Motivation Unstoppable Force

[m0n5t3r0u5]

Motivation Unstoppable Force





Since the new Motivations are released i had about 15 Games.

I play Hadross and I tested nearly every Motivation of them. Generally speaking, I had a positive feeling that they are in terms of fairness and possible accomplishment quite right.

I had the same feelings with Motivations that I played against with one exception “Unstoppable Force” . I don t know how this Motivation plays out against other factions but against Hadross it is devastating and I don’t know how to handle this Motivation. Maybe I am playing it wrong but I don’t think so.



Let me explain the Problem with this Motivation.

Factions like Nasier can start their game in DZone C and with the right training and motivation they can be in the opponents DZ at least in round 2 and start making will checks . You take at least three Leaders with you. That is a possible Moral loss between 2-6 in turn 2 without killing even one Modell.
Since there is no hint in the Motivation that you have to be completely within the Dz of your enemy, the leaders can stand there with just the tip of their base in DZone “D” from the enemy.
Again with the right combination of Leaders you can have a “Will” 7 leader in the enemy zone with “Iron Will”. That’s nearly a guaranteed Moral loss for your opponent.
In the last two games I lost 10 Moral (battle sized game) in two rounds.

You just bring enough pelegrath body’s with you so that your opponent can t reach your Leaders and if he does and he doesn’t kill them you get the chance of potentially make a moral loss to your opponent.
Even with a tough as nails army like Hadross you loose troops and with that you loose Moral. When you lost like 10 Moral in two rounds it is nearly Impossible to turn the game around.
Hadross is so slow that this faction doesn’t have the chance to block its enemy’s out of its DZone.
Every other Motivation is not so easy to accomplish like this.


Motivations should be more a two sided sword. What I mean is that you have to risk something to get a benefit or the potential to use it a tactical Option.

“Sever the Head” is one of that. You force your opponent to make decision if he should risk a potential 2-4 moral loss if he uses the marked model too aggressively to do something against you. But you still have to work for the Moral loss. It doesn’t simply come with will check.





A simple solution for Unstoppable Force could be just to double the marker count and every marker is one morale loss worth instead of two. It would basically double the time to accomplish it fully.

What Do you think?

 

[paradox1]

Could it be Hadross-specific in issue? Other factions, like Goritsi, can reach leaders pretty easily. Further, it seems like a strong counter-play would be a Motivation that makes an aggressive posture with a leader untenable. Finally, I dont find it that easy to get to the opponents D band unmolested. Maybe its just a slow build issue? Like, you could taxi-crab in some jellyfish to break the pelegarth bubblewrap up.

 

[m0n5t3r0u5]

It is definitely a Hadross problem. (I don t know if any other faction has Problems with that. Maybe someone can share his/her experience here)

You can’t have enough crab taxis to hinder the opponent to get into your zone.

At least I don’t have enough. I could imagine that you can come considerably far with 8 crabs.

And this is a game of “trade of”. You win if you trade of better than your opponent. I don’t know if you can place your self considerably well if your only option is to get as far up the board as you can.

But who has enough crabs for that list? And besides that it would be ridiculous that I have to build a list like that to have even a chance to hinder the Nasier player to get into my zone. In that case you can just say that this is not balanced or fair, which would be a point for my argument.

Besides that if you take eight crabs for example you loose a lot of the other Hadross Specialist toolboxes.

 

[paradox1]

I play Naiser, and I face Hadross quite a bit. My experience has definitely not been as easy as you put it. 1 crab can pull a handful of jellyfish dudez along really easily in 1 activation, after which they too can activate.
Just sharing what Ive seen and experienced.

 

[m0n5t3r0u5]

Ok let’s do the math.

One crab and 3 Jellyfish are on the upper end of zone B. that means they are 10” up the board.

The Crab moves and take them with them. Another 6”. They activate another 6”.

That means 3 Jellyfisch are like 22” up the board.



The Nasier player starts in zone c with 2 leaders + a ton pelegrath and brutes

With a runaction they can gen get 12” up the board that is 27” up the board. Both the jellyfish and the pelegrath are now engaged. Not all Pelegrath of course but one for each jelly fish.

Now it doesn’t matter who gets the next round. The three jellyfish can’t hack their way through the pelegrath and they can’t disengage and reengage to get more enemy infantry in contact.

