I have a Bauhaus army. I've been playing a friend lately who also has a DL army with a Gommorian Hammer. Besides rushing forward with a well armored Bauhaus Vulkan Battlesuit with hopes of getting in close for the kill. Othwise all he does every turn is play the barrage power and a Invoke Fury card every turn till I want to give up playing the game, and it doesn't get any better in larger point games where he takes 3 of them. I used to like the idea of buy back for Command Cards but my feelings on that have changed.

So anybody have some tricks I can try to knock out his hammer faster or defeat his Command Cards? Thanks!

Cyborgtrucker said:

I´m not sure if "Invoke Frenzy" is allowed to be played together with "Barrage", because "Invoke Frenzy" has to be played before a unit "attacks". I think "attacks" means the "attack-action" - so "Barrage" is not an "attack action", but a "Use a special ability action" (english rulebook page 13). I think thats two different ... keywords. Hope you understand what i am meaning ...

Can someone check this definition?

And some hints for your bauhaus army list:

Try to use "Sniper Shot" or "Trick Shot" with the Bear Kapitan to take down the Gommorian. Or charge him with the battlesuit and play "Duel to the Death". Or try a mixed army of Bauhaus and Capitol (i think Capitol is much better to deal with the Gommorian) to have "Command Intercept" or some Martian Banshee Sergeants.

But i think, the "rule issue" above is the real thing.

Dominik said:

No I completely get where you are coming from. I never thought of it that way. I just assumed Barrage was an "attack" that took three actions instead of a "Special Ability" that wounded enemies.

Though if anyone wants to weigh in on this I would appreciate it. I wouldn't just start claiming this since I'm an interested party and it wouldn't be fair or ethical.

Last battle I ran a Vulkan Battlesuit forward and was lucky enough to survive three turns so I could use Heavy Artillery and nearly blow him away. In the end he only scored two wounds and it was my Gold Bauhaus Ranger who side-stepped in and put one between his eyes. He was hiding his Hammer on the far side of the large middle building on the starter map. For the first few turns the rest of my army was pinned till he went down.

I'm also send your idea off to the rules boys to see what they think and will post any replies here. Thank for the help Dominik!

I'm asking the question to Nate French. From my point of view the Gommorian text mentions "This attack must be accurate to damage the unit", so I'm inclined to believe the Frenzy bonus may be applied.

I'll put the official answer.

It's actually been discussed elsewhere on the forums in the past, but Invoke Frenzy can be played with Barrage. This was the official ruling at the GenCon tournament last year.

EDIT: This is because Barrage is still an attack, and Invoke Frenzy does not specify an "attack action".

nullstate said:

If it´s so, than the FAQ should be get an update.

And in my opinion - i dont like this ruling, because with "Invoke Frenzy", "Barrage" is too strong in this way. Just put the Gommorian behind a wall with some bronze necromutants as a "shield" and you can blast your enemy away (maybe Capitol can counterstrike this, but bauhaus and even the Brotherhood with a lot of short range meele attacks are screwed).

On the other hand - IF you can play "Invoke Frenzy" with the "Barrage", does the effect of the card take place for ALL attacks, or just for one single attack? I think, it is just for one attack, not several attacks in a single action.

It seems, that the text on the card is not clear enough.

The Barrage+Invoke Frenzy is a powerful combo, but it's a very costly one : a gold order token to use Barrage, plus a gold command card, and two silver tokens to buyback the card... Don't forget the Gomorrian is also very fragile for a double based units (only 3 health), and that Algeroth doesn't have any sniper, so the Gomorrian is their only real long range option.

It's a powerful combo, but not game-breaking IMHO.

Dominik said:

OK here's what Nate French told me:

"Play before the chosen unit attacks" refers to the chosen unit taking an attack action. Using the Barrage action does not interact with this play restriction.

Nate French
Design and Development
Fantasy Flight Games

I agree with Dominik this does not make me happy either but I guess i just need to be a B*tch and find a power-gamer way to deal with it. This is where nuclear escalation then moves in ruining the gaming experience for me. I'm NOT hating the game just the way certain people play it.

Honestly, this looks more powerful "on paper" than it really is out in the field. It's sick to see how often yellow dice come up blanks. We have a league player that doesn't even use this combo anymore, because it crippled him too many times -- Invoke Frenzy has been seeing better use on Alakhai, out in the open.

I wanted to post this earlier, but I didn't have the cards with me at work. To bring the thread more on-topic, here are some Bauhaus tactics that will completely rip a hole straight through the Dark Legion.

1) Bear Kapitan (gold) is the ideal unit to take out Alakhai if he's giving you trouble. But more importantly, he has a marksmanship icon, meaning you can use Trick Shot to annihilate the Gommorian before your opponent can even get that Barrage combo off. If anyone gets close, try using Point Blank. This guy has insane damage and is well worth his gold rank.

