Pleasant dreams: a breakdown of beating Dreamer.

[Maniacal_cackle]

I played a fair bit of Dreamer before swapping back to Ressers, and have been inspired to write this post by some misconceptions about beating Dreamer. At least, I think they're misconceptions! I am by no means an expert, but I did quite well with Dreamer and wanted to offer a different perspective on waking from the nightmare.

The 'bad' advice: hitting him where it hurts.

Often you will see people say that the way to beat the Dreamer is to take out some key models. Sometimes they mean daydreams, sometimes they mean Dreamer, and sometimes they mean Dreamer's beaters so he is stuck using only his minions to kill you throughout the game. 

Here's the thing: Dreamer is one of the most brutal combat crews in the game. He wants you to come over and start hitting, and then his guys will start hitting you. Guess who is going to win if this goes on for a few turns? Even if you kill Lord Chompy Bits, stitched and even alps are going to start hitting you for min 3 attacks and you're going to die.

The Dreamer strategy explained.

If the Dreamer wanted to, he could spend all game summoning from some obscure corner and never get near danger. Why does he go near danger, then? Because he is comfortable with it. If you get close enough to the Dreamer and his Daydreams, you are in the middle of his crew. You're in his castle, and you're going to pay for it. 

From his castle, Dreamer sends out the troops. He stakes a claim to an area of the board, and then continuously deploys more and more forces until he owns that part of the board. By the end of the game, he aims to own most of the board. You can't infiltrate his castle, and once he has claimed territory he is extremely difficult to push out. If you come to his turf, you're going to be ground to dust by one of the scariest crews in the game.

There are some exceptions. Exceptional ninjas can sneak in, do some sneaky killing, and sneak out. Misaki is a prime candidate for this. Archie can rush in, get a few hits and eat a few resources, and then leap away and carry on with his day. So this approach is something to keep an eye out for, especially when you can do it at low cost and low risk. Poke the castle a bit. Just don't plan on staying for long.

So he can't be beat?

Exactly! Submit to the eternal nightmare! LORD CHOMPY SHALL REIGN SUPREME!!!

*Ahem*. Sorry about that. No, it is not hopeless. Read on!

My advice: don't try to stop the Dreamer's crew, try to stop his points. And secure your own!

The Dreamer can go lay claim to a section of the board. But it takes him time to do it. He is very inefficient (as some recent posts note, he feels HORRIBLE for things like having to do a bunch of interact actions). So the key to beating him is to go secure your points.  He will have trouble stopping you, as he is a slow roll devastator.

Feint him. Go try to score points somewhere, and then when he lays claim by unburing a couple nightmares... Go somewhere else and score points elsewhere! His nightmares are now stuck, as they've unburied. You are free to go do some shenanigans somewhere else.

Move away. Reposition. Outmanoeuvre.

Let's look at some examples!

Plant explosives

If I was playing against Dreamer on say corner Plant with Molly... Here's how I'd tackle it:

• Turn 1, get 2-3 bombs planted, far away from Dreamer (far enough that only his spiders can deal with them).
• If his spiders come to deal with my bombs, precision strike them down, steal their bombs OR run away and leave them to it (depending on how long it'll take them to deal with the bombs).
• If the spiders go to put down their own bombs, go disrupt them.
• Turn 2, go kill something with a bomb.
• Turn 3 Dreamer is probably catching up and has claimed the first area where I have laid the bombs, and might be able to pick up two of them by now.
• Go start laying my other bombs/some of the bombs I stole. Steal another bomb with pocket crooligans if possible.
• Snag his bombs and run wherever possible.

And just like that, the entire plan is basically 'RUN AWAYYYYYY', but it would be a nightmare for Dreamer to deal with (hehe...) Dreamer is slow to take over territory. So you want to zip into a location, disrupt and score, and then run away again. Don't let him pin you down in a fight.

Reckoning

This one comes down to the schemes. If there's outflank and claim jump... Well, just get a crew that does the pool better than he does, because it is going to HURT.

However, for the average scheme pool, he is providing you with lots of opportunities to score. Snag your points, and then just start running away and not letting him score by killing your key models. Dance around him and disrupt where possible (it can be agonising for dreamer if he goes to the effort to place a few scheme markers and then you casually whisk them away with 1-2 actions).

It is hard to be more specific without a specific scheme pool, but if you want advice on a pool, let me know and I'll give an opinion!

Turf War

I'd argue that Dreamer is pretty strong on this one.

