This article will start the Second Edition relaunch a series for beginning competitors on Counterplay – a concept about finding ways to shut down your opponents’ plan and keep them from meeting their goals. Many players focus on how to achieve their own aims, score their own cards, and execute their own gameplan, and this is a great thing to do! It’s hard to win if you don’t score your cards. Whether you read the great summaries available on What the Hex, Path to Glory, or Battle Mallet or listen to any of their podcasts, they all will help you find ways to leverage whatever cards you took to score as much glory as possible. If you want to take your game to the next level, you should try to be mindful of your opponents’ possible plan and work to interrupt it when possible, and that’s what we will be looking at today.

This guide will be written with Nemesis in mind, Where you’ll have to guess whether your opponent did or didn’t take a given card. In Rivals, you can expect to use all of these tips as their deck will be no mystery to you and you can be confident you’ll see most of the available counterplay opportunities bear fruit across a best-of-three match.

Click here to see other articles in the Counterplay Series
Click here to see a review of the Surge Objectives from these decks by Konsul/Mikkel
Click here to see a review of the End Phase Objectives from these decks by Jake from Goonhammer/Starting Hex

Related Articles
Contender Series (For Optimizing Your Own Gameplan)
Participating in Your First Tournament
What to Expect at your First Grand Clash
How to Run a Local Tournament
Building Your First Nemesis Deck

Let’s dive into the Embergard Core Box and see how best to shut it down!

Blazing Assault

Deck Overview
This deck is really straightforward for the player using it – make attacks, roll as many dice as possible, and slay as many things as you can. That, unfortunately, makes counterplaying it somewhat difficult. Several of the Objectives in BA are effectively impossible for you to stop, and just dependent on them having fighters left to punch with (or punch at) and the dice results therein.

The easiest Objective cards to counterplay are Annihilation (just make sure you have at least one fighter survive, and run away if you have to), Get Stuck In (get your fighters out of friendly territory before they’re attacked), and Denial (have a fighter in their territory in the end phase). Easier said than done of course. Additionally, they have multiple dice-result-related surges: Branching Fate (all results differ), Critical Effort (they rolled a crit), and Perfect Strike (all successes in the die roll). You can’t necessarily influence their dice, but you CAN try to avoid being staggered and therefore limit their ability to get rerolls, which will up their chances both of hitting you and also of scoring these surges.

Board choice and orientation can go one of two ways. If you think you can outfight them and want to get into their territory and make the fight happen there, choose the fives orientation with no blocked hexes so you can get into it faster. If you’d rather do your own thing (Take and Hold, Positional play, etc) you might prefer Nines on the Blocked Hex side – it makes the distance between your fighters higher at the start, and gives you more interference from their attack/move/charge lanes with blocked hexes.

Treasure token placement should do whatever your gameplan requires. Blazing Assault makes no mention of treasure tokens (or feature tokens at all for that matter), so their position and number is irrelevant to the BA player. I’d recommend having the ones in enemy territory relatively accessible to you if you need them, since being in Enemy territory will be helpful for blocking a few cards and you want to make that convenient for yourself. The ones in your territory might benefit from being further back so they’re going to have a harder time reaching them at the outset.

Fighter placement when facing BA has a few considerations. If you have ‘softer’ targets, you might want to hide them further back to prevent their being slain early – many of the deck’s upgrades are a 2-glory cost and you’d like to prevent them from coming out for as long as possible. Should they be taking Strong Start, you’d also like to prevent losing a model early to slow down their surge scoring. An alternative approach is to put your fighters up front with the intent to invade early and keep the fighting in enemy territory – some of their cards work best when they are the invader and you can stymie some of that if you stay out of your own zone.

Priority Targets against a BA player are whichever fighters you consider to be the most dangerous, especially those with the accuracy upgrades and/or range 2 attacks. They’ll almost certainly be looking to dish out a lot of accurate shots, so if you can take their best fighters early you’ll slow that down and hopefully prevent Annihilation if they were so bold as to take it. If they have a fighter who is throwing 3-dice attacks, that’s another good target to hopefully make it harder for them to score Branching Fate, at least until they’re the underdog.