On the other hand it is not a problem to kill at least two of the Jelly fish with the pelegrath and walk easily into the hadross dz. Even If the nasier player couldn’t t kill one Jelly fish still the rest of them can walk besides them into the dz and spam it.

And this is all under the situation that the nasier was grateful enough to place his army directly opposite of the hadross jellyfish.

In reality the Nasier player places his troops always somewhere else, because the hadross player deploys his dz b troops before the nasier player deploys his dz c troops.

 

[paradox1]

I think your math is overly optimistic on the pelegarth, and underly optimistic on Hadross. And fails to take initiative, positioning, and other factors into consideration.

 

[paradox1]

So pelegarth move 6" and sprint 4". C deploy is 15". You're giving them an extra 2" to start.
Sevridan are 2defense. Pelegarth have 1die. So they need to combine, assist (AND get 2 8+ results), or overpower to kill 1. Already highly unlikely.

Sevridan have 2 dice. Pelegarth are struck on 7+. Assign 1 die each to get around evasion. A hit passes out resonate in 2". The others can then gelatinous shift the others out of the way, exposing the leader (who still has not reach the opposing zone yet). The last can engage the leader, preventing disengaging.

 

[EvilGardenGnome]

Another to consider is that the example Nasier force is built entirely around this objective. It's devoted to keeping the Hadross off the leaders.

The counter to this is to slam your own motivations that play to Hadross strengths. Like you said, m0n5t3r0u5, it's about trade-offs. Take Personal Gain or Burn it Down. This means your opponent can't simply camp in your DZone without loss of points; They have to go where you know they'll be (objectives or your units). Use that to determine your deployments to maximize your control of your zone. At this point, you turtle (Hadross are good at that).

Boom. Highly specialized army build turned against itself.

 

[m0n5t3r0u5]

I am not overly optimistic or pessemistic. It's just simple mathamatics. Elsis Tagil, The Wail of War has the inspiration that pelegrath's get +2 movement.
Also you only get around shieldwall with one die, not evasion. You still can ajust a the single die which makes them still harder to kill. Not to mension Shieldbash.
And i wrote that you take a couple brutes with you. This guy has 3" melee weapon. You always put the normal pelegrath's in contact with them and when they activate in a group the normal pelegrath's assists the brutes. Than you have two brutes who attack a servidan with 5 dice and one with 6 dice. If you can't kill a Servidian with this combo, you have very bad dice luck.

 

[EvilGardenGnome]

Looking back to the OP, I notice something else. The Pelegarths aren't getting into your DZone until round 2 at the earliest (max distance up the board in round 1 is 27", short of your DZone by a full inch). So first, enforce that they are entirely within their C DZone.

Second, they have to activate within Targis's SOI to gain the Inspire, and Targis won't move until the last group moves in order to ensure they all get the extra 2" movement. That means your opponent is telegraphing exactly where they're heading to lockdown your zone. Alternatively, they divide their forces which merely works to your advantage. In this situation, you definitely want to go second, at least in the first round, if not also the second.

The moral of this is that Targis has to hang back some until almost the very end of round 2. As such, if you can get around the Pelegarth wall, you can kill Targis and eliminate the threat before it is one. Additionally, if they spread out the Pelegarths, that's a thinner wall to smash through.

As another counter, use terrain to control exactly where your opponent can enter your zone. Put up anything that slows movement or blocks access. That means they have fewer ways in. Next, use those same elements as a highway for your Reavers to get behind the Pelegarth wall and assault the leader from behind. In this situation, your Reavers are transports only, not tanks. Just get close enough to rush with the tag-a-long units. Targis, and all the Pelegarth leaders, are a little squishy, so you should be able to take them out without too much muss or fuss.

I think tactics are the way around your opponents attack. Just tweak your plan and you should prevail. Prioritise the leaders and, if you want to double down, take Sever the Head (you mentioned it yourself) to hurt them and help you simultaneously.

 

[paradox1]

I am not overly optimistic or pessemistic. It's just simple mathamatics. Elsis Tagil, The Wail of War has the inspiration that pelegrath's get +2 movement.
Also you only get around shieldwall with one die, not evasion. You still can ajust a the single die which makes them still harder to kill. Not to mension Shieldbash.
And i wrote that you take a couple brutes with you. This guy has 3" melee weapon. You always put the normal pelegrath's in contact with them and when they activate in a group the normal pelegrath's assists the brutes. Than you have two brutes who attack a servidan with 5 dice and one with 6 dice. If you can't kill a Servidian with this combo, you have very bad dice luck.

sure, it would have helped to specific Tagil for one. Two, I havent got brutes, so I cant help ya there. They e been out maybe a month?
I appreciate the clarification. Im still pretty sure you have a biased perspective here. Not in the least because we're hypo-ing a kevel 2 character leader and at least 2 rank 2 infanty plus a few rank 1 into a crab and 3 sevrudan. Seems like an unecessary forced situation.

