). Each article will be aimed at a certain part of the game and aim to share my experiences with the newer members, to the effect of improving their overall game by focussing on the small details. This first article looks at deployment
So, onto the article itself...
While it is not possible to win the game in deployment, it is possible to put yourself in a stronger position to win the game by deploying well, it is also certainly possible to lose the game with a bad deployment. Most players fall into one of two camps when it comes to deployment, i call these camps "counter-deployment" and "set-deployment". The two methods of deployment have quite differing styles, and both are skills that a player would be well advised to develop.
A "counter-deployment" is where we place our units in response to what our opponent has placed, for example we place warmachine hunters opposite his warmachines. If you decide to deploy in this way, your first step should be to make a careful analysis of your opponent's army and make a plan how to deal with each unit in it. This means making a realistic decision about each unit, don't rely on spearelves to beat chaos warriors for example. If some units are hard for you to kill, you can plan to avoid them or redirect them with something. Finally, if you decide that one of your units is going to need to kill two of theirs (for example, i know i need to shoot both a unit of dark riders and a unit of harpies with one unit of my archers) decide on your priorities (maybe you decide you should shoot the harpies, because they have a higher move and thus threaten your mages more, or the dark riders because they shoot and so will hurt your elite infantry). Now that you have a plan for each unit in the opponents army, you can aim to deploy each of your units opposite it's main target. Each time your opponent deploys a unit, you respond by deploying your counter unit in a good position to counter it.
Admittedly this method of deployment is more complicated than just this. If your opponent puts down his warmachine hunters, you should consider deploying your warmachines far away from them, even though this may mean they are less close to their real target. The objective is to place each unit in the best position to counter it's target unit, not to put your units as close as possible to it's target. Remember that you will have planned to avoid or redirect certain units, which you can achieve either by deploying far away from them (refusing the flank) or by the use of an eagle. If you do decide you will use an eagle for this, remember this when deploying the eagle. Also remember your opponent will be trying to kill your units and things such as shielding your units from line of sight of warmachines and giving them good fields of advance while being able to protect their flanks are important.
Every time you have to deploy a unit when you don't know the best place for any of your units (because no unit's first target is deployed yet). I suggest deploying the fast elements of your army (especially true of eagles and reavers) because they can redeploy in the shortest number of turns.
As you gain experience with this kind of deployment, you will become better at planning to deal with enemy units, and develop better anticipation of what your opponent is planning to do with his units. You will also learn to plan for his army in "teams" (people like to tag team infantry with a chariot, or with a flanking unit of some sort) and you should learn to recognise these teams as such, and consider these as a solo unit. (the most common team is when people plan to put a certain character in a certain unit, which you can often tell because of a gap in the unit).
The other method of deployment is quite different, instead of reacting to your opponent's deployment, you have developed a plan as to how you will work the army during the army selection stage and you deploy with this in mind. In my armies i have somewhere between 1 and 5 "set" deployments, which i bring out as required, generally i look at my opponent's army and decide how i am going to deploy my army, and then do so, with little reaction to my opponent's deployment.
These plans are not rigid, but are more of the idea of where units will be in the battle line. With any set deployment, there are units that we do not consider part of our plan. These are our "trouble-shooters". These units we use to deal with the big problems an enemy can put in our way, and so are always dictated by some of our opponent's units. for example we want to ensure our stardragon does as much damage as possible to the hardest units in the enemy army but is shot as little as possible. Thus we endeavour to ensure it is out of line of sight of enemy warmachines, but is also in the best position to kill the enemy that we will need it against.
the most common trouble shooters are warmachines (these, by their nature, make good trouble shooters from their ability to kill big monsters at long range, but need to be as protected as possible from enemy warmachine hunting attention), eagles (trouble-shooting is their entire job) and mounted characters (these are good for their ability to do additional damage in combat and can run a long way to get there). Any set deployment player should have at least a few trouble shooters to call on, and deploys these last, in order to best assess where they are needed. Note that we consider where the enemy force will be superior to ours, and it is these points we ensure support from trouble shooters, we do not generally look at single enemy units.
Now that i have outlined the two types of deployment, i will consider the advantages and disadvantges of each one:
The advantage of a counter deployment method is that you come into the game with a plan, and are deployed in such a way as to be able to employ that plan succesfully. The disadvantages of this method are that: the death of one or two key units means you are in a bad position when it comes to delaing with certain enemies; it is difficult to do effectively to fast armies or woodelves, because these can redeploy so effectively; and you are very vulnerable to an opponent doing something unpredictable, or using an unexpected item (when you plan to use a stardragon on a certain enemy unit, but they have the armour of stars in the unit say).
The advantage of set-deployment is you do not get decieved by your opponent, the disadvantages are: you can find yourself out of place to deal with a certain unit, your opponent deploying in an unexpected way can force you to reconsider your deployment or pt you completely out of position, a certain amount of anticipation is needed with your trouble shooters, you are reliant on your trouble shooters early on, and losing them can have serious consequences, you often find yourself stuck in a pattern and using the wrong set deployment can lose the game.
It would be wise to discuss some of the more common set deployments (thanks rod): i will give an outline of each one and why/when it works. A "refused flank" is where you deploy most of your army on one flank, with only redirectors or deception units in the centre or far flank. The point of this method is that it lets you engage a section of the enemy army with all of yours, and is most useful against horde armies since your troops are much better 1:1 than his are. "Castling" is a similar concept, you deploy in a corner, often on a hill. The difference however, is that a refused flank is aimed at stealing the amrch on the opponent, you move forward and engage his line, then pivot round to tackle to oncoming centre and far flank, whilst a castle deploys as far from the opponent as possible and then shoots the enemy until it gets close, engaging only to protect its ranged elements. There is also "battle-line" which is deploying across the centre of the table in something resembling a line, which has the advantage of being able to isolate and destroy either side of the enemy line more easily; an "echelon" deployment (as i understand it) uses a double wave of troops, the first being flak and rubbish, planning to flee from charges, setting up flanking and supporting charges from the better troops in the second row, with support from any flak that happens to see the sides of the enemy. this is often done with O+G or skaven, with slaves or goblins infront of better troops. "checkerboard" is similar, however here the flak is deployed intending to take charges, allowing flanking charges whether the recieving unit stands or is broken and pursued.
There are some very good articles on these deployments in the library.
There another issue that needs to be raised (thanks gobblas for pointing this out), and that is the idea of "cheap" deployment slots. using units like eagles, chariots, archers and silver helms, we have enough disposable deployments that we can put down a lot of units without disclosing what our battle plan is. this allows us to assess our opponents deployment from a position with more information than our opponent has. You should consider the number of deployments you have during army selection. If you already have lots, then getting as many as possible in is probably a goood plan, if you don't have many, then you may be better off going for strong units and the skeinsliver in order to be pretty sure of going first.
Thank you for reading (though i do wonder how many people will get all the way through), i hope it helps someone (i don't know how useful this will be to people).
Next issue will be about redirection of units.
Deployment is really my favourite part of the game. It's where you get greatly rewarded for keeping your head cool and being able to win your opponent in the mind game. The rest of the game is sometimes a bit unrewarding, due to the random factor of dice coming in. 
