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How to counter the December Acolytes in Henchman Hardcore?


Baskakov_Dmitriy

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My main faction is Arcanists (though I own some of the Outcast models, like Johan), my friend's is Ten Thunders. My friend's crew isn't assembled yet, so we play Henchman Hardcore using my models, the ones that I know well (my main crew is Rasputina with her thematic models occupying most of the space). 

During our last game the crew of my friend was:

Leader: Snow Storm (cache 2)

- Sub Zero (1 SS)

Ice Golem (9 SS)

Ice Gamin (4 SS)

Silent One (6 SS)

My crew was:

Leader: Snow Storm (cache 2)

December Acolyte (7 SS)

December Acolyte (7 SS) 

Silent One (6 SS)

We took turns installing the terrain, flipping a card for the player installing first. Sadly, I did not make a photo of the result, but the important parts were:

1) A Ht 3 forest on my right flank behind which my friend could flank my crew, perhaps with some losses, but still.

2) A Hard cover thingie that did not actually matter, because the Silent One (Df 3) standing behind it has suddenly charged forward and got Severe damage (6) from my December Acolyte (which would need to focus to get a cheatable damage flip normally)

3) A Ht 3 building (Hard Cover, doesn't block LoS) a couple of inches right and behind the center line, so the other December Acolyte could stand on it, score points for the strat, and actually see some of her crew, most importantly the Ice Golem which was not within required distance from the forest and hence it was a clear (second) shot from the December Acolyte, Sh 6, to the Ice Golem (Df 2). 

My friend has waited for too much (was attacking my crew only by the third Turn instead of the second Turn), so things didn't go rather well. 3-4 cards per Turn discarded for nothing due to the built-in trigger, slows... My friend has managed to kill my Henchman because I have announced a wrong suit on the Red Joker in my hand, but the end result was 8-3. 

______

Now the important stuff. What I would do against this shooting crew as my friend's crew is charging in as fast as possible, hoping for Bulletproof on the Snow Storm (and "In the middle of the storm") to do its job, engage the Acolytes and then outdamage them. Or even rush to kill the Henchman if I could place the Ice Golem rightly. But I already see a counter: use Snow Storm's Sh attack to push the enemy away, as the whole enemy crew is Frozen Heart. A Joss+Howard Langston+Arcane Effigy+Mobile Toolkit crew would do a rampage on the enemy Henchman because there is a place to hide most of the time. And if I the shooting crew would place an even higher roof, it would be able to see almost all of the models if not all of them, making the enemy to discard cards and get Slow. 

So, the question. 

How does one actually counter a shooting crew? How does one protect against that many shooters? Should we simply use more terrain objects?

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3 hours ago, Nikodemus said:

If you had to guess, how big of of a % of the table was covered in some kind of terrain? How much of that was effective LoS blocking?

LoS blocking terrain:

1. There was a forest on the right flank. My friend could actually, with some very accurate measurements, land a (3) Smash on one of my models by Turn 2, probably even my Henchman, but that would depend on the activation order and things that I would do.

2. There was a Ht 4 blocking wagon in the middle (the opponent's side), there were other things, but they didn't matter much because only a small portion of the battlefield was actually used. My friend had also forgot about the elevation rules that allowed me to shoot above the forest -- the point of elevation was to draw LoS differently.  The blocking wagon didn't matter much either because my friend has made a mistake, but the stairs to the wagon were also considered hard cover, so the Silent One was well defended. 

My vantage point wasn't LoS blocking (so an enemy Henchman could stand in more than 12 inches from it, then move in and shoot me through cover, then push my model because it had Frozen Heart -- would be 3 points of damage and I would also lose a strategic position).

Other things didn't have an impact on the game.

______________

Anyway. How much terrain do you usually use/recommend?

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4 hours ago, Baskakov_Dmitriy said:

How much exactly is OK? Could you please perhaps link me to photos of proper amount of terrain? 

It's also important how many roofs are present. If there are any, they can potentially invalidate every single piece of cover. 

Fill 25% to 40% of the board with terrain and then spread ut out. If you’ve got many places that a model with a 10 inch range can’t be approached by a melee model that is trying to stay in cover you probably need more terrain. 

This is what a typical table I play on looks like.

f4uP2oO.jpg

 

If you have roofs that are higher than the other pieces of terrain on the board the  you need to define them so models can’t stand on top of them. A sniper’s nest that is able to get LoS to any spot in range should probably never be permitted. 

If you need to, fudge the height of so e of your other blocking terrain upwards to that it can block LoS from vantage points.

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Vantage points are almost like negative terrain. If you include them you need to carefully consider how to block LoS of a model standing on them. A single vatage point should probably not let you see more than about 1/3 or even 1/4 of a table. We usually have 2-4 ht 5 dense forests. They don't need to be super big, many small areas of dense terrain covers LoS better than one large covering he same area.

