What could i have done better? game plan, strat selection

[Coyotebreaks]

Hi,

I had my first game using the GG18 strats and schemes last night. It was a really interesting game and made us both use our crews differently to how we normally would. 

But that said it felt like an uphill struggle the whole way and scoring the main strategy seemed almost impossible. So Im wondering how I could have better approached things.

 

The strat was, ply for information, schemes were surround them, search the ruins, take one for the team, recover evidence and public demonstration.

I chose take the one for the team and recover evidence. 

My crew, was mcmourning (+moonlighting, plastic surgery) sebastian (those are not our), rafkin (transfusion) , carrion emissary (with the mcmourning upgrade) , chiaki the niece, zombi Chihuahua, nurse, rotten belle

My opponent had, ramos, joss, johan, howard, arcane emissary .

 

In the early stages of the game I got a couple of flesh constructs on the table and a canine remains, my emissary died turn two. Ramos, was summoning approx three spiders a turn. So this is where the strategy was hard to score or deny.  his spiders would gather intel off my crew before I could get at them. I did not really want to run up to his big hitters and gather intel off them as I would be flattened straight after, looking the gathered intel condition and the model. also

in hind sight recover evidence was not a great pick as again it meant getting close to his beaters, I was thinking if I have to be in the middle of the table getting these would be easier then the strategy points, but it turned out they were hard to get as well. just too much threat in the middle. (i did score all three for take one for the team though so happy with that choice)

anyway, it just seemed the whole game, my opponent would gather intel off three off my crew early on, I would then spend my AP trying to kill the models that did it to prevent. and my other models would be trying to deal with the heavy hitters. and so not really doing anything constructive in the way or scoring. I did mange to gather some intel. but often never enough. I was really struggling to get canine remains on the table, playing defensibly meant that there were not many corpse counters on the table and not much poison was getting spread around as more interacting then hitting was taking place, so no dogs from moonlighting.

So now im wondering if I should have gone for a completely different strategy. something like avoid his crew completely and go surround them instead of recover evidence. Im reckoning mcmouring is probably not optimal for this strat, but at the moment he is all I have. 

So yes, with this in mind (I cant change master) what would have been a better game plan? more defensive, more aggressive? something else? 

 

cheers for your thoughts. 

 

 

 

 

 

[JoeJones]

With Public Demonstration in the scheme pool, I would recommend taking multiple Belles for an easy 3 points. That is probably the easiest GG2018 scheme for Ressers to score full points. 

Against that sort of Ramos crew (Disclaimer: Arcanists are my main faction, and Ramos is one of my favorite masters), you will lose models and you will be outnumbered rapidly. Take One for the Team is a good scheme option to take against an extremely killy crew like that one. 

To score Ply for Info, use your Belles to separate one model from the rest of his crew, and use that model to gather intel from.

There are some specific things you can do against a Ramos crew like that.

First, you must deal with Howard Langston. Either take a heavy hitter to deal with him or slow him down with a tarpit model (or more likely, models). Multiple Canine Remains or a Flesh Construct might be useful for this.

Second, try to disrupt his summoning before he overwhelms you with spiders. Find a way to separate him from his scrap markers and the rest of his crew. If he didn’t take the Under Pressure upgrade, Ramos is as vulnerable to being lured as any other model. If he did, he has Counterspell, and is therefore immune to lures - so you need to lure his crew away from him and kill them individually. (Yes, I am basing a lot of this strategy around having and using multiple Belles, because they are extremely useful, especially in numbers.)

Joss is a hard target who ignores most defensive abilities. Avoid if possible. If not possible, use armor-ignoring attacks against him.

Johan hits hard, but is otherwise slow and squishy. Kill at your leisure.

The Arcane Emissary is intimidating, but can only use its most powerful attack on a charge. If it charges in, that means you don’t need to use a lure to bring it into your kill zone. 

Hopefully, you will find some of this advice useful, and hopefully the other people going to the same tournament I am today won’t read this until after the tournament

Good luck, and good hunting. 

