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Competitive Armies Discussion Discuss, critique, and build ideas for tournament-caliber armies.

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  #1  
Old June 2nd, 2021, 02:49 PM
Maytrix Maytrix is offline
 
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Question Competitive 4x400 armies

I'll be attending my first convention for Heroscape in July at ScapeCon, and wanted to start a discussion on viable/favorite army builds. These are the 4 I have experience with and plan to practice more with before the tournaments.

Nilfheim/Greenscale 2x/Raelin/Isamu = 395
Romans 2x/Marcus/MBS/Major Q10 = 400
Heavy Gruts 2x/Grimnak/Nerak/10th Reg/Otonashi = 395
Greyspears/Darkclaws/Bahadur/Marro Warriors = 400 (VC format)

I don't have as much match-up experience using the Varkaanans, but Bahadur has been one of the more consistent hard-hitters in my army no doubt. I'm not a fan of rats or Q9 very much, so decided to take the Nilfheim build as my tier 1 squad. I've seen that the Romans army do quite well at GenCon and believe it got runner-up using Q10 build. The orc army is my most subjective army at the moment, I was torn between 10th Reg/Otonashi & Mezzos/Marcu, but the extra 2 attacks and range were the deciding factor for me. My C3V collection is limited, hence why I only had one army using customs so if you have other VC builds you've used in tournaments I'd love to try them out. Hope to see you all at ScapeCon!
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  #2  
Old June 3rd, 2021, 10:33 AM
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Re: Competitive 4x400 armies

Hi Maytrix -

I'll also be attending ScapeCon, look forward to meeting you there.

As a starting point, in case you don't know there's a Heroscape podcast called 'Casters of Valhalla' hosted by OEAO (the person who's organizing ScapeCon). In the 3rd episode of the podcast, good/favorite armies for the 4x400 event are discussed during a section of the podcast. Here's a link in case you want to listed to it:
https://castersofvalhalla.wixsite.co...3-a-to-a-units
That podcast doesn't include VC units, but it's still a good intro for 4x400 armies with classic scape only.

As for thoughts on your armies, generally having more of the common squad is good (Romans/Heavies especially). I'm guessing (could be wrong) that you only have 2x Heavies, which might be why you included a single squad of 10th, but replacing that squad of 10th with a 3rd squad of Heavies definitely improves the army if you can.

Similarly with the Romans, it's just kind hard to get great value out of a 2x mele squad in a 'cheese' event (bringing the best army(s) you can). If you're facing an army with any range, you're going to be down to 5 or 6 romans before they can ever engage anything. You said you weren't a fan of rats much, but rats are much better at filling the role of a screen for a ranged hero like Q10 than 2x Romans are (glyph grabbing through better move, better defense, cheaper, off-turn movement, etc.).

Nilf with Greenscales x2 is definitely strong; usually the 3rd squad of Greenscales is crucial, but with Raelin you might get away with just x2 of them. But Nilf is certainly a strong hero (especially with Raelin) who can shred armies. The downside to this army is that sometime in round 2 your Order Marker placement is going to get tricky once you're down to 2 or 3 Greenscales.

TBH I'm not as familiar with the Varks as a lot of other people on the site, so I'll skip discussing them in favor of hoping someone who knows them better than I do comes along.

- Chris
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  #3  
Old June 3rd, 2021, 11:29 AM
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Re: Competitive 4x400 armies

I disagree with Chris on the first army; Raelin is much more essential than the third squad of Greenscales. Raelin makes Nilfheim so much more consistent. It's true that sometimes you can run out of Greenscales, so you need some reps with the army to get a sense of when to switch OMs to Nilfheim so you don't lose turns, but I'm a big fan of Greenscales x2. Worse than running out of Greenscales is running out of dragon. This is your best build.

The Romans build is hard to rate. Evantage did do well with a Romans and Q10 build at Gencon Main Event 2019, but that was in Reverse the Whip, which encourages you to play suboptimal things. He only had 2x Romans and Q10 (along with 2x 4th) which is a tricky army to play. Romans and Q10 don't have a lot of natural synergy, but they're both good. The build you have is probably a little week for 4x400; Romans are almost still too cheap for this format because of the figure limit.