Positional Tips against a BA player are to keep the fight in enemy territory to stop Denial and Get stuck In, and ideally have at least one fighter who can play keep-away so that they won’t table you and score Annihilation. Be aware their leader will have the ability to push up to 3 with Commanding Stride, so imagine them wherever you don’t want them to be until you’ve slain the leader or seen the card.

Emberstone Sentinels

Deck Overview
Emberstone Sentinels is our prototypical Take and Hold deck – the player using it wants to get on Treasure tokens and stay on them. Depending on how much of the deck they’ve taken, they’ll likely want to do so in your territory as well. A canny counterplayer will pay special attention to token placement and occupancy – get on tokens to keep your opponent off of them, and knock people off of tokens whenever possible – especially if they have a high bounty characteristic or are holding multiple tokens and/or all in a given territory. Easier said than done! The deck makes its bones in the end phase scoring with multiple achievable 2 and 3 glory end phase Objectives, so opting to go second if you win the roll-off will give you the last laugh as you drive them off of that all important Treasure they were counting on in your fourth activation.

In terms of the ‘easiest’ Objective cards to counterplay in ES, they’re mostly a similar difficulty across the board – don’t let your opponent hold multiple tokens at once for the most part. Some warbands of course will have an easier time achieving this than others, but the simplest way to do this is to be on those tokens yourself. Supremacy requires multiple tokens held with a total bounty characteristic of 3 or more – so if you have to choose, prioritize the 2 and 3 bounty fighters on tokens to eliminate or displace. Slow Advance requires holding one in neutral and one in enemy territory, so if you keep fighters out of your territory and/or hold the neutral territory Treasure tokens, you’ll do well. Iron Grasp requires the player to hold all Treasure in either friendly or Enemy, so as long as you are also holding one in each they can’t complete it. Sally Forth requires a fighter with a charge token to hold an enemy territory Treasure, so either occupy the charge-eligible Tokens before they land on them or don’t place eligible charge targets near Treasure tokens in your territory, especially if they’re relying on range 1 attacks.

Board choice and orientation when facing ES should largely be focused around what your warband needs to do, but without compelling reasons to choose otherwise I’d focus on the nines ‘longboard’ orientation on the side without blocked hexes. You want to make it harder for them to get into your territory, and you want to be able to see and reach everybody to make those attacks on targets that do hold Treasure Tokens. If you think you can out-place them in the Treasure token placement stage, you might be able to use the Blocked hexes to your advantage to ‘zone out’ some situations they might be angling toward of course.

Treasure token placement when facing ES should focus on making them either difficult for your opponent to get to or difficult for them to safely occupy. Place one in enemy territory that you can reach so that you can keep them from holding it to potentially block Iron Grasp and/or Supremacy. Ideally you make sure there’s only one in neutral territory so that they have fewer angles to score Slow Advance. You’ll want one deeper in your territory to make it harder for them to get to and score Iron Grasp on your side of the field as well. Hopefully none of the ones in your territory are immediately next to important starting hexes to make Sally Forth a little harder for them to score as well.

Fighter placement when facing ES will mostly require you to be able to reach tokens and get on them quickly – if not for your own scoring, then at least to block theirs. Fighters with good defense and/or accuracy should go closer to the front so that you can either get on the tokens they need in their zone and be hard to displace, or have a good chance of knocking their holding fighters off while stealing the token with an overrun. If you have the capacity, try not to give them an easy target for a charge onto a Treasure in your territory or you’re asking for them to get Sally Forth early on.

Priority Targets against ES are pretty simple – first, hit anybody holding a token in your territory. Second, hit anybody holding a token with a high bounty characteristic. Third, hit anybody holding a token if all the tokens in that territory are held by their warband. Third, hit anybody on a token whatsoever. If they’re not holding a token, they’re less important, but you could focus on their fighters with more dice in their attacks to lower their chances of an overrun to steal a Treasure from under your feet.

