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Scheme Decisions


Silencer

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After my last league game in grow mode (30 ss / Henchmen led) I started to wonder how should I decide on what scheme I go with.

The game ended as a draw ( 6 : 6 ) and in the end it was a lucky twist of cane (or fate) that I moved my Ama No Zako broke away from the sniper that she was locking on for 3 turns. I found out my opponent took Frame for Murder (which was kind of unavoidable) and Take Prisoner that I narrowly avoided.

I did take Frame for Murder on my Trapper (that was kind of obvious choice to neutralize) and Breakthrough as my crew on the average had 5 inch walk value. Unfortunately my Trapper was not a juicy target from my opponent and I could potentially take Take Prisoner on his henchmen.

The scheme pool contained: Breakthrough, Distract, Take Prisoner, Frame for Murder

And here is the question: what do you take under consideration when see a scheme pool in general ? What decision you make when you design the crew to compete for scheme points as I am trying to improve my scheme choices that seem to be 50 / 50 hit and miss...

Thanks for advice in advance :)

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I would consider the following (maybe not in this order):

Opponent's crew - especially in such a limited setting you know what type of crew your opponent will bring and can probably plan more towards some schemes. In more open settings, consider the opponent's likely choice of master and resulting choices in crew depending on strategy and scheme pool. Keep track of if your opponent has painted something very cool and posted online recently ;) 

Strategy! - What the heck were you playing?! Some schemes mesh well with the type of crew you can expect to face depending on strat. Some schemes are a lot easier with some strats and harder with others.

Terrain - Can I do breakthrough with one dirt-cheap fast model playing hard to get. Is the terrain favourable for "gun"-type attacks or not. 

Own preference - some people find different schemes easier and sometimes you really want to play a certain master who is better at some of the schemes. 

How easy are they to get done - some schemes are plain easier to get full points for, take 'em! Of these Iwould call breakthrough the obvious choice. How easy it is is also influenced by enemy crew a lot - if they have out-activation and can interact while engaged it's not very smart to take distract. If they have abilities that discard enemy scheme markers it might not be smart to go for ALITS unless you are really sneaky. Frame for murder requires your opponent to have primarily henchmen and their master for damage dealing so isn't always the obvious choice although I might have gone for it in this pool (would help to know crews). FFM is usually nice with assassinate in the pool but some players are really careful about it. Take prisoner needs a lot of things to go right but some crews are good at it (Brewmaster comes to mind).

Adaptability - is one scheme the odd man out and require a drastically different approach than the other four? Go for a crew that can do any of the four.

The hardest part can often be to see how you should deny enemy schemes, that's where it gets complicated.

Hope that helped you get started.

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Strategy! - What the heck were you playing?! Some schemes mesh well with the type of crew you can expect to face depending on strat. Some schemes are a lot easier with some strats and harder with others.

That was Extraction - I planned to take 2 durable models one being Ama No Zako and second Bishop. Rest was filled out with a single Trapper and 2 ronins.

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Strategy! - What the heck were you playing?! Some schemes mesh well with the type of crew you can expect to face depending on strat. Some schemes are a lot easier with some strats and harder with others.

That was Extraction - I planned to take 2 durable models one being Ama No Zako and second Bishop. Rest was filled out with a single Trapper and 2 ronins.

Now we just need the enemy crew to be able to really get to the bottom of it. ;) 

In turf war I sometimes go with Distract since it meshes so well with the impossible to remove models people prefer, then you just send something that is hard to take down and engage them while they mostly eat the 3vp from Distract because they don't want to move away from the turf zone. In Extraction that is less appealing since you really want to take away models and dominate.

The trapper is usually a good FFM target. Did you have it set up inside the turf/extract zone to force the opponent? Bishop should also rate high on models your enemy will kill no matter what since he is a beast but rather squishy so it's always a worthwhile investment to kill him.

