Dealing with FEC

[Ormly]

I'm having a very hard time dealing with my friend's Flesh-Eater Courts army, and I need advice. I play Sylvaneth.

1. Kills off my important units with impunity right away

His faction abilities give his units +2 movement, and he can case Spectral Host (charge and run) on a flyer from outside unbinding range on round 1.

This is an extreme example, but last battle on turn one, after I slightly advanced to barely outside my territory. Sent an Abhorrant Ghoul King on Royal Terrorgheist, moved it something like 25" (14" base + 3" run, + 2"  + charge). He split its attacks to cut a group of Tree-Revenants and my Spirit of Durthu at once, then used Feeding Frenzy, and killed Alarielle, , despite using All-Out Defense on Alarielle.

1,145 points lost before my 1st turn. Game over. And if it hadn't worked, well, he has two of them, and he can Feeding Frenzy one of them every round without even spending CP.

This is a big part of the problem: Terrorgheist's Gaping Maw: If the unmodified hit roll for an attack made with Fanged Maw is 6, that attack inflicts 6 mortal wounds on the target unit and the attack sequence ends. Both of them have a trait that rerolls failed hits with this. Usually he gets off at least one spell that adds attacks, with +4 attacks in the worst case, but usually +2, which is still plenty. If just one six comes up, that's half Spirit of Durthu. If two come up, Alarielle's dead. Before the other damage is considered.

2. Summoning power

His FEC army can summon ~450 points / 50 wounds of units in round 1 (without spellcasting).

[yukishiro1]

Sounds like you need to screen better. One terrorgheist shouldn't be able to get into 1145 points of models, that's bad positioning on your part. It also sounds like he's (unintentionally?) cheating since you can't take both the +2 movement sub-faction and the delusion that lets you get the free Feeding Frenzy once per turn, it's one or the other. And in that situation on a 4+ you make him fight last and Durthu potentially kills him before he even attacks so it's still a very risky play. Also on a 3+ you're roaring him and he isn't attacking twice. So the odds of that play working are like virtually zero. 

Without knowing your list it's hard to say more but if you leave more than half your points value within activation range of a terrorgheist occasionally you are going to be punished badly for it, which sounds like what happened here. 

 

 

Edited January 25, 2022 by yukishiro1

[Maogrim]

@mods 

This discussion should probably be moved to the Sylvaneth subforum. 

[Freejack02]

52 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

Sounds like you need to screen better. One terrorgheist shouldn't be able to get into 1145 points of models, that's bad positioning on your part. It also sounds like he's (unintentionally?) cheating since you can't take both the +2 movement sub-faction and the delusion that lets you get the free Feeding Frenzy once per turn, it's one or the other. And in that situation on a 4+ you make him fight last and Durthu potentially kills him before he even attacks so it's still a very risky play. Also on a 3+ you're roaring him and he isn't attacking twice. So the odds of that play working are like virtually zero. 

@Ormly Basically this sums it up perfectly - it's likely your friend doesn't realize he can't be doing all the things he's doing, but more importantly this is a situation where you really learn to screen your important units from the opposing threats. If he's investing so much into throwing a single GKoT across the board at you, learning how to minimize the impact will set you up pretty well to deal with the rest of the army. 

Don't feel too bad, this FEC strategy was pretty meta-dominating for a while until people really learned how to play around it (there were nerfs involved as well). Also Sylvaneth just seem to be weak to MWs in general - Durthu at least could take an Amulet of Destiny (meh) but Alarielle is in danger of getting 1-shot by mortals. They heal very well, but the trade off is being vulnerable to burst damage. 

Edited January 25, 2022 by Freejack02

[Ormly]

Thanks! I took all the advice here and put it to use last night.

I screened much better, and he tried the same thing. Terrorgheist was stopped short by battle line, which yes, all died, but that's their job. TG then killed by Spirit of Durthu + Alarielle. The thing had a 5+ ward, so it took a zillion wounds, but it died. (2 VP for Bring it Down!) Next round he sent in a buffed up missile of a Varghulf Courtier, and it managed to die to Talon of Withering (first time it ever worked for me).

With better positioning/screening, Alarielle lived through the whole game. She was at 1 wound once and 3 wounds once, but healed back to full both times. I see the healing/burst thing now. Hard time against FEC, like a roulette wheel, but I'll cope.

I still lost, but it was very close, and mostly came down to priority in round 3, which I understand is often the case. Even still, it was anybody's game all the way up to rd 5.

It was an awesome game, owing partly to guidance from here.

P.S.:

• If there's a Sylvaneth subforum, I haven't found it.
• I was mistaken about Blisterskin / free Feeding Frenzy. He was taking one or the other in different games, and his provided list did include that, I just didn't catch the change.

Edited January 26, 2022 by Ormly
Correction.

[yukishiro1]

Glad to hear you had a better experience. Learning how to effectively screen is one of the most important skills in AOS (less than it used to be thanks to the proliferation of shooting, but still really important) and it takes a while to figure it out with each list, especially against stuff like FEC that has a double pile-in that messes with the movement calculations you need to do. 

 

[Arzja]

On 1/25/2022 at 8:22 PM, Ormly said:

Both of them have a trait that rerolls failed hits with this.

This isn't allowed anymore btw. The core rules prohibit duplicate mount traits.

[Ormly]

On 1/27/2022 at 2:24 AM, Arzja said:

This isn't allowed anymore btw. The core rules prohibit duplicate mount traits.

That was my mistake as well. He had changed which unit had the trait in different games, and I was confused. I'm still at a stage where shuffling things like command/mount traits and artefacts doesn't stick in my brain from one game to the next. If it looks the same on the battlefield, I can't remember what all is supposed to be different. I've gotten in the habit of just asking to be reminded as many times as I need, and my opponents have been patient with that.