Positional Tips when facing ES are get on tokens, and stay on tokens. That’s the same thing they will be doing, but you need to do it as well or you’re giving them a much easier path to end phase scoring. If you can stand on at least one token in each territory, and hold all in neutral territory, you’ll have gone a long way to slowing them down.

Pillage & Plunder

Deck Overview
Man, what a deck. I said earlier that Blazing Assault was difficult to counterplay, but this one might be even more so. There, you were at the mercy of their dice, but here, you risk giving up 2 and 3 glory end phase scores if you can’t stop them, and in some cases once they’ve done their delving actions there’s not so much you can do since the conditions are ‘this stuff happened this round’ instead of ‘this stuff is still true in the end phase’. That said, there are some things you can do – namely make it hard for them to delve by getting on tokens first, and delve them yourself if need be. Regardless, P&P is probably the ‘smoothest’ deck we have seen in second edition, and you’ll be hard pressed to counterplay all of it while also scoring your own cards, unless you’re playing P&P yourself.

The easiest Objective cards to counterplay in this deck are Strip the Realm – make sure you are ALWAYS holding at least one treasure token in an end phase until you see the card discarded or you’re sure they aren’t running it. Standing on a delved cover hex does not block this card – you must be holding a Treasure. Fail to do this, even if you block their own delving plan, and you are handing them 3 glory. Delve something back in the last power step if you have to – it’s a must-do. To some extent you can stop Torn Landscape if you manage to keep at least three tokens Treasure-side up, though this may be hard to do depending on the warband you have and what you’re facing. Broken Prospects can be stopped by either keeping them off of 3 treasure tokens so they can’t delve them, or delving them yourself first (as they must delve them FROM Treasure – a delve from the cover side does not qualify for scoring the card. That said, they can also do it by delving one you held previously, so once you’re on one, think about staying on it or delving it to cover before you step off. Finally, Desolate Homeland can be stopped if you are smart in the token placement phase and/or can get onto all the tokens in their territory to delve them back to Treasure, but it’s sometimes a tough ask. At least it is only 1 glory.

Board choice and orientation when playing into P&P will likely benefit from the ‘wideboard’/fives orientation – P&P is one of the Rivals decks that cares the least about being in enemy territory, and can score a boatload of glory just chilling in their own zone. Fives lets you get at them faster and makes it so more of their feature tokens are chargeable/stealable early on. The board facing could benefit from the Blocked hex side to keep them from having as much freedom of movement, but be careful it doesn’t slow you down too much or block your shots either.

Treasure token placement is really tough against P&P since largely they don’t care where the tokens are, as long as they can get to them. The best thing you can do from a counterplay perspective is to to make sure they have at least 2 in their home territory, or else they’ll score Desolate Homeland by default. You want at least one Treasure token that you can stand on and stay on for every end phase, so either try to get one distant in your territory and ‘safe’ for a minion to camp on, or have tokens near where you want to be so that you can meet your goals for your own scoring while still being able to block Strip the Realm. Otherwise, just try to get on them first and place them in a way that it’s feasible.

Fighter placement against P&P really just needs to be giving yourself the best opportunity to sprint onto the tokens before they can so their delving plan so slowed down. Otherwise, put yourself where your scoring needs you to be.

Priority Targets when facing P&P are realistically going to be ‘anybody who still has the potential to delve’ – if they have a fighter within range of a token that isn’t charge, you need to kill that guy if you can’t get onto the token to stop them. Next, you should focus on anybody who is sitting on a token (who has conveniently staggered themselves for you) because they will till want to slip them back and forth for afew cards – and it can open up the token for you to put it on the Treasure side to stop Strip the Realm and/or Torn Landscape. Finally, if the enemy warband has a ‘critical fighter’ that gives them resurrection, movement economy, or something similar, take them out so they’re less efficient/less able to get onto tokens and delve.

