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Alpha defence against alpha attack


mojopin

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Hi there! I`ve been noticing lately in my playing group a rising tendence in making very agressive lists (Hi, fiktor) and I´m finding very difficult to resist those alpha attacks that can kill your master at the beginnig of turn 2 if you lose initiative (which is quite common against arcanists). Yesterday I was reading other thread where people where complaining about flying yanusori with nimble and fast given from mccabe and emissary. I´ve not faced this but I´ve faced a reactivated howard Langston with Imbuied energies and :+fate to initiative. Or a jumping cerberus (with infinite attacks wih tomes) from a sacrified myranda and that :+fate flip to initiative usually bringing Marcus in turn 2 with accomplice :mellow: .

 

The fact is that even with noncombative strategies/schemes, begining my activations in turn 2 with 4 less models or a killed master gives no option to do anything. Usually after those loses is difficult to even take out those beatsticks that have wiped out half of your crew.

Do you usually face this kind of lists? do you have an efficient way of dealing with these situations from the resser point of view? Thanks to all ;)

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Depending on who I'm up against, I've had a decent amount of success utilizing the Hanged's aura to stop you from becoming immune to horror duels.  Nothing fantastic really, but it eats cards and has the chance to screw them over.  It's mostly about positioning with that, since I bring Hanged a lot anyways.

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Before, during and after deployment, you'll need to assess what your opponent's alpha strike is relying on.

If it is something like Reactivating Langston, it's 50mm and can't Charge through models or Charge when engaged with models. Keep your important models behind chaff models. If you're playing a summoner, prioritize quantity rather than quality, and throw up your meatshield.

Carrion Emissary and Datsue Ba can bring 1-2 Seishin or 1-2 Shards in as a wall, and activating My Little Helper on turn one if you're anxious about the alpha strike to get that second Seishin or Shard is perfectly fine. It also means that the Emissary/Datsue also safe from shooting or Charges, so they can actually join that wall and block Charge lanes too. Hard to Kill and Incorporeal means that neither of them are going down without taking at least 2 big hits, and even then Datsue Ba nukes his entire hand when she does die. Denial of Sanzu can be really good against Langston if he wants to Walk -> Flurry.

If its a Cerberus, premeasure all the places that its jump can go on Turn one, including any movement/Alpha bonuses. You can't tie it up in combat or put a simple wall in the way due to Leap, but anything you can do at range to damage or debuff it is a big deal. Even a humble Slow or a few points of damage really knocks the wind out of his attacks. The attacks can potentially keep going if it flips :tome, but this only happens if it actually inflicts damage, so if you have Graveyard Spirit chilling behind your Master or Nurse giving it Armour and a few SS to spare, you have good odds of preventing damage entirely (especially since our Masters almost universally have Impossible to Wound, so kitty is probably hitting Weak or Moderate.) The first few hits of damage are a priority so that you can get rid of the 3 Headed Bonus.

If you're against a hitty master, say Marcus, who hires a Cerberus, Myranda AND Langston, then yeah, haha... that's tricky. You have your work cut out for you. Deploy your master and critical pieces very close to your board edge and buy as many turns for yourself if you can. You'd be up against an extremely low model count crew in that instance, so if you do manage to scrape through the initial two turns worth of activations with most of your essential pieces intact, you're actually doing really well and should be able to win in VP.

If you're desperate, Flesh Constructs are great models for getting in the way of things. Their 40mm base and stupidly high wound count really takes the concept of roadblock to a new level. Even Marcus or Langston hitting 3 times with minimum damage 4 won't kill it. 

Which masters do you usually favour? 

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Another road block could be Izamu and a Grave yard spirit. Armour 4 can be tough to get around. I can't recall though if Langston can get around armor? I'm pretty sure the Cerberus can't. A Cerberus in combat with an armor 4 Izamu is going to have a really bad day. Or if you have him, Archie. You weather the storm and them hit back hard - most of those big hitter have pretty low DF. 

Also, are you playing with enough terrain? if you block charge lanes and or entice him out with a juicy target you can often goad him into going where you want him. Sometimes even using a sacrificial model can help . A canine remains with fast can go 18" (or 24 if you have a Dead Doxy push it first). Run him up and engage the big hitter right off the bat. That can throw a wrench in his plans and allow you to get set up a little more. Obviously this is less helpful with Cerberus as it has Leap.... A rotten belle off to a far flank can also cause him issues depending on the terrain and deployment if you can pull him out of placement before he can get the missile off. 