2) Venusian Ranger Sergeant (silver) has Bauhaus Tactics, which is one nasty ability. For quick reference, here's the text: "After you play and resolve a (Bauhaus) command card, you may remove an order token (including guard order tokens) from Venusian Ranger Sergeant, and place it in your used order pile." This means you could activate two of these guys, use Heavy Artillery on the second unit's attack, pull off the orders, and then activate them again. It's not power-gamery, it's just how the rules work, since unit abilities stack... and it's disgustingly powerful.

3) Finally, my most hated. Vulkan Battlesuit (silver) has Pummel, which effectively means that if you go first, you're almost guaranteed to put one enemy unit on perma-lockdown per Vulkan Battlesuit. It's just about as frustrating as playing a Stasis deck in Magic The Gathering, if any of you have been there before. There's not much worse than someone saying, "oh, you don't get a turn."

I have to credit Slovotsky for showing me most of these. We weren't ready for these tactics in the league, and now we're paying for it dearly.

Let's take a look at the numbers. A Gomorrian emasculator making a Barrage attck with Invoke frenzy uses one gold order token, and two silver order tokens to buy the command card back. That's A LOT of resources for a single attack.

The average damage dealt by the attack is... 2.33 damage, from 0 to 6, which means he'll do 2 or 3 damage much more often than 5 or 6. So if you're in cover, or if your armor has Armor 1, it goes down to 1.33 damage. If he's shooting the Vulkan Battlesuit, or an armored trooper under cover, it goes down to 0.33 damage. If the Vulkan Battlesuit is order cover, or boosted by Minitry of war, it goes down to... minus 0.66 damage. So armor and cover are efficient counters. Armor boosting command cards (most notably the Brotherhood's Litany of Steel) are also good counters. The Brotherhood can also heal targets damaged by such shots while advancing under fire... Of course, some figs will be lost to good rolls, but one in close range, the Gomorrian are dead meat (3 life point for a big target).

The attack will touch quite steadily 9 hexes away, ignoring LoS, and can hope to touch a target up to 12 hexes away. That's huge indeed. Dodgers put the numbers down, but it's still an impressive range, not easy to counter. There are two ways of doing so, though :

-Use snipers. Snipers can either outrange the Gomorrian thanks to sniper shot, if they can have LoS, or ignore LoS like he does by using trick shot. A Capitol ranger, boosted by an adjacent commander and using trick shot is just as deadly as the Gomorrian Emasculator is, and needs a lot less ressources to do such an attack. All in all, each faction's snipers are very good (don't forget Bauhaus will ultimately get armored bronze snipers, with the Dragoons !!).

-Close in the distance. Once again, this is most easily done by Capitol (Capitol charge and great grey scout), but Legion foes can also do it (Necrovisual symbiosis, Beastial charge), just as the Brotherhood's Sacred Warriors (charge plus whatever he needs to deal a lot of damage to the Gomorrian, be it Hammer of Judgemend or Test of Faith) - though it won't be an easy task for them.

Once again, sometimes, losing units in the first stage of the game is no big deal either. It's a question of resources : if your opponent has used a lot of resources to make such attacks, the he doesn't have those ressource to deal with your troopers at a closer range. So you'll be able to close the gap in VP later in the game... Of course, this is all just theory craft, but each faction have their "deadly combo" on paper ! If your opponent plays like a power gamer, nothing prevents you from doing the same thing !

Some VP also makes it easier to face Gomorrian Emasculator, like Deep Cover or the Sniper Roost...

To nullstate : A multi target pummel from a Venusian Ranger Kapitan using Superior Tech to mimic Pummel is even nastier... A pain in the *** for all those annoying Rangers/Brotherhood clusters out ther !

Btw, those are excellent advices you gave here ! The Bear Kapitan is an awesome sniper (thanks to his baseline green die : snipers LOVE green dice...), and his Infiltrate ability will be even more appreciated against nasty guardians, like the Infernal Corroder...

Thanks for all your advices pals - but i dont like this combo neither. We will not allow it in our league. Luckily, we don´t have such "cheesy army list" gamers in the league at the moment.

The costs are a good point with this, but in my most games, we´ve got more than enough order tokens after the first two or three rounds/turns, because of the loss of some minor units. So i think, a good player can handle this problem.

@nullstate

I think for "Cyborgtrucker", this isn´t just a "on paper" problem. Just look at his first message.

By the way, a very nice discussion, i love to be part of the mutant chronicles fanbase.

