Deployment and Positioning - an in depth tactica

[Cursed25]

33 minutes ago, Cronex13 said:

Welp. 

You're right.

He declared Asami and I thought it was Misaki. So I'll be re writing that. 

Fuck.

take exorcists and Jury! they are good vs summoners!  

[Cronex13]

Okay, new list

Lady J

Scales

Guardian

Executioner

Pale Rider

Brutal Em

False Witness.

The goal here is to position Lady J and the False Witness right at the top of the wedge deployment and have the guardian throw them both up the table turn 1 at Asami. The False Witness will throw up her bubble of no cheating and Lady Justice will attempt to kill Asami turn 1. This is a risky manouver but if she's allowed to live, I WILL lose. Take her off the board means I only get 1 point for Assassinate, but I'll still have McCabe to kill for the late game strat points. He either has to kill Lady J early and deny himself the same points as me or let her live and heal herself as she kills more things. Guardian still there to get the easy point on Claim Jump, Pale Rider and Em are there as damage sources that aren't henchman

[Cronex13]

I don't have the Jury and only 1 Excorcist, and when he summons the Jurogumo the Excorcist only does a couple of damage before he is killed and the jorugumo heals. He will just be a free strat point for my enemy

[le_wahou]

Exorcist and lone marshal puts a lot of pressure on summoners, you should try them

[Cronex13]

1 minute ago, le_wahou said:

Exorcist and lone marshal puts a lot of pressure on summoners, you should try them

I don't have the Lone Marshall and the Excorcist has already tried his luck against Asami before, my opponent knows he can just summon a Jurogumo and kill the Excorcist in a single activation and then get a heal off of it.

[Myyrä]

1 minute ago, Cronex13 said:

I don't have the Lone Marshall and the Excorcist has already tried his luck against Asami before, my opponent knows he can just summon a Jurogumo and kill the Excorcist in a single activation and then get a heal off of it.

What models do you have? I don't want to be mean, but that list you posted doesn't seem very strong, and you can probably do better.

False Witness doesn't have the durability to live that close to Asami for very long, and your opponent can negate the aura just by moving Asami or the witness a few inches. So, unless you somehow catch your opponent completely off guard with that one, it's never going to work.

[Cronex13]

Solid feedback! Here's a list of what all I have.

Lady Justice, Judge, Scales, Excorcist, 3 DMs and a DM recruiter.

Lucius, Model sub for his henchmen, Scribe, 2 lawyers, Doppleganger, model sub for false witness and investigators.

Dashel, Queeg, model sub for Dispatcher, an Executioner, 4 guild hounds, 4 guild guard, 2 riflemen, a Warden.

Hoffman, Mech attendant, 3 hunters, a guardian, a watcher, the previously mentioned warden.

Grimwell, Heartsbane, 2 Orderlies.

Misc stuff includes: Francisco, Pale Rider, Brutal Emmisary, an Austringer, a Witchling Stalker.

[Cronex13]

I am locked in with Lady J as leader so can't bring the Doppleganger but everything else should be fine to hire

[Myyrä]

Considering what you have available, how would this feel like:

Lady J + LLC (2)
Scales
Judge (10)
Grimwell (9)
Guardian (10)
Pale Rider (11)
8ss cache

You could also slap another LLC there somewhere if you feel like it. This crew should have enough mobility and damage to choose their targets pretty freely. With 8ss and disgustingly durable models your opponent should also have difficult time finding kills. That should be good for Reckoning.
As for schemes, you will be giving out one free point for Vendetta, but should have a pretty good change of preventing your opponent from getting two. Depending on what your opponent brings, you should also have a good change of getting 1-2 points from Vendetta yourself. Claim Jump and Assassinate should be good alternatives as well, and it's usually pretty easy to get at least 1 point from Search the Ruins.

Personally, I would have preferred bringing a bigger ranged threat, but I don't think you have anything that fits the bill too well.

[Cronex13]

-spends a few minutes looking at it and considering-

Okay, so initial thoughts. Doesn't look half bad! I haven't given the judge his fair chance after seeing him slaughtered a couple times, but his melee is GOOD and he's pretty durable.

I don't know how I feel about Grimwell as a model. He's got nimble so he's very good for search the ruins, haven't had much luck with him as a beater in previous games. I definitely feel like I'm missing a key part of playing him. Any advice?

Pale Rider is the Pale Rider. Was considering giving him Expert Marksman for his rifle early game?

The Guardian can basically get the first point on Claim Jump automatically with his pulse, and as long as he has support he stands a chance of making it for the second point.

As far as a ranged threat, I definitely feel like I'm lacking as well. I don't have any Perdita (sans Francisco, their melee expert) and I lack almost all of Basse crew.

[Xekros]

Are you overextending your exorcist to try to make use of Barrier to the Other World? Also the guardian should be able to help him not die too quickly.

