Contender Series: Board Choice and Placement

This article is a part of the Contender Series, the goal of which is to encourage players to begin participating in Organized Play events, attending tournaments and Grand Clashes, and overall up their competitive game to improve as players and ultimately win more often. While I am not personally some competitive ace taking home glass every weekend, I do have advice to help get newer players off the ground and set you on the path to success, and also can point you to better players than myself where you can get more focused advice when you’re at that stage. I will attempt to keep this article series ‘timeless’, so while I’ll reference specific warbands, cards, and mechanics occasionally, I want it to be relevant for years and so will try to refrain from focusing too much on today’s current competition climate. With those things said, let’s dive into this article’s main topic: Choosing, rolling for, and placing your boards.

Check out the rest of the Contender Series for more competitive pointers:
Warband Choice
Deckbuilding Overview
Deckbuilding: Objective Cards
Deckbuilding: Gambits
Deckbuilding: Upgrades
Board Choice and Placement
Objective Placement
Mulligan
Fighter Placement
So you won the roll-off, do you choose to go first or go second?
Practice (coming soon!)

Check out other tournament related articles:
Participating in your First Tournament
How to Run a Local Tournament

Having already chosen your warband and if applicable, the cards for your deck, it’s finally time to sit down and play a game. The first step you’ll take is rolling for who places the first board. But before we even get to that stage, a savvy competitor will have evaluated the boards available to them and know which ones they want for what scenarios, based on their warband’s characteristics, the deck strategy, the opponent, and whether you’re placing first or second. Let’s take a peek at how to evaluate board quality.

It behooves me to state up front that this is both an incredibly important part of winning your games, and one that is a personal weak spot of mine. The internet’s best resource for board theory is The Monkey’s Hex, which you should read in great detail if you’re looking to improve in this area since I can only take you so far.

A note on Orientations

There are three main categories of board orientations. The second player to place their board connects the board edges together in an orientation of their choosing, dependent on their plan and their opponent’s perceived plan.

• The first method is ‘squared up’, wherein the long sides of the board are flush with one another. This creates the largest possible no-one’s territory, aligns the stating hexes closest together, and creates the largest area for Objective Token placement. Squared up is generally best for Aggro gameplans, or slow warbands who cannot afford to waste activations positioning fighters too far away from enemy territory. It is also useful for situations where your cards specify things within 1 or 2 of no man’s land, or if you want to fit 3-4 objectives in a single player’s territory.

• Longboard, or Hallway orientation, refers to placing the boards with their short edges fully connected. This creates only 2 hexes of no-one’s territory, and positions opposing players’ starting hexes much further from each other on average. It also allows for continuous line of sight between the two boards (except for blocked hexes), and creates a large number of edge hexes. Generally, a Longboard is the better placement for a defensive warband who is interested in passive scoring, while disadvantaging an opponent who needs to invade their side. You will get the best leverage out of longboarding if you have good mobility and ranged attacks, spellcasting, and Objective cards that don’t require interaction with the opponent. You will hurt your opponent the most with Longboarding if they have lower movement (move 3 or less), or have a warband that requires them to engage in enemy territory. You will also hurt opponents who require things to happen in/within x of no man’s land, as Longboarding significantly shrinks this area.

• Offset describes a board orientation where the boards are joined by their long edges, but are not ‘squared up – the overlapping area is shifted by one or more hexes to create a smaller no-one’s territory and laterally offset the starting hexes. A ‘max offset’ is where the boards are aligned offset to create only four connected hexes in no-one’s territory, the smallest allowed by the rules in this orientation. An offset board, compared to a squared up board, increases the distance between starting hexes, narrows no-man’s land, makes invading more difficult, reduces line of sight, and is generally better for defensive play. Max offset is similar in character to Longboarding, but creates the most possible edge hexes with the most limited line of sight, so it works best for warbands who care about edge hexes or for preventing enemy spellcasters from being able to choose targets as well. The increase in edge hexes also forces objective placement closer to the center of the field, so may constrain some Hold gameplans. It also can work as a ‘bottleneck’ for opponents attempting to invade – less effectively than a longboard, but with better protection against ranged attacks.

Starting Hexes, Features, and Implications

Every board has seven starting hexes, but they will not all be in the same spots. After evaluating your deck and your warband, consider the following things about your starting hexes; are there good ones near edges or in the middle, are there starting hexes adjacent to one another, and are they near hazards or features that impact your plan?

Starting hexes near the edge of a board can be very useful for invading aggro, as you will have reduced the distance you need to travel to enter enemy territory. Be warned that they may not be balanced across both sides of a boar, so if you are not choosing the orientation your opponent may place those tasty hexes in the back rather than the front. Hexes in the center are useful regardless of orientation and can be good for defensive or hold objective playstyles as you can be ‘safe’ no matter the orientation. Adjacent hexes can be quite important for some warbands – perhaps you have an ability on a character card that requires an adjacent fighter, or cards that want you to have support or fighters ‘within x’ of another friendly fighter. Adjacency hexes make this much easier to establish at the start of the game without the need for pushes or moves.

The boards you choose may contain feature hexes or hazard hexes. How many, which type, and where they are located (as well as their relative position to starting hexes) will be very relevant for some warbands. Perhaps your warband relies on cover hexes either for defensive benefits or to activate the effects of some power cards/score some objective cards. You’ll want a board that has enough cover hexes in relevant positions to take advantage of this. Blocked hexes can interfere with charge lanes and line of sight, so can be useful for a defensive warband, especially one that doesn’t want to use ranged attacks (or one with Flying, and so can move through them without issue). Lethal hexes are a risk as you may get pushed into them, but oriented correctly may make it more risky for your opponent to charge in as you can push them there as well.

