This is a three part guide that General Stormfox put together for everyone on the MKRealms. I decided that it definitely had enough merit to post to my page.
The guide is written in three parts as follows:
- You have at least a bit of a choice what figures to use, meaning you do not own only 10 or 15 :-)
- You build your army for a standard tournament. This means 200 points for you and 2 actions per turn.
- The "doubleturn":
This is a time unit I created because of the nature the Warriors of Mage Knight use actions. In most cases, you do not want your figures to push if you do not have to or it is not beneficial, so we assume that each figure only moves every other turn. This is why I will use a time span of two turns (hence doubleturn) to measure action-usage. So what does this leave us with ? In a standard game, you have 4 actions to spend per doubleturn.
So let us elaborate the action usage. How many actors in an army is good ? What is the problem with too many or too few actors for your actions?
Case 1) Fewer than 4 figures This can work, but at the beginning, you end up either wasting actions, or pushing a lot, or both. If one gets killed, things get even worse. Most figures are ok for their points, no matter how much, but an army that only uses 3/4 of its allowed actions will always be at a disadvantage! So while the Hierophant may be ok for his 145 points, if you are not using your other 3 actions and the occasional command bonus well, he will end up losing because while he shoots once, the enemy shoots up to 4 times in the same time frame.
Case 2) 4-6 figures Most of the time, this will work out good. Almost always, one or two of those figures is a support unit like a healer, or enhancer, and will not be used much until another figure is badly damaged, and this way just "borrowing" the action of the damaged unit.
Case 3) More than 6 figures This is the hard one. IMHO most successful armies have more than 6 figures in them, but those are not individual warriors running all by themselves. This is where formation usage comes in. Having 4 actions means you can have 4 formations moving in each doubleturn. So whenever you want or have to use more than about 5 warriors, group them in formations. There are different kinds of formations, tough. Some of them just behave like one or two big units, for example in the Gunner/Demi combo, where the Demis are just there for the enhancement, but there are groups like a *** Black Powder Boomer with two ** Kahmsin Fusers at his side, where the smaller figures most of the time boost the better one, but some-times just shoot something themselves. This is where it gets complicated, and beginners get confused. How many actions does such a formation really use?
Our Boomer/Fuser/Fuser combo uses just one action to move it. So in the first 4 turns or so, lets assume it uses one action. After this, it will shoot in formation to break the sometimes high defenses. So for another 2-6 turns, it will most of the time just use up one action. But as soon as some enemy troops are softened up, three separate shots would be much more effective as one with an attack of 11. Does this mean you have to count those three figures as 3 actions when building the army ? Of course not, because after those 6-10 turns, you will have lost some other units OR some of this formation will be damaged/dead, freeing up actions. The gist is: a formation like this tends to use about one of your four actions at start, and later about two, which is ok because you will not still have all your figures in good shape by then.
Another classical case would be Troll/Troll/Priestess combo. To move them, you need one action. To shoot, you need two. To heal one Troll, you need another one. How does this resolve ? The last case can be dropped, because if the Troll really needs healing that bad, he is in no shape to fight, and the Priestess just "borrows" "his" action. Thats oversimplified, but lets keep it that way for now. So it comes down to one action at start and 2 after moving into position.
By now you should have noticed that action usage breaks down into two to three separate blocks:
Roughly for the first 4-6 turns, both armies tend to just move around taking positions and trying to commit the enemy to a bad move. During this time, any formation uses up one action per doubleturn, no more.
The next block is the heavy battle with fresh figures. During this time, groups with few heavy hitters and much support use up one or two actions, while groups of equally hard hitters take one for each warrior.
Then there is the last block, which happens after some of the Warriors of the formation have taken a beating and/or there are weakened enemies nearby. In this phase, our Rebel group would still use two or even three actions, and the Trolls would roughly stay at two.
So the two groups in our example here used up:
1/1/2,5 and 1/2/2 actions
during a battle.
What did all this ramblings have to do with army composition ? Simple, I tried to show you that if you use more than about 5 figures, you have to use formations and try to look at the middle and late parts of a battle, not only if you can move them all at the beginning.
Of course you can move 4*3 Fusers in two turns, but when it comes down to fighting, you would have been better off with one single tough figure instead of three weak ones, because you will never get to use more than one of each group. Again, this is oversimplified, you would of course have the added flexibility of shooting all three of one formation and neglecting another one totally for this. But then, for what did you bring them with you if they just sit and watch the show?
Another thing to take into consideration is figures that have a special way of dealing with actions, namely those with Quickness and those with Command. Except for the Amazon Queen, until now all figures with Quickness are more or less just harasses and living shields. Because of this, I tend to ignore them totally in my action usage math. If you use many Shades or Scouts, maybe count about three of them together as 0/1/1.
Command gives you about 1/3 action every doubleturn. Again, so long as I have only one warrior with Command, I tend to ignore this for the math, but again, the Queen is an exception. She has both Quickness and Command, so IMHO she is almost paying for herself, letting you add her like a Shade to any army without really increasing the action count. If you have two or more Commanders in your army, then lets just assume you have 5 actions per doubleturn.