[Coyotebreaks]

Thanks very much for the advice. some very useful stuff. Against this opponent public demonstration is not an easy one as he rarely hires any minions. but its good to know for when playing against others. 

[JoeJones]

For Public Demonstration, you have to hire the minions. Your specified minions must be within 4” of one of his master, henchman, or enforcer models at the end of a turn to score. 

[Coyotebreaks]

12 minutes ago, JoeJones said:

For Public Demonstration, you have to hire the minions. Your specified minions must be within 4” of one of his master, henchman, or enforcer models at the end of a turn to score. 

ah yes completely miss read that one. (another thing I need to work on to improve my game  )

[Ludvig]

How did three of his spiders gather intel each turn? You should have had a chance to activate and gather from them between their activations. Belles have companion if I am not mistaken so they are excellent to lure something in and gathernintel twice from it. You also picked what is probably the hardest scheme in the pool.

McMourning himself is pretty good at dealing with all the beaters you mentioned if you can get poison onto them somehow.

[McSkip]

Also summoned modells cant interact the turn they are summoned

[Coyotebreaks]

36 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

How did three of his spiders gather intel each turn? You should have had a chance to activate and gather from them between their activations. Belles have companion if I am not mistaken so they are excellent to lure something in and gathernintel twice from it. You also picked what is probably the hardest scheme in the pool.

McMourning himself is pretty good at dealing with all the beaters you mentioned if you can get poison onto them somehow.

he generally had five or six spiders in play at once. so at least 2 of them would manage to get something and he other models were getting the odd one as well. My models were usually trying to kill the models that had gathered the intel, so not able to get it themselves. either that or trying to deal with his beaters. I just never seemed to have the AP resources to play proactively, I was always having to react. There were situations where I could have gone for the gather intel but it would have meant moving into a wall of heavies.  There was forest involved so the spiders were out pacing me in there which didn't help.

 

I have found in the past that mcmourning can handle on of them. but if ever I have moved into the middle of his crew then mcmourning doesn't last long. admittedly I could have probably done with having more belles on the table to help set mcmourning up. But I was having to use him for the easy kills in first half, killing spiders and making flesh constructs.  

[Coyotebreaks]

43 minutes ago, McSkip said:

Also summoned modells cant interact the turn they are summoned

yes thats true they did not interact on the turn they came in, so there was one turn where things were even. but after the first turn there was a good amount of spiders from the turn before. 

[Adran]

I'm surprised you weren't able to turn off those spiders into canine remains by killing them with poison. (Or at least just killing them with poison). If he summons 3 spiders they are on 2 wounds, so if you poison them near Sebastian they die on activation. Or at the end of turn before they score. 

If you have a model that multiple people can ply, then it's best to activate them early and ply yourself. Doesn't always work, but try and make your opponent work for his points. 

[Coyotebreaks]

4 minutes ago, Adran said:

I'm surprised you weren't able to turn off those spiders into canine remains by killing them with poison. (Or at least just killing them with poison). If he summons 3 spiders they are on 2 wounds, so if you poison them near Sebastian they die on activation. Or at the end of turn before they score. 

If you have a model that multiple people can ply, then it's best to activate them early and ply yourself. Doesn't always work, but try and make your opponent work for his points. 

indeed, im not sure went wrong there. I really struggled to get much poison onto the table. my chihuahua was taken out quite early on. I did manage to summon a couple of canine remains with sebastian. but I was either trying to use them to go for ply. sebastian was a bit too far back though really so not being as effective as he should be. its those big scary models in his crew. they make me really scared to move too far forward. my opponent knows very well what sebastian is cable of so I have to be pritty careful as he has massive target on his head. but also I would have had to get mcmourning close to the spiders for them to count as undead as I was more trying to dash in and dash out again as I didnt want to be counter charged. 

 

perhaps I was a little to cagey. but this strat really seemed to throw me, I could not find  a way to move in gather intel and keep the condition on the model. I was just fighting hard to get the gather intel condition off his models. in fairness by the end of the turn he was only beating me by one. but one is all it takes. 

