Played my first 200 point game last night. My opponent played Daqan and choose to go with units over upgrades, so he had (best of my memory) 3 blocks of 2 trays Oathsworn, Kari, 2 solitary Rune Golems, and 2 blocks of 4 tray Spearmen. He took the wizard that recasts runes, and maybe one other upgrade.

I ran Waiqar and I wanted to use my new stuff so I ran a block of 3x2 archers with Close Quarters Targeting and Shield Wall , 2 blocks of 4 tray reanimates, one with Deathcaller, one with Executioner and Aggressive Drummer, Ardus with a Ancient Technique and Reaping Blade, a 2x1 tray of Carrion Lancers with Master Crafted Weapons.

The Deployment was Careful Approach, with the objective of Demoralize Their Forces.

At the end of 8 rounds the score was... 198 to 200. He attacked the Carrion Lancer unit 2 times with Kari dealing a grand total of 1 wound, I blighted Kari once, and then used the Deathcaller to deal 2 wounds, at which point he retreated knowing that since he started with more points if he stayed out of range he would win.

Lame.

We both decided that we will no longer be playing the Careful Approach deployment until the new heroes come out on the 15th, then we will reevaluate that deployment option.

I've seen and wondered about players not wanting to engage. Like the Waiqar player choosing to not march, and the opponent being cautious. And wondered if on the competitive scene we would see an eight round game with limited combat.

to me that is a npe

im the opposite with my daqan lol. I am a bit suicidal with'm, i actually have never backed out of combat, but i often employ turtle strategies to take minimal damage while tying up my opponent's units.

Such a strange thing to me. I'd understand if you're trying to win a tournament and everything matters. But when you're just playing to have fun and experience the game, why go with the boring, conservative way to win?

11 minutes ago, Glucose98 said:

Such a strange thing to me. I'd understand if you're trying to win a tournament and everything matters. But when you're just playing to have fun and experience the game, why go with the boring, conservative way to win?

I have to admit we are both very competitive and strategists (at least in our minds) so I believe his strategy is very sound. Move Kari just far enough out to be able to range attack, and surround her with Rune Golem Body guards to prevent unwanted attacks. Everything else is just waiting as a trap for anything that moves too close. We're still learning new strategies, but from our experience, the person who jumps first typically loses to the one who has more patience.

I wonder if the scoring rules need a tweak, so in this case it would be equivalent to 200 vs 200 and a draw?

Hm... objectives SHOULD negate this, but I'm thinking of the objectives I remember and most don't stop this. The supply raid could

56 minutes ago, Ywingscum said:

I've seen and wondered about players not wanting to engage. Like the Waiqar player choosing to not march, and the opponent being cautious. And wondered if on the competitive scene we would see an eight round game with limited combat.

to me that is a npe

Sometimes I do against daqan. I'm slower and have lower initiatives but I'm better at ranged combat. Therefore I prefer to countermaneuvre rather than maneuvre.

1 hour ago, backupsidekick said:

We both decided that we will no longer be playing the Careful Approach deployment until the new heroes come out on the 15th, then we will reevaluate that deployment option.

The key is to take advantage on movement. Daqan's key power is to engage their powerful units such as spearmen or oathsworn. And improve the list. A good waiqar list should outwhelm daqan on ranged combat. Kari has no distance skill, so she cannot expect to do much ranged damage. Her top is 6 damage, often does only 2.

Your archers can kill her and blight can prevent her from shooting. She can regroup and elliminate the blight, but only after the first action concluded so she cannot get rid of your blight.

However I respect the 2 of you for resolving your runewarish conflicts as civilizated gentelmen and avoiding the use of force or violence.

5 minutes ago, druchii7 said:

However I respect the 2 of you for resolving your runewarish conflicts as civilizated gentelmen and avoiding the use of force or violence.

The diplomacy objective. Complete!

1 minute ago, druchii7 said:

Your archers can kill her and blight can prevent her from shooting. She can regroup and elliminate the blight, but only after the first action concluded so she cannot get rid of your blight.

However I respect the 2 of you for resolving your runewarish conflicts as civilizated gentelmen and avoiding the use of force or violence.