 

[m0n5t3r0u5]

Ok lets take a step back. What I mean is that you can’t stop the Nasier player from getting into the DZ of the Hadross Player. This makes it an extremely effective Motivation against Hadross.
1 The Nasier deploys after the Hadross, so they can choose where they want to break through.
2 The Hadross player doesn’t have enough models to cover and secure the whole table. Even if he had, the defense line would be so thin that the Nasier wouldn’t have any problems to break through. Also at round two the nasier have only 1” left to get into the DZ. Even when the Nasier play it safe and put your leader in the Second line they have enough movement to get into the DZ at least with the tip of the base.
3 Until the Hadross hat time to react and bring their might against the Nasier it is probably to late. (That is my point with “double the marker count and half the moral loss per marker”)
4 As what terrain go’s. Both player has to agree how to place it. So the Influence on it is limited. That means you can’t rely on that. Also since Hadross has lost swim I can’t just simply put a water element into play to relay on that at least. The consequence is that Terrain is in the same way problematic in defending the Hadross Dz as for the Nasier to enter it.
Here is a typical list I play against:
12x Pelegarth, 6x Pelegarth brutes, 2x Pelegarth Howl, 1x brute warden ,Elsis, Bloodchild , blind hakar ,1 Greathorn and shadrus.
My opponent splitter the list into 4 groups
1.Group:
1xTilia, 1x Pelegrath howl, 2xBrutes, 4xPelegarth, Bloodchild, shadrus
2.Group:
1xBrute Warden, 2xBrutes, 4xPelegarth
3.Group:
1xPelegrath howl, 2xBrutes, 4xPelegrath
4.Group
Blind hakar and Greathorn

Group 1 and 2 advance together with high speed to the enemy DZ . Obviously they advance to the part of the zone where the resistance is the lowest. My opponent always places the Pelegrath as protection and in base to base with the Brutes. Behind them are the leaders. Most of the killing work is done by the Brutes.
Group 3 Flanks the other side or tries to hinder your approach to fulfill your Motivation.
Group 4 advances in the middle and make trouble.(Contest something or just kill stuff)
At the end of the round 2 there is quiet a good chance that there are 2-4 Nasier leader in the Hadross DZ which can make will checks and with a clever positioning of the Bloodchild they have strong will.
In the worst case theHadross loose 8 moral in the best none but the best case is statistically very unlikely . In reality you loose something between 4-6. More likely six because of the reroll of Iron will.

 

[m0n5t3r0u5]

Just Prox the models you don t have and test this list with this motivation. I would like to hear your expirence.

 

[CMON Michael Shinall]

If they are pushing their Leaders up that far that fast, the you have a number of options to punish them for doing so.

I'm just going to throw down some ideas here for you to try:

-Orsund Cavaliers: Since their Leaders are that far up, an Orsund will just snatch them 8" up into your line. Take two and you can displace the Leader right around their Troops, which should make them an easy kill.
-Torvosh would be punishing against the listed army because they're going to be clumped so tight they're all going to get Resonated.
-Oracle of Ulloth to again punish them for being clustered, as well as giving them -1 Willpower should they survive to make their check.
-Ilva will bypass most of what make Pelegarth sustainable via Will Attacks + Bounce(3).
-Ephrimaki does tremendous damage against clustered and Resonated enemies.
-Neritic Horrors actually seem to be the most crippling thing against that list, as they are not only reducing Leadership Values, thus making your Sevridan that much harder to kill, but also reducing enemy Willpower.


If you're dedicated to running the full Sevridan List at Battle size:

Leaders
1x Oorath (who's Inspire will allow you to displace their front-line, thus opening up access to their Leaders all the more, plus his Training will hurt as well).
3x Gutter Friar.

Note you could also throw Torvosh in there, who's Training synchronizes very well with Sevridan, and his Voice Commands means you're going to have an easy source of Resonate against Pelegarth Clusters.

