AOA: Playing The New Factions

[Tauros105]

Lovely GF game 3: I had the dreadnaughts, the knaves, scarlet widow, cornelius breech, and the tarn(turned pirates via hire crew). my gf had aubrein archers x3, armoc x1, raelin rotv, and the venoc warlord. Map was Aftermath I think. I put my dreadnaughts outfront and got almost my whole team out of the startzone in round 1. GF placed raelin and got shooting with the archers, even got a few frendzies in the first couple rounds. the dreadnauts died early, but once the pirates make contact they hit hard. I did not activate mutiny unfortunately. The squads did not last long, the pirates need raelin i think. It came down to the wire, but the Ullar tream beat the pirates.

[ryguy266]

Just played an interesting game against Bert. 500 points no figure limit. He went with Romans x6, Marcus, Me-Burq-Sa, and Marro Warriors. I played Admiral EJ-1M, Crimson Widow, Izumi Samurai (as pirates), Dreadnaughts, and Kate Crawford as filler.

It took me a few turns to get the hang of the synergy, and I definitely regret some early placement choices. I got lucky that Me-Burq-Sa did no damage to an Izumi from range (and in fact got counterstruck to death when engaged). Then it was all Admiral churning through romans, with 1 Izumi sitting on Wannok for 2 rounds killing two more. All told, Admiral killed 16 romans on his own while the Dreadnaughts and Izumi screened for him. Unfortunately, he fell to the Marro Warriors (after taking 2 earlier wounds from romans) with only 3 MWs, 4 scattered romans, and a Marcus left on the field. I conceded as it was not a winnable endgame for Kate with water on the map.

I had several chances to win. The big strategical error I made was not realizing Crimson Widow could be moved with Boarding party. When I'd gotten down to only 1 Izumi and 1 dreadnaught, having her in there for the extra attack for the one other bonding turn she took and the boarding party bonus would have been really nice, but she was just sitting near my startzone. I did realize eventually, and she was key to some more Roman kills, but it was too late. The other chance I had was an initiative flip where Admiral cleared out 3 romans and left an exposed Marcus to a 4-dice and 5-dice attack from the remaining two dreadnaughts at the end of the round, but Bert won initiative and managed to evade devastating mortal blows. A dead or severely wounded Marcus would've really changed the game. The final chance was Admiral blanking his last wound away to a Marro Warrior attack from low ground...would have been a tight endgame for sure.

Final thoughts: Admiral EJ-1M is quite good. He consistently killed romans every turn, sometimes up to 3, completely ruining shield wall and stringing out the romans still in the start zone while moving pirates around to keep him protected. His base stats hold him back. Bert attacked him 3 times. A 3v6, a 2v6, and a 3v7, but that was enough to put 3 wounds on him and send him to Davy Jones' locker thanks to some poor defense dice. That fragility will hold this army back from being top tier. One more life or one more defense and moves from quite good to very good.

The Izumi are by far the best Hire Crew squad for Widow, although I think Tarn might fare okay. Nothing else comes close to these two for Admiral purposes, with Izumi easily at the top. The Dreadnaughts are good simply because they are the most survivable of the unique pirate squads. Any of the other unique pirate squads fold like paper, and having an extra figure doesn't do much when ideally you're screening mainly with Izumi. Admiral is the key piece in all of this, especially with the added toolkit bonus of being able to flex OMs to the Dreadnaught hero killers/heavy hitters after seeing the initiative outcome, or possibly even Izumi if you really need some key repositioning. I think after all the rounds we played, I only ever put 1 OM on Izumi (first round 1st OM to get them developed) and 2 on dreadnaughts (first round 2nd OM to develop them and Izumi with Widow's Midnight Raid, 1 later hoping for some mortal blows on Marcus with a 4v3 from the single remaining dreadnaught, which failed). It's an amazing army, and has the potential to be competitive with some practice.

[chas]

An interesting mix of figures! The Admiral is fun for sure.

[Tauros105]

Izumi are a great option for hire crew ryguy266, I didn't think of that. I got two more pirate related games. One was Realin, Dreadnaughts, knaves, bok-bor-na, and killian vs Anubian wolves x3, khosumet, and agent carr. My gf had the pirates in this one, and they developed pretty fast. agent carr didn't get much done, but the wolves went wild. During the second round they got plus 4 attack from unleashed fury twice and took out the pirates pretty quickly. raelin helped, but my gf lost an order marker due to all the knaves dieing and had some dificulty keeping the pirates together which I think hurt their effectiveness.

Games two I took my gf's pirate team and switched out raelin for cornelius breech and she had theracus, raelon, krug, arrow gruts x2, and swog riders x3. I did get to activate mutiny this time around and healed 3 wounds. The game was mostly melee so the pirate defense bonuse didn't help. I attacked krug a bunch with the dreadnaughts to try and cut him down early, but krug with raelin is good it turns out. I probably shouldn't have targeted krug early because he became the offense for my gf after he took a couple of wounds. Bok-bor-na got to heal and was decently effective with his buff, and killian was left to be killed at the end by krug. Theracus cheered from the sidelines. The pirates took 2 Losses today, but I'm looking forward to playing with them more.