Kari has been averaging 4 damage, and the way my opponent plays, which I feel is excellent, is to use the first 3 turns putting inspiration tokens on Kari and Rune Golems so the blight never lasts. It's a risk with the Archers, do you allow them to blight with 1 surge and then they get killed by rushing Oathsworn, or do you give them the opportunity to range attack engaged units, but lose the blight power. Those upgrades are exclusive so you have to choose.

However, yeah, good friends so its more about learning the game so we can crush our opponents in tourneys.

I suggest not letting them to accumulate inspiration tokens. An archer unit with combat ingenuity often place 2 blights. In theory the limit is 4, but I never saw that.

Flanking 2x1 carrion lancers are a great choice to combine with 2x2 reanimate archers with that card

You can also both place and use (with Carrion Lancers) blight on initiative 5. Units can only avoid that by activating on 5 as well, but if you've got more than one unit of archers in position to blight them, you can bait their activation and then follow up with more blight if they clear it.

Unless you are building a list that you actually plan on engaging enemies in melee with archers, I feel CQC is a waste of points for an oh ***** button. Archers are there to primarily support your army by blighting in order to trigger abilities and give much needed defensive support...At least that is my thoughts, I see CQC as more of a trap upgrade than actually helping on anything, MSU archers with CI is awesome, and can put out CRIPPLING blight.

A damage dealer archer build with 3x2 and fire rune could use CGT, but that's a very particular configuration

i could see having 1 unit of archers with CQC and place them towards your less guarded flank where oathsworn are more likely to appear. Theyre less valuable and can potentially fight back, but theyre still Archers that are in the way so the oaths would go after them first. Especially a larger ball of oaths as they might not be able to squeeze by and go for the real threats.

Generally when my oaths catch an archer unit they all but wipe them out in the initial attack, and suffer no casualties since they just negated a ranged attack and who the crap would dial in a melee attack to wait for the charge? Even if you lost your threat youre likely to take an oath down with you on average, and depending on how unlucky i got you might still have threat and can really hurt me.

Theres always 1 tray of archers that seems to do nothing anyway. Either positioning not offering them a shot or the oaths murderize them too fast.

2 hours ago, druchii7 said:

A damage dealer archer build with 3x2 and fire rune could use CGT, but that's a very particular configuration

What is CGT?

21 hours ago, Glucose98 said:

I wonder if the scoring rules need a tweak, so in this case it would be equivalent to 200 vs 200 and a draw?

I'm sure competitive will be margin based, so it is a non issue.

OP, your friend sounds about as fun as watching paint dry.

4 hours ago, jek said:

Unless you are building a list that you actually plan on engaging enemies in melee with archers, I feel CQC is a waste of points for an oh ***** button. Archers are there to primarily support your army by blighting in order to trigger abilities and give much needed defensive support...At least that is my thoughts, I see CQC as more of a trap upgrade than actually helping on anything, MSU archers with CI is awesome, and can put out CRIPPLING blight.

The issue is the speed at which Oathsworn move. Here is an exact breakdown of every game: if I have melee units in front of the archers to defend them, then Kari moves just into range of the melee units, outside of range of the archers, and range attacks the melee units without fear of losing anything. Since range attacks are further than anything can move for Waiqar, he can guarantee at least 2 ranged attacks before anything gets to Kari, and having her body guarded by the Rune Golems, means she stay protected. So, in this situation, the archers never get any attacks, everything stays out of range of the archers, since the melee units were in front.

If I put the archers up front so that the above situation doesn't happen, then the Oathsworn charge in, and they can move up to 6 spaces in a single turn if they need to. Even if they get into range of the archers, they can move 4 spaces on initiative 4, or 5 on initiative 5 which is almost the entire range ruler. If they can collide with the archers, they get 1 panic token, but they cancel the archers ranged attack so they have no fear of taking damage and remove an action from my units. They will get their melee attack before the archers so they will kill off a ton of archers, and the archers will roll 1 red die, dealing next to no damage.

Now, in both situations, I haven't been able to use Combat Ingenuity at all, since none of the archer's ranged attacks have been able to target anything.

I think Combat Ingenuity is nice to think about, but if you play against a smart Daqan, they won't let you use your archers if you have Combat ingenuity. They'll either wrap up those archers in close combat as early as possible to remove the threat, or they'll keep your archers out of range and force Waiqar to bring the melee game to them.