I might have gone with FFM on Bishop and then used the trapper to shoot itself halfway across the board turns 1 & 2 before doing Breakthrough with it. The trapper can then probably kill the opponent's Breakthrough model while keeping mobile so both preventing 3 and gaining 3 VP. You then have Bishop and lots of other models to dominate the zone with, be careful to only soften stuff up with Bishop and Ama No Zako. You can also charge at the enemy leader with Bishop to drain some soulstones from the enemy. If you note that they don't SS prevent or defend properly then you have a good idea of who they chose FFM on. 

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tbh, if I'm not expecting a shooting vs shooting match, Distract and Cursed Object are pretty much auto-takes for me. As long as you pick the target right, your opponent needs to spend so much effort to remove Distract from an engaged model, even a weak one. It's really good in strategies where you'll be nice and near each other as well (so extraction/turf war makes it a good choice).

I'd actually avoid Breakthrough in Extraction, unless you have a single model who can zoom down there and get the points all by themself, which in a smaller game you probably can't afford. My reasoning is that you mostly want to be clumped up around the informant marker, and if you have the majority there, you're probably moving the marker away from the enemy deployment zone, making breakthrough more difficult to achieve either because your focus is further away or because you're putting a model even further away from the action. If your opponent wins majority, they're probably moving it towards their deployment zone, meaning they're closer to whoever's dropping markers. I really like Breakthrough and think it's very good in general, just that it tends to be a little difficult in turf war/extraction.

That's just my opinion on your particular game, but bear in mind, I have a regular opponent on record as saying that I seem to be very good at picking the easiest schemes ;)

I'm wondering since you say that your scheme choices have been hit and miss: how are you constructing crews? The very first thing I do when making a crew is to look at the schemes and work out a plan there, and how they synergise with each other and the strategy. Although you don't lock down your scheme choices until after you've seen enemy crews, 90% of the time I will have picked mine and built my crew around achieving them, and they don't change after I see my opponent's crew.

So for example, I just generated a random game and got: Turf War, with corner deployment. Schemes are ALitS, Bodyguard, Deliver a Message, Assassinate, Take Prisoner.

I automatically gravitate towards Deliver a Message, and it's probably a good pick in this strat because even if their master isn't directly in the turf bubble, they're probably near it. You might want someone big and scary in melee to get that, if you think you can get Assassinate off, otherwise anyone with access to a 0 action push or more than 2AP is a really good choice for this and will almost guarantee 3 points. Bodyguard is also a choice, since the turf war is more than 8" from your deployment zone and you want big buff unkillable models in turf war generally, who tend to make good bodyguard targets too (and it's easier in corner regardless of strat, since more of the board is at least 8" from your deployment zone). I'm generally wary of Take Prisoner in general, since I feel like it gives your opponent too much of a chance to counterplay you. And finally, ALitS, which is slightly easier in corner because there's a longer centreline, I wouldn't take it unless there was good terrain that cut off enough of the centreline from the fight in the centre. Then grab one or maybe two scheme runners to spend their days dropping markers.

For me, I'd have already picked Deliver and then either have Assassinate or Bodyguard as my second based on who the enemy leader was. Then I build a crew taking a model that I don't mind dying early for Deliver, preferably one with a free push or 3ap (otherwise take a backup or two), and then just lots of buff models as I would usually for turf war. idk if that sort of analysis helps, but it's always good to take into account all the variables like that.

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From your scheme pool you should plan your list accordingly. You said you were in a slow grow league, so I assume you only have a limited selection of models to choose from. 

Extraction.  - You want at least 2 models to be able to be in the area each turn. In such a small game this means you probably need pretty durable models, and some extra to cover movement tricks. 

breakthrough. You need to dedicate a model to this. From your list, you might get away with the trapper shooting and interacting, but at most he can only put 4 markers down, and probably will only get 3 down. Likewise a single ronin can just about achieve it on its own, but is liekly to struggle if the opponent tries to stop it. 

Distract. Normally quite good in Extraction, you need your crews to be quite close. 

Frame for murder. With so few models on each side this is a bit hit and miss. It depends alot on your opponents crew. My Current Campaign team is virtually garenteed to not give away 3 points to this ever, as my henchman is almost never going to be the person who gets the kill, and the rest of the crew is minions. 