As Chris says, your third army is good but would be way better if you cut the 1x 10th for a third squad of Heavies and upgraded Otonashi to Marcu.

Your Vark build is okay but your weakest. Bahdaur's Spirit can't go on the Greyspears or the Marros which is sad. 400 is a little low for the Varks unfortunately. Their best builds are all 4 Vark squads, but all 4 squads is 410 points.
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Old June 3rd, 2021, 11:01 PM
Maytrix Maytrix is offline
 
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Re: Competitive 4x400 armies

Quote:
Originally Posted by vegietarian18 View Post
I disagree with Chris on the first army; Raelin is much more essential than the third squad of Greenscales. Raelin makes Nilfheim so much more consistent. It's true that sometimes you can run out of Greenscales, so you need some reps with the army to get a sense of when to switch OMs to Nilfheim so you don't lose turns, but I'm a big fan of Greenscales x2. Worse than running out of Greenscales is running out of dragon. This is your best build.

The Romans build is hard to rate. Evantage did do well with a Romans and Q10 build at Gencon Main Event 2019, but that was in Reverse the Whip, which encourages you to play suboptimal things. He only had 2x Romans and Q10 (along with 2x 4th) which is a tricky army to play. Romans and Q10 don't have a lot of natural synergy, but they're both good. The build you have is probably a little week for 4x400; Romans are almost still too cheap for this format because of the figure limit.

As Chris says, your third army is good but would be way better if you cut the 1x 10th for a third squad of Heavies and upgraded Otonashi to Marcu.

Your Vark build is okay but your weakest. Bahdaur's Spirit can't go on the Greyspears or the Marros which is sad. 400 is a little low for the Varks unfortunately. Their best builds are all 4 Vark squads, but all 4 squads is 410 points.

Thank you for the great insight! I totally agree with you guys on switching the 10th with one more heavy, I figured some range would compliment it. I decided to replace the Vark build as I kind of realized their designed much more for 500 point games. The Nilfheim army is my most confident pick no doubt, I'm thinking the Roman's army may get switched out for Q9/3x Rats/KMA as I'm realizing I need to utilize them in atleast one build. though I do wish I could incorporate more C3V figures, they're just very hard to find and I'm not familiar with their army builds as much. One I considered in place of the varks army I had is, Arktos/Greyspears/B-11/x2 Rats but decided against it eventually as I fear they have too many bad matchups
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Old June 11th, 2021, 12:14 AM
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The Nilfheim, Raelin, and greenscales build you mention is a legit option even though you can only field 2 squads. I've usually saved Raelin for the 10th regiment in my 4x4 builds, but Nilfheim is the other obvious option there (at least until VC made a third obvious option).

Aside from my Raelin build, my usual stock builds were a 4th build, a ratpodge of some sort, and a melee bonding build (usually knights). 4th are hurt by the 18 figure limit though.

Unfortunately all four Vark unique squads runs you 410. I think the build gets a fair bit weaker when you can't field all four, although Arktos and the three cheaper squads isn't a terrible option.

Incendiborgs theoretically beef up your ratpodge options, but it's not like Q9 was ever bad there, and IMO Q9+Krav make more sense as a pairing than Incendiborgs+Krav.

Quahon/spiders definitely deserves consideration. Getting a third copy of your bonding squad probably gives Quahon the edge over Nilf in this meta. 9 spiders beats 6 greenscales.

Spearmen are the other obvious one. Spearmen x4 + Marcus or Raelin+Marcu or even Krav/Syvarris. This is really strong. It murders most of the bonding melee, has a strong matchup into 10th (less so if they have Raelin but it's still OK), and is OK against 4th or Stingers+Raelin. The worrisome matchups are Nilf/Quahon/Krav/Incendiborgs behind rat/spider/greenscale walls.

Last edited by Dysole; June 23rd, 2021 at 02:47 AM.
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