And my Little Helper  is a God send  for this stuff. Have two of your big hitters sitting up front that can't be targeted from more than 3" away. They have to decide to move forward and face retaliation next turn or hang back and wait it out. In the meantime the rest of your crew can work on the objectives and get better placed to handle the threat. As someone else mentioned Datsue Ba can summon seishin pretty easily (with an upgrade I think) and with MLH can do so twice that turn. Use them as activation control and to heal your Armor 4 Izamu :) 

And +1 on the Flesh Constructs. Great cheap tarpit model. You can even have the GraveYard Spirit with them if you want! Armour 2 and all those woulds will take a looong time to take down. 

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Neither Langston, Cerberus nor Blessed of December can get around Armour, so on the surface an Armour 4 tarpit is a good option. But remember that all these options at least have Leap or Nimble and will buy Imbued Energies, so there's a good chance whatever it is, it will just Walk around Izamu and Charge something more relevant. Often crews hiring these big hitters include friendly Pushes/Reactivate too.

You could use Izamu in concert with other blocking pieces to temporarily stop them, certainly. But it is only temporary; Leap will disengage effortlessly, while Armour 4 and inbuilt healing doesn't help when Langston' Decapitate trigger either eats half your Soulstones/Cards in one go (very sad for Ressers) or otherwise instant kills Izamu.

This isn't a big deal if you're playing Yan Lo, mind you. Buying time with Izamu who can be resummoned can be worth it. I'd also bring in Yin then, and let Izamu and her take the initial hits, using up resources, while I get my Chi and upgrades ready. If you're using them expressly as expendable delayers, then yeah, they're totally legit.

Otherwise, if I'm not Yan Lo, I'd rather invest Izamu's 10ss in a Rogue Necromancy. He won't buy more time than Izamu - I know that he would die just as fast, if not faster. But he's a very nasty counter punch enforcer. He has to be dealt with or he can swing the game on the alpha strikers all by himself so you can position him slightly further back and incite the opponent to over extend.

It's also nice to have models that aren't too hand dependent when you're facing down extremely aggressive crews; Rogue Necromany with his Ml 7, :ram trigger, and Three Headed mean that you're operating fairly well even without cards, and if you have a few 6's in hand, he can happily convert them to Moderate damage 5. 

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I think Toshiro the Daimyo can help in these situations. He is quite sturdy due to his many hard to wounds+soulstone use and he can summon units from the corpses your enemies create! Sloth or Jaakana Ubume can also help dissuade foes from travelling to certain parts of the battlefield and be difficult to remove, whilst Flesh Constructs can form mighty walls with their mighty bodies!

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I play all resser masters but Reva which I dont own  yet. I much apreciate your advices. Luring to deceptive charges against secondary models doesnt usually works for an experienced adversary. Also, I dislike taking Izamu as 9 wounds with df4 tend to evaporate soon against armlr hate. From the top of my mind I can remember a cerberus killing nicodem with only one lucky slow action triggering  several tomes, low df masters simply eat everything that comes to them. A reactivated howard Langston going around a house where Seamus was hidding and winning initiative in turn 2 for a devastating final flurry. 

Moving your pieces trying to avoid that fatal charge means losing tempo for completing Schemes. Staying in your deployment zone while the other player does his stuff leads to poor results too. 

I think that if it wasnt for that possitive flip to initiative... It is the key to that success. Maybe if ressers had a long (long like 'all board) range threat or control model that could cut this, like a CA attack that crippled movement from afar... 

Well, thanks for your comments! Well see how this works :)

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Most of them like to charge you and they can't do that if they are engaged so you can put durable minions in the way of the charge lanes and at places where they would need to be to charge. 

You can often control that somewhat with belles luring them into that engagement. Models that trigger extra attacks dislike when hanged are around so they need to beat a high terrifying multiple times.

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Valedictorian + Graveyard Spirit should do a little better than Izamu + Graveyard Spirit, 1 less armour but you can spend soulstones to prevent, have terrifying (all) and can remove triggers on following turns. 

Also might be worth considering Hanna + Graveyard Spirit as Hanna would strip the built in suits out of their attacks which along with the armour might overcome the attacks. 

You can also try blocking charge lanes with models that have push triggers on def, like a Nurse or Doxy so they will waste 1 AP when they charge.

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46 minutes ago, Mikey_C said:

Also might be worth considering Hanna + Graveyard Spirit as Hanna would strip the built in suits out of their attacks which along with the armour might overcome the attacks.

Ooo, that's evil! But you're Ressers so you're probably comfy with evil. ;) I already looked into suit removal regarding the Yasunori problem, and it won't help. That'll neuter Hank's decapitate though.

My powerful constructs also really hate not having room for their 50mm bases. It is as @Ludvig said. Jam up the lanes with seishins and flesh constructs and shards and don't let 100mm gaps stay open.

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8 hours ago, unti said:

Isn t it possible to charge through seishins because of their incorporeal?

