Now that the castle pieces have started appearing, has anyone started working on tactics to make use of these pieces or to use against them? It certainly should introduce some new situations to consider, at least in a tournament environment. For one thing, it's the only way to use elevated terrain in any of the standard tournament rules right now.

So far I've only played one game with them. It was 4 players, 2 against 2, with 500 points per player. 2 attacked the castle, two defended. Other than that standard scoring. Unfortunately the two relative neophytes decided they wanted to team up against the two more experienced players and attack the castle. The battle never got anywhere near the castle. So, the few ideas we individually were going to play with never actually go to see play.

The only tactic that actually saw some play was having a healer & necro fig in the tower to call in "reinforcements" should there be casualties on the field. We also had a ML character there to quickly get the revived figures back to the battlefield.

My basic strategy was to have a GA type army to engage and weaken the opponents as they approached the castle, with support pieces back in the castle when the battle reached there. I had a wind minion & creator out on the field. Combined with my co-defender's Thunder Golem, they wounded the Dwarven Steam Behemoth to near death (when the game was called by surrender & informal time limit). Admittedly, the rest of the battle was pretty even (except for poor strategic use of a VSD).

We plan on doing some more experimentation in the next week or two, and I'd like to hear some ideas on how to use the unique properties of this piece for some different armies.

David A. Blizzard

Well, I've only done anti-castle strategy for now, considering I haven't bought anything from Castles yet. The main tactic has been this (and this has annihilated entire castles before). Fly a unit into the middle of the castle, and Shockwave to affect as much of it as possible. It might be good to Shockwave only one part at a time, to gain full effect, but I've found 2-3 hits for 1 damage on 4 castle pieces is more efficient than 1 hit for 3 damage to one castle piece. In particular, I like to use the Wind Minion for this inner-castle destruction duty, as he cannot be fired upon by any part of the castle, requiring some ranged fighters from the castle proper to leave the wall and engage it in b2b.

Another idea that works fairly well against a Castle piece is to sit about 10 inches away from it with a good MBer, and the firing arc up to it blocked by Warrior Sprites or a Wind Minion. This allows you to keep a hammering up on the castle while remaining relativly safe yourself.

For pro-castle tactics, I've got no ideas right at the moment. If I think of any, I'll be sure to post it here first.

steampunk,

What sort of tactics did your opponent use with his castle? Did he have all of his pieces set up in the castle, or did he have a few outside to take care of such things as figures guarded by LI figures?

I like the Wind Minion idea (I can see the castle defenders scrambling like there is a fire in the castle to take this thing out).

David A. Blizzard

Both of your tactics sound interesting, but with the Necro, he CAN get hit, and with the Wind Minion - well, it does not hit too easily and will rarely get more then 2 castle parts in its 5" Shock range. Possibly 3 and a corner tower.

Defend/BA on top of Castles may seem over the top, but it brings your figures from hard to hit to quasi impossible to hit if their ranged defense reaches 24 or so.

LI and similar abilites are not really needed within a Castle. The defense values above 20 should suffice to get hit very rarely - and thats what the next point covers.

Healers are very strong on castles, just because they can still sit behind other figures and those get damaged rather rarely. A Healer helps your warriors stay in perfect shape until the enemy decided to level your fortress.

If your castle has free, enclosed space, place Magic Blasters into your courtyard to shoot through the walls at anything in base contact with them.

If your castle is big enough and has a gate, build a yoyo team or two behind that gate, and when opportunities arise, open the gates, snap out, fire, snap back, and close the gates next turn.

Have a charger or two ready to intercept fast enemies whizzing in in the one turn the doors are still open, so you can use this tactic more often.

General Stormfox

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hiding a MB figure behind Warrior Sprites wouldn't do that well if the caste itself has any ranged attacks. According to the rules, figure bases never block LOS ranged attacks.

Sair

Sair is right. Did not catch this. You cannot hide from a castle if you do not place a HUGE mountain in front of it :)

General Stormfox

Eh, dangit. Guess I'll have to think of a few more tactics after that one. Perhaps just moving within 4 inches of the castle is good, probably having done so with some insane movement (like 14 for any of the Solonavi). Perhaps 14 ranged shots with the Thunder would do well, too, although that'd open you up to getting shot back at.

castles count as elevated terrain which is not legal for tournaments, so I wouldnt worry too much about seeing castles at the local H2H.

Of course tactics on taking them out would be useful for the scenario games and fun games though.

Well, it's true that you won't see them in the "standard" tournaments. However, they do have Castle Tournament rules in the works. Besides that, I mostly play in friendly games.

However, I actually will be playing in a large Castle tournament next weekend. I've agreed to be the "swing" person in a huge battle. I'm designing an army for attacking the castle & one for defending. That way I can fill in where I'm needed.

It's using Conquest rules (which will make it much easier to handle). It should be quite interesting, and probably quite chaotic.

David A. Blizzard