"I could beat that army!" Theoryscape Challenge

[Elven Lord]

I'd run command and control against this.

Kato Katsuro 200pts
3 squads each arquebus and yari (300pts)

Your melee heavy front line will get bogged down in squishy yari while arquebus wear them down. I'd command arquebus first to open holes in your lines, and plug them with yari next, breaking up roman legion's flanking bonuses.

Your ranged DPS will have a hard time getting a bead on CnC (Kato) with a scattering of yari holding delaying positions (meat scattered on the board you have to wade through).

[Blue Trails]

How about this?

Zombies of Morindan x5 300
Phantom Knights x2 140
Zetacron 60
23 hexes / 500 points

Zombies match well into low-defense melee squaddies like the Yari, PKs harass the Arquebus and threaten Kato, and Zetacron plays the cleaner.

[Elven Lord]

Originally Posted by Blue Trails

How about this?

Zombies of Morindan x5 300
Phantom Knights x2 140
Zetacron 60
23 hexes / 500 points

Zombies match well into low-defense melee squaddies like the Yari, PKs harass the Arquebus and threaten Kato, and Zetacron plays the cleaner.

Zombies are natural squad killers, especially squishy squads like the ashagaru. I guess I could try run and gun tactics, using the yari to run interference on zetacron. However, there's no way I could stop that many zombies from reaching my regular lines. At that point its all over. Granted, the zombies can only move a few at a time. As long as I have extremely good luck with the arquebus, I could win...but this conversation isn't really about luck.

[Son of Arathorn]

Originally Posted by Blue Trails

How about this?

Zombies of Morindan x5 300
Phantom Knights x2 140
Zetacron 60
23 hexes / 500 points

Zombies match well into low-defense melee squaddies like the Yari, PKs harass the Arquebus and threaten Kato, and Zetacron plays the cleaner.

Marrden Hounds x2 180
Major Q9 180
Crixus 90
Theracus 40
Isamu 10
500 points, 18 hexes

If you lead with Zetacron, counter with a Crixus/Theracus bomb. If you lead with the zombies or phantom knights, counter with the hounds & Q9. Plague and normal attacks should knock down a couple undead per Order Marker as long as the hounds keep taking turns. If you decide to bypass the hound screen with PK’s and go straight for Q9, Queglix Gun can probably whittle down two squads to the point that the hounds can finish the job. Isamu is here to grab glyphs and maybe take a late shot at Zetacron or straggling undead. There are only two small/medium figures in this army, so almost everything that dies will stay dead.

[Knox]

Originally Posted by kolakoski

Well met!

"I'll run some standard bonding melee. Sacred Band x5 & Parmenio get me to 340 points. I'll finish it off with the Varja, . . ."

150 Romans x 3
140 Deathwalker 9000
110 Sgt Drake RotV
100 Marcus
500 points, 15 spaces

Sgt Drake for the Varja; Romans/DW9000 should destroy Sacred Band/Parmenio.

I'm pretty skeptical that army wins. Sacred band doesn't have to stay together, so DW9K's explosion is not much of a concern. And yes, Romans are stronger than Sacred Band, but I have 20 squad figures compared to your 12.

Sure, Drake can kill the Varja if I lead with him, but with disengage I can probably still get into your SZ while that fight is going on. And since Romans can't spread out well, they are easy targets for the Varja if you lead with them. But more likely, I can just lead with the SB and overwhelm you with numbers.

Plus, if we're primarily battling Romans vs. SB, the Varja is a much bigger threat to the bulk of your army on surprise initiative switch than Drake is to mine. If I develop him into striking distance R1, OM1 before proceeding with the Sacred Band swarm, there's a chance of stealing an entire round of OMs from you with a surprise OM on the Varja later in the game because Romans have to stick together.

Thread has moved on, but I would go so far as to say this matchup leans 80-90% in my favor. If you drop DW9K and just grab 2 squads of Romans though? I'm toast

[Knox]

Originally Posted by Son of Arathorn

Marrden Hounds x2 180
Major Q9 180
Crixus 90
Theracus 40
Isamu 10
500 points, 18 hexes

Moving to the army at hand, I'll go ahead and negate your pesky Marro Plague

Marro Hive - 160
Marro Drones x5, 250
Atlaga - 90

Total, 500 points, 17 figures, 22 hexes

My 15 Drones should easily outmaneuver your 6 hounds, and if they ever do get caught at least they are immune to the plague. Without a screen, the drones should be able to overhwhelm Q9 although of course the Queglix gun will be difficult. But I have the spare figures to lose a few and eventually I should get a large enough activation roll for the Drones that Q9 won't be able to stop the onslaught. If somehow this doesn't work, I still have a 25% chance at an insta-win with Bolt of Witherwood

[nate the dawg]

Originally Posted by Knox

Marro Hive - 160
Marro Drones x5, 250
Atlaga - 90

Total, 500 points, 17 figures, 22 hexes

Howzabout...

Charos! 210
Raelin ROTV 290
Deathreavers x5 490
Otonashi 500 / 24 hexes

A lot would have to go right for me. Charos backed by rat-wrapped Raelin should be a counterstriking nightmare for the Drones. Rats will also be able to lock up Atlaga. Once enough of the Drones have gone down, Charos can clean up the heroes. If Otonashi can take out any Drones with Attack the Wild, that's just a bonus.

Of course, if Bolt of the Witherwood goes off, I'm in really big trouble!

[Knox]

Originally Posted by nate the dawg;2625042

Howzabout...

Charos! 210
Raelin ROTV 290
Deathreavers x5 490
Otonashi 500 / 24 hexes

[/B

[/I]

Like you said, I'm not convinced that army wins, largely bc relying on counterstrike for kills is fairly unreliable, and you're not really sending anything to knock out my hive so I can keep re-spawning my counter-struck units until I eventually break through. That said, I think it's super fun! So here's my counter:

Marutuk: 195
Shades of Bleakewoode x3 300

Total 495/10/11

I'm going all in on stealth flying/long strides to ignore the rats, and then relying on the D20 to soul devour charos/ raelin. I open with shades and if I get lucky, the game's over almost immediately bc Charos is mine. If I get less lucky, I can pivot to Marutuk who can move through the rats and hit them with dismissive swipes while absolutely punishing Charos with 8 attack value against large/huge figures (or 6 attack against Raelin).

This army is mostly an excuse to run the shades. They suck, but I think they're a perfect counter to your army bc you don't have anything that can really make me pay for only getting 3 activations of low attack and/or soul devour per turn (I'm never attacking Charos with them, just attempting soul-devours and attacking rats/raelin). You're either getting 4 attacks of 1 which I'm not worried about, or 1 big attack so I'm expecting to lose 1 shade per turn. That means I'll get a ton of turns to roll for soul devour before you're able to kill all 9 shades, which makes them way more interesting than they are against normal armies.

Edit: Some quick math - assuming 20 soul devour attempts, which is approximately what I'd expect to get before all 9 shades are dead (3 per turn for at least 5 turns, whittling down from there), there's an 88% chance of landing at least 1 success (calculation = 0.9^20, i.e. chance of failure^number of attempts). Since your army has nothing that can kill Charos if I soul devour successfully, I'd say my odds are looking pretty good. And I think Marutuk has at least a halfway decent shot at solo-ing your whole army even if the shades accomplish nothing.