Reverse the Whip Army Archetypes

vegietarian18 · #1 July 27th, 2018, 03:18 PM

I don't think you can really do a "Power Ranking" for Reverse the Whip, despite some figures definitely being better choices than others. It's too hard to take into account how much personal preferences, skill influence, and army construction as a whole impact the success of figures. Hatamato Taro has more Gencon titles than the Marro Stingers after all. But the other half of competitive army building, army archetypes, is valid for RtW. Gencon Main Event is probably the most-prepped for Heroscape tournament, with many concepts unique to it, and it seems sad to let all of the ideas behind army selection be hidden behind closed doors. So this thread exists to demystify for the public, and serve as a record for the participants, of the different sorts of armies that have had success in RtW tournaments.

If an event is not listed, it is the Gencon Main Event. Online Con (and in a couple months ScapeCon) are also listed; feel free to have your own opinion about whether they should be.

Splash

The term & main event usage was pioneered by the infectedsloth group. In 2014, Major Q23 brought 1x Mezzos as cleanup in his Dwarf army that he took to Day 2, as the beginnings of the splash concept. Splash has probably become the most popular style of Main Event army; I know the OEAO and maybe IS argues that there are many sub-army types within Splash, but to me, the average player probably sees them all the same (ie: gets a little confused when you hand all the pieces to them). The defining features of these builds are low amounts of commons, wide variety of pieces, and difficult order markers. With Raelin and well-constructed Splash builds you can make pretty much anything work.

Spoiler Alert!

Figures You Personally Are Very Good At

This is kind of a hard archetype to class because I can only really do it if someone has success with a figure multiple times, and that figure doesn’t see the same success or plain isn’t even attempted by other people. The three that I think of when I think of this are ISB3 with Cutters, dok with Nagrubs, Matthias with Spiders. The most defining feature of these armies is that they are mechanically intensive to play with and against, in terms of subtle positional situations, which grant large advantages to players very familiar with situations these figures end up in.

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Bread and Butter

Instead of traditional army structure of one coherent whole with filler, these armies have one melee part and one ranged part. This concept doesn’t really need a name, but it’s probably second to Splash in terms of continued success by variety of players, although dok has had particular success with it. Where Splash armies reward long term game plans and using all of the different pieces in your army well, these armies reward short term flexibility and responding to how well your figures are surviving.

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Short but Good

Playing strong armies with strong figures that are under on points is a fairly underutilized archetype and I don't think it should be. Most people are familiar with the structure and playstyle of Tier 1 armies. Playing an army that you know well and have won other tournaments with just leaving things out of it so it can be beaten by worse armies allows for comfort with your own army. Matthias and I each had pretty successful runs with this concept in 2018 and 2019. There really aren’t many unsuccessful runs at this concept, but people just don’t do it very often. It takes a lot of confidence in the army you’re bringing to intentionally play under.

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Ping

These armies use Raelin, and some range, but doesn't want to move too far out of the start zone. The goal is to repeatedly push out threatening damage from long range and make your opponent's plans awkward; you may not be able to follow up with a ton of damage once they get to you, but you hopefully have disrupted them enough that they don't have enough left to put the hurt on you when they finally get to you. They can really make things awkward for Splash builds and other slow paced armies that people like to play in RtW, but sometimes they don’t have enough damage to take out bigger things.

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Mediocre but Whole

This is by far the most common archetype of Main Event army. Pick something that's an okay base, and fill out the points making the best build possible for it, Raelin if she works. There's almost too many to list but I'll try to put some important examples. People are always going to want to break these out, and try out variety of figures that don’t get to see the table in standard Heroscape events.

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Fast and Fragile

These armies go against the grain of traditional "OM hell" RtW builds, although OM management is still important. Instead of OM management as the primary focus, figure positioning and tempo is focused. These builds use fast and traditionally low defense figures, and squeeze as much value out of their defense as possible through well-played aggression and making opponents uncomfortable. A bit of range is often included for matchup smoothing, but the whole army is mobile. These armies are one of the scariest to bring into the Main Event, as you can just get run over in close matchups if the early game goes poorly for you and your opponent gets situated comfortably. But it can go the exact same way for your opponent if you get on top of them before they're situated.

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Gladblast

This is the only archetype based around a specific figure in this list, but I think it's important. Gladblast with the figure limit is about the right power level. It has a lot of layers, between Cyberclaw and 7 range and potential Blastatron activation loss and Gladiatron dice loss. 1x Glads is a fun innovation that tones the army down. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it appears on paper since you’re not losing attack activations. Gladblast is probably the single build with the most sustained RtW success over the 10 years of the format.

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Uniques Mostly

Rÿchean plays this every other year it feels like. It's like Splash but different; you're still susceptible to losing activations but you have more special powers and utility that wins games like Stealth Dodge or Smoke Powder or Water Clone. This is a legacy archetype at this point, since the RtW meta has shifted weaker since 2016 and many of these Uniques are just quite good, and people are quite familiar with them.

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This list is not intended to be exhaustive, but I am tired of writing it

. I would love to hear some other discussion of armies that I've missed or misclassified other potential archetypes that haven't seen historical success but could fare well in the future.

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