Not many.

Let's turn the question on it's head though, as an Epic army fights as a whole, rather than in isolation. Knowing I'm playing against an experienced opponent, what can I do to protect the grunts in the trench, or at the very least make their sacrifice worthwhile?

I can create a deep and wide network of trenches that makes the prospect of a clipping attack less likely. I can place a more resilient or faster formation behind the trenches to react to any Engagement, either by countercharge or a seperate activation. I can bombard (or shoot) the crap out of any enemies that could be such a threat, reducing their threat. I could do the same to any small formations, breaking or destroying them and reducing the enemies activation count, and forcing any such moves earlier in the turn when there is more opportunity to react.

I've found it to be true that Epic is a game of can'ts, not a game of cans. In other words the way to win is not to ask what units are the best. The way to win is to ask what your units' limitations are, and how you can overcome them. This can mean anything from adding upgrades to mitigate weaknesses, to deployment to protect units, to creating 'combat commands' of formations that work in concert, protecting each other's backs and covering the holes in capacity of each other.

Making a unit (or in this case terrain piece) better is not always the answer. It can open the door for abuse and imbalance if not done properly. I've certainly had good enough luck with my Baran, despite them having trenches less compact and more susceptable to clipping in theory than the set I've shown.

_________________
SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

Hi Spectrar,
Thanks for the answer.



True, but being completely dispassionate about it and about how great trenches look, this is more efficiently done in a piece of area terrain. And since both players place terrain pieces, its not impossible to get some where you need it (which is my way of saying that apart from when a tournament organiser sets up terrain, I always have at least one nice piece where I need it ).



Most faster formations (including AV and rough riders) treat trenches as difficult terrain, so it's similar to using a free area terrain piece.

I appreciate your approach of not asking what is best and instead trying to overcome weaknesses, but in my devil's advocate role the weaknesses of trenches are:
They cost 100pts
Their deployment rules can force infantry to space out and be very vulnerable to clipping attacks

To overcome these weaknesses:
Use a nice broad piece of area terrain that has no requirement for wide spacing and costs no points. >:D


Funnily enough though I have found at least one other use for trenches. If you use them against LV armies like Speed Freakz with massed skorchaz, then although the skorchaz ignore cover and thus make trenches completely redudant as fortifications, if you instead set the trench up down the centre of the board to fill gaps between terrain, it will kill 1/6 of the enemy army as it crosses.

So at least that is worth considering

If you are looking at the area terrain as a regular terrain piece set up pregame, I'd be OK with that. I've played on boards with fortifications as fixed terrain, and while occasionally irritating, they affect play balance little.

If you want to have fortifications that are set up where you want them, after objectives are placed, you need to pay for them. You can seriously affect the balance of the game, and that doesn't come cheap.

I know you are aware of this, but overcoming weaknesses doesn't occur at the list writing stage (that is to say, when the list's author designs it), by changing costs, etc. It occurs in the list building stage, and in game through good support, etc.

Massed Skorchas can make fortifications a waste of points, but very few armies will come out with that kind of overwhelming Ignore Cover firepower.

_________________
SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

Use Barbed wire (or minefields if allowed) to defend 'weaker' areas:- if you put barbed wire in front of the corners, the enemy has to cross it to get into assault range, potentially suffering losses in doing so.

Equally if you imagine trench formations set up more like foxholes or like Napoleonic infantry 'squares', you can make sure that enemy attacking the weak corner of one formation come under intense supporting fire from one or more nearby formations.