A tie with a crow to straight up kill a summon is really good, especially if it's immediately after Asami goes, and hasn't gotten a chance to use said Jorogumo.

The Death Marshal Recruiter might actually not be a bad pick, either, if you're taking the Emmisary: stat 4 vs sz is a pretty solid advantage, especially against Asami herself.

As for the False Witness, I don't have access to the card, but the Scales has some anti cheat tech, as well, and the damage reflect on df for survivability.

I've played against Asami, but not with Lady J, so there's that.

[Cronex13]

2 minutes ago, Xekros said:

Are you overextending your exorcist to try to make use of Barrier to the Other World? Also the guardian should be able to help him not die too quickly.

A tie with a crow to straight up kill a summon is really good, especially if it's immediately after Asami goes, and hasn't gotten a chance to use said Jorogumo.

The Death Marshal Recruiter might actually not be a bad pick, either, if you're taking the Emmisary: stat 4 vs sz is a pretty solid advantage, especially against Asami herself.

As for the False Witness, I don't have access to the card, but the Scales has some anti cheat tech, as well, and the damage reflect on df for survivability.

I've played against Asami, but not with Lady J, so there's that.

I may be overextending, I'm not the best at positioning. I try to keep him relatively near the action but it's hard to get away when Asami can summon wherever she wants. I REALLY want to like that trigger but without access to SS he has a hard time making that work. More often than not he's just gonna force the enemy to cheat and since she has Arcane Reservoir that's not really an issue.

False Witness straight up stops cheating near her (provided she can flip a 7 of anything on her flip) but Scales does some good stuff too. 

 

[Myyrä]

15 minutes ago, Cronex13 said:

-spends a few minutes looking at it and considering-

Okay, so initial thoughts. Doesn't look half bad! I haven't given the judge his fair chance after seeing him slaughtered a couple times, but his melee is GOOD and he's pretty durable.

It's worth noting that Judge isn't that durable without spending soulstones, so in this list, I would play him towards the back lines and focus on drawing cards. He can also make ranged attacks and target models that overextend.

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I don't know how I feel about Grimwell as a model. He's got nimble so he's very good for search the ruins, haven't had much luck with him as a beater in previous games. I definitely feel like I'm missing a key part of playing him. Any advice?

I feel Grimwell is better at setting targets up than knocking them down. He can stack quite high injured on a target or do a number on opponent's control hand. He doesn't have enough damage of killing anything too significant alone, but if you can get Lady J (or pretty much anything in that list) to a heavily injured target, it won't live for long. Grimwell will also get a lot more dangerous if you can target a staggered model, and you have Pale Rider and Judge that can give staggered from range.

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Pale Rider is the Pale Rider. Was considering giving him Expert Marksman for his rifle early game?

It is definitely an option, and might turn out to be very good. I just feel it's rather expensive for what it gives. Would not fault you for taking it though.

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The Guardian can basically get the first point on Claim Jump automatically with his pulse, and as long as he has support he stands a chance of making it for the second point.

Indeed.

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As far as a ranged threat, I definitely feel like I'm lacking as well. I don't have any Perdita (sans Francisco, their melee expert) and I lack almost all of Basse crew.

Sonnia might have been my first choice here. She would have made it pretty much impossible for the opponent to form a giant death ball around Asami.

[Cronex13]

-continues to mull over- 

Okay. I'm liking it more now. I like the Staggered and Injured coming out of the crew. One of the biggest pains is the high WP in the enemy crew, several models have WP7 so bringing that down a bit with Injured will be nice.

I'll take Claim Jump and Search the Ruins. Grimwell, the Pale Rider and Lady J are all able models for Search the Ruins so I think that's the best bet. I'll work on keeping the condition removal on and I'm going to try to get rid of Asami early on. I don't think I'll take the EM upgrade, as there's a lot of Henchmen to keep alive so I want my stones.

I like your thought process on this. I've underestimated Grimwell and the Judge after misusing them, mostly because they're a bit different than last edition. Grimwell isn't the hammer he used to be and the Judge traded out a little offense for a little support. I'm really hoping to see this go well. 

That said, we have two games we're playing since it's tourney practice so in a bit I'll post the second game scenario and my initial list ideas.

 

[Xekros]

9 minutes ago, Myyrä said:

Sonnia might have been my first choice here. She would have made it pretty much impossible for the opponent to form a giant death ball around Asami.

Sonnia has been the one I've played into Asami. She prevents the bubbling they tend to like, and the range reduction actually hinders Asami's summons surprisingly effectively. And just throwing witchlings in the summons' faces to tie them up so they can't do anything

[Cronex13]

Are you talking about hiring Sonnia in? Because it's not like we can hire our leaders based on what leader the enemy brought

[Xekros]

I happened to be playing Sonnia at the time and it worked out quite well. The range reduction is leader only, unfortunately, so that bit can't help.