[Ludvig]

I might have gone hard for Ramos and tried to "trade" McMourning. Did you miss models in his list or am I missing some trick? I don't see where Ramos gets the first scrap to start summoning from.

[Coyotebreaks]

1 hour ago, Ludvig said:

I might have gone hard for Ramos and tried to "trade" McMourning. Did you miss models in his list or am I missing some trick? I don't see where Ramos gets the first scrap to start summoning from.

he summons an electric creation. kills it, then summons off the scrap from that 

[Freman]

Shikome teamed up with Rafkin (specifically his aura) make mincemeat out of Joss and Howard, especially if you're able to "take their meds" to give them extra armour (doesn't matter) but put them on negative flips (matters a great deal).

[Butch]

On 6/9/2018 at 5:47 PM, Coyotebreaks said:

I just never seemed to have the AP resources to play proactively, I was always having to react.

I don't know, if this could apply to your game. But for me it was a massive improvement in my gaming in general when I learned to ignore models. I always try to play stictly to the mission. In the past I too often tried to get rid of the dangerous models and did not score enough points. Now I maybe still loose (I'm not a very expierenced player), but sometimes manage to win. And if not, I feel very much in control.

[Ludvig]

Killing won't give much points in that match, if you had died slowly while getting strat point it's possible you would have won. If Ramos gets a couple of massive spider summons turns 1 and 2 it might get iffy though, they are pretty good at scoring and denying VP, that's why I woukd probably have tried to expunge him turn 1 if given a chance. 

You could also do rancid transplant on a bunch of spiders if they stuck close to each other, that should get you a flesh construct and hopefully kill the spiders nearby. Flesh constructs might be tanky enough to gather intel against his big boys or if they kill it keep an unactivated model nearbyto gather intel after try kill the flehie.

[Gloomy]

Remember that Chiaki can remove the Ply condition from your opponents models. Memories Past is a (1) action so she can do this twice with a 10 inch range, usually leaving one of their activated models standing next to one of yours ready to re-plyed the other way. And on top her (0) The Calling makes models insignificant until the start of her next activation and therefore not able to Ply.

[Coyotebreaks]

On 6/11/2018 at 1:24 PM, Ludvig said:

Killing won't give much points in that match, if you had died slowly while getting strat point it's possible you would have won. If Ramos gets a couple of massive spider summons turns 1 and 2 it might get iffy though, they are pretty good at scoring and denying VP, that's why I woukd probably have tried to expunge him turn 1 if given a chance. 

You could also do rancid transplant on a bunch of spiders if they stuck close to each other, that should get you a flesh construct and hopefully kill the spiders nearby. Flesh constructs might be tanky enough to gather intel against his big boys or if they kill it keep an unactivated model nearbyto gather intel after try kill the flehie.

agreed, and sound advice, the only reason I was killing was to remove the gathered intel condition. otherwise I would have avoided it.

 

[Coyotebreaks]

On 6/11/2018 at 2:24 PM, Athiko said:

Remember that Chiaki can remove the Ply condition from your opponents models. Memories Past is a (1) action so she can do this twice with a 10 inch range, usually leaving one of their activated models standing next to one of yours ready to re-plyed the other way. And on top her (0) The Calling makes models insignificant until the start of her next activation and therefore not able to Ply.

ah compeplty didnt realise I could remove the condition. that would have helped with Ludvigs suggestion as well.

[cbtb11235813]

I've played Ramos more than any other master, and in my experience, cagey is not the way to play against him. There is nothing better for him than you staying back and leaving him to summon at his leisure. I have lost very few games playing Ramos, and I would guess that 90% of the games I've lost with him were ones where the opponent put serious pressure on Ramos early (or even better, killing him). McMourning's crew tends to be pretty well kitted against a Ramos crew, since you have so many ways to get around armor. Apply pressure, make him play on your terms, not his. If you don't do that, you'll likely be crushed under the weight of his arachnids