Obviously a lot of it depends on team/terrain, but if you were playing a tournament match where you had to (for whatever reason) pick characters blind, what order would you put as your preference?
Australian living in Toronto. I make a lot of games. http://about.peterchayward.com
My order:
Australian living in Toronto. I make a lot of games. http://about.peterchayward.com
Proletariat is last?! I hope Christopher doesn't see this list. :)
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
-Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"
Haha when the Gencon tournaments go up, you'll see his reaction to my thoughts on Proletariat.
Australian living in Toronto. I make a lot of games. http://about.peterchayward.com
So they actually save the video else where right? Because Twitch deletes it after 14 or 60 days and we're well outside that period now.
Stop lurking, it makes you look like a villain target
When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all
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Yup! They typically put them up on YouTube - this one had some technical issues but I believe it's still coming.
Australian living in Toronto. I make a lot of games. http://about.peterchayward.com
Based on what I've seen in the tournaments and because of rulings since I haven't done skirmishes much myself:
Really the bottom three are a bit interchangeable as I never any of them able to have a lot of impact regularly. Christopher's game with Proletariat is the main reason he is the top out of them. I'd like those bottom three to be higher honestly as I a fan of Absolute Zero and Proletariat.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
It was really hard to come up with a list, but I think i've finally came up with one that I liked.
1. Absolute Zero, Ambyscade, Baron Blade, Beacon, Bunker, Citizen Dawn, Legacy, Omnitron-V, Proletariat, Ra, Tachyon, The Operative, The Wraith, The Visionary, and Unity
Alphabetical order for the win!
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
-Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"
Here's my order, I tier them.
Tier 1: (Ban or First pick level) Tachyon.
Tier 2: (Ban or build team around) Baron Blade, Citizen Dawn, Ambuscade, Wraith, Operative, Legacy.
Tier 3: (Solid on any team) Unity, Bunker, Beacon.
Tier 4: (Only on the right team) Omnitron-V, Ra, Visionary
Tier 5: (Avoid unless they are the perfect last pick) Absolute Zero, Proletariat.
That's how I would go, my basic team strategy:
1. Ban Tachyon unless you pick first, then you ban someone who counters the team you are hoping to build (Blade if I want Tachyon).
2. First Pick Tachyon or if she is gone grab the tier 2 character you want most, of course being conscious of bans and their first pick.
3. From the tier 2-4 list grab the character that works best with your first pick, or block a counter pick.
4. Fill out your team with a more situational character that fits your strategy, or counter pick an opposing strategy.
If I get Tachyon I'm trying to get Citizen Dawn, Unity, Legacy, Wraith, Visionary, in that order. (Tach/Dawn/Legs is my favorite, but very hard to get)
I haven't played much Tactics yet, but the team I've thought about running is Absolute Zero, Visionary, and Proletariat.
Maybe there's a hidden synergy I've found, or maybe I'm just a contrarian by nature...
Tier 1: Very powerful. Take them if they're available and their counter's haven't been picked.
Tachyon, Legacy, Bunker, Baron Blade, Citizen Dawn, Operative
Tier 2: Overall good.
Ambuscade, Unity, Wraith, Omnitron-V, Beacon, Proletariat
Tier 3: Very situational. Use only if their specialties can really shine.
Absolute Zero, Visionary, Ra
Or as a numerical list of favoritism:
"Deja-fu? You've heard of that?"
- Lu Tze, Sweeper, Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
- Tachyon
- Baron Blade
- Citizen Dawn
- Operative
- Omnitron-V
- Legacy
- Bunker
- Beacon
- Wraith
- Unity
- Ambuscade
- Visionary
- Ra
- Absolute Zero
- Proletariat
I am amazed to see Baron Blade so low on so many of your lists.Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
I know right?
Especially ranking him lower than Ambuscade.
Hello my name is Alistair. Since this is my first post none of you may know me, but I am a member of the adaptive subroutines. We finished second at the world championships for tactics. I have also complied a tier list, but this tier list was created around competitive play. Heroes have different value when you are picking for a coordinated team. There are certain goals and win conditions each team is trying to achieve. I explained my reasoning for each character placement as well, thank you:
Character tiers Updated after season 1
1. Citizen Dawn: Dawn is too good at everything her kit is overloaded with solid damage, healing, the best tank in the game, team buffs, off turn team actions, debuffs for the enemy team, and arguably the best one shot in the game. Her passive allows her damage to scale as the match becomes more bloody. In competitive play Dawn is a must pick or ban for any team at this point.
