A huge army of your enemy is only two trails away from your stronghold and it is pretty obvious that he will take a conquer-order to crush your little castle - who hasn‘t been in that situation before?

You would like to choose a recruit-order to fortify your stronghold, but whatever you do, the attack-order of your enemy will come first. So, what possibilities do you have to rescue your stronghold?

Surely, if you own more influence-token than your enemy, you can take a mobilize-action to gather all availible forces in that strongold. That might be a pretty good choice, but it isn‘t possible in every case: Maybe there aren‘t enough forces around that stronghold, maybe your enemy has the lead in influence and will come first if he chooses „mobilize“ to attack your castle.

But maybe there is another option...

The idea:

How many units do you need to defend your castle from the first wave of attackers? The answer is: Exactly as many as there are empty areas adjacent (!) to your stronghold that your enemy could use to get to your stronghold.

The idea is: Take a strategize-order to move exactly one weak unit into every free area adjacant to your stronghold your enemy could travel through. Your enemy will have to waste a complete turn just to kill that squishy unit in order to clear the way to your stronghold. In the best case, he will lose a complete year until he can really attack your castle (or maybe he even decides to attack another target instead of wasting a complete turn). In addition, maybe you will get tactic cards (supremacy bonus) to prepare for the big fight.

The advantages:

In every case, you can use your strategize-order to go on proceeding your game aside from the stronghold while your enemy wastes a complete (!) turn. You can move your units and heroes in other areas on the board, maybe you gain some tactic cards. In the meantime, your enemy will do nothing more than killing a single squishy unit – this will be worth the sacrifice of that unit.

In the best case, your opponent cannot attack any more in this year (he might have spent his other attack-order before or maybe he lost his conquer-order that he would need to defeat the stronghold). Thus you have gained some time to play your recruit to fortify that stronghold.

Going into detail:

A smart enemy won‘t take the bait: He will not send his whole army to the squishy way-blocking unit as his army would be caught in that area after battle until next spring (as it will be an activated area).

So he will split up some units from his army to clean the way. But as he won‘t be willing to let raw luck decide if the way gets clear, he will use some more units than necessary to defeat that one unit. (If he doesn‘t, a bad card-draw could foil his plans for a whole year). By the way: If you have some tactic-cards like „summon lightning“, this will be the time to play them.

You can bet that your enemy will lose more units for the big fight (ay they are caught in the activated area) than you have spend to block the way. After that, you can still play a mobilize/conquer order to fortify your stronghold with the circumjacent units - or even better to reconquer and re-block the way to your stronghold. (This will let your enemy go nuts.)

In any case: The main-goal of this tactic is to waste a complete enemies turn while you can go on proceeding with unit- and heroe-movements (and maybe you gain some tactic cards). And if game-time is narrow enough, maybe your enemy will decide to attack another target than you in order not to waste his order for smashing one single unit.

Last thoughts:

In theory, you could even use an allied neutral unit to block the way if availible own units are rare. This allied unit won‘t be allied any more after that, but it would do its job as long as your enemy has chosen a conquer-order (and not a mobilize-order): Yes, it might be that your enemy recruits that neutral unit, but as it will be onto an activated area, this old friend and new enemy won‘t attack you in the same year – enough time to fortify your stronghold. And maybe your enemy will waste some valuable influence token just to get this single unit... (and just to get it out of his way)...

Nevertheless, this strategy has two major disadvantages aside from losing the neutral unit:

At first, it is risky: If your enemy has chosen a mobilize-order instead of a conquer-order, it might be that he will clear the road via diplomacy to attack afterwards your stronghold with his supremacy-bonus-attack in the same turn.

Next, it is a waste of potential: You won‘t be able to play tactic cards like „summon lightning“ in the fight between your enemy and a neutral unit.

(Remember: Even if you don‘t have that card, you could get it because of your supremacy bonus. Moreover, in some cases you don‘t need to own that card at all: It might be enough to bluff. Let your enemies suppose that you have this card – this might stop them from attacking the single unit or it might increase the number of units he sends to this insignificant battle just to go sure that he controls the way to your stronghold.)

What do you think about these tactics? Any thoughts?

Yeah we tend to use a single unit to block entire armies almost every game. Usually do to the amount of turns, resources, and effort it takes to reach any important hexes they won't bother. Even without a single addition built on a stronghold with a few guys, not even the max you can have at the time, usually is resource heavy to dedicate taking over. Unless you have one far out in the front and it somehow gets taken unaware it is unlikely you won't be able to just grab it back since the most they can leave on it assuming winter isn't coming up is 8 units plus it will be damage down to 3.

This seems like a very good tactic to employ for several reasons you said and then some.

We don't tend to see many empty hexes after the first few turns of the game. Not sure how often this strat would even be doable.

In my group's games most of the board is being filled up very fast so that single unit-controlled hexes aren't just an option, they're the rule. If anything, the only spaces left unoccupied by sparse infantry are near home bases because people are trying to expand super-quickly and/or solidifying chokepoints.

