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  #13  
Old May 1st, 2020, 08:07 PM
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Re: 10 year check: where is Bring the Cheese now?

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1. What is the best army in competitive Heroscape, but more importantly:
2. What makes an army good at winning competitive Heroscape games?
1. Knights with Gilbert, Heavies with Grimnak, Dwarves with Darrak or Mogrimm.
2. It bonds with melee.

That was easy. Any other questions?
I'm curious what the Matthias take is on these two armies for 500:

Knights x4, Gilbert, Alastair
Knights x5, Gilbert, Eldgrim

My dad and Chris Perkins are both running with the first, but I'm pretty sure you'd choose the second. Or Airborne instead of Alastair.
Back in my "competitive" days when I was actually trying to make armies to win etc, I would have said the first. A decade later I would say the 2nd. You win a lot of these games with knights on attrition, so 5 knights is far superior to 4. I also don't use Gilbert as liberally as a lot of people because I use him to keep my back line ready to rumble. Also with 5 knights I can dispatch out of engagement a lot more freely and with a lot less hesitation.

I would take that army toe to toe with anything out there and expect to win. 10th and trons would make me think quite a bit and I would probably need a key initiative switch but it's doable. Rats, Q9, Raelin and whatever is just a long slogging game, not hard, just long and boring.

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  #14  
Old May 1st, 2020, 08:26 PM
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Re: 10 year check: where is Bring the Cheese now?

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Back in my "competitive" days when I was actually trying to make armies to win etc, I would have said the first. A decade later I would say the 2nd. You win a lot of these games with knights on attrition, so 5 knights is far superior to 4. I also don't use Gilbert as liberally as a lot of people because I use him to keep my back line ready to rumble. Also with 5 knights I can dispatch out of engagement a lot more freely and with a lot less hesitation.

I would take that army toe to toe with anything out there and expect to win. 10th and trons would make me think quite a bit and I would probably need a key initiative switch but it's doable. Rats, Q9, Raelin and whatever is just a long slogging game, not hard, just long and boring.
Huh, I had never thought of the disengage with dispatch to stop yourself from losing the more important attack activation, that's really useful. Learn something new every day.

The advantages I see to Alastair are what Chris Perkins said basically: that you have a better way to kill dragons or Q9 with overextend and a 5 attack hero. But it does require a substantially different playstyle, since you can't use Gilbert for dispatch as much as Alastair requires turns. Knights have a good enough matchup against dragons anyways, and if you're confident in the head to head vs. Q9 just by smashing through Rats with the Knights themselves then you don't really need him.
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  #15  
Old May 3rd, 2020, 07:44 PM
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Re: 10 year check: where is Bring the Cheese now?

After playing the army a few times, I'm convinced that it would be better with one more squad of knights instead of Alastair.

Using Alastair just cost me too much development in knights.

That being said, I also don't think I played the army particularly well in those games. But I'm still switching my vote on the better 500 point composition of knights.
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  #16  
Old May 3rd, 2020, 09:25 PM
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Re: 10 year check: where is Bring the Cheese now?

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Originally Posted by Chris Perkins View Post
After playing the army a few times, I'm convinced that it would be better with one more squad of knights instead of Alastair.

Using Alastair just cost me too much development in knights.

That being said, I also don't think I played the army particularly well in those games. But I'm still switching my vote on the better 500 point composition of knights.
We have a believer folks!!

The flexibility of dispatch is just too good to not use it. Constantly having more 4 defense units throwing themselves into the fray just wears down your opponent.

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  #17  
Old May 5th, 2020, 10:33 AM
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Re: 10 year check: where is Bring the Cheese now?

The rule that I made up for myself is 2:1 lives of squad vs. lives of bonding is the perfect ratio. If you are off that ratio, you need to sacrifice value of either the hero and the squad to protect the one that's lower.

So Gilbert is perfect amount of bonding for three squads of Knights. 12:6. If you get up to 4 squads, that means you should waste some of the Knight's value defending Gilbert, and if you are down to 2 you waste some of the Gilbert's value defending the Knights.

This is true for variety of squads: Deathchasers x4, MBS, Nerak is perfectly ratioed army where you rarely have to use one as protection for the other. But when I was doing Deathchasers x3, MBS, Nerak in the Main Event this year I pretty often would have to use MBS or Nerak as a shield for the 9 Deathchasers.

The 2:1 number comes from the fact that squad bodies are generally more valuable than hero bodies. Heroes can lose more than one life at once, but in general you're happier when someone is attacking your bonding heroes because it means they aren't attacking your squads.
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  #18  
Old May 6th, 2020, 08:44 AM
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Originally Posted by vegietarian18 View Post
The 2:1 number comes from the fact that squad bodies are generally more valuable than hero bodies. Heroes can lose more than one life at once, but in general you're happier when someone is attacking your bonding heroes because it means they aren't attacking your squads.
Bu-bu.....but I like my Sir Hawthorne bonding with my Death Knights....!
Kill my Death Knights if you wish, I'll still have more, but don't kill Hawthorne...! Please, for the love of humanity...!! It's not his fault he has trust issues!

Oh, this is a hypothetical...?




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Last edited by Dysole; May 20th, 2020 at 09:34 AM.
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  #19  
Old May 27th, 2020, 08:26 AM
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Re: 10 year check: where is Bring the Cheese now?

Imo best builds using VC are:

Quahon+ Greens+Rae: pretty much like Grenscales + Nilf but better imo as it's much better against tough machups like ranged squads or screen+range.