So how many figures should end up in my army?
This part of the guide shall focus on the benefits or problems with specialization and generalization, as well as building an army out of warriors whose abilities complement each other.
Ok, so how do we start building an army ? That depends entirely on what figures you have available and which of them you want to base your army around. Maybe you want to use a certain unique or expensive non-unique, or even an entire formation. Your choice here.
So let us assume you chose one of your uniques to make an army around. So what now ? Look at the abilities your Unique has, then look at what figures you have. Which of those have abilities that would complement those of your unique ? If your unique has Flame or multiple attacks, do you have figures with Magic Enhancement to use them to greater effect ? Or if your unique has a low defense, can you boost it by adding a unit with Defend and/or Healing ? I think by now you have gotten the idea.
But beware, do not overdo it. Adding 5 Shamans or Demis to a single figure may enhance it, but it will also eat up all your points, leaving you with a single formation that will fall apart as soon as either the biggie is dead or your other figures are damaged for 2-3 clicks. Same goes with Healing, more than one Healer is seldom needed, maybe two if you field many small figures. Any more just will only trade firepower for unneeded healing power.
So the gist is: Try to support the figures doing the damage, but dont use too much of your points for those support roles, or you will start to exchange too much damaging power for staying power.
So now we have a strong figure or formation, some kind of support to boost it/them, and usually some points left over.
Now you could just expand your main group with similar figures, but that would make your army very specialized, and vulnerable to formation-breaking abilities like Flame and Shockwave and your enemy could easily run around the battlefield unhindered, securing the best positons for his figures. So I suggest either using at least two formations or at least adding some cheap cannon fodder to distract and intercept enemy singles and formations trying to get in a good position to hit you from relative safety.
When adding single figures, try to add those with abilities that either take away a weakness of your army or provide a new way to enhance your other figures. One example for this would be using a Ki Devil or Screeching Terror in an army that already uses so called push-spawn (Werecreatures and Worms) that gets better when damaged. They would add a nice ranged attacker with flight, and the possibility to "accidentally" enrage your spawn even more.
Lets start with the benefits of range vs. melee. In Mage Knight, you have a big problem when playing agressively. The enemy will almost always get to hit you first. If he has a good range (more than you can move in one turn), its even worse. But just by sitting there and staring at each other, a battle won´t be won by either side. So what are ways to close in on an enemy without being slaughtered ?
There are a good many of ways, but i will try to point out some of them (actually just those that spring into my mind in the next few minutes, hehe).
One thing is adding throw-away figures that either distract the enemy or just form a living shield. Good figures for this are Imps because they are cheap, Freelancers because they are cheap and have lots of clicks, and anything with Quickness (read: Shades and Scouts) because they do not waste actions, are reasonably cheap and can even pose a minor threat to the enemies support figures so he cannot completely ignore them.
How to use the shields is pretty simple. Just move your formation of 3 freelancers in front of your really dangerous troops, let them be shot down and step up with the real thing as soon as his fighters have an action token next to them (ok, it ain´t that easy, but you will figure this out yourself).
Imps, Scouts, and Shades can be used to move into the rear of the enemy formations (by flying/running a flank maneuver) and deny shooters their ranged attacks. Ok, they may spin to your harasser and blast him away, but thats ok. He will usually need 2 of his rangers to kill one Scout or Shade, wasting an entire turn, and has to wait one turn, then turn around one turn, and then wait a turn again if he does not want to push them. At the very least, it will take them 3 full turns, 4 actions, and 1 click of damage to get back into their position. More than enough time that even dwarfs could get up and whack them over the head.
Another way to get in is using terrain, stealth, and fliers. Use blocking terrain or hindering with stealth to move up unhindered as near as you can get. Fliers are great for this too, because they ignore terrain during their movement, and have a speed of 10". They can easily fly around the enemy and attack from the sides or even behind.
Most of the time its easier to stay out of an enemies firing arc than to stay out of his range. And it will get you much nearer. Of course this is much harder with those few uniques with a 180° arc, but if you flank on BOTH sides, it should be possible. Personally i like ** and *** Screechers/Ki Devils for this, but the Neophant can work well, too.
You should really consider which terrain you want to use and even roughly where you want to place it (if possible) when building your army.
If you dont want to devote too many points to this, or you are faced with a Magus or Queen or something to that effect (both can blast even stealthed figures and have a good arc), you can stil get up to them with some figures. Blade Golems, Seething Knights, Living Elementals, and many others have abilities like Toughness and Battle Armour that help you get there in relatively good shape and still have decent stats when lightly damaged. Another kind of figures i like for this role is those that actually get better after being damaged (we call them push-spawn), namely Werecreatures and Worms.
By now you should have sorted out what formations you can use, which combinations of special abilities will be helpful, and so should have a pretty good idea how your army will look like. Of course, if you have more than 15-20 figures, there will always be multiple ways you can build an army along this guidelines, but thats just the thing that makes MKR fun at last.
That should get you some ideas by now. I will not do an in-depth discussion of this, but this shall get you started. Maybe have a look at Shatki´s Domain, he has some really good in-depth strategy guides.
General Stormfox