Crew Selection: The Process

[psychogeek]

Good afternoon everyone!

 

I have had a particular part of the game in mind lately. In my local meta (about half a dozen people currently), we have several people who enjoy the game, but are a bit down due to constant losses and frustrations. I have been sitting down with one in particular to go through a game beginning to end, focusing on the choices leading into the beginning of the game. I was very impressed with the player as he saw drastic improvement from this process. The largest issue he was facing was the crew selection process. Too often he would plan on a gimmick or be set on a specific list without adapting it. Now for a new player, sticking with one list can help learn, but once you have a handle on the game you need to adapt to improve you skill. Thinking about it, I have decided to share this process and get feedback and discussion about it.  So after reading this please provide your own feedback as to how you go through these decisions. Is there anything I do not bring up that you factor in or do you disagree with any of this? Regardless, I figured this would be a helpful thread for new or struggling players.

 

Step 1: Opponent disclaimer

So I must bring up that this is all my personal experience in my local and limited meta. Every meta has players who favor tactics and crews specific to them. Knowing those players and facing them often factors in a variable that you cannot objectify. Please note this is the process treating my opponent as an unknown, a new acquaintance if you will. Also remember that the best laid plans can be totally nullified as soon as the game enters turn 1. You cannot fully plan out a game without knowing the terrain and deployment positioning. But the following the next steps you can plan out the game without being at the table. Just keep in mind you will need to adapt in the middle of the game regardless of the next processes. 

 

STEP 1: The Initial Flip

So the first flip in the game in the game decides attacker, defender, deployment, and strategy (you have already declared faction, and for this article I will be coming from the perspective of outcasts). This is right off the bat one of the most crucial points in decision making. Right now you know who will pick deployment (which we will have to ignore as we do not have a table set up), and you need to pick a keyword to adequately handle the strategy and you must consider the deployment for how close you will be to scoring zones and the opponent.

Example: Having declared Outcasts (lets say facing Ten Thunders), now we have flipped and determined I am the attacker, we are using Turf War and Wedge Deployment. Right off the bat I need to determine possible masters that can adequately handle the strategy. I could declare Leveticus, but his crew relies heavily upon "Demise" abilities. One of the greatest strengths of Ten Thunders is their access to Charm Warders, a model who specializes in stopping those "Demise" abilities. Already I need to have a basic knowledge of the opponent's faction in order to plan accordingly. Know that those would greatly harm my crew, I instead choose Von Schill and his Freikorps keyword. Von Schill is a good pick because his keyword is incredibly durable and runs fewer models than many, giving the opponent fewer targets to kill in order to flip the Turf Markers. Von Schill's crew like to "bubble" a bit (keep from spreading out too much). This lends strength to him fighting for the middle zone giving him a positional advantage in Turf War should he be able to establish control of that area. Wedge does not harm the crew but will force me to split a couple models out at the beginning to grab the objectives.

But we haven't declared yet, we only have selected a TENTATIVE choice. We want to have a game plan just in case but schemes could decide a lot. 

STEP 2: Schemes

For schemes, we flip Vendetta, Outflank, Claim Jump, Take Prisoner, and Power Ritual

Man what a scheme pool. We have options between focusing in the middle of the board or chase the edges. Now I could pull and audible here for a more mobile crew, but I am flexible enough with Von Schill that I decide to keep him.

Now at this point we have locking the leader in and declared him. 

Now my opponent is also planning against me. He decides to play Asami and her Oni as they are an incredibly adaptable crew, both able to spread out or fight over a specific zone. 

The challenges I face here is that Asami is far more mobile than me for schemes like Power Ritual and Outflank. Instead of fighting her in a area where she has an advantage, I would be better off picking 2 of the other 3 schemes.

STEP 3: The Crew

Now is the hardest part, actually locking in a crew. This is going to vary a bit based on who you pick for your leader, but you always want to think of the schemes in mind and roles for the models to play.

First of all you want to pick the "auto-include" models. This is mostly subjective, but there are often models agreed to be taken in most of those crews.

For me that means Hannah, Arik, and a Librarian. These I always bring as Hannah brings power and cards to my crew, Arik is my preferred beater and will deny the summons in his "Gravity Well," and the Librarian is one of the best healers in the game.

Next we look at the schemes and select models that will lend to them.

I pick the Scout as it allows me to position in advance for grabbing a nearby turf marker (yes I have to wait till turn two). The plan would be to use his "From the Shadows" to deploy on the table half where I think I want to focus my efforts and movement. Terrain greatly affect this choice.

I pick the engineer as it helps me stay alive. I have 11 stones left to use and I have a couple options. Buy a cheap model or an upgrade or two. 

Outcast upgrades can be meh, but I do something specific here. I buy Soldier for Hire for the Scout, making him a decent choice for Vendetta by giving him "Hard to Kill."

My last choice is to dip into my versatile models as I hire a Prospector. Never forget your versatile models as they are some of the most useful models in your faction. This brings me down to 3 soulstones which would normally make me very nervous, but this is not a crew that needs them for triggers and the prospector will be adding one to my pool every turn. He has another use as well: defense against Power Ritual. I can move him to block and stop my opponent from scoring that scheme should they select it.

Note that most of my decision making is with my own plan in mind. Yes I did a little planning to counter my opponent, but I need to make sure I have my own plans covered first. This varies in its application as some keywords rely so heavily on something (such as "Terrifying") that by teching specifically to them you can shut down a large part of their functioning.

