Hi all,

Without much experience (only 1 other player locally and he is on vacation atm) I had a look at some Youtube battle-reports and saw to my surprise mostly a rather small number of (very) large units.

Examples; 9 Daqan cavalry or 9 spearmen with a Rune golem added.

(or similar very large undead units, mostly reanimates for now)

How do you plan to deal with something like this?

The thing I want to try is (ab)use terrain for example. Not sure how (if!) this will be effective.

Multiple smaller units? Baiting and getting a flank?

Or a tarpit of sorts? Combined with other flanking units?

What have you tried? What works and what fails?

Nerekhall Hexer really worked well for me in my last game against a 9 spear with frontline golem and master at arms.

First turn I turned it around and made it march into the edge of the board. Second turn I killed the frontline golem. Then I combo charged it and removed it.

I had the same question after watching those battle reports so I did some thinking. I think the most obvious answers is like you said. Use terrain. A unit of 9 trays will never fit inside of terrain so they're always gonna have to go around it. Take a look at the terrain on the board before you deploy and you can almost always find the "alley" where that 3x3 unit is gonna have to go. On that second battle of the San Antonio tournament I was almost yelling at the screen trying to tell that one Daqan player not to set his 3x3 Spearmen unit behind that clump of objectives. I could tell the opposing player with the 3x3 Oathsworn was just setting the bait so he would have a good unit to crash into.

You also have to be careful when occupying terrain when facing a deathstar unit. They can charge an occupied piece of terrain but they can't charge through it.

As a Waiqar player, blight does wonders for me. Cutting even a single die out of the death star's attack is a big reduction in damage.

As Daqan, you try to hit first and hit multiple times.

2 minutes ago, Church14 said:

As a Waiqar player, blight does wonders for me. Cutting even a single die out of the death star's attack is a big reduction in damage.

This.

If you can stack blight on either Oathsworn Cavalry or Spearmen, they have to spend a turn with a weak attack or spend a turn to rally.

Uncontrolled Geomancer likes to see large units across the table.

9 hours ago, Jormi_Boced2 said:

Nerekhall Hexer really worked well for me in my last game against a 9 spear with frontline golem and master at arms.

First turn I turned it around and made it march into the edge of the board. Second turn I killed the frontline golem. Then I combo charged it and removed it.

How'd you get rid of the Golem so quickly? Attacks with accuracy? If the Golem is in the center of the front rank you need to remove 7 trays before you can start dealing damage to him unless you have accuracy.

In my last game I just tried to avoid it. It was the scenario with loot markers. He had tied up so many points with that one big unit that I was able to field one more unit than him. His death star only had only claimed one or two unit markers so I was able to defeat the rest of his army piecemeal. Terrain limited his movement so it was only at the very end of the game (last turn or two) that the Death star came into contact with one of my units and it was just an infantry unit (not holding any loot tokens) that I charged into him just to see what would happen and make the game a bit more fun for him.

I've not tried such a unit yet, but I'm strongly considering a delicious 9-tray unit of cavalry. I'll have 8 cav trays when I finish my second pair of starter box daquan forces. Add one Lord, season to taste and see what happens.

12 hours ago, WWHSD said:

How'd you get rid of the Golem so quickly? Attacks with accuracy? If the Golem is in the center of the front rank you need to remove 7 trays before you can start dealing damage to him unless you have accuracy.

I single carrion lancer on the flank rolling 3 blues against a blighted unit can be PREEETTY effective at accuracy/mortal strike combos against figure upgrades throw on rank discipline so you get to reroll...

My friend managed to Execute the golem out of my unit. Bastard....lol...

His lancer managed to accuracy a mortal strike to it, then next round his reanimates' Executioner just went "You dead"
Unless we missed something it doesnt follow any damage allocation rules, it just picks a wounded model and removes it.

21 hours ago, WWHSD said:

How'd you get rid of the Golem so quickly? Attacks with accuracy? If the Golem is in the center of the front rank you need to remove 7 trays before you can start dealing damage to him unless you have accuracy.

With the Nerekhall Hexer. I got the card that eliminates a unit upgrade.

As far as figure upgrades go, a ranged hero with Fortuna's Dice makes an excellent scalpel. Removing a blighted vexillum banner or citadel weapons master before they have a chance to do anything can make the whole unit much easier to deal with.