1 hour ago, Vineheart01 said:

Generally when my oaths catch an archer unit they all but wipe them out in the initial attack, and suffer no casualties since they just negated a ranged attack and who the crap would dial in a melee attack to wait for the charge? Even if you lost your threat youre likely to take an oath down with you on average, and depending on how unlucky i got you might still have threat and can really hurt me.

With Cqc you don't need to dial in a Melee, you get to target the unit you are in melee with with a ranged attack, so you dial in a ranged attack and it can be used on the unit you are in melee with

9 minutes ago, garek365 said:

With Cqc you don't need to dial in a Melee, you get to target the unit you are in melee with with a ranged attack, so you dial in a ranged attack and it can be used on the unit you are in melee with

thats the point of that entire post....

CQC on the unit most likely to get flanked, CI on the rest.

Ah my bad, I read it that it was a waste because they just got killed in 1 turn without the ability to fight back.

I love this game! Just finished my first match of our Runewars league here in SoCal. 100 point armies for the first two weeks. I brought Ardus, Reanimates (4 trays), and two units of Reanimate Archers (2 trays each). Lots of fun trying to figure out what the opponent will do. I still feel like I haven't got a firm grasp of what I'm doing, but it's so fun just exploring this game. Every match is a treat.

But the reason I posted in this thread is because of the discussion about Reanimate Archers. Is it just my bias, or are Reanimate Archers really good? Everybody talks about them like they're only good for dealing blight, but they managed to tear into Oathsworn Cavalry, Spearman, and even dealt a wound to the Rune Golem - without any rerolls. Anybody else having similar luck with Archers dealing damage, even without particularly building for it?

I usually wreck archers wil my cavalry. They do what they do.

On 7/6/2017 at 6:11 PM, backupsidekick said:

The issue is the speed at which Oathsworn move. Here is an exact breakdown of every game: if I have melee units in front of the archers to defend them, then Kari moves just into range of the melee units, outside of range of the archers, and range attacks the melee units without fear of losing anything. Since range attacks are further than anything can move for Waiqar, he can guarantee at least 2 ranged attacks before anything gets to Kari, and having her body guarded by the Rune Golems, means she stay protected. So, in this situation, the archers never get any attacks, everything stays out of range of the archers, since the melee units were in front.

If I put the archers up front so that the above situation doesn't happen, then the Oathsworn charge in, and they can move up to 6 spaces in a single turn if they need to. Even if they get into range of the archers, they can move 4 spaces on initiative 4, or 5 on initiative 5 which is almost the entire range ruler. If they can collide with the archers, they get 1 panic token, but they cancel the archers ranged attack so they have no fear of taking damage and remove an action from my units. They will get their melee attack before the archers so they will kill off a ton of archers, and the archers will roll 1 red die, dealing next to no damage.

Now, in both situations, I haven't been able to use Combat Ingenuity at all, since none of the archer's ranged attacks have been able to target anything.

I think Combat Ingenuity is nice to think about, but if you play against a smart Daqan, they won't let you use your archers if you have Combat ingenuity. They'll either wrap up those archers in close combat as early as possible to remove the threat, or they'll keep your archers out of range and force Waiqar to bring the melee game to them.

So why is it you dont just kill the Rune golems protecting Kari with your archers? If they are in front like your meelee units are to protect, then your archers should be able to hit them. And the archers can deal more damage than Kari if they are a 3x2 tray. Furthermore a single rune golem has quite a lot of HP but not more than 2 trays of reanimates.

2 hours ago, Darthain said:

I usually wreck archers wil my cavalry. They do what they do.

For Parakitor, I have been enjoying archers. I played a couple games with 3x2 archers just raining hell down on everything. Basically they can kill everything they can shoot if they get a couple turns. It really is up to the opponents play with cavalry to mangle your archers, as Darthain said. My last game I set aside a 2x2 unit of reanimates to try and slow the oathsworn so I could get more shots. Learned really fast that 4 trays of cavalry vs 4 trays of reanimates is not a close fight...at all. As soon as archers get into melee combat, that single red dice (and oathsworn attacking at 3 and defensing up) means their usefulness has come to an end.