-

An additional strategize play to mention is the "leave stronghold undefended when you expect an attack strategize" when you know an enormous attack is available to your opponent at a chokepoint and trying to hold the fort is a waste of resources and would leave you with a weaker force.

Often I've found it unworthwhile to even try to defend strongholds from some of the attacks in this game (18 attackers vs. 8 defenders has a predictable outcome) and the more worthy strategy is escape and retrieval. Leaving 8 defenders to get killed in a major attack severely lessens your army strength. Strategizing those 8 defenders out and then attacking with a larger force against your opponent hurts his army more. He won't be able to pass the activated space when you take it back and you can launch another attack from behind the line. It's also a good way to move recruits up to the front line from a further stronghold.

Also, any surviving units on his side will retreat and be routed (as opposed to this happening to you). At the point of his initial attack, since you strategized while he most likely attacked, you have 2 attack options and he only has one. You should be able to take back your stronghold and then wipe out his routed forces and any other meager excess units he has in the next area.

Weaknesses of the strategy - Firstly, you need a big enough force to dominate the stronghold back. Obviously, it also needs to happen early in the year. And if your opponent played conquer and has more influence than you he will possibly still have an initiative-favored mobilize to use on you. Depending on how you strategized, you might have an open zone for him to move past the temporarily-taken stronghold and into one of your hexes with (killing some of your forces). The point of a strategy like this is coming out on top when it comes to killing. You don't want to be trading equal units. However, at best the usable forces are 2 spaces away (this is a chokepoint strategy). Your force should probably be stronger as you prepare a major attack to take your stronghold back anyway - an attack that should diminish his forces with the most minor casualties inflicted to your own side.

The problem is that undead doesn't care about loosing guys. In my playgroup my opp just attacked my stronghold with everything (20 units). I've than taken this back he reatreted killing a lot of people but afterwards was recruit and another attack with 6 necro and other stuff. After 2nd attack I had no forces to take stronghold back. Especially that he has stolen my title card twice. I still managed to win getting 7 runes but was close.

20 units is a lot to attack with, even with the Necromancers around to rebuild their troops. If you bring in more than 16, you are guaranteed to lose at least 4 units (since you have to retreat excess units, and you can only retreat to a SINGLE area). Heck, even if you are pushing 16 you are likely to lose some units in most cases, since you MUST retreat to a friendly area if possible (even if there's no room for the retreating units).

Yes, the Undead can build up forces fairly well, but if they lose too many units to exceeding stacking limits, it will start to hurt them as much as anyone.

In last game he attacked my stronghold with 23 units. I lost 8 he 4, then he killed til 16 and retreat with 8 leaving 8 on stronghold. All killed units were reanimates. But to be honest it doesn't matter he spreaded across the board and had a lot of resources, built stronghold near my so was able to attack immediately after recruit. I mean undead are military unbeatable.with conquer order stronghold gives me only +2 which is not enough to have any chance in battle. I think that number of attacking forcec should be as well somehow reduced to avoid such situtation.

I guess I'm not seeing how he could attack with that many units without leaving a ton of his areas undefended. Unless the stronghold was in a chokepoint area, you just need to go around it, start attacking his undefended areas, and leave him without resources - especially if you have pillage cards.

sigmazero13 said:

I dont know about the pillage cards, but without it, could you please tell me how you are going to leave him without ressources ?

All he need is to Harvest when he have a plenty then he can let you take everything or just leave them empty for all he care. The only things he will lose ressources for are the Fortress but he probably doesnt need them anymore given the huge manpool he sustain and his ability to raise/feed 8 units.

That's the weakest point in Runebound : Harvest when you have maxed then forget about land grab, it doesnt matter anymore. You can be reduced to just your Stronghold and still produce/field the same enormous army.

Ivan Kerensky said:

4 of the 8 Fall Season cards also require you to modify your resources: Famine and Bountiful Harvest. Thus, acquiring resources early and then just sitting on what you have won't necessarily help you later, if someone starts taking your areas. All it takes is one of those cards to come up (which will happen 50% of the time) and all of a sudden your resources could take a major unless you are working to retake those areas and keep your resources high.

Harvest doesn't get used much, it's true. But I've found one of the keys is learning WHEN to Harvest and make the best use out of it.

conquer bonus of weaken a fortress of 3 is too strong. i read it as an errata from 2. it sounds not much, but that little difference will cause to attack a fortress without the bonus sometimes. otherwise nobody will ever attack a fortress without it. and why should one do it, there is still the mobilize card for other attacks in the year. the fortress could have made 2 / 0 .

magicrealm said:

I'm not quite sure what you are saying? Take out the Conquest bonus altogether, and just make fortresses 2/0 all the time? That makes fortresses way to easy to conquer. As it is, if you want to conquer one, you'll have to conquer early in the year (unless you have a Brilliant Maneuver). If you want to use Mobilize, or Conquer without the bonus, it gives you more flexibility in your timing, but at a price.

I haven't found the bonus to be too strong; it's powerful, but it also limits your options if you want to use it!