2. Bunker: Bunker is a powerful pick dealing high damage from both long and short range. He features a high health pool coupled with the highest base defense. Omni cannon gives bunker the highest based attack in the game. Expert tactician also gives him huge team utility. Bunker in turret mode can deal extreme damage while also ignoring any forced movement crowd control. Bunker is a force to be reckoned with for any opponent.
3. Legacy: Legacy is a huge flex pick. He can play both tank and support very well. Being able to mitigate an attack roll, trade places with people in line of sight, being able to generate tokens for himself and allies, and he is one of two heroes with a group heal. Legacy is also one of the best damage scalers in the game. Between surge of strength, galvanize, inspiring presence, and flying smash a clever Legacy can sit back store up attack tokens and one shot even the the strongest of opponents.
4. Operative: Operative is one of the most difficult heroes to play against. With her dragons frenzy passive being one of the best passives in the games she can 1v1 any one. Then she can further strengthen her attacks with undivided attention. She has a whole deck of poisons to debuff the opposing team. Then there is kusarigama which is the best displacing power in the game. The only thing that really limits operative is she can't fly and she is mostly close range. But she is an absolute nightmare for melee focused heroes.
5. Ambuscade: Ambuscade is the hardest hero to kill and is great at cutting down tanks and squishies alike. His bombs are one of the best ways to control opponent movement and they also provide so much out play potential. Cloaking device allows him to be an absolute terror for any priority target and makes him one of the most mobile heroes in the game. The only down fall for Ambuscade is he doesn't have any real buffs for his allies, or debuffs for his enemies. But Ambuscade is still a strong counter pick into most team comps.
6. Unity: Unity has fallen from top support in the game with the recent ruling limiting her go bots action. However champion bot and turret bot are still incredibly powerful. Now Unity players must take longer to position her bots. As a result this can leave vulnerability window for her enemies take advantage of before she has everyone in position. But her combo of swift bot into reconfiguration for an almost instant bot delivery is still potent to either provide aid to her allies or frustrate her opponents. She fits most comfortably now in fortress comps.
7. Baron Blade: Baron Blade is a Jack of All Trades kind of hero. He scales well with his passive, he is incredibly mobile with displacing teleporter, and hard to kill because of sabre battle suite, and kinetic redistributor. But Baron Blade fits best as a pocket counter pick. Able to frustrate most teams with his one shots and he can single handedly deter the token generation strategy. But he lacks the full power to have only him as a damage dealer, and can't really protect or buff his allies. With his out play potential he can still take over a game, but he is a tad more situational.
8. Ra: Ra is damage. Kind of a one trick poney in that sense, but in a game that is about killing your opponents damage is a stat that should not be overlooked. Ra may not be as crafty or efficient as some of the higher ranked heroes when it comes to dealing damage, but he puts dice on the table, a lot of dice on the table, and with his mid tier ranking he can easily round out a team comp in need of a hard hitter.
9. Wraith: Wraith fits an interesting role in team comps. She is hands down the strongest dualist in the game, but her best role for a team since she has mediocre damage is to be an off tank and debuffer. Between her passive, slip into shadows, stun bolt, and adhesive foam pellets she can go solo into the enemy team and apply movement, attack, and defense debuffs to the opposing team with very little risk. Creating openings for allies.
10. Omnitron: Omnitron is a beast that does a lot of interesting things, but is outclassed by many heroes. He does tote the largest health pool, but isn't the best tank. He has the second highest base attack power, but is out classed by more efficient hitters. He has a four hex leap, but is not the most mobile hero. So overall Omnitron can fit your team as a second tier pick for most roles if your ideal picks are unavailable.
11. Tachyon: Tachyon is one of the more flashy heroes. She has extremely powerful health abilities. But with a small health pool Tachyon has a very limited amount times she can take an extra turn or hit someone really hard. Her other abilities are a little underwhelming and without her light speed barrage her damage output is relatively low. When tachyon is not being a hitter she has little to provide her team, and she is very easily countered and negated by opposing team comps causing Tachyon to not do anything or die excessively.
12. Beacon: Beacon is in a odd place. She has some powerful abilities between focused blast, kreyow, head on collision and fortitude. She also features some great utility abilities with next evolution and bolstering team up. What really limits her is the fact she has only two actions. Even with her mobility she doesn't have an effective gap close or much in the way of surge abilities. As a result, Beacon is taking an action to either get into position to either hit an enemy or support an ally. So in a team comp she ends up not hitting most of the time and is kind of stuck being a walking bolstering team up.
13. Proletariat: Proletariat is the strongest late game scaling hero in the game. If allowed to get to full manifestations he can destroy any target. The only problem is getting to that level of strength. He is very vulnerable until then making him a high risk high reward hero. So as a result Proletariat is played mostly as an off tank. This makes him hard to kill, but it significantly delays his damage output.
