Shangular
General
Spent the past month heavily queueing PVP to for the Sept PvP Season, an upside from COVID and working remotely is that you can PvP while being on virtual meetings. Fought many warbands, had some really good fights, and just want to say GG to everyone I faced.
What I've mentioned in other posts is that I'd really love to see the player base learn and adopt tactics for more competitive gameplay. I think this game is similar to Chess (albeit with an RNG), in that the rules are fairly simple, but there is potential for a breadth of tactics. Wanted to share a few of them here that perhaps not many people think about or if they do, maybe I'm just late to the party. There's already plenty of posts and wiki on tactics like alpha strike, pathblocking, rating management and stuff like that so I'm not going to repeat. But for those seriously interested in PvP, here's what I think are some key factors to making my Marienburg Come and Get your Love warband successful in this past PvP season. This was a warband I built specifically for PvP.
1) Build Design: The key here is Redundancy. Make sure your warband doesn't rely on one or two warriors to win. I've seen many that rely too much on their leader or just a couple of warriors. Make sure that it is still competitive even if the captain dies. I've designed this where this warband is flexible in that all warriors are capable of winning the game. In a couple of games, I've even played the "Sacrifice the Queen" tactic as in chess, where I let my captain get killed in order to draw the opponent into a position where I could win in the following turn or 2. With this warband, the pistoliers ganging up with their pistols and blunderbusses is just effective as the captain souped up with Crimson Shade and Mad Cap.
2) Positioning is Key to winning or losing. This is obvious, but I've been able to defeat warbands twice my rating because my opponent didn't manuever very well.
2a. Don't underestimate Speed Skills: Being unstunnable, being able to hide at double distance, extra movement are vital. I usually focus on levelling these up first.
2b. Take the Pit Fighter skill and always try to end your movement in cover (+10 WS) can make a difference.
2c. Try to force your opponent to move the kill zone of your choice. This applies more in the Treasure Hunt and Wyrd Stone Shard scenarios. In Treasure Hunt it's obvious, grab the chest and force enemy to come to you. But for the Shard scenario, what I'd like to advise is to focus on getting the shard that's closest to the enemy not the one that's closest to you. This will force your enemy to react to your tactic. In addition, if a shard lies conveniently close to you, have a support warrior get it, not your main dps warriors. The reason is that your main dps will go after the shard nearest the enemy and if one of them dies, the enemy won't have the opportunity to grab your shard that's being held by a support warrior standing on the other side of the map.
3) Control the Map: I've designed this warband to maximize the opportunities to have a "home field advantage" by intentionally not unlocking any of the maps. Thus when I queue there are only 2 possible maps (the one with closed buildlings and the cemetary. Why this is important? One I gotten very familiar with these 2 maps that I know every potential treasure spawn location, shard spawn location, best places to set-up firing lanes and kill zones, etc. In addition, these maps play to the advantage of the warband I built. For example, 3 out of 4 PvP scenarios are the Treasure Hunt. My captain and elf has Flight. Neither of these 2 maps have blockable pathways that prevent Flight.
This tactic doesn't prevent you from farming the University District for gold as you can buy a Map of Mordheim to play that map.
4) Initiative is key: Having a lower starting initiative is not necessarily a bad thing. Having the captain going first ahead of your other warriors isn't always a good thing. With this warband, I intentionally have my captain be the lowest so that the others can do there attacks first. This is helpful in that the pistoliers can do their barrage of blunderbusses without risking having my captain get hit and then he can mop up after.
Also what some people may not know is that you can re-adjust the initiative order by using Crimson Shade. So for example, my enemy starts of as higher initiative. He passes, I pass, he has to go next and activates. I then active and use Crimson Shade which gives my a higher initiatve in the following turn and gives me 2 actions in row before he activates.
5) Most important - Have fun. Win or lose I always enjoy a good match
What I've mentioned in other posts is that I'd really love to see the player base learn and adopt tactics for more competitive gameplay. I think this game is similar to Chess (albeit with an RNG), in that the rules are fairly simple, but there is potential for a breadth of tactics. Wanted to share a few of them here that perhaps not many people think about or if they do, maybe I'm just late to the party. There's already plenty of posts and wiki on tactics like alpha strike, pathblocking, rating management and stuff like that so I'm not going to repeat. But for those seriously interested in PvP, here's what I think are some key factors to making my Marienburg Come and Get your Love warband successful in this past PvP season. This was a warband I built specifically for PvP.
1) Build Design: The key here is Redundancy. Make sure your warband doesn't rely on one or two warriors to win. I've seen many that rely too much on their leader or just a couple of warriors. Make sure that it is still competitive even if the captain dies. I've designed this where this warband is flexible in that all warriors are capable of winning the game. In a couple of games, I've even played the "Sacrifice the Queen" tactic as in chess, where I let my captain get killed in order to draw the opponent into a position where I could win in the following turn or 2. With this warband, the pistoliers ganging up with their pistols and blunderbusses is just effective as the captain souped up with Crimson Shade and Mad Cap.
2) Positioning is Key to winning or losing. This is obvious, but I've been able to defeat warbands twice my rating because my opponent didn't manuever very well.
2a. Don't underestimate Speed Skills: Being unstunnable, being able to hide at double distance, extra movement are vital. I usually focus on levelling these up first.
2b. Take the Pit Fighter skill and always try to end your movement in cover (+10 WS) can make a difference.
2c. Try to force your opponent to move the kill zone of your choice. This applies more in the Treasure Hunt and Wyrd Stone Shard scenarios. In Treasure Hunt it's obvious, grab the chest and force enemy to come to you. But for the Shard scenario, what I'd like to advise is to focus on getting the shard that's closest to the enemy not the one that's closest to you. This will force your enemy to react to your tactic. In addition, if a shard lies conveniently close to you, have a support warrior get it, not your main dps warriors. The reason is that your main dps will go after the shard nearest the enemy and if one of them dies, the enemy won't have the opportunity to grab your shard that's being held by a support warrior standing on the other side of the map.
3) Control the Map: I've designed this warband to maximize the opportunities to have a "home field advantage" by intentionally not unlocking any of the maps. Thus when I queue there are only 2 possible maps (the one with closed buildlings and the cemetary. Why this is important? One I gotten very familiar with these 2 maps that I know every potential treasure spawn location, shard spawn location, best places to set-up firing lanes and kill zones, etc. In addition, these maps play to the advantage of the warband I built. For example, 3 out of 4 PvP scenarios are the Treasure Hunt. My captain and elf has Flight. Neither of these 2 maps have blockable pathways that prevent Flight.
This tactic doesn't prevent you from farming the University District for gold as you can buy a Map of Mordheim to play that map.
4) Initiative is key: Having a lower starting initiative is not necessarily a bad thing. Having the captain going first ahead of your other warriors isn't always a good thing. With this warband, I intentionally have my captain be the lowest so that the others can do there attacks first. This is helpful in that the pistoliers can do their barrage of blunderbusses without risking having my captain get hit and then he can mop up after.
Also what some people may not know is that you can re-adjust the initiative order by using Crimson Shade. So for example, my enemy starts of as higher initiative. He passes, I pass, he has to go next and activates. I then active and use Crimson Shade which gives my a higher initiatve in the following turn and gives me 2 actions in row before he activates.
5) Most important - Have fun. Win or lose I always enjoy a good match
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