We also try to design tables so that a shooting model in the turfwar are cannot see the entire turf war area for example. Having the center free so you can place a marker at th exact center of the table is good since certain dtrats want that but apart from the exact center I usually try to block off a lot of the 6" of the center, about 4 LoS blocking pieces is good, I try to see if two players could score turf war without seing each other in the 6" area and not being able to see anyone in the opposing deployment zone (even if the opponent is on a vantage point). That is a good center of a table for me. 

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Things to also remember for Henchman hardcore. 

You need 2 models within 6" (and 15mm) of the middle to score. You only start with 4 models. You can actually deploy in a scoring position since the deployment type is close. 

Most of the time I find Turn 1 has combat so I am very surprised your opponent wasn't causing you issues until turn 3!

 

 

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On 3/4/2018 at 10:48 AM, Ludvig said:

Vantage points are almost like negative terrain.

Pretty much. I actually think about using no vantage points at all as they devalue other terrain and drain time for determining LoS in an alternative way.

On 3/4/2018 at 8:59 AM, WWHSD said:

Fill 25% to 40% of the board with terrain and then spread ut out.

I am thinking about developing an algorithm that would assign a point value to each piece of terrain, based on the area it can cover on the board. The amount of terrain will be determined based on this total point value. So, we would use a given "general" amount of terrain, and get a rough estimation of the terrain types distribution. 

Terrain that is actually used in the gaming club that I attend can be broken in those groups: 

  1. Forests of different Ht
  2. Soft cover fences, usually Ht 1
  3. Hard cover fences, also usually Ht 1
  4. Buildings (could be called climbable and non-climbable)
  5. Pieces of Severe terrain, which could also be called Hazardous

The fence types are the most common, which means that a great advantage is given to a crew that has a lot of LoS-based attacks that ignore Cover. The overall amount of terrain was actually generally pretty low (typically 25% of the board or sometimes even less) in the games that I have played, but that is my rough estimation. 

If an algorithm appears to formalize the terrain distribution, we can balance the usual encounters better or even predictably make "special" encounters, such as "this will be played on a field of severe terrain, so prepare something that bypasses it". 

On 3/5/2018 at 12:57 PM, Adran said:

Most of the time I find Turn 1 has combat so I am very surprised your opponent wasn't causing you issues until turn 3!

This was due to poor deployment and poor decisions made (failure to surround me and charge as fast as possible). 

On 3/5/2018 at 12:57 PM, Adran said:

You need 2 models within 6" (and 15mm) of the middle to score. You only start with 4 models. You can actually deploy in a scoring position since the deployment type is close.

True! But it would be an even worse decision, as this would make my friend's whole Crew a perfect target of my shooting, especially of my Silent One with her blasts. 

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We use the example forests of the rulebook which are ht 5, we never measure the trees, forests are dense terrain that will always block any LoS. I would never define a piece higher than 3" or 4" as a vantage point to stand on and our houses are 4" high to block all models and all vantage point sight lines.

When you are building tables for henchman hardcore you should keep in mind that it will be close deployment and push the terrain closer to the center. All the models will usually be within 10" of the middle the entire game so focus on that area and fill it up nicely.

Shooting is strong when the enemy can't engage the shooter. There's no real way around that. The crews in this case also might have been a bit mismatched. Two acolytes is pobably better than the gamin + golem in any game. 

If you had the golem crew you would need to get snowstorm up and place the golem forward or something to let it get stuck in turn 1. Not attacking with your ml beater turn one is not an acceptable outcome in Henchman hardcore. With a wider selection of models the ml crew would have had better mobility to ensure that.  Another option would have been tossing the gamin to engage something. Either way facing an enemy snowstorm is a major annoyance for a golem since it pushes models with Frozen heart. A blessed of december would probably have made the game more interesting.

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12 hours ago, Baskakov_Dmitriy said:

This was due to poor deployment and poor decisions made (failure to surround me and charge as fast as possible).

When you say charge, do you mean figuratively or as the game mechanic? Because the only one of his models that should really be charging anything is Snowstorm. Attacks have to have a :meleesymbol to be used in a charge, and you don't really want to be using those on the Acolytes or Silent Ones.

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8 hours ago, Ludvig said:

We use the example forests of the rulebook which are ht 5, we never measure the trees, forests are dense terrain that will always block any LoS. I would never define a piece higher than 3" or 4" as a vantage point to stand on and our houses are 4" high to block all models and all vantage point sight lines.

Agreed, defining terrain attributes (especially Ht) based on what you need on the table tends to work best.

Are all of your fences less than 2 inches? Would they work better as Ht2 instead of Ht1? Just define them as Ht2.

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There was a pretty good thread on terrain setup on the boards a while back, sadly I think it didn't survive the update to the new board software.