[Tauros105]

Allright, did a little Me vs. Me because I'm unhinged. I genuinely tried to play each team as impartial as I could and make the decisions I would make were I playing as each team in the scenario, but I'm only human so who knows how it actually went. had Utgar bots (DW9k, DW8k, rats x3, and zettians) vs pirates (dorim, knaves, exiles, dreadnaughts, and bok-bor-na)
Bots put a lot of early order markers on the rats, but the game was on aftermath which was pretty wide and hard to block off from the knaves. The knaves got an early kill on 8k and where able to engage 9k very early. The bots just don't have much offense. 9k lasted a good couple of rounds of sustained attack, but only had one succesfull attack. This attack was an explosion that took out the last three knaves in one go. Zettians weren't able to do much, 9k just did more damage with an order marker. Eventually, the bots went down and all that was left was to clean up the rats which wasn't too bad as once I made contact with the bots, dorim and bookburner got cooking on them. I only put a few order markers on the exlies, but the were really good late game at hunting down the last couple rats with their range. The pirates only lost the knaves and one health each on both heroes and one dreadnaught. Dorim's movement bonus was also helpful both in getting the knaves in on the bots and in keeping the dreadnaughts super mobile. The pirates really came together on this one and I had a blast.

[chas]

Yo ho!

[ryguy266]

Been working through some games with the Clockwork Combine. Played a 750 point game with Frostclaws, Primus Adelbern, Concan, Knights x2, Thorgrim, Wing Commander Tuck Harrigan and Ordo Borealis vs the full Acolytes/Caylus/demon faction on the Ledge of Allegiance scenario map. Set up a nice pod with Concan and the Ordo and began blasting through Acolytes. Corvor did a ridiculous amount of damage to the army, but the frostclaws were able to finish him off thanks to the Concan boost. Primus tore through more acolytes and Morgoloth while I ran low on knights. Ended up losing the game with some sneaky play by my opponent to run past Primus and Concan, take no LEAs and no damage from two Primus attacks, kill the knight on my tower, win initiative, and burn the flag. Super fun game and in a "kill 'em all" format the 'claws would've dominated.

Second game last night was a straight 500. I ran Claws, Adelbern, Gilbert, Isamu, and Ordos into Knights x3, 4th x1, Gilbert, Alastair. Gilbert whiffed his first dispatch which hurt. I used Run twice and half of the next dispatch and was basically able to pin down the knights in their start zone with the Claws (played on Ascension). I activated Gilbert a third time to give the Frostclaws a ton of attack bonuses. Primus charged in but the amount of knights was too overwhelming. It came down to the Ordos vs three Knights, 1/6 Gilbert and 1/6 Alastair. The Ordos managed to kill Alastair and Isamu took down one knight before missing his first vanish, giving the last few knights the momentum they needed to finish the last Ordo.

Overall, I think the Frostclaws are very strong. However, I think all the "synergy padding" I did in both armies was generally a mistake. I think the 270 point combo of Claws and Edelweiss is super powerful. Trying to buff them with Gilbert or Concan is probably a waste at that point. The last 230 points would've been better spent on either a filler hero for the Frostclaws like Thorgrim or WCTH and either some cheap bread and butter like vipers or a strong cleanup unit like Kaemon or a Hydra, or both.

Ordos have been fairly underwhelming even with the Concan boost in the first game. Not being able to reposition at all to get the ranged attack is rough. And on any standard competitive map you'll have a hard time getting height with them because they can't make attacks along the way, unlike a normal ranged unit. Playing them as pure melee then is super underwhelming. They do not have any other abilities nor the stats to justify their point cost. Take Krav for 10 points less or Kaemon for 10 points more. You'll get way more out of a ranged unit that can actually use their range when you want them to.

Frostclaws completely outshine their ranged knight counterparts. With every Knight bonding option plus 5 more AoA heroes, they have some of the most versatile options in the game. I greatly underestimated how effective a 2 life melee squad would be, especially ones with stats identical to the knights but with significantly greater development. Knight Primus Adelbern really elevates their status. Grimnak's Chomp that works on Common Heroes? Sign me up. What's that? He doesn't have the 25% chance to kill small or medium Unique Heroes? Hmm...how about I just smash through them with his 5 attack dice and 8 lives? He can tear through just about anything with ruthless efficiency on his own. Pair him with the Frostclaws and you've got one of the hardest hitting melee combos in classic 'Scape with enough points left to match up with just about anything.

[Myriadite]

Originally Posted by ryguy266

....Frostclaws completely outshine their ranged knight counterparts. With every Knight bonding option plus 5 more AoA heroes, they have some of the most versatile options in the game. I greatly underestimated how effective a 2 life melee squad would be, especially ones with stats identical to the knights but with significantly greater development.

Such a detailed report! I keep forgetting they have two lives, which makes them so much more intimidating. Out of curiosity, what do you use to track their lives?

If the base is the right size, I could imagine a separate, coloured base identifier would work well (those rubber rings that fit around the base, often used in games with unpainted miniatures). It would be fun if the marker could be incorporated into the model, like a removable helmet or flag.

[ryguy266]

Originally Posted by Myriadite

Such a detailed report! I keep forgetting they have two lives, which makes them so much more intimidating. Out of curiosity, what do you use to track their lives?

If the base is the right size, I could imagine a separate, coloured base identifier would work well (those rubber rings that fit around the base, often used in games with unpainted miniatures). It would be fun if the marker could be incorporated into the model, like a removable helmet or flag.

It's nothing fancy, on tabletop I slip a wound marker onto the base of the proxy, online I color each squad figure individually and put them all into the wound box like they're uncommon heroes. It's a pain on the board because the marker wants to slip off, but it's also the most convenient.

[chas]

Hey, I do the same with wound markers. But then, unlike those trying to get the perfect 3D printed mini, I'm just playing for the experience, with proxies mostly, except for the Swarm of the Marro heroes, which of course have their own minis.

If you have all the cards (if not the figures too) of all the Classic and Custom figures, that's now over 400 cards! So the possible combinations with all of them and now the AOAs make for lots of exploration of new combos.

If you check out my signature thread, you can see photos and descriptions of my most recent game, where I designed a new type of race scenario. I not only won--and one of my opponents had the dread Queen Maladrix and her Festering Honor Guard--but I won with my custom version of a new Shiori, which the others liked; although I did raise her cost! Not bad.