Tactica: Challenges

This post has been updated here.

 

Just some of my brief ruminations on how to deal with challenges in Warhammer...

Let’s think about the different situations:

·         Your character is better than my character.

o   I accept with my champion (or challenge myself using him).

§  You kick his ass and get +5 overkill but rather than real wounds on the unit, those are virtual wounds that only affect the combat resolution. I’ve limited the number of wounds he can do to 5 plus my wounds and my guys are still alive.

o   CONCLUSION: Do challenge with champion

·         The characters are evenlyish matched.

o   I accept the challenge (or make my own).

§  It’s a cool fight that improves the narrative. Excess wounds aren’t wasted because if you’d not challenged and just allocated your attacks against the character then they wouldn’t be used for Overkill.

o   I accept the challenge/challenge myself with a unit champion?

§  You kick his ass while my character does more wounds against the unit. You get good overkill while I get good real wounds. I lose one guy, you lose several guys. We both do the same amount of wounds (all things being equal) but you’ve lost more men. I can still allocate an attack or two against the champion.

o   CONCLUSION: Do challenge with champion

·         My character is better than your character

o   If I challenge then you might take challenge with champion, putting me in a bad position

o   If you accept with a character I kick his ass and get overkill but could I have killed more unit guys?

o   CONCLUSION: ???

·         I challenge with a uber character on a monster.

o   You accept the challenge with champion or character.

§  I kick his ass and get overkill. Your unit can’t fight back. I win.

o   You don’t accept with character. I kick unit’s ass and you do minimal damage back. Your character is wasted.

o   You don’t accept with champion. Your character and unit can do a fair amount of damage.

o   CONCLUSION: Always challenge with monster characters and hope they don’t know retiring champion trick.

·         You attack me with an uber monster character.

o   I accept the challenge with good character and maybe do a few wounds before dying. But probably die first. You get good combat result. My unit can’t attack.

o   I accept with my champion. You kick his ass worse. My unit and good character can’t attack.

o   I refuse the challenge with my champion.

o   My character and unit can still fight as normal.

o   CONCLUSION: Refuse challenge and retire champion.

The top tip here is to kill the monster as priority. However good their character is, removing their transportation will limit the damage they can do to the rest of the army. Further, mounts tend to have less armour.

OVERALL CONCLUSION: Always take a unit champion and use him wisely.