Hoyleds gaming thoughts ep 1- questions and answers

So I figured id start up a weekly thread on my gaming thoughts. So for this first thread I figured id talk about how I like to evaluate casters and to a lesser extant units and other models. Pull out your favorite caster card and follow along.

So looking at said card ask yourself these questions. What questions does this caster present to my opponent? What answers does this model have to the questions my opponent presents?

So lets look at some questions. "Can you deal with this stupidly high defense unit of winter guard or assassins", is one of khadors favorites thanks to the ironflesh casters. Then there's the ever popular " can you deal with my incredibly powerful control feat" a question that a lot of the games best casters generate. Can you guess who this question belongs to? "Can you deal with multiple posses with armor twenty plus that keep coming back to life?"

Then there's the answers to those problems. Calibans a caster with a lot of answers. Carnivore, parasite, hexblast and occulation are a lot of answers and his feat lets him spread those answers around a bit more then usual. However he really doesn't give your opponent any questions.

So which is more important questions or answers? Well that really depends on the quality of those questions and the effectiveness of the answers. If I still need to roll tens with a carnivored posse then the question of high defense seems to be better. If I wipe out all your troops with eleaps then the question of high defense is irrelevent.

To be continued.

As a happy Cryxian, I far enjoy answers. That's not saying we don't pose our own questions, such as "can you afford not boosting that attack roll and possibly missing me?", "did you bring magic weapons?", and so on. It's also true that most Cryx caster feats include a good deal of control (p and eDenny), or a "when's he going for the throat?" feel (Gaspy2, Terminus, pSkarre).

However, the majority of spells seem to be answers rather than questions. Debuffs are typically answers to high DEF/ARM. The cloud effects of Gaspy1-2 are often the answer (or at least a lane/LOS blocker) to high DEF single wound troops. Scourge is also a great answer to high DEF, and has the added bonus of the opponent dealing with knocked down models should they survive to his turn.

I think the question is valid. But it is not the same answer depending on :
- your army.
- your opponent's.
- the size of the game.

1. Your army :

Most of the time, your army (even the very complete ones) have a trend to their strength and weaknesses.
Ex : Retribution is a perfect glass cannon to assassinate one thing at a time. Menoth is good at obliterating the opponent's spells and support. etc...

Because of that, whatever you do, some answers won't find an easy answer.
Ex : I'm cryx and playing against Ret. What shall I do with an army which has half of their gun ignoring incorporeal and line of sight ?

As you start to build your army, you start asking yourself these questions of your weaknesses.

2. Your opponent's :

As I hinted in my previous example, your opponent might be your nemesis or almost a freekill (litterate exaggeration for the sake of this topic, I know no army which is so easy to kill).

Depending on your local meta, your gameplay will never be the same. and your answers will vary.

3. Size of the game :

I play a lot in 50APs. This size of game allows you to answer a lot of questions in one army list. On some really old armies, you can even answers almost all questions (Cygnar, Khador...) but it's rare and hardly done.
When you go 35APs, you have to sacrifice some answers cause you're missing these extra points to complete your army.

That's the reason why I always carry 2 armies with me. May it be in 35 or 50. As in tournament. Because this game is like a CCG when it comes to questions and answers. And you can't really answer everything at once.

When my opponent even on a friendly game tells me he plays this faction, I pick up my list.

And most of the timemy lists are built either :
- one for Hordes, one for Warmachine (rare).
- one for long distance capture scenarios, one for caster kill (seldom).
- one to deal with high armor, another to deal with high DEF (frequent).