With another year comes another Gaining Grounds update, and I might be late but I will be going through all the schemes and strats nonetheless. There are a lot of these that are the same as last season, and as such I will be considering my thoughts on them to be mostly the same as last year. I'll also be going into the accompanying errata and updating my crew reviews to add in these new scheme pools and keep them up to date.
Summoning
GG2 brings with it a unique change to how summons work, affecting a lot of crews in new ways. Summoned models (which includes anything summoned as of the errata, counting everything as having summon upgrades) can no longer affect strategy markers in any way during the game on top of the usual restrictions. It's overall a pretty good move, but some things (Ulix in particular) have to tilt their playstyle hard to keep up with the change which may prove difficult.
Strategies
Symbols of Authority, Corrupted Ley Lines- Same as in GG1, my thoughts are the same
Turf War- While this is an old scheme and my thoughts are the same as before, it favours crews that are tanky but also things that are fast and can deal damage. Mobile gun crews like Parker, Dashel, Cooper and Von Schill, fast blenders like the Viks or even just zone control crews like Ironsides or Titania. There are a lot of ways to go about Turf War and none are really identical, which I really like.
Break the Line- Similar to how Corrupted Idols worked in GG0 with the big exception that all the strategy markers go down before deployment. It becomes a bit of a tug of war mid-game (because I assume both players to start pitching two markers early game for the first 2-3VP, but one must also consider denial for their opponent too) and the way it works differently to the other strats means it benefits a few crews that don't work great in the others so it keeps the variety of models seen on the table which is really great IMO.
Schemes
Breakthrough, Vendetta, Assassinate, Hidden Martyrs, Research Mission, Let Them Bleed, Catch and Release, Spread Them Out- These are all very much the same as before and I wouldn't change how I play them now.
Detonate Charges- A return from the original 3E release, just needing scheme markers near a single enemy model. With regular scheme rules it needs some very careful placement (or bigger base models) to do with normal interacts but anything that lets you drop more than one marker without interacting makes this a piece of cake. False Claim anyone? Also, both Reveal and End are the same making it one of the few that doesn't get noticeably harder to score the 2nd point.
Claim Jump- The 2nd return from the 3E rulebook schemes, Claim Jump is really nice and it tilts some crews better into a pool that they may not otherwise appear as great in. Keeping a model alive near the centre of the board is a bit of effort, but if you can push things away from it/activate late in the turn to get into position you can make the points here fairly easy. The 2nd point almost dictates you need to take healing to score it but I would likely be doing that anyway.
Death Beds- Similar to how Research Mission worked in GG1, if you don't place your own kind of markers you probably don't want to take it but if you do this is relatively easy. You need to choose a kind of non-scheme marker (so you choose what you can make- Underbrush, Pyre, Ice Pillar or even scrap) and you then need to kill enemy models near both one of this marker and a scheme marker. It needs setup but once that's done you can pretty easily secure it as much as possible as long as you can bully a weaker model and not get bogged down by something tanky. The 2nd point is also pretty easy provided you can put them into annoying places in the enemy table half
Bait and Switch- Choose a single enemy model to pull in near you and place a scheme near them inside your table half, and then keep enemies out of your deployment zone. If the enemy has no incentive to go inside your zone you can make it a choice of 2 bad decisions for them (dedicate models to denying the 2nd point and not get a benefit out of them, or you get to score a point if they don't)
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