When scenarios and schemes conflict...

[jchrisobrien]

Whenever I play the Ours strategy, there is a 75% that Show of Force is one of the schemes involved (or so it seems!)  The Guild are great at Show of Force, but if we take that scenario, it makes winning Ours harder.   Most of the time I still take it, because my opponent may not suspect it, and I aggressively go after one of his quarters.  Would you take Show of Force in this strategy?

What other conflicting strategies/schemes have you run into, and how do you address them?  (Obviously it depends on what the other schemes are, but I'm interested in figuring out ways to make those conflicting strategies work for us.)

[thewrathchilde]

I do not take schemes that conflict with the strategy. It is hard enough to play for 10 in every pool and limiting or inhibiting your ability to do so through your scheme selections just seems like an unnecessary handicap. With Show you may be handicapping yourself a key model (Frank/Phiona/etc) that you need to kill out the other quarters and unless your opponent is placing close to the center circle (w/n 6") then your upgrade holders aren't able to influence or support your efforts to control quarters. 

Similarly I try not to take schemes (when possible) that are dependent on my opponent cooperating with me to score such as Take One for the Team. I try to take things I can score one the basis of my own actions and crew (Undercover, Surround Them, Covert Breakthrough, Recover Evidence) and also avoid things like Inescapable Trap or Hold Up Their Forces that rely on having multiple models of their cooperate with me scoring. 

I will take some schemes (Public Demo or Set Up) that require proximity to their models to score occasionally but only with specific masters/crews and then limit it to things that can be scored all at once so they can't deny it once I have "tipped my hand". Ideally with Guild I prefer to take schemes that can be scored as a by product of me playing for the strategy without having to dedicate AP to the schemes or that can be scored while I am using the AP to do other things that enable my crew. Ideally I want things that fit within the primary style of play that works for that crew without dedicated effort to do something different. 

For example, In the example in the other thread about the crews selection for the 3 round tournament I was advocating for Lady J in Extraction w/Undercover and your choice of other scheme. In this case Lady J (and a lot of her crew) want to be in the middle, they function most effectively killing their way into the other crew the strategy requires the opponent to meet in the middle. She and the homies can kill out the center and escort the marker across to the enemies deployment zone for her to score Undercover and score the strategy each turn. Depending on your other scheme selection you can then spread out to drop the last two markers for Surround Them. I think those are the best two choices for that pool with the type of crew I usually play with Lady J. I am not going to take Public Demo because I don't have the right minions to score it without altering my crew (dropping a Henchman to take Thrall), I am not going to take Take One for the Team because if Lady J and her crew is working well then the prime candidates for Take One (the cheap stuff) is often ignored by the opponent who is forced to deal with the big models before their crew is killed out. Then if I take it on the Executioner or something similar most likely I am only scoring 1 pt for it or 2 its at the best instead of the full 3. In the same vein I don't like Inescapable Trap because either it is easy to deny once you score it once or you are killing them out quick enough that you don't have two models close enough together to score it consistently or you are having to choose not to kill in order to score letting them score the strategy. I almost never take Inescapable Trap but decided to take it tonight (I wanted to try our what I was advocating in the other thread in that pool and played my Lady J against a pretty fluffy Lynch list) because I thought with Phiona and Transparency it would be easy to score......and I ended up killing through my opponents Lynch crew in such a way I didn't score a single point from it- fortunately I did get 4 pts for Extraction and 3 its for Undercover and pulled out the win by several points. 

[Ludvig]

I would probably skip show of force in ours unless the other schemes were super hard for me. There are a couple of henchmen who can shoot out of the middle decently if you want to try anyway. A melee heavy enemy will need to get close to the middle and give you a chance to trap them there if you deploy a lot or ranged behind the middle for your quarters and Queeg or someone could stick a toe in with a couple of upgrades and can try to whip enemies into the center, he can touch the edge and reach 4" out with the whip or shoot out if they keep away.

[Adran]

I would try to build something that could at least threaten to do show of force. And then if my opponent looks like they chose to ignore it it can be an easy 3 vp, at the risk that you'll struggle more with ours. If you're going to try it, you need the model that can't score ours to still be a threat, either because it has ranged threat, or movement tricks that can alter scoring by moving enemies to non scoring , or moving you to steal a quarter that you otherwise would score. In guild, shooting is most likely, but not the only way.  

I'd look to focus on defending my starting quarters in that case, rather than try and work on stealing the enemy's. 

[Tris]

Regarding show in ours - you can always take a ranged model with one upgrade so you get the points while still affecting the game - if your opponent wants to deny you, he has to lose some points for ours too.

Guild nornally has enough upgrades on henches and such that you can always decide on the fly if you would like to go for show or not - and if your opp should try to deny you, put another model with an upgrade in there, kill the enemy model and you should've scored show and made ours harder for the opponent in future turns.

[Ludvig]

A guild sergeant is pretty cheap and can bounce out markers for scoring other stuff with a single upgrade on it.

[Gnomezilla]

Eventually I learned that almost all strategies (Symbols of Authority being the outlier) must be played for every turn, therefore schemes were secondary as even the longest ones only take three, therefore conflicting schemes are not to be taken at all.

I personally am often playing against Show of Force so there’s a disincentive there: the assumption that I’ll have enough upgrades in a standard Guild crew to win it isn’t one I can make.

[jchrisobrien]

Lots of good discussion here!

I did some number crunching after work. I've taken Show of Force in Ours five times, scoring either 2 or 3 each time.  One win, two big losses, two narrow losses (narrow by 1 points).  The moral of the story seems to be "Don't take Show!"  

I often pair Guarded Treasure with Show of Force in those cases (usually the Jury or another tanky model)  I've been playing it poorly, but just having that model touch the center of the board.  That means my other model has to sit near the back with little impact on the game.  Better to put that model deep in the center, so my second Guarded marker can be closer.  The Guild Sergeant is also a common model in Ours; kicking a scheme marker around is sweet!