His key weakness is that you can just keep flipping his turf war markers by killing things. He will fill up the board, so focus on getting a solid lead early, then just precision strike things down to stop him ever having more than 2 turf war markers. If he doesn't leave anything in a table quarter, just flip it by sending someone in.

You don't need markers to be friendly. Just stop him scoring, and then use your own lead (that you probably got by scoring better schemes and early turf war markers) to coast to victory.

Corrupted idols

Oh, you're facing Dreamer on corrupted idols? Well, fuck...

All joking aside, this one can be rough. Here you're wanting a crew that is just really, really excellent at the strategy. Dreamer will be doing a solid job of covering the entire centre line, so it is harder to do the important stuff in territory he hasn't claimed yet. So take a strong idols crew to the matchup.

Schemes will be super important here, as Dreamer will be stretched a bit thin covering all the idols. Abuse this by doing schemes away from the centreline to spread him out thinner.

Also be aware Dreamer is resource hungry, so he sometimes won't be able to force idol placement. Keep an eye out for being able to force awkward idol placements, especially turns one and two. If you can secure an early lead, he will be spending a lot of the game scrambling to undo your lead. Perfect opportunity for you to disrupt and secure more points. If he gets an early lead, he will snowball you horribly.

What do you think?

What do you all reckon? Am I wrong about avoiding the fight and just focusing on scoring? Have you won Dreamer games because you've manage to take down key pieces early? What's the balance?

[Nagi21]

3 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

My advice: don't try to stop the Dreamer's crew, try to stop his points. And secure your own!

So score points while denying your opponent's points >.>  Nice advice captain o7

Joking aside I wanna hit on a few things.

 

3 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Plant explosives

If I was playing against Dreamer on say corner Plant with Molly... Here's how I'd tackle it:

• Turn 1, get 2-3 bombs planted, far away from Dreamer (far enough that only his spiders can deal with them).
• If his spiders come to deal with my bombs, precision strike them down, steal their bombs OR run away and leave them to it (depending on how long it'll take them to deal with the bombs).
• If the spiders go to put down their own bombs, go disrupt them.
• Turn 2, go kill something with a bomb.
• Turn 3 Dreamer is probably catching up and has claimed the first area where I have laid the bombs, and might be able to pick up two of them by now.
• Go start laying my other bombs/some of the bombs I stole. Steal another bomb with pocket crooligans if possible.
• Snag his bombs and run wherever possible.

And just like that, the entire plan is basically 'RUN AWAYYYYYY', but it would be a nightmare for Dreamer to deal with (hehe...) Dreamer is slow to take over territory. So you want to zip into a location, disrupt and score, and then run away again. Don't let him pin you down in a fight.

This strategy only works with hypermobile crews (which are different from just mobile crews) such as Molly or Nekima.  The pair of spiders is actually very dangerous and requires significant investment to stop, because while Bandy is a bit squishy, Widow is not, and if you lose a model to them (any model), stitched are going to become an issue for you, which also means it frees up summons on the part of the board you're not on (i.e. where dreamer is).  This strategy can get out of hand very quickly if you underestimate the ability of the crew to put a lot of force in more than one place.

3 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Reckoning

This one comes down to the schemes. If there's outflank and claim jump... Well, just get a crew that does the pool better than he does, because it is going to HURT.

However, for the average scheme pool, he is providing you with lots of opportunities to score. Snag your points, and then just start running away and not letting him score by killing your key models. Dance around him and disrupt where possible (it can be agonising for dreamer if he goes to the effort to place a few scheme markers and then you casually whisk them away with 1-2 actions).

It is hard to be more specific without a specific scheme pool, but if you want advice on a pool, let me know and I'll give an opinion!

Good news, bad news.  Good news: Nightmares are not the hardest thing in the world to kill and scoring 2-3 points on this is fairly reasonable for you.  Bad news: Nightmares are some of the deadliest and most mobile things in the world, and will almost certainly be scoring as many if not more than you do on this.  Claim jump/Prisoner/Outflank all make this a rough, high-scoring ride.  Running away doesn't work so hot because the summons pop up off your models, unless you run so far away that wp duels become a non-factor, and at that point how have you managed to kill anything to score?  Advice: Bring guns... lots of guns.

 

3 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Turf War

I'd argue that Dreamer is pretty strong on this one.

His key weakness is that you can just keep flipping his turf war markers by killing things. He will fill up the board, so focus on getting a solid lead early, then just precision strike things down to stop him ever having more than 2 turf war markers. If he doesn't leave anything in a table quarter, just flip it by sending someone in.

You don't need markers to be friendly. Just stop him scoring, and then use your own lead (that you probably got by scoring better schemes and early turf war markers) to coast to victory.

