425 point 16 spaces army suggestions for our first tourney

[jojo204]

Hey guys so my self and my wife will be playing our first tournament ever. Excited we get a chance to do this and even more surprised the tourney is even happening. It's going to be in conjunction with a big event on International table top day hosted by one of the FLGS

So we needs some suggestions of what a competitive 425/16 space army would look like. I've looked at the gencon army for main event but then realized that day 2 was reverse the whip. This tourney won't that but rather a simple Swiss format.

So what I've only come up with so far is:

Nilf
Q9
Zetacron

KOW x3
Sir Gilbert
KMA

Nilf/zelrig
GW x2
K Awa

4th x3
Q9
Guilty

Any other suggestions or tweaks to these would be highly appreciated

Thanks

[dok]

Originally Posted by jojo204

Nilf
Q9
Zetacron

KOW x3
Sir Gilbert
KMA

Nilf/zelrig
GW x2
K Awa

4th x3
Q9
Guilty

Any other suggestions or tweaks to these would be highly appreciated

Thanks

You can't really go wrong with those figures, of course. When I look at that first army, what sticks out at me is that I'd prefer to have some sort of common squad for easier OM management and better board control. If you're just looking to max out the power of the army, I'd say something like Deathreavers x3, Q9, Hydra. Deathreavers can be tricky to manage, though, so maybe that's not the best option.

The second and third armies are just very strong, for sure. The third one is strong, of course, but you're probably going to be dealing with nonvaliant 4th Mass the whole time, because a smart opponent will just ignore Guilty. A better option along that lines would be 4th x3, Nilf, Eldgrim. Nilfheim can't really be ignored if you lead with him, and since Eldgrim is valiant the whole army becomes valiant once Nilfheim goes down.

[Hendal]

If it's your first tourney, go with your favorite army, something you are comfortable with

[jojo204]

Thanks @dok for the suggestions. I like the Deathreavers x3, Q9, Hydra one you came up too. What do you think of this one. Hydra x2, rats x2, and KMA. The only thing i can think of is it doesn't have any specials so I cant by pass somethings.

This one sounds real good too. 4th x3, Nilf, Eldgrim. Ive got a ton of play testing in the next week to do leading up to it.

@Hendal to be honest we are still so new that playing with anything will be all the same to us. We just need to nail down something so that we can get some practice in to get comfortable. I wish we had a favorite army already but we literally came from 100 units to over 400 in the last 3 months and only missing 4 to complete our classic set. So we havent played an army twice yet.

What do you guys think of these

minions x2
4th x2
black wyrmling x2

mezzo x4
q10
isamu

glads x3
blasts x3

thanks

[Rÿchean]

The glad blast one would be way, way over your space limit.

Originally Posted by dok

Deathreavers can be tricky to manage, though, so maybe that's not the best option.

This completely baffles me everytime you make this assertion. With scatter, disengage, and 6 move they are one of the most forgiving common units in the game. The only thing tricky about them is their personality and playing against them.

[jojo204]

@Rÿchean Wow! totally overlooked that. thanks for saving me the headache. I adjusted my Battleplan options now to give me a warnings.

[dok]

Originally Posted by Rÿchean

This completely baffles me everytime you make this assertion. With scatter, disengage, and 6 move they are one of the most forgiving common units in the game. The only thing tricky about them is their personality and playing against them.

As I've said before, there's a difference between power level and learning curve. Deathreavers are an A+ unit and they are very, very powerful, even if you are not playing them well (particularly if you are playing 3+ squads). However, between knowing when to put an OM on them after the first round, and all the positioning decisions that go into using them, they do have a pretty hefty learning curve.

Compare them to their A+ brother, Q9. Q9 is also very, very powerful, but is awfully easy to play. As long as you don't put him next to height or something, you basically can't screw it up. I'd argue that many other common squads like stingers are also easier to play close to optimally than deathreavers.

I have seen plenty of people screw up with Deathreavers, allowing their core units to get attacked while the rats are marginalized and idle. By contrast, I've almost never seen someone play Q9 or stingers "wrong", because it's actually pretty hard to do that.

[jojo204]

@dok that's all to funny as I read that. I played my wife last night with:

Hydra x2
Rats x2
KMA

Vs her

Q9
K Awa
Stingers x2

On highways or dieways

OM1 and 2 on the rats on the first turn with 3 on a Hydra. Her first was to lead out with the Stingers with OM1 and 2 and 3 on q9. So I moved my rats out as fast as I can to engage her Stingers but she starts picking them off right away. I moved up a Hydra for some retaliation ad hopes to start cutting her Stingers down but since I couldn't engage all her Stingers and q9 she slowly starts killing off some of my heads. Trying to play the 4 rats I had left, bringing up another Hydra and KMA, with trying to survive with the other Hydra getting pegged of was indeed an OM headache. Not being able to always have the rats running a proper screen and q9 doing his QG number on the rats made it even harder. I did pull off the win and it was down to an agent vs a stinger but had I played the rats better I don't think it would have been as close.

[jojo204]

I think the way I should have played the rats was not to rush out and wait till her 2nd or 3rd March and then engaged her. But who knows she could have started pegging me off sooner then. Ah well tonight I'll try to play rats differently. That's what playtesting is about right.

[kolakoski]

Well met!

I'd be tempted to play

225 10th Regiment x 3
120 Kaemon Awa
80 Raelin RotV
425, 14 spaces

[jojo204]

@kolakoski thanks for the suggestion. How would you play that army. I just tried it against my wife with

Q9
KMA
Stingers
Finn

I tried to slow play it and wait for her to come to me but she wasn't having it. She stayed back and just used her range to pick me off slowly. I had to move to try and get any offense going but 10th lost it +1 and Awa got mowed down by super KMA once she sacrificed Finn.

[Foudzing]

Well rou wife's army counters your pretty well, all your defensive powers are useless against full ranged army. You army had close to no chance.

It seems that you got the basics army creation, all the army you propose are fairly balanced between offensive/defensive and between costly in OMs/ not costly in OMs.

So at this point just run what you like and/or play best and you'll be good.

You have to know tho that some armies are so much overpowered that it's not very well seen to run it in Heroscape tournaments, which are more friendly battles than anything else.