Guild Schemes & When To Take Them

[Hansel]

I've never taken the Guild-specific Schemes (in all of my 6 games), and I'm wondering in what kind of matchups people take them.

On a side note, they seem awfully similar--seems like if you'd want to take one, you might want to take the other (which you can't) which is kind of a bummer and bad for us Guildies.

[Dark Alleycat]

Well,Sonnia's specific one is one you will want to be doing normally anyways,and thats turn two enemy models into witchling stalkers

Thats best if you have a opponent with a lot of weak models.

[Hansel]

Yeah, I took that one in my first game and haven't taken it since, since it seems pretty difficult to pull off (maybe just against the crews I've been facing). It's a 17 of Tomes to cast, which means you'll probably be burning a Soulstone for Confiscated Lore. Also, in most cases it only does one Wound, which means you've got to manuever to take enemy models down to exactly one Wound, which isn't easy, either.

But back to the Guild ones: One is to have more minions than you at the end of the game, and one is to kill all your minions. Why so similar? Is there a situation where you'd want one and not the other?

[Courtsloth]

Potentially, you could kill all your opponent's minions and lose yours as well making Roundup better if you expect a knockdown drag-out fight and Raid better if you expect a game of attrition (and your opponent isn't Ramos or a Resser). In general, I think Raid is easier to accomplish (Guild lists are plenty killy) but Rondup does give the interesting option of scoring VP's w/few or no friendly models left on the board.

Generally speaking, I play Perdita and my most common Schemes are Bodyguard (because she is insanely hard to kill if you are careful with your hand and your stones) and Breakthrough or Holdout depending on the Strats my opponent and I draw (Watchers and Guild Hounds are great for Breakthrough).

The best choices tend to be based on the circumstances of who has what Strat and is playing what list. Example: last night my opponent was playing Seamus and got plant evidence for his Strat and I got Distract. Given the Strats, my opponent had every reason to flood my side of the board and so he took a very mobile Belle heavy force to do so (We play: pick masters, pick Strats, hire crews, pick schemes). I knew I wanted the game to devolve into a big messy mid-board fight or at the very least turn into several turns of him dancing around in his deployment zone stalling, so I chose Assassinate and Raid to put him on his heels and announced them both. Now if he sat back it benefits me because of our respective Strats or if he moves up it benefits me because I get the big messy fight I want for my Schemes (my list being quite good at the big messy fight and his more designed to move fast and manipulate the enemy). Picking aggressive Strats and announcing them made my opponent play my game instead of his and opened up more potential VP's which lead to easy in-game choices for me and in turn an easy win.

Edited April 24, 2011 by Courtsloth
Grammar