Take Prisoner. I like this, but it is very crew dependent. If the opponet has a support model, or a sniper, then I'm often goign to go fo rthis on them. Against you, I would strongly have considered Take prisoner against the Trapper (terrain would matter here, do I think I can trap him in an area so he can't push out? if so I might tie him up early. if not, I might wait until the last turn to do so). Or if I had a killy crew, against Bishop, and hope to kill all the rest of your crew in the extraction area, and just hold him up. 

line in the sand. Not bad in extraction, as you are probably around the middle line, but its quite AP intensive to score 2 or 3 points. 

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*advisey stuff* 

Can't believe I am saying this but: listen to the Gremlin, he speaks truth ;) 

Take Prisoner. I like this, but it is very crew dependent. If the opponet has a support model, or a sniper, then I'm often goign to go fo rthis on them. Against you, I would strongly have considered Take prisoner against the Trapper (terrain would matter here, do I think I can trap him in an area so he can't push out? if so I might tie him up early. if not, I might wait until the last turn to do so). Or if I had a killy crew, against Bishop, and hope to kill all the rest of your crew in the extraction area, and just hold him up. 

A lot of good advice here too but don't you find trappers to be hard to score take prisoner against Adran? They never seem to stay put in melee so you need to severely out-activate and they are very good at removing cheap models if you try that while simoultaneously pushing 10" each turn if you have them engaged when they go.

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Strategy! - What the heck were you playing?! Some schemes mesh well with the type of crew you can expect to face depending on strat. Some schemes are a lot easier with some strats and harder with others.

That was Extraction - I planned to take 2 durable models one being Ama No Zako and second Bishop. Rest was filled out with a single Trapper and 2 ronins.

Now we just need the enemy crew to be able to really get to the bottom of it. ;)

Damn it, I am just pure chaos when trying to explain anything - sorry for that. I was facing Sidir led crew (10T) with 4 Wastrels, an Oiran and a Katanaka Sniper.
So he had activation advantage that gave me a thought that he had Breakthrough besides FFM (which I was sure of - 7 times out of 10 my opponent would take FFM). Around turn 4 while Ama no Zako and Bishop were one shooting-slapping killing spree with Wastrels he spilled his beans and mentioned that he thought Take Prisoner can be taken only on Henchmen and above (which is not true). In the end that trapper went up front to start putting those breakthrough markers. In the middle I almost denied him the informant but the Oiran came from the flank to support Sidir. Now I still have a hard time judging the models durability and if I can survive long enough to take prisoner on a particular model. Ama No Zako can be durable annoying flying she if has survivalist upgrade. From the game standpoint if I haven't taken FFM I would have won the game by 2 points.

The reason I took Trapper and placed near the informant behind hard cover to take some pot shots and get him killed over there by anything. This way I could net those 2 points for the win. And actually he was wounded for 3 by the enemy sniper so by sheer amount of luck like I moved out of his engagement with my henchmen he did not kill my trapper.

Thinking from time perspective I never would have thought that my crew is durable enough to complete take prisoner. So I am trying find the answer from you my veterans :) in regards to how to influence my scheme choice better as you hire and reveal your crew after the scheme and strategy is determined.

 

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As I said, its a little terrain dependent. I have managed some games where I have trapped them in Ml because they sat by a wall, and so couldn't actually push out. If that isn't possible, then I would try and rush them in turn 5 after they activated. If I stick a ronin next to them on turn 4, then unless they have worked out my scheme, they probably want to run away from me before I flurry, so they probably won't kill a ronin (unless its already hurt) and it can catch them up when it activates. 

 

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As I said, its a little terrain dependent. I have managed some games where I have trapped them in Ml because they sat by a wall, and so couldn't actually push out. If that isn't possible, then I would try and rush them in turn 5 after they activated. If I stick a ronin next to them on turn 4, then unless they have worked out my scheme, they probably want to run away from me before I flurry, so they probably won't kill a ronin (unless its already hurt) and it can catch them up when it activates. 

 

Ah, how to trap a trapper! ^_^ I don't have Ronin at my disposal but it sounds like a very sound tactic if I can find a model with a similar role in my collection. God knows I have enough opportunities to practice against trappers.

 

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