Gauging "Acceptable Losses"

[Bathysphere]

In my ongoing effort to improve my game vs heavy shooting and alpha strike crews, I pose questions to the hive mind:

How do you gauge acceptable losses when playing into a crew that can reliably remove models from the board every turn? Sonnia, Perdita, the Viks, and Reva come to mind.

Assuming you can't don't know your opponent's master while building your crew (tournament style vs "Jimmy always plays Sonnia"), how does dealing with these things factor into your list building? 

Once on the table these crews are generally obvious. How do you adjust your play around knowing your opponent has so much killing power? 

[Ludvig]

Sonnia is utter garbage if you only present hard to wound models with armour so you don't need to accept losses against her, especially not if you have an alpha strike yourself that can get to her. Models that create dense terrain or negative auras against ca also diminish her impact. Perdita usually has trouble if you can create armour and cover so a combination of such models are usually good against guild.

For me it would depend on the faction. In outcasts there is a possibility of Leveticus, von Schill and the Viks who ignore armor (as well as some other reductions in some cases) so it's usually a bad idea to take an expensive model that relies on armor to prevent damage against someone who declared outcasts (or at least to put that model forward against those crews, it can be nice against A&D). In guild I would for example lean towards an executioner over a peacekeeper since many of their masters will ignore the stuff that makes the PK better and the executioner has a higher threat range.

If ml beasts are a high probability you can make a list with lots of disguised models or that ability that protects against those attacks specifically.

I think it comes down to either building defensively with lots of LoS blockers and combinations of defensive abilities or building extremely aggressively to alpha them right back. It's hard to have a general guideline since masters and factions solve the problems differently. A resser can usually spam cheap minions to completely block any good targets from the Viks while a guildie may be forced to take a hyper aggresive list and trust in initiative flips or something.

High stats are also a good defence against most attacks. If you can present a defensive stanced df/wp 9 target you have a good chance of lasting through a Vik charge as long as your hand matches theirs.

[Myyrä]

Losing all your models is acceptable as long as you win the game.

[Adran]

Can I still win? Then the model death is acceptable. 

I'm happy to throw my master into my enemy knowing they will die if it stops my enemy scoring, or preventing me scoring. 

[bertmac]

I play a couple of masters that can put down los blocking terrain, Lilith and Kaeris. Mei feng vents steam.

All about activation control really use your lesser pieces early and keep them out of LOS. if you are in LOS try to be in cover and out of max range so they need to walk and shoot rather than focus and shoot, this can make a huge difference.

[Ludvig]

Also what Myyrä and Adran said  I get my master killed in most of my games. They're usually durable so why not throw them into the thick of it (well except assassinate of course).

[mojopin]

If the player Is skilled enough is very difficult to overcome those killy crews because if you tend to avoid his threat ranges you are not going to score vp's. Skilled vickys or reactivated Howard will hunt your beaters first leaving you with little options to retaliate. In my opinion playing fast agressive crews tend to be more effective.

[Ludvig]

4 hours ago, mojopin said:

If the player Is skilled enough is very difficult to overcome those killy crews because if you tend to avoid his threat ranges you are not going to score vp's. Skilled vickys or reactivated Howard will hunt your beaters first leaving you with little options to retaliate. In my opinion playing fast agressive crews tend to be more effective.

It depends a lot on if you can out-activate too. Vik isn't going to want to charge your guild hound when you have a fast, unactivated peacekeeper with debt to the guild within charging distance of that hound. That's why rats made them so utterly ridiculous, you couldn't hold that threat back and out-activate.

If you can find a 3-4 ss model that takes two ap for them to remove in your faction you can gum up charge lanes with those.