The topic of this article is very wide and touches other extremely deep game aspects like wild dice management, target priority, player/warband playstyle and listbuilding. Because of all this I struggled for few months trying to figure out the exact scope of what I want to cover here. I will try my best to not venture to other topics too much, but because all of the mentioned topics are tightly connected for some of you it might feel like too much (sorry, I tried) or too little (If you would like me to explore some avenues more, comments are the best way to let me know, some ideas for future articles are already growing at the back of my head)
Half of the terms I will use later are instinctively understood by most of the more strategic players and as with all feel-based ideas (strategy is an art, not a science) our definitions will differ slightly so lets start with setting up the definitions that I will use later on. This way I hope to put some structure to the later conversations and avoid any potential misunderstandings. (Difference between “dragon” and “titan” introduced by theSaltySea or terms like activation advantage or action economy made strategy/tactics discussions way easier and this is my intent here).
Types of activations
Lets start in the very beginning. While analyzing the options we have available in the game we can split them into single activations and this activations can be described by both the best moment in turn for certain activation and the impact it has on the game. Based on this two factors we have 2 separate spectrums and to make the conversation and the model we build here easier to grasp lets agree to simply split all activations into 3 categories (with potential for using “very” to indicate that certain aspect is even more extreme). From the timing or “activation urgency” perspective our activations can be described as:
- Early (activations with “time window” that can close)
- Filler (the timing doesn’t matter or isn’t that critical from strategic point of view)
- Late (we want to delay them as much as possible, some actions might only make sense if opponent can’t react to them)
Similarly we can divide our activations based on the impact on the game:
- High impact (for example grabbing treasure or killing important target)
- Low impact (for example getting into position for future turns)
- No impact (for example activating the fighter too slow to impact the game)
Based on the classification above the game round should follow this sequence:
- Early, high impact activations
- Early, low impact activations
- Filler, high impact activations
- Filler, low impact activations
- Filler, no impact activations
- Late, low impact activations
- Late, high impact activations
I wont go into much details here, but for obvious (I hope) reasons no impact activation can not be either early or late, because if it has almost no effect on the game then it wouldn’t make sense to delay any of your urgent activations for it or press the trigger earlier on your as-late-as-possible activations. If you have trouble understanding how an activation can be at the same time high impact and also a “filler”, then consider a situation when the urgency came from your opponent having an option to prevent your play (by for example disengaging and running away or preemptively killing your fighter), but instead playing in a way that made your plan unavoidable (for example your intended target was just activated and suddenly there is no way to prevent your attack, which means that you can switch your focus to urgent activations and get back to your original plan later that turn). Example above is also the reason why you would want to make urgent low impact plays before you do your high impact filler plays as the window for urgent plays might close which isn’t the case for filler activations. As always the devil is in the details and there are exceptions to all the “rules” above, but lets assume that this model is true in 95% cases and lets move forward.
Interesting observation coming from the sequence of the round above is that high impact activations happen mostly in the very first activations of the round or as the last things you do. Warbands (often elite heavy) with the center of gravity revolving around early part of the round will often have the word TEMPO used in conversations about strategy, while players with warbands that thrive at the end of the turn (mostly hordes) will often use the term ACTIVATION ADVANTAGE. Lets dive deeper into this concepts.
Tempo
People following Warcry conversations on different social media platforms most likely heard something like “Brewgit buff is a bad tempo play”. It is very easy to instinctively understand why the mentioned play is bad for your tempo as it simply gives your opponent an option to react to incoming high impact play from a buffed fighter. It gives back initiative to your opponent while not impacting the board state which for some players might look like a serious crime. It looks like a very low impact activation that is basically a prerequisite for a very high impact one later on. On the other hand describing what is a good tempo play is way more difficult and as far as the Brewgit example is concerned I would guess that most players will agree that mentioned play is “low tempo”. On the other side of the spectrum we have “high tempo plays” and I expect way less unity here, as tempo is a bit of umbrella term that groups few concepts together, additionally as in life, catastrophes are way easier to identify than successes. Earlier I described urgent activation as one with the time window where it can be performed. Generally as high tempo activations I would consider the combination of your own high impact urgent activations and activations that “close the window” of your opponent most impactful ones. Sometimes opposing players potential most urgent and high impact activations are mutually exclusive (best example is two heavily wounded titans/monsters engaged – the first to activate will most likely eliminate the high impact activation on the other side). Lets agree on the following definition of tempo: Sequencing your activations in a way that decrease the impact of your opponent activations while maximizing the impact of your activations. I would also add that most tempo plays require some significant impact, its difficult to speak about tempo when looking at horde warband with no powerful fighters and abilities. Some examples or high tempo activations are: using net on key fighter, disarming enemy combo before it can harm you or chaining high impact activations with Inspiring Presence. As a last note I want to mention that I would expect tempo plays to exist a bit more in an area of “board state” rather than “scoring”, at least in comparison with activation advantage plays that I describe in the next paragraph.
