This time, we will look into how we assemble a 6 player roster. Keep in mind that you won't win a game in the draft phase, but you can make it harder for you. Picking the right tools for the job will give you the ability to realize your game plan on the Pitch.
The player types
Let's start today's topic with a look at the types of players we have at our disposal. Note that these are archetypes, many players are a mix of those types.
Beater
These are your prime examples of damage dealers. Taken for putting the hurt on enemy models, these guys and gals will be your prime source of take-outs. The most common beaters will do their damage in melee and you will see that they have a playbook with momentous damage results. These Damage results often scale with more hits, but there are some unusual beaters that have other means of dishing out pain. One example would be Venin, who doesn't have high damage results, but his Heroic does 3 free damage. Sometimes, especially in the Brewer's Guild, the beaters have short playbooks, making wraps more likely.
Examples: Sledge, Devana, Thresher, Tater, Hooper
Football player
A football player has 2 important missions: Get the ball under your control and score goals.
To do this, they possess certain abilities that you will see in different combinations. Tackles low on the playbook make it easier to get the ball off enemies. Mist and Greyscales for example have dodges that you can just buy with influence to help them disengage. Football players also sport a good kick stat. A new kind of ball retrieval has crept up lately, the ranged tackle. Cinder, veteran Sakana and Crucible all have means of taking the ball off you while not even engaging the ball-holder.
Examples: Siren, Shark, Midas, Vitriol, Flint, Veteran Spigot, Alloy, Bolt, Farris
Ball-holders
These guys will hold onto the ball and make it hard to get to it. They have abilities to make it harder for the football players to play their game. Ball-Holders ideally got 2" melee to be able to counter attack footballers coming in, but may have other abilities to help them hold onto the ball. Resilience or Clone(Vitriol) can ignore anything from the first attack to a character play. A good disengaging counterattack on top and you got yourself a ball holder. This means you have to break it first before having a chance to get to the ball. A good Knockdown with a disengaging playbook gives the football player a conundrum. Do I take the ball and it will scatter due to the knockdown, or do I risk getting disengaged without having the ball?
Close Control only works against a tackle, but it can't be broken by any other means. Sometimes, high defensive stats in cover are enough there. Snakeskin and Siren counter the character plays due to being beautiful. Having a good ball-holder is crucial if you are trying to win the game by fighting against a football opponent.
Examples: Iron, Vitriol, Snakeskin, Friday (with Spigot), Velocity(with Nimble)
Defensive players
The ones who are there to protect your more squishy players. Defensive players are pretty hard to take out and have abilities like Close Ranks(Granite), Counter-Charge(Brick) or Protective Instinct(Fallow). Forcing you to make plays that you often don't want to, they will eat up resources because you will have to deal with them.
Example: Compound, Anvil, Fallow, Kraken
Control Pieces
These models are designed to mess with your opponent. They either directly control his actions or use pushes to get them where you want them to be. Obulus and Scalpel are king and queen here. Obulus can (almost) do whatever he wants with one model while Scalpel can mess with a lot of models with her Voodoo Strings.
Other very Strong abilities are Goad on Marbles and Pinned on Theron. In a similar vein, Blind on Calculus and Disarm on Ferrite can shut down certain players pretty well.
Lighter control abilities include pushes in the playbook or with character plays, as well as putting out Fire, Snared or Disease. Slowing down your opponent or messing with his momentum is not as much of a control, but it's still a small wrench in the plan.
Examples: Silence, Obulus, Scalpel, Theron, Benediction, Farris
Support
The purpose of these models is to make other models better. Either by buffing them or debuffing the enemy. Buffs include abilities like Tooled up or Tough skin. Sometimes, buffs are passive, like the shelling out Aura from Strongbox or The Owner from Ox.
Debuffs are things like Weak Point, Dirty Knives and Stagger.
Examples: Hearth, veteran Graves, Ratchet, Hag
Influence Batteries
This is pretty much always a sub role, including models that rarely need any influence. A battery will provide his INF-stat to the team, but doesn't tap into the influence pool. These are models with passive buffs or abilities that need no influence to trigger.
Examples: Compound, Tenderizer
Drafting your 6
Assembling the team
I hope you can now categorize the players available to you. Now you can start to assemble your 6. When building your team, always remember that you will need to score VP somehow. A team entirely consisting of Defensive players, Support and Control Pieces will not win, only lose slower. I would recommend that at least 3 players on the team should be Beaters or football players.
Drafting Strategy
While drafting, keep an eye out for the picks your opponent makes. Do any of his picks mess a lot with your intended game plan? Do you have any counters to his players? Take some time to consider your picks and if there is any merit in trying to counter pick, or if going with your original drafting plan is better.
What you should always try to do is "conceal" your picks. Even if you intend to play a certain 6, take a short time to think about the order of picking. Obvious picks should always be picked first, the "flex" slots last.
Let's do an example, with Blacksmiths against Masons.
The Blacksmith player receives, has put down Farris and Sledge, while the Mason player plays Hammer and Wrecker. The first pick of the Smith is Anvil. Sledge needs Anvil on the pitch, so no surprises here. Masons pick Granite to have a defensive player around. Now the Blacksmith picks Bolt, he conceals his last Master and Apprentice pick here. If he picked a Master, there would only be 2 apprentices to come. Furthermore, Bolt is very likely to come out with Farris anyway. Masons take veteran Chisel, another common pick. Blacksmiths now take Furnace, keeping the last apprentice slot open. Masons pick Tower for the Tooled up. Now the Blacksmith player has a decision to make. He wants to play one of the Cinders, but the Mason player can take Flint to counter the original Cinder. By not picking Flint until now, the decision is a bit harder for the Smith.
In the end, concealing picks is a very small part of the game and in the beginning, you shouldn't worry too much about it. Playing the game well is way more important than drafting, but it might give you a small little edge.
Join next time when we talk about the Ball - killing it and getting it back!
No comments:
Post a Comment