Quahon+spiders: good against anything imo, 0 bad machups, entangling web is an ability to respect

Cathars+Kravs: Kravs are essential to Cathars in a "cheese" environement to counter most of their weaknesses for only 100 points. Only counter to this army is Q9 and maybe Spiders+Quahon, literrally no other counter or like very specific ones. Usually paired with Raymond and Isamu to go to 500, 21hexs.

Phantoms Knights+ Incendiborgs: Another strong combo, same style as Kravs+Cathars where one unit covers the weaknesses of the other unit but imo Cathar+Kravs is better. Adding Mezzos in this build is worth considering but I think added versatility doesn't outweight added OM complexity.

Borgs+Kravs+Rats+Rae is also obviously excellent. Borgs are less sensible than Q9 to being "overflowed", they also don't care much about Sharks as they can lose only 1 life per attack, so you don't need Hydra and run Kravs or Kaemon instead.

In my opinion, Incendiborgs can replace Q9 in pretty much any army, weaker vs Kravs and rats but much stronger vs Knights and Heavies. With Raelin they are basically 6 defense 6 lives where you can't destroy more than 1 life at once, it's super resistant. And their 4 move isn't much more problematic than Q9 double-hexed 5 move.
I've never seen someone running both Q9 and Borgs but I think that can be very strong especially in higher points limit.


Azazel+new SoV shadow guy: this seems like troll, but 4 turns in an OM means 4 chances to ressurect Azazel every turn, similar army (using Nicholas+Thralls) already won a tournament in france in dominating fashion. An Azazel army well played (where player knows how to avoid fight and damage while Azazel is dead) is honestly quite a hassle to fight with Azazel resurecting 5 ot 6 times in the game. Very similar to Thanos+rats.

All those above are definitely builds you can bring to a "bring the cheese" event with no trouble, but you also have:

Any Vark build: Strong and very strong if well played but maybe not strong enough in a 20~24 figures environment with lots of commons.

Morgoloth and wolves: Same as Varks, huge firepower, but falls shorts vs strong and cheap stuff.


Last edited by Foudzing; May 27th, 2020 at 09:01 AM.
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  #20  
Old May 27th, 2020, 09:24 AM
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I think you're missing micros (although admittedly I don't think my micro build was the best one) as 3 attacks of 2 and one attack of 4 at range is good.

I really struggle to see Azazel doing well in a high commons format especially if you're going to pair with Xundar. Both are gonna die pretty quickly. Nick at least is able to go heal himself and has better defensive stats and mobility so you can play keepaway more. Azazel just seems too easy to have the Hydra problem where you engage with only a couple and whittle down (at 4 life and 3 defense that shouldn't take long) which allows you to position the rest of your army to take care of whatever else is in the army. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm gonna need to see it successful before I include it up there. Was the France tournament a bring 1 type format where massed commons were a thing?

~Dysole, who certainly doesn't think that army is bad, but when she's got a lot more commons to work with she feels a lot more equipped to neuter Azazel shenanigans
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  #21  
Old May 27th, 2020, 09:34 AM
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Re: 10 year check: where is Bring the Cheese now?

The idea of that Azazel army is that Azazel will die many, many times. You get to roll Rejected by Death 4 times with an OM on Xundar, 12 times in a round, so with a round of OMs on Xundar you have a 1 - (.9^12) = 71.8% chance of resurrecting Azazel. So you're just slingshotting him in and seeing what damage he can do everytime, while concurrently just running away from your enemy in whatever way possible when you're using Xundar and Shadows so you can buy more time for Azazel to die and come back. There's only so many times an opponent can kill Azazel before it becomes too much. Important to realize with the Xundar Azazel build that running way with the non-Azazel part of the army is always beneficial to you, since playing for more total rounds of game is always a benefit.

The big question mark about the army is how successfully can the Shadows play time for Azazel on most tournament boards. I'm still unsure of that one personally, but I don't think I can answer it with theoryscape.
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  #22  
Old May 27th, 2020, 09:54 AM
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Theoryscape

I understand the theory. But massed commons have so much board control, I really struggle to see how it could win consistently against an army that can fight him while also either attacking or setting themselves up to attack the lynchpins in the other part of the army. I just think it's too easy to counter with good play.

~Dysole, thinking the army would struggle more with a strong ranged component but massed melee could just overwhelm everything
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  #23  
Old May 27th, 2020, 11:16 AM
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Re: 10 year check: where is Bring the Cheese now?

For Azazel, I think there's 2 different theoryscape matchups for massed commons - squads that like to bunch up for defense and those that don't.

For example, against Romans (and Heavies w/ Nerak to a lesser extent) you're either going to give Azazel a lot more attacks per turn or reduce your defense.

Against Knights or Dwarves, you can limit the Azazel attacks without giving up anything, which makes the matchup a lot worse for Azazel.
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  #24  
Old May 27th, 2020, 07:55 PM
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Re: 10 year check: where is Bring the Cheese now?

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For Azazel, I think there's 2 different theoryscape matchups for massed commons - squads that like to bunch up for defense and those that don't.

For example, against Romans (and Heavies w/ Nerak to a lesser extent) you're either going to give Azazel a lot more attacks per turn or reduce your defense.

Against Knights or Dwarves, you can limit the Azazel attacks without giving up anything, which makes the matchup a lot worse for Azazel.
Well no cause even if Azazel kills only 1 knight, it's still worth it, because the rest of the Azazel army will just chill in startzone waiting for Azazel to revive, and have 0 casualties.

That's the difficulty when playing vs Azazel army you kinda have to run towards opponent and catch the rest of the army because otherwise you'll 100% lose on points.
I agree with you avoiding fights can be difficult on very small maps and mass commons is a hard machup for Azazel compared to hodgepodge but I still think Azazel army has a decent shot vs the top tier stuff.

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