14. The Visionary: Visionary is the only hero whose kit screams support. With dice manipulation being a huge part of her kit she has so much she can contribute to a team. The challenge with Visionary is that she is very vulnerable so she needs to stay out of the fight, but also close enough to interact with it. This forces her to keep decoy out for her own protection, but unfortunately because of decoys positioning it typically separates her from her team. Though dice manipulation is powerful she can be too much of a liability at times.
15. Absolute Zero: Absolute Zero suffers from a kit without any clear identity. He is a two action hero and more so than most this limits his play making significantly. He can change terrain, but because of his lack of mobility the enemy typically escape his pillars. He has bonus reach, but it's only plus 2 which kind of limits him as a long range poke champion. Since his most damaging abilities require him to lose health or be at low health he typically can be targeted fairly quickly by a coordinated team.
Excellent analysis of the characters!
"Deja-fu? You've heard of that?"
- Lu Tze, Sweeper, Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
Thank you :)
Welcome!
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
-Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"
Glad you could join us, Alistair!
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
Very cool. How do you counter Tachyon?
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
We have two major favorites:
"But dice are dice, and Dice are Fickle"
Internet Pseudonyms: PseudonymTwitch, PseudonymTweetr, PseudonymGamer
Thanks.
Tachyon's admittedly vulnerable to hazards, but usually this means that she simply goes and focuses on someone else. If you've built your whole team with hazards in order to counter her, well, then she's to some extent already done her work, as she's forced you into a particular team, and presumably your other two picks can do well against them.
I agree that leaving Tachyon at low health is probably the best way to manager her, but then to some extent, she's already won. My vision of how to use Tachyon is that she wins any race, meaning she will incapacitate you before you incapacitate her. If she does nothing else but run over into a corner and make it hard to reach her to get that 3rd point, she's still make this a game where your opponents only need to get two incaps.
But, really, points taken. My rebuttals are admittedly weak. Still, I'd keep Tachyon in the top tier for sure, and probably still number 1.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
Six other options can help against Tachyon.
1. Tanky characters. She doesn't do much with her base power in terms of damage. Tanky characters force her to use Lightspeed Barrage, and some characters, like Legacy and Citizen Truth, can usually survive it, especially if they dodge. Bunker can also do well with all the defense and defense +1 tokens. Visionary can turn squishy characters into tanky characters with the right rolls.
2. Damage redirection. If Tachyon gets hit by her own attack, she can't afford to keep up the high-speed vollies. Baron Blade, the Operative (sorta) and Tachyon have the only redirections in the game.
3. Remove her power cards. This doesn't stop her outright, but it slows her down. Citizen Dawn is the card destroyer here.
4. Kite her. For this, you need to be able to slow her down and keep out of her range. AZ can slow her down, but the Wraith can kite her with adhesive foam pellets and slip into shadows.
5. Debuff her. Give her attack -1 tokens and now everyone is equivalently Bunker against her attacks. She can burn them off quickly, but she isn't doing much when she does.
6. Kill her first. Tachyon is about trading blows. If she defeats someone first, then you defeat her, you are losing the trading game. If you defeat her first, the tables are turned. This usually requires long range or the option 1 tanky characters.
"Deja-fu? You've heard of that?"
- Lu Tze, Sweeper, Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
A lot of teams seem to make the mistake of expecting Tachyon to carry. Tachyon is an assasin. You don't tank for tachyon, you hit and run until the table is set for your big assault. If you are lucky enough to get Dawn + Tachyon Spring can heal her 2 each of her turns, so you can hit, run and heal. We do this with Pushing the limits and a single LSB each turn, before running back to safety to heal.
Without that you rock your defense, poke and run and when the time is right throw down.
I try to pair her with pokers and big-hitters like Bunker, Baron Blade, Unity but Ideally Dawn.
My favorite counter to Tachyon is Ambuscade. She can't run from you and you can one-shot her almost every time you uncloak if she doesn't use interruption.
Kite?
Just assume I'm always doing that.
Damn it, Ronway!
It's a term I'm familiar with from World of Warcraft. Basically the idea is you have a target follow you through traps that slow them down while you slowly take down their health.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
Yes. In this case, you reduce their movement and attack from a far enough distance that they can't just sprint up to you. With Slip Into Shadows, even if they get close to attack, the Wraith can run further away.
"Deja-fu? You've heard of that?"
- Lu Tze, Sweeper, Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
Ah, I see. Haven't played WoW and never heard that one before.