On 2017-5-31 at 3:24 PM, Elkerlyc said:

Hi all,

Without much experience (only 1 other player locally and he is on vacation atm) I had a look at some Youtube battle-reports and saw to my surprise mostly a rather small number of (very) large units.

Examples; 9 Daqan cavalry or 9 spearmen with a Rune golem added.

(or similar very large undead units, mostly reanimates for now)

How do you plan to deal with something like this?

The thing I want to try is (ab)use terrain for example. Not sure how (if!) this will be effective.

Multiple smaller units? Baiting and getting a flank?

Or a tarpit of sorts? Combined with other flanking units?

What have you tried? What works and what fails?

Spearmen deathstar is 1000000 times better than reanimates deathstar, because of that rune golem, because they can protect themselves with +1 defense before we attack, because they charge longer and quicklier...

So there's a 100% effective strategy against them: 2x2 archers with combat ingenuity. That's all. If your roll isn't too bad, you can place 2 or 3 blights on them. Every time you manage to do that they do little or nothing. Your units will recieve panic and that can be a pain in the a**, but you can weak them down quickly.

The key is: try to kill flanking units before the spearmen can do much damage. Once the flanks are controlled and they cannot netralize the archers, engage the spearmen with at least one unit, letting some line of sight, so that the archers can still see the spearmen and keep them controlled.

They'll generally be 80-100 points units, so the rest of the army shouldn't be impossible to defeat.

I play Waiqar.

Right now my friend runs a 9 tray Spearman unit with a Rune Golem, Aggressive Cornicen, Citadel Weapons Master, and Raven Pennon Bearer. He also throws on Shield Wall.

He has had a lot of luck with it. He also has played the most of anyone in the group, so his experience is definitely giving him an edge right now. I'll have to be better about placing terrain. I screwed myself last game because I thought the crumbling wall could hold 4 trays. Realized it before I placed units, but it was already in a terrible position for me.

Anyway, this unit scares me. I mostly avoided it last game I played.

At one point, I ranged attacked him when the unit had +2 defense due to the Shield Wall as well as the dial modifier. I got lucky and rolled 4 damage with an accuracy, took out the Aggressive Cornicen (everything else had 5+ def).

Then I tried to charge with Ardus. I took out 2 trays, but he just hit back with 15 damage. Threat 3 with brutal from the Golem is crazy!

Shield Wall is glorious, i have that on every large spearmen blob i field (3x2 or 3x3). I had one game where a 3x2 just sat there and tanked against a 3x2 reanimates, a lancer, and an oncoming 2x1 archer for 4 turns before losing enough models for the reanimates to disengage (lancer was in the way to prevent it from closing in properly to stay in the fight). I just Init3 Rallied and +1 Def every turn, using the shield wall against whoever hit me hardest (kari kept the reanimates low enough where i still had more trays than them lol).

Yeah, they did no damage for 4 turns, but 3 of my opponent units practically did nothing either.

I love that card

On 2017-6-2 at 1:19 PM, rowdyoctopus said:

I play Waiqar.

Right now my friend runs a 9 tray Spearman unit with a Rune Golem, Aggressive Cornicen, Citadel Weapons Master, and Raven Pennon Bearer. He also throws on Shield Wall.

He has had a lot of luck with it. He also has played the most of anyone in the group, so his experience is definitely giving him an edge right now. I'll have to be better about placing terrain. I screwed myself last game because I thought the crumbling wall could hold 4 trays. Realized it before I placed units, but it was already in a terrible position for me.

Anyway, this unit scares me. I mostly avoided it last game I played.

At one point, I ranged attacked him when the unit had +2 defense due to the Shield Wall as well as the dial modifier. I got lucky and rolled 4 damage with an accuracy, took out the Aggressive Cornicen (everything else had 5+ def).

Then I tried to charge with Ardus. I took out 2 trays, but he just hit back with 15 damage. Threat 3 with brutal from the Golem is crazy!

That's top overpower unit in the game. If you want to bust them open your wallet and buy lots of archer expansion units and collect 2 or 3 combat ingenuity cards.

Spam lots of blight and see that deathstar doing nothing. IMO if a daqan player looses against a waiqar list without combat ingenuity upgrade card, only very bad dice rolls can be an excuse, as they are extremly easier to play: much stronger, quicker, need no specific synergies...