Positional Tips for P&P – you MUST occupy a treasure token in every end phase until you see Strip the Realm discarded or you know they aren’t taking it. Otherwise, stand on tokens so it’s harder for them to delve. Also, while I wouldn’t dedicate significant effort to it, should the opportunity present itself to drive two fighters back to be adjacent to one of their own teammates, you might as well take it to block a potential Lost in the Depths score.

Countdown to Cataclysm

Deck Overview
Among my favorite decks out there, CtC has some real bangers in every card category. The problem is that can make it tough to play against, especially considering a few of the cards are pretty tough to counterplay and one of them “Spread Havoc” is literally impossible to stop. it WILL score for 1 glory and probably for 2 with really nothing much you can do about it. I wrote all about how strong the deck is here, with hopes it will see some rules updates in the near future.

The good news is regardless of what cards they decided to take, one thing you can deal with is the Cataclysm tracker – it moves up the first time each round you kill one of the CtC player’s fighters and at the end of the round for each feature token you are not on. So, as the theme for the whole box (save for BA) goes – get on those tokens and stay on them for your best counterplay potential.

The easiest Objective cards to counterplay in the deck are few, but doable. Shocking Assault scores after the opponent’s action step, so you can stop it by being on the neutral territory Treasure tokens, or by kicking them off of them on your turn. Set Explosive wants them to hold two treasures and all in one territory – again blocked by occupying those neutral territory tokens and ensuring they don’t hold two at a time if possible.

Board choice and orientation against the CtC player usually benefits from the nines orientation, as it makes it easier for you to get multiple tokens in neutral territory, which I will discuss in the next section. Otherwise you’ll probably want to go with whatever board side shuts down the other half of their pairing – though CtC wants you to damage and slay things so the blocked hex side might make that harder for them.

Treasure token placement when playing into CtC should focus on two things – preventing Shocking Assault, and preventing Set Explosives. In a perfect world, there are two tokens in your territory, two tokens in neutral territory, and only one token in enemy territory – so they can’t score Set Explosives by hanging back, and they can’t score Shocking Assault by holding only one token. Otherwise, put them where you need them, since they only need to hold 1-2 to score those cards and the rest aren’t as concerned with tokens. There’s a special note of caution however – you don’t necessarily want to have all your tokens clustered around the midboard of you might find yourself eating multiple points of ping damage when they play Sunder the Realm. The last thing to think about is Sudden Blast, which can push every fighter within 1 of a stagger hex. Canny players of CtC use this to push you off of a token and them onto it, so do not place your feature tokens adjacent to a stagger hex if at all possible.

Fighter placement when pairing into CtC largely can depend on whatever you need done for your own scoring. They’ll be looking to injure more fighters than their cataclysm value to score Wreckers, so probably hitting 2-3 fighters early on, and if you wanted to you could try to make that hard for them but it’s not totally reasonable. Otherwise make sure you can get onto the tokens in neutral territory.

Priority Targets when facing CtC will be largely dependent on whoever looks like they’ll be scoring Shocking Assault and/or Set Explosives for them. If somebody equips Desperate Rage, you probably want to take them down before you eat a 3 damage hit, and whoever has Utter Conviction on them is easier to deal with the earlier in the game you can, before they get up to 3 defense dice. Finally, they may have taken Loaded for Bear, so if anybody looks like they’ll have 3 or more upgrades on them, slay them before the end phase if able.

Positional Tips when facing CtC are: If you are attacking somebody, maybe try to do it in a way that they can’t be hit with Counter-Charge (easier said than done), don’t put all your fighters within 1 of neural territory at once or you’ll eat a Sunder the Realm, and be careful near stagger hexes, as you might get pushed by Violent Blast. Finally, and the theme continues – get on those tokens and stay on those tokens, both to slow a few important cards’ scoring, as well as to suppress how fast the cataclysm tracker can advance.

Wrap

That’s it for this Counterplay article! Let me know what you think about this and what other things you can think of to counterplay the Embergard Rivals decks. I hope you enjoy spending your glory, and don’t forget that your opponent can’t spend theirs if you don’t let them score any in the first place.