Attrition in Retribution, Retribution vs. Armor Open Thread

Way (way) back when I joined the blog, I did a little thinking on the subject of attrition as it applied to Skorne.  The discussion mainly involved trading: who to sacrifice to the enemy, and how to set up the counterattack.

As a part-time Ret player, I'm interested in how the 2 factions do things differently, and in what Retribution needs to watch out for in an attrition-y match.

When I'm playing for attrition with Retribution, I usually try to get the edge early with shooting and set up the first charge on the same turn or the next turn.  I find that if I'm taking the alpha strike, or if I didn't do enough damage shooting, my list tends to lose the attrition war.  That's often ok, since Retribution assassinates well, but it can be a little nerve-wracking, especially if your opponent is careful.

I'm also a little curious about Retribution against heavy armor.  I played an armor-skew list recently against a Ret list with a lot of their traditional armor-cracking tools, and it didn't go well for the angry elves.  Admittedly, bad luck played a role, but I think even if it had been in my opponent's favor, he would have had a difficult time.

So I'm mostly asking any Ret players reading what they do in a slugfest, even if it's just doing their best to avoid one.

What do you use?  How do you position?  When is it useful to trade, and what do you do to set up favorable trades?  How do you deal with massive Arm-skew?

Any co-bloggers who want to comment can feel free to edit this post if they like, or even highjack it completely :)

MaxterMynd's comments:

This started as a comment but then exploded, so I decided to hijack the post. I agree that Retribution doesn't do attrition particularly well- we're really dependent on having our high quality infantry get the job done, and when we start to lose our critical mass we start to lose the game. But the thing that Retribution has in spades is assassination potential, so even if we're up against a really skewy list it's still possible to ignore most of it and go straight for the caster.

But even if it is a skewy list we can have the tools to deal with it. Some of them are specialized, like Ossyan's and Issyria's feats, but others can fit in most lists. The key thing to remember is that if the Retribution is going to make an impact on armor skew lists it needs to be dictating the flow of battle. We are much faster and have longer threat ranges than the typical brick list, and we need to use that the advantage to get the alpha (if not multiple alphas) or position our units for the scenario or assassination end game.

I'll go through the three sections (Alpha strike aka The Hard Hitters, Scenario Play and Assassination play):

 

The Hard Hitters

- Stormfall Archers. Better against single wound shield wall infantry (starstrike rounds set things on fire) or medium armored multiwound infantry (brutal shots), but with Ossyan can be used to eliminate Colossals and in a pinch can do decent damage to heavily armed targets with normal brutals.

-Halberdiers + UA + Thane. They will almost always get the alpha off if you are smart with a 13-15" threat range and will demolish any heavy on arrival and even take large chunks out of colossals. In a game that I'm writing up right now they were even able to eliminate an entire unit of shield walled Man-o-War Shocktroopers. The great thing about these guys is that with Reform you can move to avoid getting hit yourself by either moving in to engage or back out of charge distance from other threats.

-Sentinels. These guys have fallen a bit out of my favor as the Halberdiers are just so good, but they hit like trucks on all turns instead of the Halberdiers' one shot of gang and are more resilient to losing numbers thanks to natural strength and Vengeance.

-Invictors. Pow 12-14 shots are no joke, and can flank with warjacks.

-The Murder of Griffons. Sadness is seeing an Aspis one round your colossal or Miserable Meat Mountain when on a +7 Synergy chain. This list tends to suffer from having a limited number of attacks and is generally better vs multiple heavy lists than tons of multiwound infantry, but can do either in a pinch thanks to the burst of speed that the feat provides.

-Aiyanna and Holt. Pow 16 charging Halberdiers thankyouverymuch!

-Mage Hunter Assassins. Especially if you can get repeated use from them, doing an average of 8 damage a piece to ARM 19 heavies is no joke and can help things like our heavies finish off their targets.

-Hyperion, particularly if he is Inviolable Resolved or Polarity Fielded, as then he's hard to get rid of and still packs a punch.

Movement Shenanigans/Scenario Play

If you can't take out the armor you can at the least delay it and play for scenario. Jamming with Halberdiers is the premier shared tactic here, as not only do they take out the front line but then they slow up the second as they have to deal with your angry elves. And since they're just so fast already this likely sets the line of engagement rather far back. This works with any of our fast infantry such as Infiltrators, but I think that it works best on the Halbs. This play is especially sick with Kaelyssa as it preserves the alpha and allows us to set the line of engagment even further back.

Other plays come from the AFG (rough terrain templates and slamming targets into one another), the Banshee (run or charge it up to prevent units from giving orders, thereby slowing them up and forcing them to deal with an ARM 19 heavy without charging) and Rahn (TK and Force Hammer all day).

Play for Assassination

Retribution is one of the few armies that can just ignore the enemy's army and go straight for the caster and support. Strike Force can threaten things like the Kriel Stone or the caster, our many slams will clear lines of sight for our many guns and work any number of angles for killing the caster. Rahn especially is great at this style of play, as all it takes is one or two Assassins TK'ed into position on a knocked down caster to spell good night. Ravyn (if the caster is lightly armored), Issyria and Ossyan all play this tactic well.

 Conclusion

 Retribution can take on heavily armored lists, but it takes a bit of planning and forethought. If you get bogged down or don't get the correct dice math you can get quickly screwed, so preserving your forces as long as possible while getting the alpha strike or maneuvering for scenario or assassination play is critical. Get the game plan in place, and then follow through, but always keep an eye on assassination (which, really, all good elves do).