Activation advantage
As a player that feels the most comfortable playing very numerous warbands “Activation advantage” is the game specific term that I probably use most often. It is sometimes called out-activating or out-waiting your opponent and it basically means that to have activation advantage is to perform last activations of the round. While it might not look like a big deal it gives an option to perform actions that your opponent can’t react to – in treasure mission you can drop the treasure, then pick it up and flee with the other fighter with no option for your opponent to act between both activations. In kill mission you can move to opponent and attack with no fear of retaliation that round and finally (my favorite) in objective missions you can move your last fighters with perfect information to maximize your victory points that round (remember that to prevent your opponent from “stealing” objective you previously controlled you only need to equalize the number of fighters around it). As you probably noticed the mentioned plays require specified fighters to capitalize on the opportunity. Let’s look at the last example – if you are too slow to reach the only objectives you could “last second steal”, then you actually have no way of capitalizing on activation advantage, at least scoring wise, which is obviously bad, that’s why certain class of fighters (like a Dire Wolf that I mention every second article) should appear in horde lists, especially in objective heavy environments like Rumble pack or Scales of War (links to both in Battlepacks tab on top of the page). Similarly moving the treasure between your fighters will work best if you will have a durable or mobile fighter that can step in for your current treasure carrier and making sure you have access to such fighter is something you must consider during list building. It’s not a coincidence that I describe Tempo and Activation advantage next to each other, as often the same fighter that you use to exploit activation advantage with will be in the center of your tempo considerations next round. Example of that would be an Ogor warband with a lot of chaff and a big titan in a form of Gutlord or Tyrant. This warband can have activation advantage early which might be used to activate titan last and surgically position it in a way that will decimate enemy forces next round (you can move into position where you could kill 3 fighters with might makes right double or do anything you want as at this point you operate with perfect information and nothing can escape or react in any way to your activation). The impact of your action will most likely influence your opponent wild dice priorities and if you positioned your titan in a way he can perform few different powerful actions you are not forced to activate it first as you have alternate plans and even if your opponent will remove your plan A you will still have a powerful plan B and C which gives you a chance to perform tempo plays in other map areas while still having a high impact titan activation for later. Using the terms I just described you might say that in the example above one player used activation advantage to position in a way that change the early, high impact activation on the next round into a filler, high impact activation, which improved his tempo next round (there is more urgent stuff he can do before rhis options “expire”). Some of the ways in which you can fight over activation advantage are:
- making your opponent activate first in turn (initiative winner choses who goes first and with the same number of activations the player that go second has the last word)
- using wait as (first) action, which might double the activations of a fighter
- Conservative usage of reactions
- Killing unactivated fighters
Local Activation advantage
Obviously the situation where you can activate with no potential counterplay of your opponent doesn’t have to happen after all of his activations are already done. It is sometimes the case that different players have local activation advantage over certain areas. It most often happen with very small difference in numbers of both players activations or as a result of killing unactivated fighters in an area. Always evaluate which fighters can influence which areas of the map. In some situations you can “force” the last unactivated fighter that could impact certain area to activate faster by creating the “timing window” where some harm can be avoided or something could be gained, for example if your Rat Ogor finish activation next to last unactivated enemy fighter in an area, your opponent will most likely activate that fighter to avoid incoming damage from “crack the whip”. Example above would be a “stick”, you are trying to do something that while at first glance looks like a good play (avoiding Rat Ogor damage) might not be in your opponent best interest. This kind of a “mind game” works best against players that value board state over playing the mission, but against some other players you might need a “carrot” and instead of “forcing” your opponent to sequence his activations according to your plans, you might “incentivize” it instead. As in both cases you are giving your opponent something “for free” the key is to always get more in return.
Fighting over local activation advantage might be the only option for elite (low on numbers) warbands to minimize the results of activation advantage of more numerous opponents (in objective missions). If your opponent can simply outwait you and then park his 2 mobile units anywhere on the map to maximize VP gained each round then trying to position in a way that threatens this two mobile fighters if they will come to contested objectives and targeting them as early as possible might open a situation where your opponent can’t translate activation advantage into Victory Points. I think the “matchup” where understanding local activation advantage is the most important is in elite vs elite objective missions.