Infantry
12x Sevridan Gutter (again, from reading your post, you seem to be running exclusively Sevridan)

Specialist
1x Orsund Cavalier (for the aformentioned grabbing)
2x Calith Reaver (While I dont think you need two, they are helpful to all Sevridan)

Options
2x Neritic Horror
1x Ilva/Oracle/Ephrimaki/2nd Orsund to taste

 

[EvilGardenGnome]

Mr Black outlined the troop counters you can use, so I'll restrict myself to tactics.

Ok lets take a step back. What I mean is that you can’t stop the Nasier player from getting into the DZ of the Hadross Player. This makes it an extremely effective Motivation against Hadross.
1 The Nasier deploys after the Hadross, so they can choose where they want to break through.

You can't stop them from getting into your DZ. Full stop. To make it so you could do otherwise would break the game, and I'll just ignore this.

2 The Hadross player doesn’t have enough models to cover and secure the whole table. Even if he had, the defense line would be so thin that the Nasier wouldn’t have any problems to break through. Also at round two the nasier have only 1” left to get into the DZ. Even when the Nasier play it safe and put your leader in the Second line they have enough movement to get into the DZ at least with the tip of the base.

Again, this is why you want to limit their approach vectors using terrain and such. You mention water and lacking swimming later. Sure, you can't move through it, but neither can your opponent. Similarly, placing your terrain (from Burn it Down, for example) right on the edge of their DZ forces them to go around it. That limits where they can reach you on round 2, and so lets you anticipate where to set up your defenses.

3 Until the Hadross hat time to react and bring their might against the Nasier it is probably to late. (That is my point with “double the marker count and half the moral loss per marker”)

You have 2 full rounds. 2. That's a lot of time to severely mess with their plans. Using the models Mr Black suggests allows a ton of opportunity for this (such as Orsund and Reaver). Get the idea of keeping all your morale out of your head. You will lose morale. It's a tactical resource to be spent, so spend it on drawing in their leaders to kill them (combined with Sever the Head, maybe).

4 As what terrain go’s. Both player has to agree how to place it. So the Influence on it is limited. That means you can’t rely on that. Also since Hadross has lost swim I can’t just simply put a water element into play to relay on that at least. The consequence is that Terrain is in the same way problematic in defending the Hadross Dz as for the Nasier to enter it.

Nope. Not for motivation terrain you don't. You place yours, they place theirs. For the non-motivation terrain it is sportsmanly to discuss it, but think of this: The Nasier will move more than you. ANY terrain hurts them more than it does you if you use reavers (ignore rough terrain during free movement). Exploit this.

Group 1 and 2 advance together with high speed to the enemy DZ . Obviously they advance to the part of the zone where the resistance is the lowest. My opponent always places the Pelegrath as protection and in base to base with the Brutes. Behind them are the leaders. Most of the killing work is done by the Brutes.
Group 3 Flanks the other side or tries to hinder your approach to fulfill your Motivation.
Group 4 advances in the middle and make trouble.(Contest something or just kill stuff)
At the end of the round 2 there is quiet a good chance that there are 2-4 Nasier leader in the Hadross DZ which can make will checks and with a clever positioning of the Bloodchild they have strong will.
In the worst case theHadross loose 8 moral in the best none but the best case is statistically very unlikely . In reality you loose something between 4-6. More likely six because of the reroll of Iron will.

Again, pick your motivations to capitalize on their layout. Sever the Head works for this, as they're bringing the target to you. Combined with Orsunds like Mr Black says makes this deadly. Your biggest threat is if they break up their force into two cohorts and attack your fringes. However, this weakens the whole, in which case you crush the one with your whole army and sprint/Reaver to get to the other. In that case you may not be able to outpace the morale loss.

Essentially, this means ignoring groups 3 and 4. If they engage you, deal with them, but otherwise who cares? Group 4 has no leaders, and it sounds like Groups 1 and 2 (your biggest morale threat) are grouped. Crush 1 and 2 with your army (they'll commit to one direction early and telegraph where they're going). If your opponent wants to weaken the army by spreading it out, by all means, let them.

Control the morale imbalance with your motivation (remember: Orsund with Sever the Head), and capitalize on killing their troops to get the win that way.

