Revs of Your Crew

[D_acolyte]

So during the end of the year break I had a friend ask me about how I came up with my assumptions on card usage. After about an hour trying to explain it and how I can guess it based on someone’s crew and deployment he told me “D you sound crazy and I am getting confused.”
If you want to know those assumptions I can post them latter.
The assumption by their nature are never going to be “truly correct” but it does mean that I can talk about how I got there and the “revs” of a crew or model.
So why am I talking about revs or revolutions of something like a crew, that makes it sounds like a car engine. Well that is because I want people to be able to visualize the crew as an engine and cards and Ap as a fuel. This is helpful because engines and models have an area of “peak” performance.
This may not be a new idea to anyone but I have found nothing about this posted so I figured why not. To talk about this I also need to talk a little about deployment, model abilities, AP, and finally pushes.

Deployment: All distance measurements are rough measurements always rounded up, for instance a 26.3 is a 27.
Deployment, particularly deployment type has a big play on how players use their hand. If we use a young Nephilim Wk is 5  flying model and then we look at the deployment then we can get a very rough idea of how these change the game.
Standard deployment has a 24 inch no man land. So if the other play does not move or moves very little then it takes till turn 3 to charge them or be in there deployment zone.
Close Deployment has only 12 inches of separation, that means that you are in the others deployment zone turn 2. A fast model can get there turn 1. This also puts you roughly into turn 2 or 3 model usage.
Corners on the other hand has about 27 inches between players. Once again if you have a clear straight path you can get to the deployment zone in turn 3, but if you are a little slower it becomes turn 4.
Flank deployment, I love you so much. If both people deploy in the center of the L against the edge of their zone they are within 26 inches of each other or you can be about 13 if you deploy on wings near each other with all sorts of combinations in-between. This means to get to the deployment zone the quickest line will take you till the end of turn 2 but the furthest will be till the end of turn 3.
The important thing this holds to Revs is how fast you or your opponent crew can get to each other, often mid turn 2 or early turn 3 depending on play style. This knowledge will become important latter thinking about AP and pushes.

Model Abilities:
Some models have action or ability that make them more useful at different point of the game. The most obvious with his are the Riders, but they are far from the only models with this aspect to them. Other models are “snipers”, flurries and to a degree the various experts. So when do these models sort of peak in their use.
Snipers or rather models that increase their range in some way are more useful early game then they are late. What makes a sniper model more useful early game? First because they can increase their range, often to 36 inches, the model has capability then other range models often shaping the enemies movement/deployment and choosing a model to start witling down. Next they have the same problems as most shooters, shooting into combat. As such you want these models to activate before you close for combat. The ideal times to use them is late first turn and early to mid second maximize the fact that they are snipers. By later turn 2 rapid fire has a bigger pay off often then the sniper.
Rapid Fire, that 2 action that lets you shoot my face three times. Now when is it good? You need to have enemies in range but not in combat and a card. Figure that without movement tricks most close combat models will be in combat turn 3 or have made some sacrifice to do so turn 2, such as just double walking to tie up a sniper and not being able to swing on it. Turn 1 you will probably not shoot unless with these models unless someone do movement tricks. To that makes turn mid to late turn 2 and then early turn 3. This is not to say that they are not useful in other turns depending on your enemy, but that the trick: figuring out where you’re going to spend your cards and where you enemy is going to spend them.
As you can guess we could spend a lot of time dissecting all the 2 tactical actions from saber charge to flurry. I feel the most important part of this is three question: when, on who, and what restrictions. Example: Feast on the young nephilim is turn 3 as you tend to charge turn 2 and you cannot use it when you charge.

Experts/nimble:
This is really a half step towards talking about AP. Revs has a lot to do about AP and cards. So the power of an extra action comes from the power of what the action can be used for. The newest member of the Wyrd family, Aionus Stolen Time is a good example and I cannot wait to see how it is used. This lets him have an extra move during the first 2 turns and casting expert turn 3 on which is sort of great.
I love nimble, out of all the extra actions that are not just an extra AP this is huge as it is almost always useful as well as being the only one that lets you move while leaving you to do a charge/flurry/rapid fire with your general AP which increase the models capabilities.
While other experts do not truly effect when you Rev the model but instead makes your important turn that much better. Where actions like Flurry tend to be have the model become better the turn after it charges Melee Expert makes you better when you engage. All in all this just means the model is more useful when you need it while not defining a turn that is better for the model.

AP:
Action points always have value but some actions have more value than others and that is what this is going to touch on and how important are they to said models. This goes from it is nice to have them to I NEED THEM depending on the situation. Give a model like Teddy slow and he cries as he can no longer flurry or charge but give him fast and he is just a little happy. Why is this, it is because where fast is a nice treat but most models are not designed to exploit being fast but being slow will often greatly interfere with how said model operates. I have played a few times with models that can give slowly very easily, and the result tended to severely limit my enemies ability. In short fast might make your model 1.5 times as effective but slow can make your model totally not effective.
Pushes/ Non Active Model Movement:
When it comes to Rev management and control pushes/movement are huge. You can often speed up or delay a models optimized use with a push or two. Example, Daydreams can push Teddy 4 inches each so 2 Daydreams can push Teddy about as far as he can walk. This means that for 4 stones and two low cards the Teddy goes from the Rev of turn 1 to turn 2 in turn 1 before he has even activated. Alternatively you can push your models to safety to mess with your enemies Revs. Be careful with pushing models to far alone because if it is out all alone it can be the sole focus of all an enemies attentions.
That is pushing friendlies but what about pushing enemies. Well it is the opposite. Pushing enemies away is helpful is a model is at the edge of usage. I am not a fan of pushing enemy models away if I can slow them, I tend to see slowing an enemy as a great way to hinder most models. Lure and other actions that pull enemies to you are a great way to do what I wanted you about at the end of the last part. Bring a model up to you and then jump them, this intern means that you are upping the Revs of other models but in a very limited way but a much safer way.
There are a lot of other ways to manage or manipulate the Revs of a model or crew, this is just a general overview.

