Many players put less thought than they should into unit deployment before play begins. Some, myself included, get carried away by the excitement of the imminent conflict and forget about key plans they made before the battle.
Here are the key things to bear in mind before the battle begins.
1) Are any of your units already commited for any reason (eg a unit which must be used to protect an artillery piece) ?
2) Which units should be close to your army general and/or the army battle standard ?
3) Which units should be in the front of your lines and which in the rear ?
4) Which units should be deployed close to one another to maximise their effectiveness ?
5) What size frontage do you want and is the battlefield big enough to accomodate this ?
Now, when your enemy starts deploying you'll find that half your plans have to be adjusted (or maybe) abandoned to cater for their unit positions.
Note: your opponent's deployment should take precedence (as a rule of thumb) over the plans you had before you saw his/her army.
The most important aspects to observing their deployment are these :-
1) Where is the enemy strength 'hotspot' and does it look likely to advance or defend ?
2) Can you spot any weaknesses in your opponents battle lines ?
3) How will you engage or counter the enemy's long range weaponry ?
These are all just key points to consider, if I tried to write about all eventualities this post would end up extremely long !
The final thing to consider is your order of deployment.
If you have a key 'would like to try this' plan then you need to keep it as secret as possible during your deployment. Eg. Don't position your flyers directly opposite a stone thrower as soon as your enemy places it on the table (unless it's a bluff)
Also, deploy your strongest most important units last of all. This particularly applies to cavalry, even though they can move more quickly ypur enemy will want to take as many shots at them as possible before they get into combat.
Observe the terrain aswell. If there's a hill on your side and you have artillery you may aswell place that unit first because your enemy knows you would be mad not to put the arty on the elevated position. By placing the artillery you are not giving away anything your enemy does not already know or cannot guess.
May Sigmar Heldenhammer be with you (unless you're a greenskin or chaos of course !)