This one looks better on paper vs dreamer than it actually is.  Remember that Dreamer is a summoner.  The fact that you can only nuke markers down to neutral means that he's going to have spare models to activate to reclaim those turf markers.  He can also unbury Insidious next to your models that have activated markers, and then activate them after scattering you.  Also, remember that Dreamer wants you to come kill his stuff, because as you said, that's his castle.  Turn 3 onwards you have to come to him to get points.

 

3 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Corrupted idols

Oh, you're facing Dreamer on corrupted idols? Well, fuck...

All joking aside, this one can be rough. Here you're wanting a crew that is just really, really excellent at the strategy. Dreamer will be doing a solid job of covering the entire centre line, so it is harder to do the important stuff in territory he hasn't claimed yet. So take a strong idols crew to the matchup.

Schemes will be super important here, as Dreamer will be stretched a bit thin covering all the idols. Abuse this by doing schemes away from the centreline to spread him out thinner.

Also be aware Dreamer is resource hungry, so he sometimes won't be able to force idol placement. Keep an eye out for being able to force awkward idol placements, especially turns one and two. If you can secure an early lead, he will be spending a lot of the game scrambling to undo your lead. Perfect opportunity for you to disrupt and secure more points. If he gets an early lead, he will snowball you horribly.

Ancient pact daydreams makes this very difficult as you say, particularly if he gets a good hand early.  Turn 3 onwards, unless you're playing as Mah or something, you're not going to be able to control the markers, because the lucid deck will start coming into effect by then.  Best bet into this one is to try and pick 2 schemes that don't require any interaction with the enemy to get 4 points off, then try and go all in on winning an early T2 or 3 initiative to score a point off Idols.  Dreamer with more than 5 points in this strat nearly always wins.

[Maniacal_cackle]

51 minutes ago, Nagi21 said:

So score points while denying your opponent's points >.>  Nice advice captain o7

Joking aside I wanna hit on a few things.

Haha, you joke, but we all know how easy it is to tunnel vision. Lots of people focus on killing the enemy rather than beating the enemy.

51 minutes ago, Nagi21 said:

This strategy only works with hypermobile crews (which are different from just mobile crews) such as Molly or Nekima.  The pair of spiders is actually very dangerous and requires significant investment to stop, because while Bandy is a bit squishy, Widow is not, and if you lose a model to them (any model), stitched are going to become an issue for you, which also means it frees up summons on the part of the board you're not on (i.e. where dreamer is).  This strategy can get out of hand very quickly if you underestimate the ability of the crew to put a lot of force in more than one place.

Part of this might be my meta, but Dreamer is on the lower end of mobility compared to (for example), Seamus + rider, Molly and co, Misaki, Titania, First mate and silurids, etc. In particular, Dreamer is highly mobile but has to commit to a space (once a summon unburies, it stays unburied). Dreamer is not as flexible with his mobility and involves more commitment. Dreamer is a bit of a cumbersome crew (very great at going and claiming territory, not as good as shifting rapid fire between different locations except the spiders. If you can deal with the spiders, their responsive maneuverability is much lower).

51 minutes ago, Nagi21 said:

Good news, bad news.  Good news: Nightmares are not the hardest thing in the world to kill and scoring 2-3 points on this is fairly reasonable for you.  Bad news: Nightmares are some of the deadliest and most mobile things in the world, and will almost certainly be scoring as many if not more than you do on this.  Claim jump/Prisoner/Outflank all make this a rough, high-scoring ride.  Running away doesn't work so hot because the summons pop up off your models, unless you run so far away that wp duels become a non-factor, and at that point how have you managed to kill anything to score?  Advice: Bring guns... lots of guns.

Running away works pretty well for a rider, for example, swapping to wherever the enemy is weakest (or Archie, First mate, etc). The summons popping out is the point. Once a summon comes down, it is locked in to that location and if you're a maneuverable crew you can leave it behind. Hit and run tactics are going to work far better than getting into a slog for a few turns.

  

51 minutes ago, Nagi21 said:

This one looks better on paper vs dreamer than it actually is.  Remember that Dreamer is a summoner.  The fact that you can only nuke markers down to neutral means that he's going to have spare models to activate to reclaim those turf markers.  He can also unbury Insidious next to your models that have activated markers, and then activate them after scattering you.  Also, remember that Dreamer wants you to come kill his stuff, because as you said, that's his castle.  Turn 3 onwards you have to come to him to get points.