You can move trough the but not land on them so yeah, not ideal perhaps. You still can't take the charge if iu are engaged and a 50mm base with 2" engagement means a large area from where it can't charge.

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Hi dudes, Acanist here :P

I'll explain my best Alphas for help to understand that...

Ramos:

1. Movile toolkit do :+fate on Howard

2. Ramos create spiders to sobreactivate the enemy

3. Totem reactivates Howard

4. Angélica push Howard 5"

5. Howard can spend IE for move 5" + nimble 5" + charge 6" + :melee2", in total with Angélica push 23" range or 18" for flurry

6. Reactivate Howard can flurry if needed or nimble + flurry/ charge if didn't cant charge on the first activation the charge max range is 25" + nimble 5" + charge 6" + :melee2" for 38" on total...

7. All atacks with :+fate or :+fate:+fate if Howard is near to Ramos

Marcus:

1. Use cheap models like Jakalope or Raptors to sobreactivate

2. Angélica push Cerverus 5" 

3. Leap 7" + spend IE for walk 5" + charge 7" + :melee1" for 25" or move 22" if didn't charge

4. Marcus do :+fate on Cerverus  for :+fate:+fateon atack and dmg, and reactivate him

5. Cerverus can leap for a total 22" + 7" + 7" + :melee1" in total 37" max range

All of that on the first turn, with :+fate on initiative flips... Can be nice the start of turn 2

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Guys, IMO block the charges doesn´t are an option with 38"/37" of range

The best option are resist the charge, covering your important miniatues with tricks like Grave Spirit, Seamus Hat, Mindless Zombies for Nicodemo trigger, Molly trigger, Kiray & Seishin...

If he can resist the Alpha my hitter have to die because usually he's alone in the middle of enemy crew...

The problem becomes when you can´t cover all your important miniatures, because I can charge usually to anything in the board and you'll start the T2 of the game with 1 or 2 miniatures less, with the consecuent sobreactivation and lost of punch

That post doesn't helps me because i'm the Arcanist, but we are friends and very competitive players, and something to do grow better and do more interesting games are welcome =P

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Langston is only Ch 6 :melee2" so it shouldn't be unreasonable to cover most of your important models. You only need to block that very last approach, he can have a million ap but if his last nimble walk ends up with him engaging one of your minions he wont' be charging anything important. Langston needs 3 AP to kill a 3ss night terror unless his first hit goes above min damage so it's not like he's unstoppable.

Ressers also have nurses and their own summoning so they can probably match you in activations and keep a nurse unactivated that will just paralyze Langston.

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Another option is don't rely on any one model. You can lose your master at the top of turn  2 and still win. 

 

Part of the problem with the suggested Marcus Alphastrike, is that the opposing crew has hired a lot of cheap models to give them the activation control they need. In which case if you have some way to remove the Alpha strike, them they don't have a plan b.  (For example Marcus can only alpha a model thats witin 16" of him at the beginning of his activatipon, so most of the time you have to alpha before the models activation, and that gives you the downsides of the chaunt an activation earlier, which can easily mean the death of the cerberus, or at least he loss of its 3 headed). 

And to defend against the Cerberus you want to save your high cards to deny the maul trigger. If they are hitting, but without a tome, then I would normally rather take the hit if I'm expecting them to have several more attacks. 

I find that alpha strikes against Ressers is naturally a risky idea, because they are normally well placed to bounce back. (I would admit that Ressers are often most  reliabnt on their master so if you can get an alpha strike to work, it is most devistating).

 

 

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5 hours ago, Daysleeper said:

We don't have "disguised" ... could always hire some Oiran though

The Corpse Candles can hand out disguised as their tactical action.  Not the best thing to be doing turn 1, since it means you would have had to activate Reva early to get the candle on the board, but it's still sort of an option.

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If alpha strikes are mostly relying on charging, why not summon in some ashigaru and throw up their auras? I know this doesn't work for all of the Resser masters, but if you are reasonably sure of what to expect, you can also hire them in straight up.

 

Would hanged be a good option as well, maybe not as an outright stop, but just a secondary speed bump that needs to be considered? If they are walking around your ashigaru, and chucking some cards to keep from getting paralyzed, it would seem that there shouldn't be too much left from their hand to blow up half your crew.

 

Additionally, and this might again depend on knowing that an alpha is coming while you are building your crew, you could take carrion emissary with my little helper. You get to throw out 4 50 mm bases (5 if you count the emissary itself), to create a huuuge wall turn 1. Since they can't charge the emissary, you should be fine to leave him out there for the first turn. Granted, this just delays the alpha until turn 2, but hopefully you can also spread out a little more so you have a better shot of completing schemes and/or more time to prepare for the alpha.

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