Thoughts after my Initial Vanguard Tournament

Having played my first Vanguard tournament in Dark Sphere last weekend, I thought I would share some thoughts on the game. First off, thanks to Dark Sphere, Angry Grot Events and all my opponents for a great day out.

Speed of Play. I only finished one of the 4 games. The others got stuck half way through turn 3. This may have been partly due to a lack of familiarity with the rules but was also due to the need to really think through your next move and consider the order in which to activate your models and to consider the myriad of options open to the opponent. It needs at least as much thought as KoW and plays more slowly. Deduction: consider victory conditions right from the start.

Rules. Not as ā€˜cleanā€™ as KoW. Particular issues arose over determining whether a run action qualified as a charge and over fighting on multi height terrain. My last game involved fighting over a fortress with walkways and elevated rooms, a complete rules nightmare.

Power Dice. Really important to use effectively and select which units to force fatigue while retaining dice to clear fatigue in the end phase. Attacking enemy command models to reduce their pool of dice is normally a good move. Power Dice are less important in the first turn to support combat but can be used to good effect in enabling you to get into good positions.

Activations and Initiative. It is sometimes important to have the initiative in the next round. One opponent wrong-footed me by using group actions to burn through their activations to ensure they finished activating first and therefore got the initiative. Of course, this gave me extra ā€˜freeā€™ activations with no options for enemy counter moves.

Just my two pennyworth.

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Yeah, there are some people who claim that a game of Vanguard is only 45 min. Those people are either very practiced, very sloppy, or liars.:slight_smile: Including setup, breakdown, and modest socializing our games take 3 hrs. In a tournament setting, I could see halving that and still being accessible. Anything less than that is maddeningly frenetic.

Iā€™m curious what rules issues might have come up with run and elevation?

I agree with both of your summaries. V2 Vanguard might be a decent tournament game but the rules set right now is much more towards beer and pretzels.

Elevation was an issue as we played over terrain with castle walls, battlements, elevated rooms etc. Issue such as:

  • What happens when a model charges from the bottom of a ladder into engagement with a model standing at the top of the ladder? Can it engage if there is no space for it to stand at the top of the ladder? What happens after combat; does the charging model return to the bottom of the ladder if it has not killed the enemy? Are the models still engaged?

  • Can a flying model engage an enemy if there is no space for it to stand on the terrain adjacent to the model being charged? (On elevated terrain, clever placing may make some models immune to being engaged.)

The issue with running/charging often revolved around defining the most direct route.

I realise your post is rather old here, but I cam eup with some ā€œhouseā€ rules on ladders here:

Iā€™d be interested to hear your thoughts if youā€™re still active on here :slight_smile:

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Afraid that it is a long time since I played Vanguard.

I think that elevation is a major issue that will not be resolved with a quick fix. Issues include how do fliers attack units standing on the edge of higher terrain. A major overhaul is required and bets option in the interim is probably to avoid multi-level play.

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Yes, lots of multi-level does seem tricky. Thankfully for me, in my small set up I just have the one ladder and none of the warbands have the ā€œflyā€ special rule.

It would be good to see Mantic address the issue though with some kind of update or errata. Iā€™m not sure the problems are quite as major as you say, but they do need some thought to make something fair and balanced.