Too many cards: a very bad thing

[rdhight]

One piece of advice I often give out, and see others give out, is that "You have too many army cards." This can be a confusing piece of advice to interpret sometimes, because we really mean more than one thing when we say this. I'll try to disassemble it and separate the meanings. Here are the example armies I'll be using:

ARMY S as in "swarm"
220 Minions x2
280 Aubrien Archers x4

ARMY M as in "military-industrial complex"
240 Iron Man
180 Major Q9
080 Old Raelin

ARMY V as in "valiant"
140 4th Line x2
140 Knights x2
110 Sir Gilbert
105 Alastair MacDirk

ARMY W as in "why?"
110 Old Drake
120 Deathreavers x3
120 New Raelin
060 Deadeye Dan
050 Marro Warriors
030 Eldgrim
010 Isamu

1. "You don't have good enough ways to spend order markers." When you draft cards into your army, you have to pay more points for a stronger card. But each card also has another cost: the order marker you expend to activate it. Marker cost does not get discounted on cheap units! Your first priority should be to invest major points in units that will put out heavy firepower when given markers. If you feel you have enough of these units, go ahead and look at cards that will give you something good without a marker. Only then should you turn to the units who need a marker to do anything at all, then generate poor attacks when they do get one. Think of the army-building process as making a machine. The main goal of the machine is to turn order markers into kills. Having all the most neat-o parts is no good unless you can assemble them into a machine that does the job.

Army S is reasonable in this category. Any marker can offer medium to high attacks unless the squad it controls has been all but wiped out.
Army M is also good to go. It will be moving Tony or Q9 on almost every turn and getting powerful ranged shots, with only a trickle of markers needed to keep Raelin in position.
Army V can do no wrong; both Knights/Champions and minutemen can really deal out the damage. Gilbert is the weakest individual attacker, but helps the offense in other ways.
Army W is the one with problems. It has 170 points of Drake, Marro Warriors, and Isamu, all with good attack power for what they cost. Then it follows up with 180 points of Raelin and Deadeye, who can hit hard, but not on demand. Finally, it has 150 points of Eldgrim and rats, who produce very few skulls per marker. It's not that W's individual units are worse than those in the other three armies; it's that not enough of them are going to turn markers into skulls on a regular basis.

2. "You have too many places to put order markers." When you have just one logical place to pile all your markers, you lose some opportunities for deception. When you have five or more places, you have to leave some cards obviously sleeping every round-- your opponent will know from the moment initiative is rolled that certain units will not be moving. You generally want to have from two to four cards that are serious candidates for markers on any given turn, and four is pushing it. One of the reasons comebacks can happen in Heroscape is because a sloppy, six-card 500-point army can go out and get its weak figures murdered, sometimes turning it into a tight 300-point army which can then battle back hard thanks to much better order marker placement.

Army S excells once again. The opponent will be spending much of the game not knowing who's going to move next.
Army M is also in good shape. Raelin will usually be standing still, but the shooters have a good chance to confuse the enemy.
Army V has four cards, but thanks to the power of bonding, only two places to put markers until the knights are almost finished. Excellent.
Army W starts the game with a very transparent style. With seven cards, it will constantly be announcing which three of them are going to sit the round out. Drake, Deadeye, the Marro, and Eldgrim all need markers to do their jobs, while Isamu, Raelin, and the Deathreavers will compete for the scraps. As filler dies and the rats begin to scatter, its secrecy and deception will improve.

EDIT: Of the three problems, this one is the easiest to solve in-game through tactics. Remember, what matters is how many cards are competing for markers each round, not each game. If you plan well, so that only two or three are good choices on round 1, and you shift smoothly to new units as those die off so that you continue to have only two or three more good choices on any given round, you can minimize this drawback.

3. "It takes too long for your army to move." Even an army with fast units can suffer from sluggish movement if it shifts a very low number of points on most markers. Me-Burq-Sa is fast; an order marker on him can move him a long way. Still, you're only moving 10% of a standard army. If the opponent then uses a marker to move 33% of his own army, MBS is in trouble, because even if those individual units are slower individually, the enemy is soon going to be throwing 100 points or more against 50 points of MBS. Tactical mobility comes from fast units with movement powers; in a way, strategic mobility comes from expensive units with extra-turn powers.

Army S is mediocre by this yardstick. Without making those fickle Frenzy rolls, it will take six markers to move every figure once.
Army M is the strategic-mobility champ. With only three heroes, it can completely evacuate its start zone in a round if the situation dictates.
Army V is saved by bonding once again. Thanks to double activations, it can move all figures once every four markers, even without Dispatch.
Army W technically takes nine markers to move all units. Because of Scatter and Vanish, it's not really this bad, but it's sure not good. Attacking in waves is a necessity.

Only you can decide how important each of these rules is to your armies. Certainly, there are ways to build and ways to play that can minimize the drawbacks of too many cards, even without bonding. You can use Carry and Summon. You can build around Red Skull. You can use units like the Airborne Elite that help simplify decisions. You can load up on samurai and auras so your sleeping units can still help you. But even with all those workarounds, I still think too many army cards is a real killer.

If you have an interest in exploring this area further, I highly recommend Jexik's in-depth order marker piece. It can definitely set you on the road to stronger armies.