STEP 4: Pick the Schemes

Now has come time to declare the crews. I declare mine but my oppoent declares the following (hypothetical here, going off previous games and copied from the web app):

Asami Tanaka Crew (Ten Thunders)
Size: 50 - Pool: 8
Leader:
  Asami Tanaka
    Trained Ninja
Totem(s):
  Amanjaku
Hires:
  Jorogumo
  Jorogumo 2
  Akaname
  Tengu
  Ama No Zako
  Tengu 2

This list gives her threats for both the spread out schemes and the more groups up ones making it hard to predict. The two Jorogumo shut down my healing, keeping me from charging efficiently and have high enough damage to mitigate my armor. The Akaname and 2x Tengu lends me to think they are going for Power Ritual but also outflank is possible. The Jorogumo could also be picked for Vendetta as I have two models eligible. Asami's summon pool also lends incredible flexibility to her crew.

From here I pick Vendetta on the Scout targeting a Jorogumo. I was initially going to choose Claim Jump, and I could still do that choosing Arik or Hannah and moving in last minute either with an Arik charge or the "Rocket Boots" equipment on Hannah. I could decide instead to choose take prisoner on the second Jorogumo. If they flicker and kill him then I would score the second point easily. This is where your preference and confidence would come in. I would be comfortable with either scheme so I just need to choose based on other factors (board layout for example, how easily is it to defend the middle, etc.). For the example I will go with Claim Jump on Arik. He is mobile and his "Gravity Well" will help defend the middle a bit. Add in his innate durability and he is a great choice.

I did not plan for any marker based schemes as that is a weaker point of my keyword and Ten Thunders have a lot of anti-scheme marker tech. 

STEP 5: The Game

Now comes the game. From here it all goes to how well you deploy, play the game, and play your cards. But you took all the necessary steps up to this point to set yourself up for success. Going through this process, discussing the variables and changes along the way helped my local players to grow in their gameplay.

 

What do you all think? Anything you disagree with as far as decision processing? Any steps missed or unknown factors i didn't mention? Let me know and start a discussion!

 

[Ogid]

It's a good initiative. I'd say you covered it well.

The main issue for a new player would be having the knowledge and model pool to be able to make informed decisions and be able to select the right crew, it could be overwhelming to some of them so maybe start this using a keyword vs keyword approach instead of faction versus faction. If there are super new players with only 1 or 2 crews, don't pit them versus the guy who owns an entire faction (or make sure that guy knows it and go easy, not picking the perfect match for that pool and the other guy's crew).

In this line is also comunication between players. Be sure both players are in the same vibre; if one brings a casual crew to try something different and the other want to practice his best tournament crew, it won't be a fun game; at least not for the casual crew guy. Also things like double masters or a player not liking playing/struggling versus something should also be taken in count.

 

In step 1 and 2: Consider also the Henchmans, not only the masters. These are less likely to happen but a player locking a crew that rely in Demises versus NBV because they know that faction doesn't have antidemise abilities (beyond some executes) could find himself facing a Hinamatsu leaded crew with the Puppets/Qi and Gong keyword hiring 2 Charm Warders, or a player may find himself facing a Nephillim rush in Outcast thanks to Barbaros, or in ARC a crossroad seven crew with Envy shooting 6 times per turn may also happen. At least being aware that those options are there it's important imo.

Maybe I'd add something in the step 3: In addition to the crew choice, it would be interesting to also consider the best OOK models of both factions and the most frecuent double masters (if your meta uses them). A player playing versus Guild for example shouldn't get surprised to see a pale rider or a LadyJ as second master and no player playing versus RES should be surprised to see Archie and/or Manos jumping around as a OOK hire. Taking those picks in count if those could be a counter for a master of the faction is also important (for example, a bubble crew will probably face a pale rider every time versus Guild). In your example Von Schill has to consider a possible double master with McCabe; Onis have one of the best minions of the faction, and precise plus fast in Jorogumos will be quite good versus a full armored crew like Freikorps (especialy in a pool where controling the center is so good like this one). Could his crew handle that level of agression?

In this point there is also a mind games step. The other player should be doing the same than you, so if see very clearly something coming or if the other master crew counter yours; then going OOK or picking unconvencional crews can give the edge. However this requires a player knowing both factions inside out and able to adapt his crews and play. As said before, this is too much for a new player; it's better starting with a much more simple approach; but it's something to keep in mind when advicing the more experienced ones.

[psychogeek]

It was more to talk step by step through the deso coins. The player I mentioned was not a new player but this helped him so I figured I would share 

[Maniacal_cackle]

Nice work! Very thorough. You may find my post on pre-game analysis useful.

A few disparate thoughts!

First, you gloss over attacker and defender with the implication that is mainly useful for terrain. But in my experience, deployment order also hugely matters.

Vendetta favours the defender, as they can always force the deployment of their Vendetta target and play around that. Same for Take Prisoner.

Being defender also opens up some potent zone control options. As defender, you could force your opponent to commit to part of the board, then focus on taking the other side of the board (outflank and power ritual are good for denial strategies as you need to only control one side to deny).

Second, I like your scheme flexibility. I always try to build to be able to swap schemes last moment if need be.

Third, flying blind. Sometimes you just don't know the enemy crew that well. In these cases, I suggest prioritising a proactive strategy. Taking and holding the claim jump centre focuses on knowing your own crew more than Take Prisoner for example (taking prisoners against Dreamer is a nightmare for example).

[Maniacal_cackle]

Oh, it also might be worth highlighting single-model counters if the player owns any.

Archie is a powerful counter to condition based crews. Ruthless is a counter to terrifying. Upgrades like Eldrith Magic can be useful for conditions and Inhuman Reflexes for Claim Jump.

You touched on this with your gravity well, but good to mention it in a broader fashion as well.