Teaching a friend to play

[Hook]

I didn’t have a camera for this battle, so I’ll do my best to make up for it. I was playing two of my friends, and we were using the Trollsford Swamps Battlefied. We had a five hundred point limit, and I was teaching my friend, The Poom, to play. So this was really just for fun and what not.

Armies were as followed

AR:
Syvarris
Elite Onyx Vipers
Krug
Tarn Viking Warriors
Venoc Warlord

Me, trying to play a Marro army
Su-Bak-Na
Ne-Gok-Sa
Marro Warriors
Marro Drones
Me-Burq-Sa
Sir Denrick (I took him to counter Krug and Charos)

Poom:
Zettian Guards
Raelin the Kyrie Warrior (who was called horrible names all night)
Zombies of Morindan x2
Charos

AR went first, and made a major tactical blunder, by moving Syvarris. He tried to take out Me-Burq-Sa, but failed. On my turn, each of my Marro Warriors took a shot at him and managed to kill him.

Poom was content to sit back and circle his entire army around Raelin and just hunker down and let us come to him.

The first of two massive battles started next, as AR sent Krug over to mess with Charos, but with the defensive bonus, Charos was not budging and within two rounds, Krug had five hits on him and was surronded by Zombies.

I lost two Marro Warriors quickly, but a Water clone kept them coming up. I tried to move Sir Denrick towards Krug and Charos to try to pick up the scraps, but I got caught up by the Vikings. I ripped through one of them and a viper, before Venoc Warlord came up and Denrick was overran.

Another Viking fell to a zombie horde, but only after Krug killed off two of them. With four zombies left, Poom went after Krug and soon, Krug was no longer in the game.

Back on the other side of the field, Me-Burq-Sa was proving his worth by finishing off the Elite Onyx Vipers and another one of the Vikings. At this point, AR realized he was going to lose, but instead of trying to take care of Poom, who was across the board, he focused on finishing off my Me-Burq-Sa.

At this point, I found myself having to fight a defensive battle as the Zettian Guards started to pick off my Drones. The Viking finished them off. My Marro Warriors managed to suck at everything that they did, and found themselves killed off by the Zettian Guards and the Viking. Imagine my embarrasment at that!

That’s when I went with my back up plan, a full assault with Ne-Gok-Sa and Su-Bak-Na. Su took out Venoc Warlord and Ne took down the Viking, knocking AR out of the game.

Then I looked over the river and saw four zombies, Charos (with eight lives), Raelin and the Zettian Guards. I sent Ne over, and managed to take out a zombie and failed to mind shackle Charos. The dragon finished him off.

That’s when I realized I had to fight a defensive war, and moved Su way out of the way of the Zettian Guards. Poom sent Charos out at me, and I met him half way, taking out six life in one hit. As he tried to move his zombies forward to assist, I managed to take out Charos, and was feeling pretty good at that time.

As the zombies came at me, I quickly got rid of one and then another, and realized I was in trouble. He had moved the Zettian Guards next to me, and put Railen three spaces behind them and zombies. I managed to get rid of one of the Guards, before Railen moved herself into position and took me out. So with three figures left, Poom, who had never played the game before, won.

I did pick up a few ideas for the future. The drones are rather useless for the time being. The zombies are utterly fantastic and I developed a new love for Railen (as well as a target for first). I also am going to try to move Me-Burq-Sa around more and take advantage of that.

Any other suggestions? I rather liked the idea of keeping Su and Me back into the last, kind of a massive final charge.

Hope ya’ll liked this.

[ariealaviator]

Raelin is powerful if used right. Nice report and welcome to the site.

[Stealth Dodge]

There is no way the Drones are useless. What do you expect if you only draft 1 squad of them

[Hook]

Originally Posted by Stealth Dodge

There is no way the Drones are useless. What do you expect if you only draft 1 squad of them

"The drones are rather useless for the time being."

That is what I stated, not that they were utterly useless. As for only drafting one squad, that is because I only had one squad.

[playa1]

Originally Posted by Hook

"The drones are rather useless for the time being."

That is what I stated, not that they were utterly useless. As for only drafting one squad, that is because I only had one squad.

Yes, the drones are much more effective when you have 3 squads of them, but even then, I have never seen them used to much advantage. They are usually just what they are called "drones" who go down pretty fast. Once I took out 9 of them with Braxas in two rounds (though they did wound braxas pretty badly).

I would also have used Ne-Gok-Sa earlier: more chance for mindshackle and his defense allows him to be pretty effective at close quarters.

[Faartknocker]

Greetings.

Some free advice (my opinion): you must draft at least two squads of any common squad. They're called "common" because the advantage afforded by being able to soak up losses without reducing the total number of units you can move/attack with per activation is factored into the price. If you draft only one squad, you are giving up this benefit and thus NOT getting full value for your points.

Some units, such as the Zombies, are best if you draft three squads; if one of your Zombies is destroyed, you will still be able to move 6 of them and (perhaps) still attack with any three of them per activation. The advantage of the zombies is that they can "replenish".

Unlike the Zombies, the Marro Drones cannot replenish. For this reason, I would recommend drafting at least 4 squads of Marro Drones. If you draft only three squads and one of your Marro Drones is destroyed, you will no longer be able to use their "Move and attack with up to 9 Drones" special ability (since you will only have 8 left). At only 50 points per squad, they're a great value (only 200 points for 4 squads).

If you want to maximize your squads' effectiveness, you've got to shell out some coin to buy more packs of commons. Cheers!