[Seahunter]

I am very new to Warhammer 40k and so far I have only painted one model.
During my vacation I read the rulebook and I had one burning question.
How do reinforcements work? Most of these questions come from the lack of writing in the reinforcement section. I would appreciate if someone could answer the following questions.

1. Is there a point limit your reinforcements have to follow?
2. Do you reinforcements have to be from the same category? (Heavy Support, Fast Attack and so on.)
3. Do you reinforcements have to be the same unit? (For Eldar... Guardians, Dire Avengers and so on.)
4. Do reinforcements count as scoring units?
5. In what game types do you use reinforcements? (Alpha, Omega, Gamma)
6. Do you get 1 unit of reinforcements for every unit on the table?
7. Do you get points if you damage reinforcements just like you would get points for damaging units deployed at the beginning?

I am dreadfully sorry for all these questions and it would be very appreciated if someone could answer them.


Thank you in advance,

Seahunter
(Eldar)

 

[Moglun]

In case this increased your confusion, reinforcements = reserves.

First of all, reserves are taken from your army roster - they are NOT extra units beyond what you already have in your army. So if you have four units of guardians in your army and two of them start in reserve for some reason, you deploy two normally and keep the other two off the board until you successfully roll them in.

Regarding #1, 2, 3, 5, 6:
Check the particular mission special rules. A mission with escalation, for example, will start with all your units except for basic unmounted infantry deployed in reserve.

Regarding #4 and 7:
Reserves are normal units in all ways. You score/get points for destroying them just like with any other unit of the same type.

 

[Seahunter]

Just to confirm...

You can choose to keep units in reserve until you roll a sufficient roll to activate them into play.
Also the only time you MUST have reserves on the basic 5 missions found on pages 81-83 in the Warhammer 40K rulebook is when playing a Omega game.
Please tell me if I am wrong in either statement but if I am correct this will assuage my fear of not being able to understand reserves.

 

[tarzen]

You are correct on those two points.

In all honesty, most people don't play with optional reserves, but there is nothing to say all units must be deployed on board unless they have the reserve rule.

that said, i prefer keeping my fast transports in reserve, but you may find people don't expect this and it may at times cause issue.

 

[Seahunter]

Thank you very much both Moglun and Tarzen. I now have gone from not understanding reserves at all to fully understanding them.

 

[tarzen]

Fantastic!

And one thing we both missed earlier, WELCOME TO THE FORUMS!