Factions: Because this is in the faction forum I will give you my thoughts on Revs for each faction. This is my general thoughts not taking into account how a specific master changes it but just the trend of the faction based on models and abilities. Feel free to explain if you think I am wrong about your faction and give examples.
Neverborn: So with all the pushes, high wk/cg models, ignoring of terrain, and “bending” of various rules I tend to think this faction is trying reach their peak turn 2 or 3.
Guild: So this is an interesting one because of all the guns. Yes the shooting effect of the Guild I feel leads it to a peak at turn 2 or turn 4. This is because about turn 2 anything with distance or that has rapid fire and moved up in turn 1 can shoot and in turn 4 with good planning and maneuvering you have weakened the enemy for you few hand to hand use to mop up what is left.
Gremlins: This is odd coming from me. These little green men are even more focused on early game peaking of their Revs then the Neverborn. With all there damage triggers, AP generation, numbers the faction as a whole lends itself to the alpha strike even more then the Neverborn.
Arcanists: My original faction way back in first ed, maybe one day I will go back. I feel most Arcanists crews really hit their peak in turn 3 or 4 and use armor or hard to kill to help them get to that point and a few fast models to force a reaction from there enemies.
Resurrectionists: similar to the Arcanists I feel that Resurrectionists tend to peak in cards turn 3. Most models I see are slow but very healthy and use hard to wound to almost force you foe to get weak damage. I am not comfortable enough to say another turn that they peak at as it can very wildly.
Outcast: Outcast are the most versatile in when they can go for peak Revs. For instance a crew with 2 trapper, Hans, 2 convict gunslingers and some desperate mercs, is very heavy on the early kills. You could go sword focus and go for peaking turn 3. That said the best outcast player I know is hyper aggressive, and when we play it is a blood fest with most models dead by the end of 3.
Ten Thunders: So this is probably the one most will disagree with but I feel that 10 Thunders tend to peak turn 3 or not at all. So what do I mean, not having a peak is not a bad thing, it means that throughout the turns of the game the use of card and AP are not used that differently from turn to turn. This is because most 10 Thunders I have seen played and played against that did not act like the other faction of there master tend to be less about confrontation but more about deception, stalling others models and scheme running.

 

I am going to try and do something like this the every month for the next year (or at least till grad school starts), so feel free to put forth suggestions on topic. Some topics I am thinking of touching on soon are use of the meta or styles of playing.

[admiralvorkraft]

I really like posts like this, that look at strategy, not just at what individual models do. I get the rev model that you're working with, and I'm interested to see where you go with it.

[D_acolyte]

4 minutes ago, admiralvorkraft said:

I really like posts like this, that look at strategy, not just at what individual models do. I get the rev model that you're working with, and I'm interested to see where you go with it.

The issue with some of this is it is a very simple look at the strategy of timing for a model and if you apply that to other models it become the timing of a crew. Then you can see how things change that timing, I decided to use turn number as a point of timing because it something discrete and easy for someone to comprehend in the discussion. The fact is there are so many interaction that can affect this in the game that to explore every option and use would a long time, the difference between pushing your models and enemy models could take a fare bit of room it self once you start looking at possible opening it can cause. I may latter on come back to this when I touch on synergy or targeting priority of models. I felt like before I could talk about much more I needed to talk about this and opportunity cost as the two deal with resources the crew has available and how to look at there use. All of these are multi part topics and I think the simplest is talking about the "use of the meta" vs "fallowing the meta/trend".

[Gnomezilla]

This starts off with a weird assumption. I have not seen many games yet but a game which does not have more than a few models in each other's faces by the end of turn 2...well, I haven't seen it. There is always at least one player who needs to be up close and personal. Or just wants to. (And our meta does not have anyone playing a controlling master who messes with the opponent. Yet. We're getting a Pandora soon. )

Please single space between every paragraph. Your style of writing is a little bit confused to start with and I really do need the extra line breaks to help break the ideas up into each separate section instead of tangling more between two or more paragraphs.

[D_acolyte]

1 hour ago, Gnomezilla said:

This starts off with a weird assumption. I have not seen many games yet but a game which does not have more than a few models in each other's faces by the end of turn 2...well, I haven't seen it. There is always at least one player who needs to be up close and personal. Or just wants to. (And our meta does not have anyone playing a controlling master who messes with the opponent. Yet. We're getting a Pandora soon. )

Please single space between every paragraph. Your style of writing is a little bit confused to start with and I really do need the extra line breaks to help break the ideas up into each separate section instead of tangling more between two or more paragraphs.

I am not making assumptions about enemy movement but talking about how quickly a model gets to a the enemy deployment zone in that section just as I am not talking about terrain or are you trying to hit on when I said that rapid fire was useful turn 2.

I tend to have between 2 and 5 models in combat with my models at the end of turn 2 and it will very from game to game. There are some players that tend not to have anyone in combat till turn 3

Fear not Pandora, often she will mess with your activation order more then giving ap. Though there is a build where she paralysis models.

I find an extra line between sections helpful, each to their own.