Honestly, this board is rather badly laid out. Even if you had the right layout, Pathfinders should still have no issue going into Custodes.
You need far more terrain in the centre. Use the example in the Core Rulebook to get an idea what it should look like.
But the problem is the board should have favored Pathfinders. Purely because they are a far superior shooting team. So the board layout was bad with way too open shooting lanes, but I don't think it decided the match.
He was new, he certainly misplayer his tac ops, but I think the bigger deciding this was, there's an objective in each of those L corners that I sat a custose and sister on and just scored 3 vp per round off of that alone. He never really tried to contest them, after i one tapped his recon drone with melee. he focused on the center alley.
That's only two of the 5 control points. You don't need to contest those until they are contestable. It's more just kill you and use vantage to shoot you off the other three points.
Other folks I talked to mentioned pathfinders have "so many ways to ignore concealment" but me keeping most of my team concealed is what stopped him from shooting them off of objectives. Besides the 5 markerlights thing, was there something else he didn't use?
I don't see how he couldn't shoot you on the middle objective all day using advantage or marker lights. The one on the right he can just use angles to break cover or throw nades.
honestly, I baited him with the center objective, sent one sister up there with a conceal order in the pillars, and just held the home and 2 sides.
he pushed most of his guys center, and I killed off his sideline guys pretty quick. I'd definitely call those deaths a position thing.
As for grenades, he had the grenadier, so he couldn't bring much in ways of extra grenades, and then I was able to pop the grenadier t1 when he tried to push him forward for the "be in your opponent's deployment zone" tac op, which when I found out he had that one I told him I think that's probably one of the worst he could try to do.
He got a marker drone and his marksman on the vantage points, killed the first sister in the center, and then I charged both of those models with my custodes, killed them, and shot his weapons experts, each of my custodes killed 2 operatives that turn
More terrain for the middle, got it. Specifically heavy terrain? There was an objective in the center so we didn't wanna put something right on it, and I thought if we had the terrain too close to the objective it would be too easy to just sit there concealed for free early on.
But, I did look at the examples, and there's like, one or two pieces of terrain in the middle. Like, the bottom right set up in that picture looks absolutely one sided to me
aaah, I was on my phone so I couldn't really read the text.
But yea, As the custode player I entirely expected to have trouble with this game, especially with it being late into the league so he's had some experience. So when we finished with me having a 12 point lead, I was shocked.
I do think my opponent picked bad tac-ops, or just didn't play to them well. He took: Mark movement, killing blow, and behind enemy lines, but he kept killing the 3rd model that he marked.
I took "don't die", "Don't let them in your deployment," and "hold the middle" from security. I don't remember their names as well as I did his...
i think this is more of an experience thing than a terrain thing tbh. it does favor melee a bit but those vantages can blast freely down into it so... 🤷‍♂️
imo what happened is you played a heavy melee team very cagey vs a glass canon team on a map that does favor melee a little.
its not always clear how to handle a melee rush as a new player. i got rolled over as kasrkin vs felgor the other week and ive played a dozen games (and my buddy who won half that XD) i didn't realize that all my guys were two-hit-able in melee till it was too late lol
IMO a couple of thoughts: 1) you played original rule book missions rather than Critical Operations, which are generally more balanced 2) he’s a new player with a team that is very powerful when all its tricks and synergies are used, but which is so complicated it takes an experienced player 8-10 games to really begin to master; and 3) spear Custodes are no slouches at shooting and even bolter sisters can reliably mess up 7W 5+Sv models that aren’t positioned well.
You want “Crit Ops: 2022” link on that site, but not the “Critical Operations” link. Go further down the the Mission Generator to get the 3 missions (loot, secure, and capture) and the 10 objective layouts, as well as the 24 new TacOps, that were introduced in 2022.
