Advice for TOS demo

[Sol_Sorrowsong]

Hey All,

So we recently received TOS starter kits and I'm going to be starting demoing this coming week. It will be between gibbering hordes box and king's empire and should be good fun but I'm a little nervous about terrain and setting the field properly for both armies.  It seems like it will be a melee vs range type brawl and I neither want the Horde to zerg the Empire, nor the Empire to Tau gunline the Horde to bits. 

Can you help me hit the sweet spot with terrain features?  Malifaux terrain is what I'm used to, but with bigger fireteam base sizes I feel it needs to be more wide open than I'm used to building.  Both armies also have "deployable" markers with tide pools and landmines so trying to keep that in mind too.  What kinds of terrain worked for you, and more importantly what terrain caused problems?  

Houses, forests, GW style ruins, scatter?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Aner-Dyfan]

I'm working on planning some ToS demos in the future myself, would love to form a local community for the game. So how did you go about it in the end?

My first demo used a load of small pieces of blocking+impassible and concealing+difficult terrain. Felt it was a mistake as made it almost impossible to not get -2AV for actions. As such I think a few large pieces of terrain would be better. This would include things like a long fence/wall/river crossing most the table.

[Cactus3D]

On 5/4/2019 at 9:29 PM, Aner-Dyfan said:

My first demo used a load of small pieces of blocking+impassible and concealing+difficult terrain. Felt it was a mistake as made it almost impossible to not get -2AV for actions. As such I think a few large pieces of terrain would be better. This would include things like a long fence/wall/river crossing most the table.

At this case you need cover to balance factions, on empty table British's gameplay is transforming into arcade mode. Royal corp has really high stats + tokens. We play with 50-60% table with cover. It is interesting.

Maybe on demos it is not good advice for demos, but imho it is not correct to show how one team oneshot other team. May be two-three big piece of losblock terrain and 5-6 piece of low terrain for cover will be good on small table. Full table need more staff when british plays on it.

[Sol_Sorrowsong]

On 5/4/2019 at 9:29 PM, Aner-Dyfan said:

I'm working on planning some ToS demos in the future myself, would love to form a local community for the game. So how did you go about it in the end?

My first demo used a load of small pieces of blocking+impassible and concealing+difficult terrain. Felt it was a mistake as made it almost impossible to not get -2AV for actions. As such I think a few large pieces of terrain would be better. This would include things like a long fence/wall/river crossing most the table.

Sorry for not getting back to you until now.

I just had another game with the starter boxes again so I can talk a bit about how things have progressed and keep progressing.

Between GH and KE it is very much a battle for KE to keep distance and tackle the objective.  I played GH each time we've played and next time we are swapping factions to get a view from the other side (heh, just noticed) the next time around. 

This last game we had three large terrain features around the center of the map. Game mode was the one where we place Objective Markers (score 1 vp per OM) for 2 tactics tokens on upkeep and can remove an OM within 3" outside of engagement for 1 tactics token (1vp per removal). We had standard deployment. Two were elevated (Hills with small building on top) so were LOS blocking a bit on top, and completely for non-titans from across the hill. The third large piece was actually two LOS blocking rock formations with a small gap not big enough for a fireteam to pass through, but allowed some vision at a specific angle (not towards middle of map).  Additional terrain included a pond, ruined building, and two forests. All were difficult, conceiling, with ruins and forest to be blocking also. Finally, with the stormsiren I had 3 tide pools placed roughly along the midline.

As GH I knew I needed to rush forward and with skulkers to hug terrain (to get that bonus card flip in opposed duels from active camo (maybe too strong, I forgot it worked in offensive duels too!)

With instantly glorying, I got into engagement turn 1 (Banner teleporting + Rush), but then got that fireteam shot off the table. Stormsiren gloried and pulled riflemen into a tidepool and they for some reason didn't run away (liked their reinforcement tokens more?) the whole game.  When  I finally got endless numbers, I used the conch shell to spawn near and rush back into the frey so tying them down, or removing his OMs as I needed.   This told me that we need more linear terrain, maybe fence or barbed wire.  Difficult, but without other benefits.  Something that GH can't ignore.  

After my first turn, I only had a fireteam left for each skulker squad and 2 left on the krakinoi, but reinforcing with Healing magic asset on stormsiren is really easy.  This was only a 25scrip game, but I felt because I could reinforce and get in his face without difficulty, he had a lot of trouble turn 3-5.  

GH has a lot of maneuverability and of course, the attrition game will heavily help them.  I think I was playing a bit higher level than my opponent in the objectives game, but if I wasn't able to move around so easy it would have helped KE more.  Not necessarily more big terrain pieces, but some more neutral challenges that KE could exploit. Instead, only I was able to make use of the terrain for benefits.

Blocking LOS from stormsiren to other fireteams would have been a big challenge for me to deal with also. but she was only challenged once by Charles and her AR 9 and tactics tokens (to use via Conch shell asset) kept him from trying again.

[Amateur Contender]

Would it be possible for people to post pictures of their boards?