If you can hire a second master, I'd go for Perdita, though, as Finger on the Trigger is exceptional anti-charge, and she hits like a train on full hp models.

[Cursed25]

2 hours ago, Cronex13 said:

Lady Justice will attempt to kill Asami turn 1.

don't try this! Asami has a oni only take the hit so you will not be able to kill her and all his crew will be in reach of your leader which will crumble easily against oni beaters! flickers are really strong and jorogumo hits like a truck! put pressure on his beaters/scheme runners in the early turn and if you have an open window to Asami try it later! turn 1-2 she will surely be surrounded by a few Oni who wil take the hit for her!

[Cronex13]

Suiciding isn't the hope but Asami will NEVER not be with an Oni bodyguard... The longer I wait, the less models I have to get it done and the more times a Jurogumo spawns next to me its not a great option but I don't have a ton of alternatives. 2 Fast Jurogumo that ignore all my densive tech WILL kill anything in this list and most likely more than one model in a turn

[Paddywhack]

 

48 minutes ago, Cronex13 said:

I may be overextending, I'm not the best at positioning. I try to keep him relatively near the action but it's hard to get away when Asami can summon wherever she wants. I REALLY want to like that trigger but without access to SS he has a hard time making that work. More often than not he's just gonna force the enemy to cheat and since she has Arcane Reservoir that's not really an issue.

Might be better to keep him behind the lines, plinking what he can when he can. Hold on to every high Crow you can and nothing will upset your opponent more than losing a newly summoned Jorogumo with no way to even retaliate. Can't say it will work all the time, but for 6SS, that threat is pretty big. And they are still a decent model. 

29 minutes ago, Cronex13 said:

Are you talking about hiring Sonnia in? Because it's not like we can hire our leaders based on what leader the enemy brought

Could always bring her as a second master... Sounds like your opponent is likely to. Asami does like to bunch up, so anything that hits multiple models at once will be 

[4thstringer]

I want to go back to something I said previously. I said I tend to focus less on the schemes.  That being said, Craig's (TFW) analysis of the data from Nova would suggest that is not a good way to go (though there were very few guild players)

[Cronex13]

I'm still new to TFW, could you elaborate a little?

[4thstringer]

16 minutes ago, Cronex13 said:

I'm still new to TFW, could you elaborate a little?

Third floor wars- https://thirdfloorwars.com/

 

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCA496705JLkpgAssAhetpdw

They did a live stream last night about that topic.

[Cronex13]

I'll check it out!

In the meantime, we finished generating game 2 of the practice session.

Flank deployment on Plant Explosives.

Harness the Ley Line, Hold up their forces, take prisoner, power ritual, deliver a message.

We haven't declared masters yet, but here's my idea for a list.

Dashel

Dispatcher

Queeg

Rifleman

False Witness

Guild hounds x4

Pale Rider

I don't have mounted guard so I just have to deal with that and adapt. The Dashel/Queeg/Hound turboboost discussed on the Dashel forum works like a charm for Plant Explosives. Its only irritating factor is that the markers must be placed 6" apart, but with the Pale Rider having Ride with Me to take a dog with him and then a move of 7" AND fast (as long as Dashel gives him Foul Mouthed Motivation near Queeg) then I should be able to get all the markers laid down by turn 1.

At that point, that group is there to protect the markers and distract the enemy.

I imagine he will stick his leader on me and so I will take "Deliver a Message" (I doubt I'll get the second point but the first one is a doozy.)

The other scheme is Harness the Ley Line. The rifleman and the false witness go to one of the corners and just use her ability to lay down a lot of scheme marks in a little area. The rifleman lays down spares a few inches away since you have to remove one at the end of the turn for the FW ability, and serves as some extra protection for FW so she doesn't get sniped like we had been talking about.

The dogs will inevitably die. If they group up after the alpha strike, maybe they will kill something. But most importantly they will take up time and AP, since the enemy either has to fight them and not place his markers, or ignore markers entirely.

Whatcha think?

 

[Paddywhack]

18 hours ago, Cronex13 said:

Suiciding isn't the hope but Asami will NEVER not be with an Oni bodyguard... The longer I wait, the less models I have to get it done and the more times a Jurogumo spawns next to me its not a great option but I don't have a ton of alternatives. 2 Fast Jurogumo that ignore all my densive tech WILL kill anything in this list and most likely more than one model in a turn

If he brings McCabe as well, would it make more sense to go after him first with LJ? I know he's not an easy target either, but if he can't give out upgrades to the Jorogumo, they become slightly less scary (they really shouldn't be Minions imo and why do they need WP7?). Even knocking him off his horse could set him up for an easier kill later and put pressure on him.

Some shockwaves could be useful, but again I don't see many in Guild. 

Timeworn Blade is stupid. It should at least be limited to only 1.