As I think, I'm with Paptimus, this combo isn't that mortal, the tokens may not seem a very high cost, but the actions are indeed. Three actions means a quiet and not in guard miniature, and you can always do the "human shield" trick... that's it, put your heavy-powered unit behind a bronze expendable unit (i.e. the mortificator master behind a elite fury guard, so you can use the Elite Fury ability if she becomes dead) and both units approaches the gomorrian. Besides, except Bauhaus (who have the Vulkan, after all) all armies can make flying units.

If you eliminate the 'Gomorrian + Frenzy' combo, you should eliminate the 'Mortificator Master + Point-Blank' combo, or the 'Venusian Ranger Kaptain + Etoile Mortant + High Technology' combo, for example. I believe the game is very leveled (but not perfect, of course)

I guess I just don't see what's "cheesy" about it. It's just a potent combo that's not immediately obvious.

If you eliminate this combo, I think you will find yourself eliminating many others as you advance in the game... your call, though.

I think Dominik is right. Cyborgtrucker isn't suffering from bad game play but poor sportsmanship on his opponents part. It's one thing to use a tactic that works. It's a whole other thing to work a tactic to death whipping it like a dog. Yes Barrage+Invoke Frenzy(with buyback) takes 9 actions worth of tokens(1gold and 2 silver) But how much do you have to move when you pin another person's army down? Also depending on his figure, token and Command Card ratio it may not hurt him to give up those tokens. When it comes to averages in die rolling my experience is that they never roll true. And while it would be rare. I would not want to be there the day he rolls a 6 points of damage after making it to the middle of the board. YIKES! Even my 2 Vulkan battlesuits would be dead even in full cover! It would be a sad day indeed for Bauhaus!

Once again, I wouldn't call it "cheese", but pushing the system to its limits. In fact, I've seen threads complaining about cheesy compos for each factions :

-For Capitol, it was multi-ranger madness

-For the Brotherhood, it was Inquisitor spamming (both self-healing bronze and card-retrieving silver, with Keeper boosting their damage)

-for Bauhaus, it was the Vulkan Battlesuit invulnerabitlity.

So if your opponent wants to play it cheesy... Well, do the same thing ! For Bauhaus, you could max out your Vulkan Battlesuit slots, take Vulkan prototypes for bronze, Max Steiner as a gold, then take multiple Ministry of War to cover your advance... Add in some Artillery cards for your firepower, and you shouldn't lose a lot of troopers while closing in...

For Capitol, there are a lot of counters : Either you play ranger spam, with Bait and switch to choose your loss (goodbye, poor ol' bronze ranger...) and a lot of Sniper cards to annihilate those Gomorrians (once again : Trick shot is your friend), or you decide to close in with Capitol Charge, Tank Hunters, Mitch Hunter, Forced March, GG scouts, whatever you like (you could even add in some Command Interception to scrap Invoke Frenzy once you're in close range)... Once again, Bait and switch is a powerful counter to Barrage hits (most esepcially early in the game, when your opponent has only one potential target for each Gomorrian).

For the Brotherhood, spam litany of steel, heals, take armored troopers, a tank like Nikodemus can even survive a 6 damage hit if he's on a cover hex, with a litany of steel to boot. If you can get to a sniper roost, putting a trooper on it playing Heed the word to forbid your opponent from playing command cards is also a good idea (though it's purely situational).

PS : Potential 6 damage is frightful, but there's only a 0.3% probability of rolling it. Of course, that won't matter a lot if you effectively suffer such a devastating hit, but it shouldn't occur a lot in a game, though. And for each 6-damage hit, this combo will inflict a lot of 1 or 2 damage hits, which won't hurt your Vulkans (or your 1 armor troopers under cover).

Once again, I'm not saying I'm playing the game better than you, or whatever : only that I think the game offers a lot of possibilities for each factions, and cheesy compos are most of the time "one-dimensional" (and that there are a lot of cheesy compos, which means the game isn't a unbalanced as one could fear).

I'm not thinking cheese as much as look at it this way. I play for fun and to relax. If I wanted someone to attack me agressively to the point of annoyance I would put on a frilly pink dress, stand out side a biker bar and call the patrons names. The problem is the player likes to play his way and when he's not killing me quick enough or looses a guy he gets pouty. If I had more players to choose from it would be nice. It's multiple things that annoy me. Again I don't hate the game just the way certain people play the game.

Yeah, not much you can do about poor sportsmanship I suppose. Sorry to hear that...

Maybe there's a local game shop with some open-minded regulars?

@Cyborgtrucker

I feel with you ...

Maybe you just show him this discussion?

In the end, it is more or less just a problem with the gaming partner. It´s not only his or yours game - its the game of both of you - and you play it together. So it´s important to maximise fun for both players, regardless what the rules say. Sure, it is a competitive game, but you play it together at all.