You drafted range and flyers, I drafted samurai... I forfeit

[ParaGoomba Slayer]

Originally Posted by Lord Pyre

Thanks you for this insightful opinion.

But my opinion says that guns are cowardly, not to mention the fact that Cyprien has assassinated Syvarris and Iron Man in a single game with just swords and cold fingers.

Calling me a coward is not going to stop me from mowing down your soldiers wave after wave with my trusty machine gun nest.

Need I bring up World War 1?


Cyprien, while he is melee, is basically an honorary ranged hero. 8 move stealth flying.

Syvarris doesn't have a gun, now does he?

[boogle]

From what I've played of Heroscape in years past I feel that it is a balance between ranged units and melee units that properly depicts melee units at their pinnacle of usefulness. I prefer to choose melee units with insanely high attack power and keep them close to my ranged warriors so that I can bring him, her or them out while using the ranged warriors as bait for stronger units until the enemies have moved close enough. Sometimes I choose warriors with special abilities that either allow them to help the ranged units by engaging with other units to tie up enemies, have multiple attacks, or a chance to either move again, attack again, or possibly take another turn altogether. In my opinion it isn't so much that ranged units are entirely better than melee units or vice versa, its just as a player one must decide clever ways so that one can use figures effectively without jeopardizing an entire army because a balance of melee units and ranged units has been poorly met. Though ranged units do have an obvious advantage over melee units because of their greater attack threat radius ranged units tend to have less defense than melee units; a possible weakness easily taking advantage of if given the right circumstances and units.

[Soul Shackle]

Originally Posted by boogle

From what I've played of Heroscape in years past I feel that it is a balance between ranged units and melee units that properly depicts melee units at their pinnacle of usefulness. I prefer to choose melee units with insanely high attack power and keep them close to my ranged warriors so that I can bring him, her or them out while using the ranged warriors as bait for stronger units until the enemies have moved close enough. Sometimes I choose warriors with special abilities that either allow them to help the ranged units by engaging with other units to tie up enemies, have multiple attacks, or a chance to either move again, attack again, or possibly take another turn altogether. In my opinion it isn't so much that ranged units are entirely better than melee units or vice versa, its just as a player one must decide clever ways so that one can use figures effectively without jeopardizing an entire army because a balance of melee units and ranged units has been poorly met. Though ranged units do have an obvious advantage over melee units because of their greater attack threat radius ranged units tend to have less defense than melee units; a possible weakness easily taking advantage of if given the right circumstances and units.

Where do you place your order markers in situations like this? If your melees are just waiting beside/behind your range, do you consistently place order markers on your range once everyone is in place? I've seen situations where set-ups like this lead to a stand-off between teams... like which one of us will send in someone to die and lose our point advantage first? These situations usually end up in one team saying "screw it let's go in", and more often than not, that's the team that starts getting decimated. I realize aggression is rewarded in this game by the 3/2 ratio of skulls and shields, but if the other team is waiting for you with their height and posts, what am I supposed to do?

[ParaGoomba Slayer]

Originally Posted by Soul Shackle

Where do you place your order markers in situations like this? If your melees are just waiting beside/behind your range, do you consistently place order markers on your range once everyone is in place? I've seen situations where set-ups like this lead to a stand-off between teams... like which one of us will send in someone to die and lose our point advantage first? These situations usually end up in one team saying "screw it let's go in", and more often than not, that's the team that starts getting decimated. I realize aggression is rewarded in this game by the 3/2 ratio of skulls and shields, but if the other team is waiting for you with their height and posts, what am I supposed to do?

Be patient. Make the enemy come to you. If they won't, create a standoff. I don't get why everybody feels the need to banzai charge constantly.

DON'T give in to the temptation to charge their trenches.

[rdhight]

Originally Posted by Soul Shackle

Where do you place your order markers in situations like this? If your melees are just waiting beside/behind your range, do you consistently place order markers on your range once everyone is in place? I've seen situations where set-ups like this lead to a stand-off between teams... like which one of us will send in someone to die and lose our point advantage first? These situations usually end up in one team saying "screw it let's go in", and more often than not, that's the team that starts getting decimated. I realize aggression is rewarded in this game by the 3/2 ratio of skulls and shields, but if the other team is waiting for you with their height and posts, what am I supposed to do?

There is no one easy answer to this, but with common squads advancing in a column, things get less difficult. You can have four-five knights or whatever up even with your range and the others trailing. When your order marker on the knights comes up, look to see if the vanguard can use their attacks. If they can, move and attack with them. If not, move four more knights up from behind to reinforce.

The situation you describe is one of the times when even slightly longer range can trump shorter range. When there's a mismatch, it's always the shorter-ranged team who has the onus to advance.

