't very efficient, but if it's in the last turn or two of the game and it keeps that Terminator squad alive to claim the objective and potentially win the game, it's a necessary sacrifice.

Next, let's look at the force I'm planning as my initial trial, and then we'll imagine a couple of scenarios and appropriate tactics.
130 Belial, Master of the Deathwing

245 DeathWing Terminator Squad with 1 Assault Cannon
245 DeathWing Terminator Squad with 1 Assault Cannon

265 LandRaider, Extra Armor
265 LandRaider, Extra Armor

1150pts

Scenario 1: Taking on a combined arms Space Marine force (featuring 3 walking squads geared for counterassault, plus a Devastator squad (Plasma Cannons) and a Lascannon-armed Predator. These forces typically turtle in their deployment zone. The Plasma Cannons offer no danger to the LandRaiders, but are hot death to the Terminators. The Predator won't really cause much damage to the Terminators, but it could be very dangerous to the LandRaiders. If the three walking squads can bring themselves to bear on the Terminator squads, they will wreak havoc on them.

Assuming that I get second turn, I'll start out with my units hidden from view and in cover as much as possible. On my turn, I'll start with the Terminators being out of Line of Sight from the Devastators, forcing them to move to get a shot. The Terminators will use their Assault Cannons to attempt to damage the Predator. (Against an army this mobile, immobilizing it is almost as good as killing it.) The LandRaiders, hidden from the Predator, will take shots at the Devastators. While they won't do much damage, causing a few casualties while your opponent cannot return the favor is very frustrating for them.

The Devastators move out of their frustrating position and the Predator moves out to get a shot at the LandRaiders. The LandRaiders move to limit damage from the Predator and concentrate on the Devastators again. The Terminators move to shoot at the Devastators and spread out, bringing them down to a single gunner.

Having lost about half of their firepower, the Predator again moves to shoot a LandRaider and the 3 foot squads move and Run forward. The last Devastator shoots at the Terminators, but if they are spaced well, he won't do much damage. Ignoring the foot squads for the moment, the Terminators and LandRaiders concentrate on gunning down the Predator. Any shots that are left will go to killing the Devastator.

The three foot squads advance and Run, and the Terminators fall back before them. The Terminators and LandRaiders concentrate their fire on the center squad and should kill about 7 of them.

The foot squads advance and Run again, hoping to trap their enemies against difficult terrain or the back of the board. Now both LandRaiders move directly between the flanking squads, leaving less than 3 inches between the LandRaiders while they fire on the 3 members of the central squad. The Terminators fire on the remaining large squad, then assault it, wiping it out on the charge.

The remaining foot squad cannot get close enough to charge the Terminators, but moves around the LandRaiders. The army will combine it's shooting at the last target, using the LandRaiders to keep it from assaulting the Terminators. (Another option once the Predator was gone would be to mount up in the LandRaiders and just snipe at extreme range, moving when necessary to avoid being assaulted.)

Scenario 2: Taking on a Mechanized Assault Space Marine army (Featuring 3 assaulting squads in Rhinos plus an Assault squad with Jump Packs and a Jump Pack Character.) These will immediately start moving forward toward my forces. Although they have no long range weapons, I can expect at least some of the squads to use Meltaguns and have Powerfists or Meltabombs for taking down my LandRaiders. Each will also likely feature Power Weapons and/or Powerfists, so they will be very dangerous to my Terminators at close range. That's the key word, right there, close range.

Assuming again that I get second turn, I will place my units further back in my deployment zone, and the enemy units all move 12" forward, bringing them roughly to mid-table. Keeping my Terminators within 24" but outside 18", I'll move them away from each other along my baseline as everything fires at the Assault squad. This should take them down to 3 members plus the character.

On the next turn, the enemy will have to split their focus, with the Assault squad and one Rhino closing in on one of my Terminator squads while the 2 remaining Rhinos move toward the other squad and the troops jump out, planning on moving and assaulting next turn. The Terminator squads continue to move away from each other, both focusing their shooting on the Assault squad, wiping it out. The LandRaiders move 6" to get between the rhino squads and their targets, while focusing on killing the Rhino from the assault squad side.

Both sides advance and Run toward my squads, getting within 6" of them to guarantee assault range on the next turn. The LandRaiders pick up their Terminator squads and scoot away.

The 2 squads that still have rhinos get into their Rhinos to give chase, while the third squad attempts to keep up by Running. The Terminator squad against the two squads immediately dismounts and (combining fire with their LandRaider) kills one Rhino, while the other LandRaider pulls further away from the footslogging squad.

The confused Rhino squad jumps back out and moves up in preparation for an assault, with the recently dismounted squad right behind them. The other squad keeps running after the Rhino. Having pulled far enough ahead, the Terminators dismount from their LandRaider and shoot at the single squad, while their LandRaider fires across the table, killing the last Rhino.

At this point, both squads can simply Kite away from the enemy, loading up in their LandRaider whenever a squad gets close.

These enemy squads are likely to have too many powerweapons/powerfists for my Terminators to ever think it worthwhile to assault them, so hanging back and shooting is the name of the game. Another option might have been to leave the single squad behind and have my LandRaider and Terminator squad rejoin their brethren on the far side.

To keep things simple, I have focused both scenarios on Kill Points as their objective, but this army has a good shot at Objective missions as well, given that those Terminator squads are Troops and can thus claim objectives while the LandRaiders can potentially tank shock enemy units off of objectives. I also didn't include Belial in my plans, as I haven't quite figured out his niche. With a Master-Crafted powerweapon (or twin Lightning Claws) and I5, he can do whopping damage in an assault. On the other talon, he's also the only Terminator in my army that won't fit into a LandRaider (at least as long as there's another squad in there.) As such, I expect I'll use him as a distraction and kind of a throw-away unit at times. He'd probably be pretty effective at giving assault units short of I6 a bloody nose, which is probably worth 130pts by itself.

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