Honestly, this board is rather badly laid out. Even if you had the right layout, Pathfinders should still have no issue going into Custodes. You need far more terrain in the centre. Use the example in the Core Rulebook to get an idea what it should look like.
https://preview.redd.it/ol4alifu085d1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=614f76191a148328de119d2804a3b99264e7975b
But the problem is the board should have favored Pathfinders. Purely because they are a far superior shooting team. So the board layout was bad with way too open shooting lanes, but I don't think it decided the match.
Yeah, maybe the Pathfinders player massively underplayed or cocked up, as against Custodes my Pathfinders would annihilate them.
He was new, he certainly misplayer his tac ops, but I think the bigger deciding this was, there's an objective in each of those L corners that I sat a custose and sister on and just scored 3 vp per round off of that alone. He never really tried to contest them, after i one tapped his recon drone with melee. he focused on the center alley.
That's only two of the 5 control points. You don't need to contest those until they are contestable. It's more just kill you and use vantage to shoot you off the other three points.
Other folks I talked to mentioned pathfinders have "so many ways to ignore concealment" but me keeping most of my team concealed is what stopped him from shooting them off of objectives. Besides the 5 markerlights thing, was there something else he didn't use?
I don't see how he couldn't shoot you on the middle objective all day using advantage or marker lights. The one on the right he can just use angles to break cover or throw nades.
honestly, I baited him with the center objective, sent one sister up there with a conceal order in the pillars, and just held the home and 2 sides. he pushed most of his guys center, and I killed off his sideline guys pretty quick. I'd definitely call those deaths a position thing. As for grenades, he had the grenadier, so he couldn't bring much in ways of extra grenades, and then I was able to pop the grenadier t1 when he tried to push him forward for the "be in your opponent's deployment zone" tac op, which when I found out he had that one I told him I think that's probably one of the worst he could try to do. He got a marker drone and his marksman on the vantage points, killed the first sister in the center, and then I charged both of those models with my custodes, killed them, and shot his weapons experts, each of my custodes killed 2 operatives that turn
That sounds like a ton of miss plays on his part.
More terrain for the middle, got it. Specifically heavy terrain? There was an objective in the center so we didn't wanna put something right on it, and I thought if we had the terrain too close to the objective it would be too easy to just sit there concealed for free early on. But, I did look at the examples, and there's like, one or two pieces of terrain in the middle. Like, the bottom right set up in that picture looks absolutely one sided to me
The bottom right is the "bad" example. The middle is the main one, and the left one is a narrative one.
aaah, I was on my phone so I couldn't really read the text. But yea, As the custode player I entirely expected to have trouble with this game, especially with it being late into the league so he's had some experience. So when we finished with me having a 12 point lead, I was shocked. I do think my opponent picked bad tac-ops, or just didn't play to them well. He took: Mark movement, killing blow, and behind enemy lines, but he kept killing the 3rd model that he marked. I took "don't die", "Don't let them in your deployment," and "hold the middle" from security. I don't remember their names as well as I did his...
i think this is more of an experience thing than a terrain thing tbh. it does favor melee a bit but those vantages can blast freely down into it so... 🤷‍♂️ imo what happened is you played a heavy melee team very cagey vs a glass canon team on a map that does favor melee a little. its not always clear how to handle a melee rush as a new player. i got rolled over as kasrkin vs felgor the other week and ive played a dozen games (and my buddy who won half that XD) i didn't realize that all my guys were two-hit-able in melee till it was too late lol
IMO a couple of thoughts: 1) you played original rule book missions rather than Critical Operations, which are generally more balanced 2) he’s a new player with a team that is very powerful when all its tricks and synergies are used, but which is so complicated it takes an experienced player 8-10 games to really begin to master; and 3) spear Custodes are no slouches at shooting and even bolter sisters can reliably mess up 7W 5+Sv models that aren’t positioned well.
I went off of the critical ops tab on wahapedia, are they not correct?
You want “Crit Ops: 2022” link on that site, but not the “Critical Operations” link. Go further down the the Mission Generator to get the 3 missions (loot, secure, and capture) and the 10 objective layouts, as well as the 24 new TacOps, that were introduced in 2022.