Just the Tips – Alpha Strike

Army Design Part 1: ALPHA STRIKE!

Hi everyone, welcome back to another installment. It’s been a little while, so thanks for sticking around.

I have decided to tackle Army Design in Kings of War, a topic that as I learned is way too big to cover in one article. Instead, it will be a series of articles. The trade off is that I get to delve deeper into each army build, and hopefully there will be more of a payoff when finished. I will be starting with everyone’s favorite Kobra Kai inspiration — Alpha Strike!

What is Alpha Strike?

The basic theory behind Alpha Strike is that you take the role of the aggressor to punch a hole in the enemy lines. You then use this momentum to surround and create a full envelope. Although it sounds easy, there are a lot of things that can go wrong, and being able to adapt to what happens on the battlefield is what separates a good offensive attack from a great one. Knowing this weakness, let’s look at how we can design an army to accomplish this goal.

First, we have to lay out some ground rules.

1. Strike Hard – It’s almost too obvious to include, but the list obviously needs a healthy dose of hammer units. I typically like it in the range of 4–5 depending on the defense of the unit.
2. Strike Fast – Speed is absolutely paramount to the implementation of an offensive list. The faster you get to combat, the faster you can start to surround the enemy.
3. No Mercy – At this point we have to look at what cost we have paid for these very mobile and hard-hitting units. Our army is probably going to be very elite, so that means the rest of the list needs to be built as a delivery system.

CASE STUDY: BASILEA, VARANGUR, ABYSSALS

Using the ground rules, I am going to build 3 army lists split unit-by-unit and by their purpose. Every unit needs to know its role, but that doesn’t mean it’s limited to just that role. In the heat of battle, a unit designed to be a support chaff piece might find itself with a juicy flank or rear and end up becoming the hammer!

HAMMERS

All of the above serve the same general purpose: push forward and smash face. However, there are slight variations that make each of them better in different situations. The most important factor in our hammers is that we can expect 10–12 damage output against Defense 4/5. This means that we have a pretty good chance of taking off the standard regiment in 1 charge and horde in 2 charges. Some units might need some artifacts to take them into this threshold, while others might need a formation.

Among the units listed above, it should be noted that the Fallen have the lowest damage output while the Despoilers have the slowest speed. We will have to compensate for this as we continue to build our list.

SUPPORT

Next we need units either to help keep our hammers alive through Inspire/Heal or help play objectives. The last thing you want to do is force Elohi to carry a push token and reduce their speed to 5. Also, random units that can put some arbitrary damage into a close battle can make all the difference.

As discussed above, we can often expect 10–12 wounds out of a hammer unit. So if we are dealing with a Nerve 18 opponent, doing 2–3 extra damage can take a nerve roll from needing an 8 (unlikely) to a 5 (very likely). (Shameless link to my last article on luck).

So with that in mind, let’s add the following to our lists.

DELIVERY

Lastly, and I would say most importantly, we need units that actually help get our hammers into combat. This means that we need an answer for enemy chaff or at least a way to slow down opponent units so that our hammers get to strike first.

Units that do this role well have a combination of speed or toughness that makes it difficult to deal with. We want these units to be cheap as we have resigned their role to be one of sacrifice.

Next, let’s show an example of “The Delivery”.

In the picture below we have a horde of Elohi and an Abbess on Panther versus our Elf opponent with 2 regiments of Palace Guard (1 and 3) and a horde of Tallspears (2). We find ourselves outnumbered in both units and points; how do we deal with it?

The Delivery

Let’s assume there is no help on the way. We need to strike now! The Elohi can charge Unit 1 while our Abbess charges Unit 2 in order to stop it from moving in the next turn and to soften it up with a few wounds.

Since we have designed our hammer to do roughly 12 wounds in this situation, we can expect a fairly easy roll to break the unit in 1 shot, which sets up the situation below.

The Charge

Unit 3 has no target to charge and so can only turn to face the threatening Elohi.

The Tallspears will counter charge and likely kill our Abbess and then turn to face the Elohi as well, setting up the picture below.

The Follow Up

The Elohi can now take advantage of their Height 2 and Fly to charge Unit 3 and again break them in 1 go.

The Tallspears are now facing the wrong direction and have no option other than to turn to face us.

The Final Showdown

We are now left with a 1-on-1 scenario where the Elohi now get to charge the Tallspears, a fight they should be able to win. Or we can even choose to fly away and help out other areas of the battlefield.

A situation in which we were outnumbered is now turned into an overwhelming victory.

Final Lists

Once we finish adding formations and artifacts, the final lists we have designed to play are below. Please keep in mind these lists are just examples. Now that we learned the tools required, we can make an Alpha Strike list out of almost any army and with a large variety of units.

That’s just the tips for this month. What will we cover next time? Trash builds? Defensive builds? Or God forbid… shooting armies?!?