It may have been the other thread where I said this, but Turf War is his second best strategy I reckon. So I don't want to suggest it is a cake walk. But just that there is some room to work.

  

51 minutes ago, Nagi21 said:

Ancient pact daydreams makes this very difficult as you say, particularly if he gets a good hand early.  Turn 3 onwards, unless you're playing as Mah or something, you're not going to be able to control the markers, because the lucid deck will start coming into effect by then.  Best bet into this one is to try and pick 2 schemes that don't require any interaction with the enemy to get 4 points off, then try and go all in on winning an early T2 or 3 initiative to score a point off Idols.  Dreamer with more than 5 points in this strat nearly always wins.

Yeah, Dreamer on Idols is ROUGH. Some scheme pools are pretty doable against him though. Dreamer with his ideal scheme pool on idols has got to be one of the most favoured matches for a master though, I feel.

Overall, though, I think a lot of my emphasis is on hit and run tactics. You don't necessarily need to hit and run models; hit and run objectives.

[Nagi21]

5 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Part of this might be my meta, but Dreamer is on the lower end of mobility compared to (for example), Seamus + rider, Molly and co, Misaki, Titania, First mate and silurids, etc. In particular, Dreamer is highly mobile but has to commit to a space (once a summon unburies, it stays unburied). Dreamer is not as flexible with his mobility and involves more commitment. Dreamer is a bit of a cumbersome crew (very great at going and claiming territory, not as good as shifting rapid fire between different locations except the spiders. If you can deal with the spiders, their responsive maneuverability is much lower).

Overall, though, I think a lot of my emphasis is on hit and run tactics. You don't necessarily need to hit and run models; hit and run objectives.

I agree the Nightmare crew itself isn't very mobile like some crews, but the spiders are very mobile, and by the same token, very strong.  They can't be handled by just sending off some small minions to perturb them, as you'll lose that entire part of the board if on of your models die (because widow = stitched).  Slower crews will have to split forces significantly to maintain board control.  Hypermobile crews can counter by bringing enough force to bear without sacrificing much on the other end, which is crucial because remember, summoner.

I agree on the conclusion though.  You really need to play it very front loaded, because there's nothing dreamer likes more than a protracted fight over objectives.

[Regelridderen]

I agree, my hardest games with dreamer has been against fast and mobile crews.

And yes, the little innocent boy with the cricket bat is bait. You aim for him, you're going to get stuck in a bad way. He'll throw Chompy in your face, along with a new summon, grant you Adversary, hand out Shielded to his cronies, then whack you with his bat and suddenly be somewhere else after throwing a big Teddy in your face. So after hitting a small boy, you're easily facing off vs. 3 nightmares, all with +flips to their attacks.

Now on the other hand, if you catch Dreamer on a bad foot. If you've got the focus or the built-in +flips, then hitting him does take its toll. Cards for Protection is cards, that aren't used for Teddy's flurry, or cards that aren't available for cheating those little utility actions, like pushes and heals. And although alps and daydreams aren't big expensive models, then they do cost stones and actions to replenish – and newly summoned daydreams won't carry Ancient Pacts.

[Ogid]

19 minutes ago, Regelridderen said:

And yes, the little innocent boy with the cricket bat is bait. You aim for him, you're going to get stuck in a bad way. He'll throw Chompy in your face, along with a new summon, grant you Adversary, hand out Shielded to his cronies, then whack you with his bat and suddenly be somewhere else after throwing a big Teddy in your face. So after hitting a small boy, you're easily facing off vs. 3 nightmares, all with +flips to their attacks.

Lol, Attack dreamer, 1 activation later...

Now seriously, going after Dreamer without to duels, when he has not being activated, has 1 or 2 tanky nightmares near (especialy Serena), a freaking Teddy at 6'' and a full hand is ask for trouble. As with everything in this game you need good timing and the right tools to beat him.

[Regelridderen]

24 minutes ago, Ogid said:

Lol, Attack dreamer, 1 activation later...

Now seriously, going after Dreamer without to duels, when he has not being activated, has 1 or 2 tanky nightmares near (especialy Serena), a freaking Teddy at 6'' and a full hand is ask for trouble. As with everything in this game you need good timing and the right tools to beat him.

My Dreamer faced Misaki this weekend. She charged, fluffed her attacks and suddenly faced an alp, Serena and Chompy - and two annoying little Daydreams. Suffice to say, Misaki burned a few stones before she could run off into a Shadow. 

[Nagi21]

15 hours ago, Ogid said:

Lol, Attack dreamer, 1 activation later...

- Dreamer, 1st edition, 2009