The game is economically broken. Daqan can devastate waiqar with very humble purchases, waiqar can devastate daqan only after doing terrible expenditures (elsewhere the only chance to get a crushing victory is that the daqan player is a total noob).

@druchii7

Agreed to 100%.

I see also the problem with spamming lots of blights towards the deathstar, because it is not the only unit attacking you. In my case, my playmat also deploy Kari and two unit of 2*2 riders.

Then your archers and other worms normally have no time to spam blights on the deathstar, they have to ensure, that Kari and the horses stay away from your lines, otherwise they will wreck your other units.

So in my games the deathstar gets normally 1-2 blights but thats not enough to win this clos combat with a 3*2 unit of reanimateds.

Next time i´ll try a unit of 3*3 or 3*4 in combination with a big unit of worms.

the problem is that rune golem upgrade should be about 10-12 points. You cannot focus all your power against them you need to kill first the rest or they'll reach your archers.

Even our best strategy can easily fail if we don't manage to get advantage on the flanks

On 6/2/2017 at 4:25 AM, druchii7 said:

Spearmen deathstar is 1000000 times better than reanimates deathstar

I have not found this to be the case at all.

Yes, the Daqan spearmen block is dangerous, but the huge Reanimate unit is also incredibly dangerous with the right upgrades.

The two units aren't really meant to be matched up that way anyway, as far as we can tell, they're balanced totally differently.

If all you're looking for are damage results, the 3x2 of Lancers with Master Crafted Weapons and Combat Ingenuity is the Waiqar unit you want. The big block of reanimates are just a fairly pts efficient tarpit that can facilitate easy flanking opportunities and excels at digging through the morale deck.

Spearmen can get defense 2 or 3 in many situations and still be very powerful when they decide to strike.

Reanimates can get defense 2, but with their slower initiatives they'll be attacked by spearmen, kari or oathsworn cavalry before, so it's rarely effective.

Flanking oportunities sound interesting, but that's not granted, oarthsworns are very maneuvrable and only de combined attack from ardus/carrion worms + 2x2 archers with combat ingenuity lets us clear a flank easily (that's 2 units against one and a lot of expense).

Reanimates are slow (unlikely to charge) with poor initiatives, cannot profit the +1 defense (only against the rune golems as most units attack on initiative 3), cannot dream of doing those ridiculous 30 damage that an optimal daqan roll (without exhausting any card), need more expenses (ATM I cannot field anything bigger than 3x3) with an optimal roll of 28, but needs to exhaust a card and it's a lot more expensive build than the daqan build.

They are completely out of the synergy triangle and at the moment they have no good enough builds to resist against a daqan deathstar unless a dedicate archer unit with combat ingenuity blights them turn by turn (but it's unlikely that kari or oathsworms allow that to happen for many turns).

• Daqan deathstar is very flexible (both the killiest unit in the game and if necessary the toughest)
• Daqan infantry has a decent initiative, they can move 4 or hit on the 3 or get +1 defense on 3s.
• Their most expensive build is cheaper than reanimates most expensive build.

@Tvayumat

Can you give us an idea of a list with this big worm unit and also a tarpit block of reanimates.

At the moment i experienced with such a list, but I´m not pleased with it.

Perhaps you can give us an new aspect to handle the spearmen deathstar.

@druchii7

good summary of the current situation. At the moment i´m a bit dissatisfied with the current power level and synergies of Waiqar. The idea of the synergies with the blight tokens is a good idea but it is hard to adopt this strategy with access.

3x2 carrion lancers unit is an extremly tough unit:

• It needs 54 damage to be completely destroyed.
• Their skill is not so important in a threat 3 unit, as most enemies will have defense 3 or less and you'll do more damage with damage result rather than with mortal strikes. So in theory they're not a blight dependent unit, which is a bless to us.
• It can also be extemely killy if you do the combat ingenuity + master crafted weapons combo. With a top of 21 damage on front combat and an average or 12-15. There are other acceptable builds, but they do a lot less damage, as red+2blue don't score too many damage rolls and they're not likely to reroll much.

Drawbacks:

• Not playable yet. Normal players have 2 lancers, the wealthiest might have expended to have 3 or 4.
• Very few available upgrade cards. Only training and equipment.