 

[m0n5t3r0u5]

Ok Guys . I tried your Suggestions. Espacially the list from mister Black.(Thanks for that, i had two Oresund). I tried my best and still lost 6 to 0.(but it was the best game i had was with this list)
I constantly had the feeling of fighting against the hill. Even when I could generate a path to one of his Leadrs with "sever the head" motivation tokens on it, it is very hard to kill them with one blow which then also gives him the opportunity to make will checks for his motivation if the leader didn t die(for every attack that doesn't kill, even worse when you don't make a wound he gets the roll!). So the the Leader who had survied could make two will checks in one round to get rid of 4 moral from me. I still have the opinion that the fact that i will always deploy earlier than my nasier opponent is a problem but not so much a problem like the fact that one token is worth two moral loss . I know you don't belive me but when you have a nasier player who knows a bit about hadross and isn't a bad player and uses the nasier list i suggested this match is nearly not winable for hadross with that motivation. Play test it yourself and see...

Don't get me wrong I love this game and i think it is great but even my opponent doesn t see a way for me how to win this scenario. As a consequence we will house rule this motivation to double tokens with 1 morale loss for every token.

 

[paradox1]

What do you mean you "deploy later?"

 

[m0n5t3r0u5]

Sorry i meant earlier

 

[paradox1]

Got it.

I guess we can approach this a different way: The Motivation is worth 6 Morale in a Skirmish, or 10 morale in a Battle. This value is the same as other Motivations. That is, you will not lose MORE Morale from this motivation than you would from any other. And it's not enough to knock you out of the game, even if he redeems all his counters. Doing so only occurs if A. you attack his leaders and fail to kill them, or B. His leaders can end the round in one of your Dzones.

Adjust your play. Sever the Head is one idea, but if you're finding his build is geared toward scoring via B, and he's building walls around his leaders to do that, maybe Sever the Head is a BAD choice for you to take. And it would be a good idea to focus on 1. using taxi crabs to deliver a wall of troops to exclude him from easy, straight-line access to the Dzone, and 2. Ignore his leaders and focus attacks on his infantry and specialist, unless you can pile overwhelming force into a leader model. Pick a motivation that does not require you to kill leaders.

Burn It Down. He's piling significant resources in your D. You can engage his infantry to score kills, and send the taxi pieces from there around to his D to counter your loses. He'll be hard-pressed to contest the objectives in his D while also trying to camp a protected leader in yours.

Loot and Plunder. If that doesn't sound appealing, getting to the opposing D, then go for No Mans Land instead. Taxi crab can take a handful of troops and dump them on an objective. Basically, you'll wrap a troop or two up to get markers, then pile the rest in around (maybe a bunch of deepmen). He'll have to move forces away from his leaders to attack ranks of infantry behind him in No Mans Land. This should let your leaders, specialist, or other troops to pile on his leaders and take them out.

Personal Gain. Those troops he's wrapping around his leaders? Make him mark some. Then deliver specialists to nab tokens and dock his Morale.

There are ways around this. You don't need to hard stop him, but you can also hit his Morale and focus on favorable engagements that can cost him equal Morale losses. You just need to build and play for it. Don't play into his game, play your own.

Side anecdote: I just played my Naiser (using Call To Glory) vs Hadross (using Sever the Head). My opponent thought the same of Call to Glory that you do about Unstoppable Force. But I also built a force with good Willpower leaders and specialist who were able to kill Hadross models to score tokens (Heska for Sundering, a Howl for Shield bash, follow up, and a 2 die attack, Blind Hakar for insta-kills and great options vs a mob, and Bloodchild because Bloodchild. Also, Will re-rolls play into my Motivation). Basically, I had a plan based on achieving my goals vs this opponent, regardless of what he wanted to do to me.

 

[m0n5t3r0u5]

Yeah sounds good but he has Blind hakar and Greathorn Shamus and the blood child which can easily protect his zone or make things troubeling for my commando force to fullfill their motivation. Shamus and Greathorn have always be a second wave to him actually he never needed them to win.
He is not winning against my Army (the attrition game is always close). He wins because he drops my moral way to fast. As you mentioned Call to glory is a strong motivation but he still needs to get to my troops and with clever positioning of my leaders I can build traps for the nasier or just simply deny the nasier to point to easily. But "Unstoppable Force" is way to easy to achieve completly. Hadross are to slow to Stop sufficend enough key models from him to score. There was a game where i tried the Sharks. They stopped him for one round longer but they are way to easy to kill for his mobs and don't make enough damage.
You know what. I am gonna record this special setup, put on youtube and then you will see what i mean.