Just assume I'm always doing that.
Damn it, Ronway!
You can't really "kite" Tachyon however. It doesn't work that way in practice (though in theory it sounds all well and good).
The biggest issue with power cards that reduce movement is that the payoff doesn't really outweigh the cost of the power card itself in most cases since the movement restriction usually isn't that big of a deal, not to mention there are diminishing returns to how effective a loss of 1 movment is (the reduction from 6-5 is really no problem at all, while 1-0 can be nusaince, but you already had a crap roll in the first place right?). If we are talking about Tachyon here, the probability you make a crap roll with 3 die is on the low end of the spectrum. And with all that being taken into account, the lions share of characters have Sprint which is better than a move roll of 1 or 2 (or even more if elevation is taken into account). This further hurts the value of movment reducing cards from the likes of AbZero or Wraith. This tends to be a greater issue within the current kits of characters rather than their effectivness in countering a high mobility target like Tachyon, but it's a problem non-the-less.
The best way to shut down Tachyon is to play off of her biggest weakness, being the amount of die she rolls for attacks. When she goes off on her sprint-attack combos, she rolls 3 die at a time with some automisses. Give her more automisses, reduce the number of die she rolls with, or just flat out prevent her from Sprinting (some of these are rather difficult to do however with the current cast of characters). Characters like Legacy/Bunker being tanky reduce her effectivness. Ambuscade has his niche "melee only defense" card (funny that it has tachyon in the art), and barrons redistributor are also solid at making it harder for Tachyon to go full on assault mode.
But attacking her movement value when you could have a better power card in play is just not ever going to be very effective.
It depends on the movement attacking card. If it reduces their movement by 1 or by # of successes, it isn't going to be worthwhile, but if it drops her movement to 1 or 0, it works great. I am unfortunately away from my cards and don't remember Wraith's Adhesive Foam Pellet movement reduction amount.
I was just giving out all the different ways to stop Tachyon that I could think of. Some of them may definitely be sub-optimal.
"Deja-fu? You've heard of that?"
- Lu Tze, Sweeper, Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
I don't know Tachyon just isn't the most efficient hitter. Yes she can make the big play; which usually means she is hanging back waiting for her moment to strike. I just feel like as a result the game can get away from Tachyon. And if she is countered she does nothing for her team essentially making it a 2 v 3. Tachyon has her place though, she is a solid third pick for the first ban team. My recommendation for a realistic Tachyon team is Legacy first pick, Unity second pick, third pick tachyon. It is very possible for Legacy to make it through the bans, swift bot reconfiguration into champion or even turret bot provide excellent flexibility in buffing/protecting Tachyon. 5 die sprint attacks are much more terrifying then 3 die. And worst case scenario Legacy can save Tachyon and then switch out for motivational charge to heal her.
I know you did quite well in the championships, but I think you overlook an important aspect of Tachyon. Her greatest strength is that she can fairly easily get a 2-for-1 incap score swing in your teams favor by with taking two turns in a row and belting out a high number of attacks per turn. In a tournament setting where its 3 incaps to win, a single hero getting going 2-1 is very significant. That is really her only job in team comps to get that score swing. Her 3 attack die may not seem like much, but because of the volume of times she rolls that attack, law of large numbers kinda dictates that you will likely see damage go through. Death by Paper Cuts. It's not efficient you are right, but her sprint/attack with Momentum is uber efficient in action economy to make up for it.
If I'm leading a team and we choose to not ban/pick Tachyon, we need at least 2 of our 3 team choices to be hard for her to kill outright to deny the 2-for-1 swing. I think this is where Bunker/Legacy/Blade move up the meta tier list since they can do that without sacing a lot of power to do so, while someone like Wraith goes down because imo if you can force Wraith to keep out Slip Into Shadows than thats a fairly big win (she wont debuff Tachyon enough with the sheer volume of attacks Tachyon puts down), and heroes like Unity/Visionary are toaster struddle status.
Clarification:
Ambuscade's Plating gives him +1 defense and then gives melee attackers a D-1 token for each of their dice he blocks. He is a very good counter for Tachyon, largely because he just incaps her no matter where she is.
A team with a Tachyon has to be built around her. You need toughness and distraction, and poke damage. Dawn/Legacy/Tachyon is by far the best in my opinion, because Legacy can let her burn her health to 1 and survive to be fully healed by a heal focused Dawn/Spring.
I like Baron a lot, since he can usually beat on people from range and survive, as well as jump behind teams to get lower hp characters, which goes great with Tachyon's kit. He also counters Hazard attacks with redistributor, which makes it hard to use them to counter Tachyon.