Matching the Board to the Warband

Different boards, depending on the starting hexes and features, may work better with certain warbands. A warband with seven fighters will have to occupy every starting hex, so you’ll want to like all of them in any orientation (or be willing to place a fighter or two in a dangerous position/too far away to contribute). Warbands that want adjacency need good adjacent starting hexes. Warbands that benefit from cover need available cover hexes. A given board may be considered ‘good’, but might not fit your warband, so make sure to look for yourself.

Matching the Board to the Playstyle

A player who wants to invade will want starting hexes near/on an edge, or multiple edges if they are not the orienting player. A player who wants to hold objectives (and wants three on their side) will want to have appropriately spaced starting hexes and feature hexes to allow for three objectives to ‘fit’, hopefully in safe enough locations. A player who hopes to make the most use the region within X of no-one’s territory will want few feature hexes on board edges as they will occupy space an Objective token could go, or make for fewer/more dangerous spots for their fighters to stand in. Conversely, if you believe your opponent will be making use of that space, filling it with starting hexes and feature hexes will limit their ‘useful’ options.

Flavius of the Monkey’s Hex has some advice using specific boards (you can view images here) and these concepts can be generalizable to other boards and things not yet released as of this commentary. He tells me “the best Aggro boards are easy to spot since they have good distribution of starting hexes, for example Glacial Tomb, Stricken Swamp, Katophrane Reliquary, and the rotated Hive Sacrifice. If you have to Hold Objectives, my favorite ever was Menhirs of Binding. You have other good boards that have a good hex distribution with many protected hexes regardless of orientation, and good ’empty’ hexes for objective placement. Examples of these boards are Soul Refractor, Mistmarsh Tangle, Frost-Wracked Ruins, and Moltscape. If you have the board orientation and want to defend, you can use the Longboard configuration with some good defensive boards like Inevitable Morass, or older boards such as Ambertrap Nest, Living Rock and Molten Shardpit”

Matching the Board to the Opponent

All of the above points have relevance when considering your warband, deck, and playstyle, but be aware of what your opponent may want as well. When possible, you should pick a board that suits your needs and causes problems for them. If you’re playing a best of three, you will have seen what they have and their general plan in the first game, which should inform your choices for games 2 and 3. In a best of one, you can make assumptions off of the warband itself, and any plot cards that they may reveal at the start of the game. In a rivals matchup, your information will be much more complete, but for Nemesis and Championship you’ll need to play a bit of a guessing game. Prioritize playing your game and picking a board that works for you, but don’t forget to think about their plan as well! You’ll have the most success disrupting your opponent in the board orientation step should you win the roll off and choose that, but the board itself can play a role.

Do You Want to Place First or Second?

50% of the time, you’re going to win the roll off to open the board placement and will have to make a choice – do you place first or second? Innate advantages to placing the first board means that you will get to place 3 objectives rather than two. Innate advantages of placing second mean that you can see the board your opponent has placed and adjust your choice as necessary, and you also have the ability to orient the boards. Think about your warband and strategy, but also about denying your opponent’s potential plan. Maybe you really care about where the objectives land and being able to get at least the first one right where you need it. Maybe you’re really interested in placing the first token so that you can put it in that critical place you think your opponent will try to zone you out of. But maybe you’re also worried about your opponent longboarding you, or you feel the need to longboard them to slow them down a bit. A good player knows what choice is best for them and can select accordingly, but a great player can predict what their opponent needs to succeed and can disrupt that plan.

It’s hard for me to give specific advice here, but you’ll need to decide in each instance whether placing first and getting three objectives (and the first) outweighs your opponent’s potential ability to orient the boards in a way that hurts you more (or limits your objective placement opportunities!). They may also select a different board going second after having seen yours, which might give them another advantage. It’s a broad rule of thumb and exceptions certainly exist, but all things being equal it’s a consensus among competitive players that it’s better to place the second board, and you should choose that unless you have a great reason for placing first. As we will see in a future article, the disadvantage of having only two Objective tokens to place is not as severe as it might seem.

Best of Three Considerations

If you’re playing a single game, that game itself and the boards chosen are all that matters. In a best of three format, however, there are a couple extra things to consider. The rules state that you cannot use the same board twice in a match, so in order to compete you’ll need to bring at least three board sides with you. The winner of the first roll-off is presumed to lose the second, so generally you’ll be placing the first board in either the first or second game and orienting the boards on the other one. Should the match go to a third game, however, you’ll roll off again, so there’s a chance you could get longboarded twice, for example. If you only brought one longboard-friendly board, you’ll be in a tough spot when having to choose the board you place for game three, and that’s the most important game of a match. Don’t get caught with a bad board choice in a best of three! Have backup plans. You’ll want ideally four or five boards you’re comfortable with – two you want to orient, and two you want to place first, allowing for a few extras to be flexible against different opponents.

Wrap

As I have stated before, I’m far from the authority on board placement, but I have picked up a few tricks. In general, try to orient the boards when you can and place second whenever given the choice. Be mindful of feature hexes and hazards on your board, and make sure they’re ones you can accept or take advantage of. Look at starting hexes and make sure you have enough adjacent ones or edge ones etc to execute your plan. Bring two boards you like for a best of one, and four boards you like for a best of three so you’re prepared for whatever you’re facing. And go look at The Monkey’s Hex who really knows what they’re talking about. After the boards are placed, you’ll move onto placing objectives, which we will look at in the next article. Until then, get out there and spend some glory!