Or you could try to get lucky. When you get in a standoff, habitually place the 3 marker on your melee units. If you win initiative, hold them back and move up more from behind on that marker. If you lose initiative, use that 3 marker to charge, then pile lots of markers on them next round. You've got a 50/50 chance of getting the lucky initiative switch and taking two turns in a row. Add bonding heroes for best results.

[Wytefang]

I think that it was Kenjib who pointed out that we're missing some critical terrain types that would greatly enhance melee units and balance things out - particularly some kind of terrain that allows units to move through it but does NOT allow ranged attacks to go through it.

So basically a Line of Sight blocker that allows movement through it like Smoke, Mist, a Force Field of some kind...stuff like that.

I'm surprised that a terrain type for this hasn't been released yet. Glyphs are a poor solution (at best) so I'm hopeful that Wizards of the Coast will clue into this glaring (imho) terrain need.

[rdhight]

Originally Posted by Wytefang

I think that it was Kenjib who pointed out that we're missing some critical terrain types that would greatly enhance melee units and balance things out - particularly some kind of terrain that allows units to move through it but does NOT allow ranged attacks to go through it.

So basically a Line of Sight blocker that allows movement through it like Smoke, Mist, a Force Field of some kind...stuff like that.

I'm surprised that a terrain type for this hasn't been released yet. Glyphs are a poor solution (at best) so I'm hopeful that Wizards of the Coast will clue into this glaring (imho) terrain need.

Yeah, I think you can be very very hopeful, considering that's pretty much a stronger version of what the jungle trees will do.

But I don't think smoke, mist, or jungle trees will have as big an effect as all that. All LOS-blockers already act like smoke for fliers, don't they? And fliers don't dominate range. Smoke or mist would hurt range somewhat, but I don't think it would easily produce range/melee balance. (Nor would I want it to. This is war-- if you didn't bring flight or a ranged weapon, or the ability to do a job that greatly helps someone who did, you should die ignominously.)

[Wytefang]

Well it wouldn't necessarily be a perfect panache but it'd definitely swing the tide by a large margin. Right now the main problem is that melee units, even with bonding and any other fast movement tricks, just die before they can reach the fray and have any effect.

A terrain type that provided cover without hindering movement would be perfect to swing things in a positive direction for hand-to-hand units.

[boogle]

Placing down order markers is a thing not to be done haphazardly, I think there are four diffrent beings for any unit who can have an order marker placed on them:

Full team- a unit which has all its units or at least enough of its health remianing to be as effective as it would be if it was at full health.

Damaged- Any squad with less than its normal number of units on a card, I.E. two ashigaru spearmen as opposed to four. This includes any hero units who have significant enough damage on them that they may die in a turn or so.

Out of range to attack units- These units include any team who isn't in an attack threat range, meaning even if he moves his full movement and you include his range for attack or special attack and or abilities he can't contribute to the battle that round.

Engaged units- Any unit that is engaged to another unit.

