Also, Seething Knight can't be used (vamp), and there isn't another person that can do 4 damage other than Det. Zomb.

The army that you posted will would probably do fine because of its seven actions. but all those things that you said aren't needed will against the average army that maybe has four actions i have complete free range with the monsters.Theres no time to open chests because I cash in at least two monster tolkens on turn two. Not only do I beat my oppenent to the chests with the monsters, if they wasted time to try and open it they're getting charged with bone golems, night stalkers, and zombie hounds. I did play a swarm army today with 9 actions and not one of my oppenents ever stood a chance. And the seething knight was dumb, i knew better but what i did use where three bone golems, which come up frequently on the blues and the red. One oppent was unfortunate enought to activate the red and get two red bone golems and a blue. I killed four levats today one in every game. DM: under no circumstance did I ever attack a hero with only one mage spawn at a time. Hitash would probably be able to hit of a night stalker all be himself. he cant fight off a night stalker and a bone golem, or one of several other combos, with out taking enough damge not to be mopped up. there are alot of combos that allow you to play a bone golems and something else be it a nightstalker or something smaller. I hit several hitashs for six clicks a turn a dont care how good your first retaliate is hitash wont be able to stand up against the mage spawn continuly hitting him. Plus while you're wasting actions fighting the mage spawn I cash in more and more. I played four games and no one leveled up even once in any game. Not once

NewportHarry--I know that you didn't attack with only one. That's why we've been going over senarios with two or more mage Spawn.

The Week one battle in my area is today...:D
We'll see how I do...

NewportHarry--If that's your goal then why don't you take:

Levatlv2 39
Podo 3
Gobbo Archer 13
Centuar outrider 17
Mancatcher 16
Goddo Cannibal 10
98
Six actions, with three quickness.

I don't think that you can simply kill off all the monsters from the tokens for experience points, no matter how powerful your individual heroes, at least not when your opponent has stacked the action deck against you. In one of Saturday's games, my opponent moved first and brought his heroes in. I then brought my heroes through my entrance corridor and brought the leader right on to the very edge of the tile almost to the nearest chest. My opponent moved up a token, which turned out to be blue and brought in two flesh golems(** and ***). He then brought in a token from the other side of the chamber. It turned out to be red and he threw an eleven, which brought in a red Bone Golem, a red Nightstalker and a red Death Merchant. Suddenly the chamber was very crowded with 4 of my heroes and all those spawn either in or adjacent to that tile. That determined the entire future course of the game, i.e., it was all uphill for me from that point on. The only thing that saved me from immediate decimation was that he had only 3 heroes in his team and therefore only 3 actions per turn, but when I had 98 points in my hero team and was facing 170 points of Mage Spawn, I could not exactly just zap them and continue on my merry way. He only had one action that he could hit me with on that turn, but very soon my main fighters were knocked down in strength and one was killed.

If my opponent had had 6-9 actions per turn, both my fighters would have died almost immediately under the swarm of red spawn. I can see bshugg's point all too well. :( As it was, one died within a turn or two and the other was severely weakened. I was never able to heal him at all because he was either b2b with a spawn or my healer was under attack himself. As it was, I was able to run around and stay alive with at least a couple of my heroes for a long time, but the Mage Spawn came into the game too early for me to take them on. Even if your heroes include Hitash and Grimm and even if they are both at level 2, there is no way the two of them can expect to handle 5 MS totalling 170 points (at least not without an unreasonable amount of luck). When the spawn are in the same tile and/or in b2b with your heroes, you can't move them away, so your opponent can just hit you with one after the other. Sure you get counterattacks, and Hitash even has a reasonable chance of hitting, but then your opponent whacks you with a different (full-strength) MS and your level of health just drops like a rock.

DragonVenom

(Edit: BTW, I do realize that the actual "Mage Spawn" I was referring to were really Necropolis Sect figs, but I was also trying to talk about the more general case and whether strategy could deal with it.)

The DM commented:

Bone Golems, Death Merchants and Nightstalkers all have WM, so although they may not have a printed damage value of 4, they can do plenty of damage with a good die roll and a fair amount just on base value, just slightly slower.

Dungeons really does have a much higher chance component than Rebellion/Unlimited. Those tokens can really bring in a lot of firepower at unpredictable times. If they do turn into a lot of monsters at the beginning of the game before you have had a chance to level up, they can hit you very hard very fast.

DragonVenom

It seems like good tile selection (assuming you get a choice) could be a great defense against teams like that.

Lots of tiles with constricted passages would make it hard for the swarms to close. If I saw somebody trying to do that, I'd pick every tile I could find with narrow passages (put in all the corridors you can, and make sure the opponent has to come through you to exit). If you can't find enough narrow passages, MAKE them by mismatching the connections a little (this three squares matches up only one square with that three square passage). Make the dungeon long and narrow instead of multiply connected.

Once you've done that, as long as they have to come get you (and with a team like that, I think they do), you should be okay. All you have to do is stalemate the Mage Spawn, preferably right at a tile boundary - once you've done that, you can use your activations to start Mage Spawn whacking on THEM, or failing that, chew up the opposing MS slowly and methodically (if you need to, activate one at a time to come next to your tile, and then move up to them - just be aware of the planning this takes due to the Mage Spawn movement rules). You'll probably also want to have someone (or maybe even more than one) with Magic Blast on hand if you want to pursue this counter-strategy.

Unfortunately, I don't know if you could finish a game in that style in a tournament setting - it might run long. You certainly won't be giving them the win, though, and that's probably enough to put the kibosh on that style of team.