I think they'll be a popular unit, tough and killy. Maybe the fact that they're expensive and that death knights will also excel as non synergy dependent flanking unit, they're not that resillient, but they have excelent initiatives

On 6/5/2017 at 5:50 AM, druchii7 said:

I think they'll be a popular unit, tough and killy. Maybe the fact that they're expensive and that death knights will also excel as non synergy dependent flanking unit, they're not that resillient, but they have excelent initiatives

Not resilient? 6 damage a tray without having to spend a modifier, and they remove a mortal strike. Thats more resilient than the Oathsworn.

3 hours ago, Orcdruid said:

Not resilient? 6 damage a tray without having to spend a modifier, and they remove a mortal strike. Thats more resilient than the Oathsworn.

DK

2x1 DK: 12 damage for 24 (12/24=0.5) points is not a bad ratio at all, but not excellent -> 0.5

On the 2x3 configuration they are 36/55=0.65 which is pretty good. -> 0.65

Reanimates

2x1 Reanimates are 8 damage for 16 points (8/16=0.5), exactly the same (and they're rarely considered tough) -> 0.5

On 4x3: 48 damage/64 points is 0.75. Actually our poor infantry is tougher in ratio than DK. -> 0.75

Carrion lancers

1x1: carrion lancers 9/16= 0.6 better than the other units in their smallest configurarion

3x2carrion lancers: 54/69=0.794 the best ratio.

Rune golems

1x1: 8/17=0.47! a bit low!

3x2: 49/74=0.648 Very similar to DK.

Of corse this is just raw mathmatics, but not to be ignored

On 100 point games high defense makes enormous differences, as defense 3-4 are very hard to kill, but on 200 point games many units do more than 10 damage per turn. Then that extra armour is just a mild help.

Carrion lancers are our hardest to kill unit. DK have enormous advantages: greatest dial, good upgrade cards combos, but they're not specially resillient, they're hammer, not anvil.

ED: add oathsworns

2x1: 8/20=0.4 a very fragile unit, as many say (hopefully they have their powerful defense modifier that they can use almost always but when they charge)

on a 3x3: 36/68=0.529: still very weak in theory, not bat if you take the modifire into account. (with the modifier it would be 0.794, one of the most resillient units, the same as carrion lancers, devastating if you remember that you can use it almost every turn).

On 6/17/2017 at 9:49 AM, druchii7 said:

DK

2x1 DK: 12 damage for 24 (12/24=0.5) points is not a bad ratio at all, but not excellent -> 0.5

On the 2x3 configuration they are 36/55=0.65 which is pretty good. -> 0.65

Reanimates

2x1 Reanimates are 8 damage for 16 points (8/16=0.5), exactly the same (and they're rarely considered tough) -> 0.5

On 4x3: 48 damage/64 points is 0.75. Actually our poor infantry is tougher in ratio than DK. -> 0.75

Carrion lancers

1x1: carrion lancers 9/16= 0.6 better than the other units in their smallest configurarion

3x2carrion lancers: 54/69=0.794 the best ratio.

Rune golems

1x1: 8/17=0.47! a bit low!

3x2: 49/74=0.648 Very similar to DK.

Of corse this is just raw mathmatics, but not to be ignored

On 100 point games high defense makes enormous differences, as defense 3-4 are very hard to kill, but on 200 point games many units do more than 10 damage per turn. Then that extra armour is just a mild help.

Carrion lancers are our hardest to kill unit. DK have enormous advantages: greatest dial, good upgrade cards combos, but they're not specially resillient, they're hammer, not anvil.

ED: add oathsworns

2x1: 8/20=0.4 a very fragile unit, as many say (hopefully they have their powerful defense modifier that they can use almost always but when they charge)

on a 3x3: 36/68=0.529: still very weak in theory, not bat if you take the modifire into account. (with the modifier it would be 0.794, one of the most resillient units, the same as carrion lancers, devastating if you remember that you can use it almost every turn).

Interesting numbers but it doesn't completely account for resiliance. Using the extreems for examples let's compare he rune golem to the spearmen. 1 rune golem vs 8 spearmen. Both take 8 damage to destroy right? Wrong. With spearmen every damage removes a figure. With the rune golem there will be wasted damage whenever you don't roll a multiple of 4. That wasted damage adds to the units resiliance. The higher defence climes the more that extra "hidden" resiliance becomes a factor.