Wraith has survivability and poke in spades, and thus works fantastically with Tachyon to set her up for a big turn.
Unity is another Tachyon friend, although you have to be smart (and don't go gainst Baron with those two) Running Champ into their team (swift/recon) and then focusing anyone in range with Tachyon's nimble strike at 5D is incredible.
Maybe it's because so much of what I 'know' about Tactics was learned by watching the tournaments, including Foote's commentary at PAX East, but what he's saying sounds spot on to me.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
The "easily" acquired 2-1 score swing is mostly achieved in the first turn of the first round. I agree this is a good swing, but most(if not all) characters have a devensive card that should be played at start of game, regardless of what they want to play with their first turn, and that can really make Tachyon's day a bummer. If that swing is not acquired the first turn of the first round, the likelihood that she will make that swing goes way far down. Most tourney maps have/had starting positions that would not be friendly to Hypersonic Assault, so most Tachyons have PTL/Unrelenting momentum to get there, and a bonus turn with two LSBs and possibly two more three-die attacks.
Ehh, yeah, I agree that debuffing is not her way to fight back here. I'm a bigger fan of Combat Stance + Infrared Eyepiece/Slip Into Shadows, as that makes her less appealing as a target, and then she can switch into her main playstyle afterwards. Bringing your argument back around, if The Wraith makes Tachyon burn two of her actions on her for a possible 'cap, then that 2-1 swing is even less likely, and therefore, wraith has done her job.
All that to say, I agree Tachyon can be very potent in the right map and starting positions; however, I will take the chances of her dice on her two 6-die attacks almost any day and just play against the other two members of her team.
"But dice are dice, and Dice are Fickle"
Internet Pseudonyms: PseudonymTwitch, PseudonymTweetr, PseudonymGamer
Hmm.
In terms of a numerical ranking, I'd go:
1. Visionary
2. Tachyon
3. Baron Blade
4. Operative
5. Ra
6. Legacy
7. Wraith
8. Proletariat
9. AZ
10. Bunker
11. Beacon
12. Unity
13. Ambuscade
14. Dawn
15. Omnitron
Way too many people underestimate the Visionary. She controls everything and allows for an astonishing number of strategies. Granting Mobility alone is phenomenal!
Tach is strong, but if you don't have a solid plan after your power turn (pushing the limits, light speed, etc), then you're just going to trade incaps. But pair with a healer, or Legacy in Tank mode and you get something truly beautiful.
BB is one of my favorites. He can deny tokens. He can damage from distance. He can deny powers. He can move around like no ones business. Basically, he can take any strategy and day "nope"!
I disagree that it has to be the first turn or the first round at all. Why does that have to be the case? If my experience with Tachyon has taught me anything, its that 2for1 swing comes in the second round a majority of the time, which is why most tournament games never got into a 3rd round.
With that said, the fact that Tachyon by herself nets you a 2for1, with 2 other teamates and turns to try and just get 1 incap between them, makes her incredibly good.
I can't take this seriously with Dawn at the bottom. Her action economy alone with her Citizens out gets her to top 2 just by itself.
I put her at the bottom because she's very much a known quantity. She's good, but I don't like using her because of all the baggage she brings with the current meta.
You don't have to take it seriously.
I wouldn't disagree, it all depends on teams you build. Her true power is she makes you deal with Truth in the draft, because if you have no way to deal with Truth you might as well hang it up and go home. Then she doesn't have to use Truth at all.
That right there is her biggest strength to me, the ability to force teams to build a team that can stop something you aren't even planning to do.
1.) Overall this is a dice game theres never a guarantee for a 2 to 1 swing with anyone
2.) The 2 for 1 swing idea is why I build against Tachyon with Hazards/ Tanks. With a Legacy with heroic interception and danger sense/ Truth on the team this hyper turn could turn out as nothing but 3 damage on Tachyon.. maybe a death on Truth. ... and I then just ignore until she decides to incap herself to try to hyper turn again/ we need to kill her. With a turret/champion on Unity you can discourage her to even get close.. The same idea with a Hidden Blade Strike with Operative. With a Operative in dragons frenzy you could very easily ignore her damage with 5 defense die. A Bunker with 4 defense die could also reasonably withstand her hyper turn.
The idea that you can counter her hyper turn with strong characters fairly easily is why I think she is not deserving of a higher tier spot, her counterers deserve that spot.
By no means do I think that Tachyon is weak I just dont think she's the unstoppable beast this thread kind of makes her out to be. (That's Dawn or Bunker currently in my humble opinion)
"Quintessential Tactics Experience: Arguing Over Range" - Worlds Tournament 2015