The main rule book uses the alternating style of terrain placement, but generally I've found that "competitive terrain placing" almost never goes well, especially with 2 newer players.  General advice I've used when setting up a board.

1) Gather all your terrain together into a single pile on one side of the board.  It should take up at LEAST 25% of the board, and ideally more like 33% to 50% of the board.  (A lot of tournaments seem to shoot for 33% most of the time)  If your terrain is a lot of "ruins with big open spot" kind of stuff that's really popular with 40K, give it some extra.  The big open spots aren't helping anyone.

2) Make sure you have a good variety of terrain.  Not just a heap of short walls, or all forests or something.  Different models are good at different types of terrain, so you want to make sure that there's enough variety to work with.  I've found breaking your terrain into good amounts into forests, plain rough terrain, and hard cover building type stuff is generally a good bet.

3) Try to lay stuff out so no one can get a commanding line of site on most of the board from ground level.  Look for long firing lanes on your layout, and adjust stuff to limit them.

4) Especially with buildings, look out for really unapproachable sniper nests (Really tall buildings with balconies/roofs/etc).  A *very* natural urge is to put all your weird tall terrain away from the middle of the board, which puts these things right in deployment zones. (see big gray building in WWHSD's photo, top left).  Resist that urge!  Depending on how inaccessible the terrain is, I'd suggest either putting it somewhere more easily accessed, or else just calling the whole platform impassible so no one goes up there.  ((Yes, there is counterplay to them, but it's generally really limited and ends up not being fun for anyone.))

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1 hour ago, Clement said:

  A *very* natural urge is to put all your weird tall terrain away from the middle of the board, which puts these things right in deployment zones. (see big gray building in WWHSD's photo, top left).  Resist that urge!  Depending on how inaccessible the terrain is, I'd suggest either putting it somewhere more easily accessed, or else just calling the whole platform impassible so no one goes up there.  ((Yes, there is counterplay to them, but it's generally really limited and ends up not being fun for anyone.))

Good advice. When we defined terrain, the second floors on all of those ruins didn't exist. We also defined the ruined buildings on bases so that only the walls mattered (and not the base itself).

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On 3/7/2018 at 5:49 PM, BFOmega said:

When you say charge, do you mean figuratively or as the game mechanic?

Figuratively. However, if possible, I would personally charge the enemy Snow Storm with my own one and get the Ice Golem in BtB contact with the enemy, so the next turn we have a Smash to land on the enemy. The Ice Golem is a very weak model if you shoot it from afar with something that ignores Armour +2, but not if it is already beating you with a build-in Slow or a 9/10/12 MI attack. Of course, if possible, I would not declare a Charge Action as the Golem, and would place it via Snow Storm instead. 

The Silent One is a model that can withstand a lot of weak hits, but cannot survive one strong strike of 6, which is not hard to land at all if your attacking stat is 6. The Acolytes aren't very touch either. 

On 3/7/2018 at 6:59 PM, WWHSD said:

Are all of your fences less than 2 inches? Would they work better as Ht2 instead of Ht1? Just define them as Ht2.

Seems to be a nice idea. I can just make or buy Ht 2 fences then. 

 

On 3/7/2018 at 7:29 PM, Clement said:

The main rule book uses the alternating style of terrain placement, but generally I've found that "competitive terrain placing" almost never goes well, especially with 2 newer players.  General advice I've used when setting up a board.

Interesting advice!

 

On 3/7/2018 at 7:29 PM, Clement said:

1) Gather all your terrain together into a single pile on one side of the board.  It should take up at LEAST 25% of the board, and ideally more like 33% to 50% of the board. 

I am going to just try to find out a rule that would allow me to give a point value to each piece of terrain we use. Then we can tell that each table should have at least a given total point value, or even measure distribution among the different parts of the table. 

 

On 3/7/2018 at 7:29 PM, Clement said:

Especially with buildings, look out for really unapproachable sniper nests (Really tall buildings with balconies/roofs/etc)

Interesting. I would probably just prohibit climbing anything bigger than Ht 3. 

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On 09/03/2018 at 10:45 PM, Baskakov_Dmitriy said:

I am going to just try to find out a rule that would allow me to give a point value to each piece of terrain we use. Then we can tell that each table should have at least a given total point value, or even measure distribution among the different parts of the table. 

This sounds like it should work, but in practise I think it is going to be very hard to do. For example 1 board that shows up at several events I attend events is an indoor board which is built with terraclips. The actual amount of blocking terrian is relatively small, but the board as a whole is a maze to run and see through. The walls would take up less that a 6 inch square but the board as a whole is one of the most restrictive and complex to move around boards I know. (one of the reasons I like it so much is that it really breaks some prebuilt lists who just can't handle that little LOS and restricted movement.) 

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