I’ll throw out a few more observations, with the caveat that I think the main issue is that you’re playing only skirmish-sized games on a tiny table, and I don’t think my advice to play on a larger table is being received.
The described Sentinel configuration is a brutal short-ranged combatant. I think you can build equally devastating short-ranged Nemesis and Scourge configurations. Better threat range estimation should keep them alive long enough to retaliate.
That Sentinel configuration only has two weapons that ignore LOS: the Phase Trajectile Cannons, and those are only RNG 10 and POW 3. I don’t see them dealing meaningful damage to a Nemesis or Scourge outside of highly abnormal rolls. Dice happen, sure! But delivering those 2 attacks really ought to leave his Sentinel wide-open to a turn of reprisals. A Nemesis should be able to fly out from behind its LOS-blocking terrain and engage the Sentinel. Worst case you have only 2 ARC on it, but depending on the configuration and your Cypher choices and deck luck, that could be worth a lot of damage.
You can also have a couple of weavers easily hanging out beyond his threat but in your Fury threat range, especially if any of those weavers are charged.
It sounds like the opponent completely neglected scenario to pursue that strategy. Every time I have seen somebody attempt the “kill everything on the table with a couple supercharged models” strategy on a Primary mission, they’ve lost on scenario.
I really think you should try playing on a full-sized table, using a scenario that requires squads, solos, or anything besides a heavy warjack to score. From these descriptions, I really do think that is about 85% of the problem.
I believe dropping a Strike Raptor and Engineer is a common opening move; a lucky Cypher lets you load up the SR immediately, the engineer uses Tune Up first turn, and boom: your first activation is a fully-loaded, buffed up SR. And your second. And, with the Engineer removing the SR’s activation token in the second turn, so is your third.
Is it actually optimal? Probably not. But it might feel oppressive for new players in small games.
I mean, if you get lucky enough to draw that card at the start of the game, sure.
Assuming the absolute minimal deck size, you have a 3-in-12 (or1-in-4, if you prefer) chance of getting it turn 1, which also means you have a 3-in-4 chance of not drawing it. I’m not even going to attempt to compute the odds on whether you’ll be able to cast enough and discard enough to possibly get it turn 2, because that spirals out of control pretty much instantaneously. But if napkin math is correct, optimally you’ve got 50% odds to draw it by turn 2… which still means that half the time you don’t get the needed card that early.
Turn 1 has the Sentinel and a solo. Activates the Sentinel.
Turn 2 still has only the Sentinel and a solo (hasn’t deployed out of a gate yet). Activates the Sentinel.
Turn 3 plays a card to remove a warjacks activation token. Activates the Sentinel. (With a 12-card deck, the player has cycled 6 at this point meaning he has had access to all 11 cards at this point making this almost guaranteed)
Having one single model that can deploy a void gate, and intentionally being two models away from an automatic Mercy loss, is an insanely dangerous tactic.
“The main issue is that you’re playing only skirmish-sized games on a tiny table, and I don’t think my advice to play on a larger table is being received.”
??? Skirmish table size is the whole point of this thread! That was my opening question. I was asking about others’ experience of playing skirmish against heavy warjacks. Obviously, i know playing non-skirmish games on larger tables is better.
I play with a lot of terrain, but if you have a flying Sentinel that moves 9"-12" it is almost impossible to be completely out of LOS. Especially when a gate can only be deployed 5" from your models, and the Sentinel has flying 22-24" threat. Believe me, everything dies.
Agree with your last point, for me table-size is the main problem. My gut reaction is to not have Heavies in skirmish games, but I also don’t like gatekeeping models other people have purchased and spent time and effort into modelling, converting and painting.
While I think Heavies are overpowered in general, they are not the problem in full-sized games that they are in skirmish.
I agree, deploying a heavy at game start is good because you can start charging it up right away, and cheaper units are easier to deploy mid-game than expensive ones.
That said, the first-turn heavy activations aren’t that impactful, because quite likely the opponent doesn’t have any high-value targets in range yet. At least if you have enough terrain to have some LOS-block so you don’t end up with first-turn activations ending the game with the Mercy rule.
How about a house rule that prevents deploying heavies at game start? That is, you’d need to bring them through a stargÅte. Think about it this way: a skirmish force is likely to be a small, mobile task force. The units they’ve deployed planetside are scouts and such. But if the situation escalates, they can request heavies from the carrier.
This won’t remove the issue of activating the same heavy repeatedly, but at least you’d need to work towards getting the engine running.
A 1/4 chance of the game being instantly oppressive is not trivial. And that’s just one example of a worst case scenario. Even without the card, some factions have ways of charging up their warjacks quite quickly.
But then powerful combinations in tabletop games are nothing new, especially when not playing at the “recommended” game size etc. If it will help ease new players into the game then leaving heavies out until they gain more experience and/or play at larger game sizes sounds fine to me, but I think it’s more about suggestions for new players rather than strict house rules.
I know I’ve said it a lot, but I think that’s the problem here.
This reminds me greatly of early Mk II and MK III Journeyman Leagues, wherein Sorscha1 — piloted by people who knew what they were doing —dominated the battlegroup box weeks, and newer players decried “Unfair!”and “Broken!” and “Unbeatable!” and I just had to advise “Wait a couple weeks until you have more than 3 models on the table and aren’t solely playing Assassination….”
It sounds like we have highly-experienced players who have heavily optimized and broken the starter format. So… move onto the regular format, which gives the other player time to set up to counter such a risky strategy as “completely ignore setting up for scenario for a round or more and let the other player get entrenched.”
To be fair it can be advantageous to play on a smaller table. In the local gaming hangout the tables are only just big enough to play a small game of WNM (if you shrink the deployment zones). So while “play on a bigger table” is a solution to the problem in general, it’s not always the optimal solution so other solutions can be worth looking in to.
But if napkin math is correct, optimally you’ve got 50% odds to draw it by turn 2… which still means that half the time you don’t get the needed card that early.
