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Swampfiends episode about conversion


4thstringer

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So the swampfiends released a new episode, and what they talk about is transitioning an attrition situation to points, and how different crews might need/require a higher ss attrition advantage to get the win.

They later talked about faction gaps, and in later conversation with people in chats got me thinking about how much trouble guild has with this part of the game.  It's not that we have no models that can score, but it certainly seems to be a weakness more than a strength. 

What has been your experience with this?  How do you go about making that transition?

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I'll give it a listen. I'm definitely a score early sort of player and tend to sacrifice board presence in exchange - I'll be interested to hear what they have to say. 

EDIT;

Having listened to the thing, it's not bad. I don't entirely agree with the "ss gap" approach because the value of models changes so much over the course of the game. I would look at it as a different way of identifying the "beatdown." Identify which crew will score more points if you both just scheme unimpeded, there's your crew with higher potential to convert actions into points. If that makes sense as a measure?

Of course there are plenty of ways to score while murdering, so that makes the analyses really complicated. But even in those instances the crew that can better isolate or scalpel out a particular high-value target probably has a higher conversion potential (CP) than one that just steamrolls forwards - even if that later crew would be considered the "beatdown" in a stand up fight.

In that light it's worth looking at denial crews in the ways in which they limit conversion potential. I think Jack Daw actually does a lot to limit conversion potential through handing out Staggered and destroying scheme markers (thanks Dead Outlaws, you're the real MVP). As well as murder, of course.

There are Guild keywords with high CP - Elite (obvs.), Family (everyone has fast, effectively, but you have no hand), Basse (you save yourself 1-2 AP per model from deployment, plus unimpeded, Rough Riders, etc). But our most effective keywords in the global meta are Marshal and Augmented*, keywords with relatively low CP (imo).

What those keywords have that the rest of the faction lacks is, drumroll, defensive tech. In short, they are much better at denying kills, which maintains their board presence, so even though each model has less ability to convert one action into one point the crew likely generates more actions over the course of the game AND has an easier time killing/absorbing the opponent's actions.

All of which is to say that CP is much more complicated and contextual than the Swampfiends folks seemed to want to make it. If I wanted a shorthand I would probably look at crews that are good at building areas of local superiority (either through debuffing, buffing, or maneuver) as crews that have high CP when played into appropriate scheme/strat pools and matchups. That it's a matter of creating an advantage in action efficiency more than anything. And maybe that's not a super useful thing to talk about? I don't know. Maybe it's the most useful thing and I'm just tying my brain into knots about it. :P 

*I know there's been a lot of griping about Guard, but I'm not doing an in-depth analysis of summoning vs. other defensive tech with as little M3e as I've played, including no primary summoners. So I'm ignoring them for the purposes of this post.

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