Doug

bshugg has an impressive army for this scenario but not entirely unbeatable.

In a regular game or multiplayer it gets eaten alive with proper map use and tactics.

IMHO many figure/action armies tend to lose their effectiveness the bigger they get.

Good point, demoss. Actually, in the game I was describing, my opponent was not trying to out-action and swarm me. He was playing with only 3 heroes. I actually had the action advantage since I had 5 (Daren, Jorum, Barber Hurgg, Zenephret and a Goblin Cannibal). If the tokens he brought up had turned out to be yellow, I would have been in great shape, killing the monsters for points and opening up a couple of chests with Zenephret. However, when the first two tokens he brought up turned into 170 points worth of attackers, he would have been stupid to refrain from swarming me with them and he is definitely not stupid.

maelwyn -- sure. Nothing is unbeatable, but bshugg's team is sure hard to beat in this scenario. With good tile placement, good tactics and good luck, you stand a chance. If any of those fail you, a swarm can take you down fast. I agree that in a multiplayer game, your chances of grabbing an action advantage to swarm someone are drastically reduced, but to beat it here you need some luck, or at least an absence of seriously bad luck.:D
DragonVenom

I guess what I meant was that if your opponent plays a "traditional" 3-4 hero team yeah it is pretty good.

But what happens if your opponent plays a similar army?

I no longer play Dungeons with anything less than a 5 action team.

You would have to have a lot of MS tokens close to your opponent to swarm him. If the majority of tokens are in between both players, what stops him from moving them towards you?

If I had half the actions I would position my team defensively and use my actions to move half the MS towards you and feed let my opponent feed the rest of the xp to my team.

I counter this strategy by not placing too many tokens and bringing the weakest (and easiest to hit) MS I can to the table.

What this type of army basically does is catch people by suprise. Not many people play that are prepared for facing an opponent with that many actions thats for sure.

Balduvian and I were probably the only two at the Origins Natls that had armies like this (5+ actions).

Your opponent still has to have some rolls go his way to get to place the MS he wants also.

Kudos to bshugg for an interesting army though! :D

If your party gets jumped by a large number of spawn maybe the best move is to break away and get off the tile so you can move the monsters away or shoot them and you can heal your team members while they are in b2b (+2 to their defense) you have to limit your exposure to spawn when possible--move tokens away from tile before entering when needed

This is a classic example of cardstacking.

When I get the 11 you die...
Your completey open to ms attacks,
I get first strike...
Then the death Merchant deals 6 with wm
and you don't make sure you have a wimpy ms pool..
So, as you can see the only way you can win is to have VERY good luck.:o
Picture this:
I have the typical dungeon sitting in front of me, with my usual build style. For the sake of arguement, say you go first. On my turn I move Zene up and secure on chest, making the ms trapped behind it useless (they need to pass through it) Podo moves into the center of the tile while Levat and Grimm stick to the side away from the counters. Even if your counters go the way you want them to you won't get to my fighters with a non-ranged attack. Next turn I take some pot shots and open the chest. Then, the MS attack. Podo makes sure that only one or two MS are getting at the fighters, unless of course, you kill him, witch would set one of the MS as a road block and waste an action. Anyway, one or two of my fighters survives for my turn, when I retreat everyone out of the tile and use the remaining actions to move the most offensive MS away. You charge with everything you've got no doubt, but the hallway the fighters are in only holds two MS in single file. So now its me and any other one MS, with the two biggest ones forever being moved forward and then back by me and you. In that situation, I can win.

Stacking the deck? Not at all, if you come into the dungeon with less then five actions unless you get ungodly luck its almost over to begin with. I dont need an 11 on monster tokens I just cant have a 2. I f I remember correctly on the red tolken there were have or six numbers that let me get three monsters in play, and several easy numbers let me get insane amounts of figures out. The blue tokens feed monsters fine too. the yellow ones suck but when you cashing in several tokens they dont matter. And at no point in the game am I ever open to MS attacks unless I let my self be. And why in gods name if I was planing on swarming you would a let place a chamber at the begining with only one entrance that can be blocked with a chest? In your example you say that you'd sacrifice podo and then get out of the tile to move away the mage spawn? thats exactly what I'd want you to do. You move three people and one monster. I move the monster back create more and can still attack you. So your in a hall and all I can do is attack you with two monsters? Great its two on one. If you do enough damage to hurt a monster he just backs up and I bring in a fresh one. If you've backed into the hall you might last longer than most but you're still goinng to lose a war of attrition.

THis is officailly my last post on this thread because really this is never going to get agreed upon until a couple of us sit down and play each other and that will never happen.

oh and maelwyn you have it completely right. This army is almost solely useful if your opponent does know its coming. It also works best in this scenario too were there was a red token

In a regular Dungeons H2H game, The tactic is still viable, just a bit harder to accomplish. I would use an 8 action army of:

Magestone Lord*
Det. Zombie*
24ish good attacker.


Graverobber*
Leech Medic**

Podo
Goblin Vol*
Elven Recruit*


Magespawn pool would be:
4 yellow skeletons
2 blue skeletons
2 yellow imp
something good that is 20 pts
something good that is 25 pts.
red Tormented Soul
a few situational wierd figs.

with the tiles all being big empty 5*5's
chests all being number 132.

You have to be more careful and use finesse with the MS, but with a few first strikes with yellow and blue skeletons You will take down there party. The Tormented Soul is a monster in combat after all there main fighters have taken a hit.