Back to Basics: Tactica - Searchlights

Do you like surprising your opponent? My team did in our most recent game of Apocalypse, my first, against our Chaotic adversaries. The night fighting special rule was in effect for the first turn and across from us the forces of Chaos had the initiative and were amassed in the dark, ready to unleash all the horrors of the warp on us, the loyal servants of the Emperor. We seized.

After the cheers and groans died down we went to work together on prioritizing our targets. Of course, the Reaver Titan had to go, but our shooting would be a lot less effective this turn because of night fighting. Someone, I don't remember who now, suggested we should use our searchlights. Genius!

I feel like we often ignore many of the minor special rules that our models have. Perhaps its too much to remember, or we just don't think that we will EVER use them. However, a tool that allows us to remove that cover save our opponent gets when darkness hangs over the battlefield really ought to get a second look. So here we go.

“Searchlights are used when the Night Fighting rules are in effect. If a vehicle has a searchlight, it can, after firing all of its weapons, choose to illuminate its target with the searchlight. If it does so, it also illuminates itself. You may find it helpful to place coins, or other suitable counters, next to the units as reminders, and next to a vehicle to show it has used its searchlights this turn. Illumination lasts until the end of the following turn. Illuminated units gain no benefit from the Night Fighting special rule.” (mini BRB pg. 87)

In order to take the most advantage of this rule, three criteria should be met:

1. The vehicle that is using the searchlight should already be close, within 12” of the target enemy unit so that its shooting is not impaired by night fighting.
2. The vehicle should be inexpensive enough that you won't mind losing it almost immediately and that by giving it up as a sacrifice, you are not endangering a valuable unit like troops or your powerful support. So Rhinos, Razorbacks, Land Raiders, Chimeras, and Tauroxes should be the last on your list to use their searchlights.
3. The target unit should be a high priority target, something you don't expect your sacrifice to kill outright with its shooting. The idea is to make your support units that are stuck back in your deployment zone effective on turn one. Like the devastators who would normally not be able to shoot or would be shooting at something with a ridiculous cover save. This makes your army fully effective during night fighting.

Interestingly, the two vehicles that can meet all of these criteria the easiest are the good old Dreadnought in a Drop Pod and the scouting Sentinel. I'm not saying that they're the be-all-end-all of searchlight management, but they certainly perform the best in this role. Since I've started using searchlights in my regular games of 40k I've seen a huge improvement in how effectively I perform in the game where I previously felt like I had to hang back and wait until the second turn in games that I had to deal with night fighting. I now take opponents off guard and catch them with their pants down in open areas where they thought that the darkness would keep them safe for a turn. It really is a game changer and you should definitely take advantage of searchlights if you play Imperium (or formerly Imperium...heretics!).