So I've actually been enjoying my Ret games far more than recent games with either Khador or the CoC. I've been somewhat surprised about this, especially as I've just been kicking around rando Ret tier lists mostly. It also likely helps that they are far far more different from Skorne than either Khador or CoC.
1. The Daemon
Hellmouth on a gun has been a lot of fun. Its great at killing infantry and the pull in is rather techy. Its helped me outright win one game by hitting pDenny and killed the stone UA in a second game during turn 2. Having accurate guns in general has been great, but the Daemon's has been the best.
2. Weapon Masters
The base Immortal Package is 11 points, which is also the cost of a full unit of Dawnguard Sentinels. Guess which one is way better then the other? Weapon masters still do disproportionate damage but its nice being on the delivery side of that for a change then watching a untouched Titan disappear to 3 circle chickas with daggers.
3. Battle Mages
Honestly, things should only be able to be pushed or pulled once per turn. Until that gets fixed the ability to pull things half way across the table will continue to be abused by this Ret player at least. Nothing says great gameplay like killing a heavy without reprisal.
Randomly these guys also have 2 attacks, beatback and anti-shooting tech. Just a really solid unit all around.
Now not everything has been great. Honestly its hard to get any work done with their melee jacks against the wrong opponents. A Stalker with plenty of woods to sprint back to and stones to teleport with is a real problem for a Ret player.
I've played the pVyros tier for 5 games or so now, the Rahn tier once and Force Wall once. I'm kinda curious if there are any other fun ret lists to play. I need to try out the newest caster sometime too.
[Randomly on the topic of Ret they are one of the infantry spammiest armies I've seen locally. I watched a Ret vs. Menoth game that had a total of 3 light jacks in a 50 point game. Its kinda obnoxious to see, but not impossible to deal with.]
Friday, March 27, 2015
Sunday, March 22, 2015
The state of Competitive WM
Anyone else see the top 8 from the Adepticon IG?
Look at those results. 3 Cryx and 3 Circle are sign of an incredibly balanced game, right? Well tournament results are incredibly noisy and this was only from a single event at a single con. It's not really indicative of a larger trend.
Huh. They only represent 50% of the field making the cut here so its a step in the right direction. Still this is troublesome, if only there were a compiled list of top faction appearances. To keep things modern lets say from Nov. 2014 to now taken from an online store that keeps track of lists to sell you, say Discount Games Inc. This information would surely continue to correct these results:
Well fuck. At this point I would be worried that the data is pointing towards some real unfortunate trends. Thankfully the competitive WM braintrust was right there to clear it all up:
"Players win games not factions"
"It's the player."
"Do remember both minions and ret have won major cons. It's all about the player."
The mental gymnastics on display when you've biased yourself to certain outcomes are incredible.
Huh. They only represent 50% of the field making the cut here so its a step in the right direction. Still this is troublesome, if only there were a compiled list of top faction appearances. To keep things modern lets say from Nov. 2014 to now taken from an online store that keeps track of lists to sell you, say Discount Games Inc. This information would surely continue to correct these results:
Cryx - 10
Circle - 9
Skorne - 5
Cygnar - 4
Trollbloods 4
PoM - 3
Legion - 3
Ret -2
Minions - 1
CoC - 1
Well fuck. At this point I would be worried that the data is pointing towards some real unfortunate trends. Thankfully the competitive WM braintrust was right there to clear it all up:
"Players win games not factions"
"It's the player."
"Do remember both minions and ret have won major cons. It's all about the player."
The mental gymnastics on display when you've biased yourself to certain outcomes are incredible.
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Charge of the Rohirrim
In thinking about organizing a 4 player cooperative Lord of the Rings strategy for Gencon I figured the deck I enjoy playing the most could be an interesting way to focus the conversation and throw out some ideas.
Heroes- Theoden, Eomer, Hama
The idea of this mono red deck is to basically control the monsters with "feint" and "thicket of spears." Theoden allows shitty red heroes to quest effectively and sentinel the occasional attack. Eomer trucks stuff with firebrand and weapons. Hama enables event recursion. And the team can smash into the staging area with "Forth Eorlingas." The deck is pretty good at tangling up a bunch of bad guys but struggles to smash through locations. I can make a deck list later with specific cards, but I want to tweak things and focus on team comps before looking at individual cards.
Deck pairing: mono colored comp
This pairing is designed to exploit Theoden's bonus to questing by overloading on tactics heroes.
Bard the Bowman, Brand son of Bain, Legolas- this deck spams archers and some of the same event cards in the other tactics deck to crush as many baddies as possible each turn. Probably also plays feint, thicket and the recursion book to help the Rohan deck control the board.
Eowyn, Galadriel, Glorfindel- Blue deck control. Spams threat reduction and control events to mitigate what the stupid bad guy deck throws at you. Eowyn is the strongest quester in the game and Galadriel has a bunch of support tools in addition to her base abilities. I think blue has some of the most OP cards in terms of preventing problems before they even happen. Tweaking this deck could also make secrecy an option due to its relatively low starting threat and threat reducing tools.
Aragon, Celeborn, Prince Imrahil- Purple deck plays classics like sneak attack and gandalf while trying to support the board. Celeborn pushes decks to include a disproportionate number of pointy eared cards.
Pros: mono colored decks limit versatility within the decks but also mean people won't be sitting on dead cards mid game. monsters should die relatively quickly. Each deck can play the books that allow them to recast events in discard piles.
Cons: no green (seems like the weakest color). high starting threats so blue needs to mitigate threat levels quickly. No hobbits. No dwarves. Both seem overly complicated.
Heroes- Theoden, Eomer, Hama
The idea of this mono red deck is to basically control the monsters with "feint" and "thicket of spears." Theoden allows shitty red heroes to quest effectively and sentinel the occasional attack. Eomer trucks stuff with firebrand and weapons. Hama enables event recursion. And the team can smash into the staging area with "Forth Eorlingas." The deck is pretty good at tangling up a bunch of bad guys but struggles to smash through locations. I can make a deck list later with specific cards, but I want to tweak things and focus on team comps before looking at individual cards.
Deck pairing: mono colored comp
This pairing is designed to exploit Theoden's bonus to questing by overloading on tactics heroes.
Bard the Bowman, Brand son of Bain, Legolas- this deck spams archers and some of the same event cards in the other tactics deck to crush as many baddies as possible each turn. Probably also plays feint, thicket and the recursion book to help the Rohan deck control the board.
Eowyn, Galadriel, Glorfindel- Blue deck control. Spams threat reduction and control events to mitigate what the stupid bad guy deck throws at you. Eowyn is the strongest quester in the game and Galadriel has a bunch of support tools in addition to her base abilities. I think blue has some of the most OP cards in terms of preventing problems before they even happen. Tweaking this deck could also make secrecy an option due to its relatively low starting threat and threat reducing tools.
Aragon, Celeborn, Prince Imrahil- Purple deck plays classics like sneak attack and gandalf while trying to support the board. Celeborn pushes decks to include a disproportionate number of pointy eared cards.
Pros: mono colored decks limit versatility within the decks but also mean people won't be sitting on dead cards mid game. monsters should die relatively quickly. Each deck can play the books that allow them to recast events in discard piles.
Cons: no green (seems like the weakest color). high starting threats so blue needs to mitigate threat levels quickly. No hobbits. No dwarves. Both seem overly complicated.
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