Your hints are quite useful, Grandclam, and I suppose you are right. But I, personally, plainly refuse to fight with Union Troops just to win a game against the Matriarchy. Reich can do it, too, especially if you do not have to kill everyone of the opposing team to win a game. As you said: Destroy her underlings, and Zor´ka will never be able to win Dominion oder Capture the flag on her own. Deathmatch is another story, of course...

Katsuyori said:

You could always make reinforcement rules. Your friend owns the game, so they're obviously going to be a better player (in most cases), so even it out with extra reinforcements. Especially if you both find Zorka to be overpowering, for your playstyles she obviously is. In the old rules, we would play with no reinforcements unless Zorka was on the field in which the opposite team would get however many reinforcements needed to even the odds.

I was thinking of some anti-zorka stuff on the Reich as well.

Wolf+ shocktruppen+strosstruppen?- you have 2 CP for both overwatches for 3 total overwatch attacks. Use heizinger's combat pack and shocktruppen command pack. Put them 3 on the same path and give the shocktruppen a shotgun if possible, you have a GREAT overwatch defense and a guy who can harrass models not on the same path- just got to have a big enough path that Zorka can't attack all of them.

or

I noticed that wolf's attack would be MUCH less effective against Zorka, high as it may be. So, Heizinger w/ combat+ 2 shocktruppen w/ command? If you stuck all your models on the same path, you have two overwatch guys who roll an insane amount of dice and who are rarely going to miss- give one a shotgun and that's ALOT of automatic wounds. Anything, even Zorka, who sets foot on the path is GONE. Take eva, w/ heizeingers bonus, should be able to bust up some loose ends and give even more CP with combat pack. And then Karl and Heizinger can harrass enemies off-path.

The problem with either is that Zorka can hurt you as badly as you can hurt them, I would try it out- though. Often, grouping your models together is a terrible idea (specially against Zorka) but I did it as Union against Matriarchy. I waited until Zorka used awakening and then put every one of my models on the same path, there wasn't much the Matriarchy could do against that much firepower in one place. Gorgei had a grenade that would've hit all of them, but Macneal's overwatch= dead gorgei.

I guess, just like the example above, it makes an all-or-nothing setup. But if you've lost the same way twice already, what do you have to lose?

watch out for voivodes, though. There is 4 of them, and only 2 overwatch attacks+ another model's next activation on your side. Also, in the same game as above, one of my opponent's voivode's did 3 wounds to Barry (equipped w/ stamina pack no less) with only a melee attack.....

And also, while Zorka basically can't step on your path without dying- the group tactic would only allow you one stamina pack (Zermann's)

Thanks for these ideas, GrandClam I will try your tactics as soon as possible, then report back