Player preference and playstyle
Important factor is the personal playstyle of a player. The same list consisting of 2 big titans and 5-7 chaff (its only an example) units can be played in very different ways and one player will start second round of the game with high impact and high tempo play with one of the titans, while the other player in this situation will simply “wait” with one of the chaff units and save the titan activation to the end of the round to make sure it is perfectly positioned to threaten intended targets in the next round. While analyzing our own play/lists when we look for areas for improvements its very easy to overlook the style we have and play in kind of “autopilot” mode, which often makes switching between different list archetypes very difficult. Going back to the terminology from the beginning of this article, playstyle will mostly affect when we will use the “non urgent high impact” activations. The other playstyle related aspect is more connected with list preference. Some players prefer a lot of agency (they usually like to prioritize tempo and overwhelm opponents attacking their options before they could be used) and naturally lists with a lot of power projection, mobility and strength concentrated in single units and abilities will work best for them. I would expect this kind of players to focus more on “playing the board”. Other players (myself included) prefer more “reactive” approach with power budget often spread over the list with fighters and abilities that work best when used at the end of the turn (You messin’ used during last activation is way stronger than used early). This kind of players often focus more on “playing the objective game”. I do believe that both kind of players fall for different traps, so it might be a good idea to try to identify your opponent playstyle. The first kind of player will be more willing to go after the unprotected chaff that is intended to lure key fighters away from important area of the map or into a trap. The second type of player will almost never go for it, but at the same time will be more willing to risk getting extra VP early at the cost of losing the game later. This second approach is way more difficult to “target with mindgames”, but its worth trying.
Listbuilding with sequencing in mind
Certain fighters base their survival on the battlefield on positioning, other on reactions. Similarly some fighters use their offensive tools best when they activate early (like infamous flamehurler that can burn the whole deployment group) others like to attack late (glasscannons that you don’t want to be hit back). Some fighters have this preference change over the course of the game. Let’s look at Otapatl and some of his abilities:
The restriction on his Ambush makes you want to move him first when enemy fighters are not yet spread all over the map, so its often the first activation of the first round. In later rounds when enemies can threaten this lovely chameleon you want to keep an option to use his reaction or at least have option to disengage and run away if something will come dangerously close. Fighters that complement him well are fighters that want to delay first turn activation, are durable so they can “tank” for the lizard and later on produce “early, high impact activations” to keep focus away from Otapatl. Great example of such fighter is a Stormcast Annihilator, that due to very low speed should delay first round movement as long as possible to make the most informed positioning decision you can get, otherwise you might not reach your intended targets. Later on you want to attack with him as early as possible to kill fighters before they can activate and hit him back (despite high Toughness crits sum up to 20 very fast). This concept was one of the reasons I created the Thunderlizards list (Link to full list HERE). Sequencing preference surly isn’t the most important factor when listbuilding, but its a good idea to avoid situations when most of your fighters prefer to operate early/late.
Target priority
Concepts described above should make it easier to predict the intent of your opponent which could be helpful to decided how to attack your opponent plans. But first of all, better understanding on how you plan to win the game will make planning your targets and sequencing your activations easier. When you actively look for local activation advantage (that you can use!) deciding on where to strike is simpler, similarly when you see that there is not much you can do to prevent your opponent’s activation advantage you should target the fighters that can capitalize on this advantage.
Initiative, wild dice and planning ahead
I plan on writing longer article on the topic of wild dice management, so I will try to keep this section short. Some fighters or abilities are so extremally impactful that they change the priorities of previous turns. Some preparation and experience with battleplans make finding such potential plays easier, but if you don’t find them fast enough it might be difficult to catch up. Creating such extreme situation is putting a netter (ideally from a very elite team) in Dagger in Brutal Conquest (Link, its a battleplan from White Dwarf #490). “Correct” response to such situation would be to keep the wild dice in first round. Despite it being the “default” for most players, due to a very “elite heavy” expected lists (I liked playing it with 4 models) it might be tempting to improve potential triple to quad and start smashing, but not keeping the wild dice increase the chance of losing initiative R2 for your opponent and he can’t let that happen as it will lead to netting (lets assume the 3+ will happen) his biggest fighter from Shield, which because of the special rules in this battleplan will result in this fighter dying at the end of the turn (Oversimplyfing this rule: If a player have killed someone then enemy models within 4″ of battlefield edge die at the end of that turn. Netted fighter simply wont be able to move away from the “death zone”).
Try to look for such situations not only to avoid this kind of traps, but also to listbuild around exploiting them (most of them are connected with “deployment camping”, but I would also consider the Seize and Control + Run Interference trap I described in THIS article as other example).
Regarding Initiative – its a great indicator of your opponent priorities. If your opponent wins initiative and makes you do the first activation, it means he values activation advantage over tempo.
Thanks for sticking to the end. I hope the quality of my writing didn’t drop too much as lack of sleep (I just had my first baby born) is taking its toll on me. Usually I stick to “reality” and try to base my writing on analysis, but this time I went a bit into mindgames, so I hope you like that. Have a great day and I hope you won’t get to wait too long for the next text.
Overthinking Warcry 