Casting Down Tyranny (How to Fight the Guild)

[Kihraxz]

Hivemind,

I have recently run into some trouble with the Guild. Prominently against Lady Justice (probably something to do with Yan Lo). My standard tactics of tying up key models and cutting down the rest have not been working as well.

So I write this both to learn and to share what are the Guild's strengths? What are their weaknesses? 

Here is what I have so far;

Guild Strengths: High damage output, Cheap Armor +x, Lots of Shooting

Guild Weakness: Elite crews, 

Guild Keywords: Critical Strike +x, Armor +x, Bury 

 

[hydranixx]

In my eyes, Guild's biggest weakness is that they're fairly static, especially when I compare them to Ten Thunders. They have few instances of Incorporeal or Flight and there aren't many pushes to go around. Most of their damage comes from models that are either slow and shooty (think Riflemen and Austringers) or slow and stompy (think peacekeepers, and until recently, executioners).

It's the masters themselves that usually offer mobility to their crew or are super mobile themselves - think McCabe, Perdita, McMourning, Lucius, Nellie, I think, just off the top of my head. If the opponent is well versed with their master/henchman choices, they'll know when and where to apply the few movement tricks they have to great effect. 

Since you mentioned Lady Justice, we may as well take a quick look at her. While she doesn't hand out a tonne of mobility, she can still give pushes to her Marshalls when she charges (which she will, as often as you let her), much of her crew has Unimpeded, and last but not least, the charges that she performs also ignore intervening terrain/models. She hits decidedly hard, as befits a skilled swords-person with a massive sword, so yes, a strategy of tying key things up will often fall short against her. Also, her 8" spell that nukes Conditions can be very strong against some Ten Thunder crews - say goodbye to your Chi stacks / Defensive Stance+Focused Condition spam / Reactivate+Nimble (McCabe) and all your Oni with Flicker.

Guild players have to play quite astutely to work with their slow movement, doubly so if the board is full of terrain. Thunders should be able to achieve your schemes while running rings around them, but if your plan is to hold them in place, a lot of Guild models are going to punish you for it.

A quick note on your Keywords, Critical Strike, and to a slightly lesser extent Armour, are plentiful in the faction, you're right on both those points. However, Bury is a mechanic that is pretty much exclusive in Guild to Lady J's Marshalls and their Emissary. You won't find anyone else using it.

[InvokeChaos]

In slight argument, I find I always see at least one guild Marshall being run with Sonnia, Perdita, Lucius and Lady J. I imagine Nellie doesn't really need one and McCabe has other things on his mind typically. But being on such an efficient and useful minion, it's a regular appearance you need to prepare for.

Also the J-bomb is a thing, so you have to worry about that (emissary boxing her and carting her relatively slow self up into charge range for the following turn).

Yan Lo is probably not the master I would take against Guild, especially if Lady J is a big drop. Yan Lo, while typically a very surviveable toolbox master, has all his defenses effectively ignored by a Lady J crew. So it's an uphill battle. Sonnia nukes him. Nellie has as much if not more control than him, Perdita can blitz his models off the board despite his armor buffing and Lucius's recent upgrades make even him a sizeable threat to the Yan Lo strategy.

If you're looking for general counter picks to Guild, Mei Fang is a consideration, as she nullifies a lot of the offensive potential of two of the most popular masters, and isn't bad against the others. Asami is also a call out here, because you can jam up your opponent with summons that would flicker out anyways. But going early and dropping 2-3 summons into their engagement then warping away with Heavenly Design isn't a bad strategy. And you can keep the rest of your crew cherrypicking targets and scheming.

In regards to Lady J... I've had good success with Misaki. Misaki's benefits are not conditioned based, except stalk. And with her new buff to deadly dance, I would absolutely run disguise on her, take a lone swordsman for flanking the ranged threat and laugh as Lady J just cannot keep up while Misaki blows up her models. It's not quite that easy, but mobility and consistent damage output is nothing to sneeze at. And denying Lady J that charge on her is pretty potent.