The first thing in determinging what units one wants to put one's order markers on is to classify your remaining units into one or more of these categories. For instance, I have an engaged Sgt. Drake (rotv) who is fighting off two deathreavers whom have been giving him trouble. Drake has full health so is not going to be taken down in one round likely unless you are facing an opponent with someone who has a reatively high attack power on a unit who is in an attack radius of Drake, in that case use your best judgement. In this case Sgt. Drake would fall into the engaged units section as he is engaged and not free to move without taking leaving swipes from the two plague infested robot faggies that are the deathreavers. Lets say Sgt. Drake had 1-2 health reamining and was engaged with the deathreavers, he is now under two catagories, damaged and engaged, in this case his effectiveness is extremly limited and one would not want to waste an order marker on someone who could in theory die just by attempting to disengage with the enemies he is engaged with in order to attack some other unit near by. Having an idea of when your units are going to fall or which of your units you think is going to be targeted is an extremly important thing to take note of in heroscape, without doing so you will waste order markers out of sympathy if not ignorance. In both these cases Sgt. Drake is fairly useless and unless you want to catch an opponent offguard by disengaging with Sgt. Drake to attack a near by enemy worth attacking your order markers are better off spent elsewhere.
Another cateogory some units tend to fall under is the out of range to attack units, this is immensely frustrating when you have melee units at the end of the board whom you didn't move so that you could get other (probably range) units into ideal positions. The key to having an unit in this type of category is that one must realize that both you and your opponent are aware that the unit out of an attack range is no immediate threat. You can however choose to move him up if you enagged the enemy with deathreavers or have planned an army aroudn the time it will take for all your other units to get into attack position (Making my run into attack position). Perhaps tricking your opponent is also ideal, by putting a 1 on that faraway unit and then an X your opponent may use his turn(s) retreat a little giving you back the turn you took to bring that out of attack range unit up. If he is Braxas or someone with potential beat down power this could very well be the case.
Yet another category is the damaged unit. These units are heroes who are either at their last licks or squads with less than their max amount of units on the card. Some squads have more effectiveness than others when their units die and can still fight even with a lessened squad number (For more details read the thread on order markers, its somewhere in Strat articles). It is easy to assume that if these units are in a threat range to attack your opponent and do significant damage to them even if they are at death's door, then they will be targeted for attack. It is up to the player whether he will risk the order marker on these figures and take one last lick at the opponent before the crushing darkness of death encompasses your unit. Perhaps you want to use that squad or hero figure to buy time for a out of attack range unit to make its way into an attack threat radius. Either way it is up to you. I tend to hold the idea that the less turns i waste on dead units the more chances i will get to attack the opponent thus broadining my chances to win, but this is a personal opinion. if you are an all out going to get my points worth for that character kind of guy you'll want to use that figure or try to use it one last time. In my beliefs damaged units also include units like the airborne elite after they've used their grenades as well as a mrosbane who has ran out of negation markers. Situations like this limit the original powers of the unit and to me should thus be deemed damaged for they are unable to fully use all their powers they once were.
The last group of warriors is the Full team, these are guys who could, but don't have to be engaged. Depending on who or what that unit is going to attack, being engaged to it can only help as it could very well be the unit you desire to attack. With that said and the discrepencies between engaged unit and free unit made, let us discuss the full unit. There are full units who are out of threat range, and full units who are either in attack threat range or already they themselves engaged. these are for the most part the units you'll be attacking with, the cliched bread and butter of your current attack force. This is where most, if not all of your order markers should go. Some factors will elevate other Full team units to be used before other full teams. Height advantage is a huge factor in determining the ideal full unit to attack with, as well as characters who are in an attack range to deal damage to damaged units that have order markers on them. Sometimes it is more wise to attack a dying unit so that you can potentially rob that opponent of a turn marker than it is to run up the hill for height advantage. If sucessful, you can always run up the hill with that next unhampered turn you mamanged to take by eliminating an order marker from a unit or at least lowering its squad's effectiveness by destroying one or more of its figures so that it cannot work on a full team next turn. All this is common sense though, just remember that it isn't what units get the order markers but when those units should get the order markers. Some units, like ranged ones tend to be easier to place order markers earlier on becasue of their natural range and abaility to attack from afar, but this is not to say that you should allow hundred's of points of melee units to stay behind while you attack with a few ranged units becasue sooner or later they will fall prey to the other teams naturally more powerful melee units and your remaining melee units will be forced to walk into the enemies ranged units who after defeating all of your warriors must have already ascertained the high ground.

[wbdhoc]

For me, the trick to running the sams is to not heavily rely on melee sams. The tagawa or kozuke serve as my hump-end game backbone, with a few common sam archers bringing the vanguard. I also tend to use the standard bearer, who gives the troops the extra defense they need until they can get within striking distance of range troops. After that, I started drafting either Kaemon Awa for out of the gate sniping or a few harquebus (sp) for stand offs. I've had success vs. kravs, hulks, even Q9 with the following 500 army:

Kaemon Awa
Hatamoto
2XArchers
Tagawa

The addition of the Harquebus and Spearmen give you more options. But keeping the archers within range of Hatamoto's special and giving them height wil either draw out your opponent's melee cover or cause the range opposition to focus on the archers when they should be worried about bloodlust. But, of course, most competitive players have their own strategy for confronting sams--staying away from counter strike tops that list so don't be surprised if you find your theme army always responding to the 'what about range?' question.

[Snotwalker 8000]

If you find that melee always loses to ranged in your battles, it probably has more to do with the terrain than anything else.

Wise use of trees, ruins, and roads, and avoiding that impulse to build up a "high-ground-center" will vastly improve gameplay and enjoyability.

In a well-balanced battlefield, ranged units can be useful, sure... but they no longer dominate melee units. At best, a ranged unit should be able to get in one or two volleys at a slow (4 o 5 movement) melee unit before becoming engaged...

if you build a wide open map, with lots of hard-to-reach high ground, where any approaching melee unit will need a full round or more of turns to get to the top, (with no cover), then it's simply a poorly constructed map.

Here's a map I constructed for a recent Mpls Tourney that provided a good balance between the need for both melee and ranged units.

Battle of Shoikan Grove, link to it here: http://www.heroscapers.com/download/index.php?dlid=1074

[Jexik]

I like Lava Fields on height too, to force ranged units to make a decision whether to stay up there, or burn their feet. The one thing I might caution against with putting too many LoS blockers in one area, is that it makes it easier for Deathreavers or even Marrden Hounds/Deathstalkers to seal off an area and allow the ranged figures behind to fire with impunity. Battle for Shroikan Grove definitely did a good job of forcing both players into a middle that did not have too many good sight lines into it though, and the relatively uniform height did not promote turtling.