I made this pretty good post on the PP forums a few months back about piece trading and thought I should archive it here. The question posed was "explain piece trading to me". Here is my response:
I think piece-trading is one of the fundamental concepts of Warmachine. It is one of the pillars of an attrition-based strategy.
One of the first things I try to impress upon new players is that some
or most their stuff is going to die almost every game (a lot of people
have a hard time with this concept because they get emotionally attached
to their models and how cool and badass they are supposed to be, and
forget their opponent's stuff is also cool and badass). What matters is
what you get in exchange for it on the following turn(s). You should
always expect stuff to die, but you should likewise always have a plan
for what you can get in return for something dying.
For example, as a Blindwater player, good piece trading is how I can
beat Runes of War. That's fundamentally what that matchup comes down to
for me.
If you as the Troll player lead with the Runeshapers, then I can just
kill them with unbuffed Gators (assuming you don't pull out high-skill,
uncounterable plays like making lots of tough rolls), and in return I
lose a couple of those Gators in exchange for your heavy, and generally
don't have to worry about the heavies as much if they are in the back
and just exposing themselves to kill a few Gators.
This pushes you to lead with beasts instead and make good use of the
walls to mitigate my charges. Because I have longer effective threat ranges on my
heavies with Boundless Charge + Reach (not to mention Rask's feat), and
they hit really hard with Fury + Rask's amazing gun of wonder, I can
probably use one of my heavies a turn to kill one of your heavies and
initiate the trading. That heavy will in turn be killed by another of
your heavies. Something like this:
Wrastler (+a few extra damage points) kills Mulg -> Earthborn kills
Wrastler -> Swamp Horror kills Earthborn -> Mauler kills Swamp
Horror -> Furied Gators/Snapjaw kills Mauler -> I have Snapjaw + a
lot of Gators and you have Runeshapers that although really good will
have trouble dealing with that much ARM and attacks, and Horluk without
transfers easily dies to a Gator or two.
Horluk's feat can potentially be a problem of course, that's like the
ace in the hole for the Troll player and makes for a real good game.
Doom Reavers are a good example of a piece-trade oriented unit because
when used effectively they force a choice - if your opponent ignores
them, they get charged by MAT 7 POW 13 reach berserk weapon masters. That
is not a sweet for them, and super sweet for you. However, if you
opponent uses attacks on killing the Doom Reavers, then they aren't
damaging your other stuff. The key to using Doom Reavers effectively is
to make sure that choice exists. If you throw them out front and they
get shot without consequences, then they accomplish nothing. If they get
shot at, and in doing so means your other, potentially more important
pieces get where they need to be (all it takes is one Reaver to force
command checks and tie up stuff), then that could be worth 6 pts in
itself.
Likewise, I've won a lot of games because I was able to just throw a
crapload of troops in my opponent's face to stop him getting into a
zone. Jamming, as this is called, is basically trading models for
control points/board control. It doesn't matter if you give up 25pts of
your army in one turn if you can win the game next turn.
In terms of factions, Cryx is really good at the piece-trade game
because they can trade cheap garbage for your expensive stuff in almost
every list using all their crack-fueled buffs/debuffs and mildly OP
troops. That's why it's really important to take out the lynchpin models
like Necrosurgeons, the very last Bile Thrall, Tartarus or whatever to
reduce the impact of their retaliation OR, more effectively, just shoot
them from a distance where they can't really hit back. That's why Cryx
doesn't do so well vs ranged factions like Ret, Cygnar or PoM and
curbstomps melee-centric factions like Trolls, Skorne, Gators, etc. It
basically comes down to piece-trading.
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Building up from there, I would expand on the Runes of War matchup by looking at the Nilsson vs Flanzer matchup that took place at the 2013 WTC. This was Maelok with 3 Posse, 3 Croctors, 3 Bull Snappers and WE + Snapjaw vs the standard Runes of War list (with Axer).
Flanzer realized that if he lead with the Runeshapers, as one often does with Runes of War, they will simply get killed by unbuffed Gators and not kill too many of them in return. The heavies might then kill a couple, but by then, Revived Gators would have infiltrated the rear ranks, started killing the Krielstone and probably would have gotten to Doomshaper. This would be quite bad for the Troll board position.
Instead, Flanzer decided to put his heavies up front. He realized that Gators without Rask suck at cracking ARM 19+ really bad and he was rocking ARM 21+ due to walls, Krielstone and animi. No problem. As a result, he was able to cockblock Maelok's feat using Mulg's magic stick as well as the anti-incorporeal aura at a safe distance and just slowly grind the Gators down by throwing them away and plinking them off with Runeshaper AoEs, giving almost nothing up in return.
Despite officially being the (Kanye-approved) Greatest Minion Player of All Time, Rickard was not able to trade the Gators for anything given the board position. Beating on the heavies was a highly unlikely proposition for him, and his only real chance in the matchup was to push aggressively for the assassination, which is really tough given Runes' defensive layers.
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