Also for consideration might be Lynch. While brilliance is a thing, he runs elite crews fairly well, huggy is a huge threat in general, and you only TRULY need brilliance for his combo. Just be careful about positioning as Lady J getting the charge off on him could potentially be a dead Lynch in one activation. Being able to rush huggy into her to absorb two swings and thus denying her charging is huge, and teh fact that you revive him from nuking her other models... potentially a decent pick. 

McCabe is also pretty good as he is the only master with consistent ways of ignoring Armor with his lightsaber. 

Last thing: Bring your smoke grenades on any enforcer or beater you don't want getting shot up and play to your cover. 

[Tris]

On 25.1.2017 at 2:42 AM, hydranixx said:

It's the masters themselves that usually offer mobility to their crew or are super mobile themselves - think McCabe, Perdita, McMourning, Lucius, Nellie, I think, just off the top of my head. If the opponent is well versed with their master/henchman choices, they'll know when and where to apply the few movement tricks they have to great effect. 

-> don`t underestimate the 2" push from Austringers here

Since you mentioned Lady Justice, we may as well take a quick look at her. While she doesn't hand out a tonne of mobility, she can still give pushes to her Marshalls when she charges (which she will, as often as you let her), much of her crew has Unimpeded, and last but not least, the charges that she performs also ignore intervening terrain/models.

-> her charges only ignore LoS

She hits decidedly hard, as befits a skilled swords-person with a massive sword, so yes, a strategy of tying key things up will often fall short against her. Also, her 8" spell that nukes Conditions can be very strong against some Ten Thunder crews - say goodbye to your Chi stacks / Defensive Stance+Focused Condition spam / Reactivate+Nimble (McCabe) and all your Oni with Flicker.

-> needs a 12 though, so not that easy, but yeah, perfectly doable if it`s worth it for the Guild player

 

[Ludvig]

Lady J has a lot of wounds but no defensive tech and a poor df stat for a master. You can put a nasty condition on her and she'll be stuck with it. You can also overload her with attacks. Double katanaka snipers are always fun for putting some pressure on her early. If she reaches your models you can make sure she only gets to attack weak models by walking them near her and pushing your worthwhile targets away from her.

She also has a relatively low mobility so you should be able to control where she moves. She's only range 2 in ml so put her between two models with longer engagements and she's stuck trying to disengage with her df 5. You shouldn't try to tank her with the likes of Toshiro, take something really cheap or use armour/incorp/htk. I don't remember all TT statlines but there should br a few cheap models she.will have trouble brining down. For LJ specifically I would have a look at Oiran. Put them so she can't walk once and hit but so that she can't charge anything behind them either and you have bascially paralyzed her.

Guild generally have high damage but very poor resilience and mobility so if you can bring some damage dealers of your own they will struggle. They have almost no engagement ranges of 3" so they can often be locked down. They are also really really bad at hand manipulation and card draw which is a major weakness so attack their hand. For a shooty faction they are surprisingly low on sniper type models.

[NulSec]

As a Guild player who recently switched to Ten Thunders (in the past two weeks), I can tell you something of what concerns me as a Guild player, but I don't know Ten Thunders enough to know their strengths just yet. 

Concerns as a Guild Player: 

-Activation control. Guild tends to run on the light side, because their crews are elite. 
-Anything that pushes me out of position. With a low mobility (outside of a Nellie crew) - it is rough to have models out of position. Specifically, Francisco. He is in most Guild crews, because he is GROSS especially with Debt to the Guild (likely min 5), so try to slow, push, or put conditions on him - he is VERY important to most crews. If you can push him away from whatever Master he deploys near, you can deny effective use of Frank as a beater as well as someone who will put El Mayor (+2 DEF and WILL) on a master. 
-Guild can't spread out. This goes back to having elite crews. As a guild player I could never really afford to spread out - if the S&S can be done using a large area of the map - take them. 
-Blasters always concerned me, but I am not sure how much of that exists in Ten Thunders. 

So those are some things I'd look to exploit.