I’m going to be honest (ironic, for an article about Bluff Counters): The most important tactical advantage you can claim over your opponent when using these is remembering which ones you put down where.
Now that the low key most important bit of the whole article is over, I can stop writing… sorry, get into the depths of playing Fool’s Gold or Smoke and Mirrors, the two scenarios that use Bluff Counters at the time of writing. Often, folks find this a difficult proposition, memory issues aside. Not only do you have to know your own strategy in advance, based on what you expect the other player to do, but you need to be able to react to your opponent’s decisions.
Fortunately, your intrepid writer is all ready to guide you through the process. Let’s begin.
First things first: Let’s look at the scenarios it matters for. They’re very similar, but with one important difference – the timing of the reveals.
As always, Kings of War scenarios are obsessed with making you roll off as many times as possible, so there’s not much control over how things start. But, you’ll find we can likely still implement a cohesive strategy in most games, even when our opponent might be able to screen out your first choice if they’re canny. The first thing we need to do is look at the map, and think about two things – where we want to fight, and where our opponent wants to fight. I’ll take a recent example from my Masters run. I personally find it easiest to explain stuff with a worked example, but if you want a quick hit-list of things to focus on, it’s at the end of the article. I don’t mind if you just scroll through, because I’m used to being ignored. You meanie.
The good news is that by the time we’re placing Counters, we know which side we’re on. In the first case, I knew I was going to deploy on the top side of the board, and my opponent on the bottom. They were playing a bunch of fast cavalry backed up by some big blocks of infantry, while I was playing a bunch of fast cavalry backed up by archer blocks.
I swear the meta is diverse.
Seriously, though, this still meant we had different goals. Simon was going to make sure I couldn’t cheaply hold Counters with stuff that wanted to stay back, such as my archer units. That meant the high value stuff wasn’t going in the archer spot (the big forest in my deployment). I lacked flyers, so rearranging my deployment after the fact would be difficult. So, the big house in my deployment meant I would be taking a gamble on putting stuff over there. It was also the best spot for Simon to hammer down a flank, because it would have been really hard for me to shoot him before he went in even if I put my archers over there.
It therefore made sense for him to put his high value Counters in the area to the right of the image. So, knowing that, I can look at my own strategy. First things first, Simon lacked major guns. I could therefore deploy with an eye toward melee more than anything, confident that I wouldn’t be outright shot off. The second priority was zoning his placements off. Counters in Kings of War can’t be placed within 12” of each other, or within 3” of blocking terrain (including the edges of the map) so I could force his placements with my early drops – as he could mine. From previous experience, I know a central fight against Simon’s big infantry blocks will be a struggle for me. So, I don’t want the fight to be anywhere near a big open space where they can freely maneuver. And, finally, I don’t want to place my value objectives in the middle, because Simon definitely wants a melee fight more than me, and I’d like him to have to walk away from the points in order to engage with my forces. It’s harder to go backward in this game than forward, so I want him to have to reverse to hold things.
Quick recap:
- If your opponent is playing shooting, make them come forward to take high-value objectives, and don’t give them good firing lanes or safe places to shoot from.
- If your opponent is playing melee, look for spots you can cut their forces off, and force them to choose between staying back to hold objectives or move forward to fight.
Applying that to this map, we know the objectives can be placed in the non-red areas. The yellow areas are where we likely want to place stuff, and the orange areas are where we don’t want to. As a reminder, Simon wants to put his stuff where he can either get cavalry matched up against an isolated defensive force, or march big blocks of guys across the board at me without getting Hindered. Those are the yellow areas on the top side. The orange area would be nice for me to defend, because it’s close to where my archers want to be, but not where he can march blocks through easily. Meanwhile, I don’t want to give Simon the option to easily do those things, and I want to make sure the fight is where my stuff can shine – though I’m likely going to have to accept my stuff being Hindered in turn, I can handle that a lot better with my stuff. So, no easy holds for him on the bottom right and middle, but the bottom left is looking tasty.
Terrible diagram, I know, but when one is trying to illustrate a point and has never used an image manipulation other than Paint 3D, one takes what one can get.
Now the issue is that these areas of ideal placement aren’t that big, so I can’t cram everything into the perfect position, and neither could Simon. That’s partially mitigated by being able to place two value-0 Counters, so that buys a bit of space, but you need to be aware that not all your placements will be optimal. That’s okay! You’ll never perfectly predict the game’s ebb and flow anyway, so a bit of variance won’t kill you.
Blue is mine, red is Simon’s. I definitely remember 100% accurately where these all were. But, it demonstrates some important points. First off, “screening” objectives are Useful and Good. I placed the 1 pointer in the middle to make sure Simon couldn’t put anything too close to that area in a position he could hold with greater ease. So, generally, when you’re placing early, feel free to give up some value to make sure your big-money placements are in the right spot. It’s also important to note your opponent might not have the same ideas about how the game is going to go. It’s therefore important to deny them any benefit from making the “wrong” decisions, so to speak – if, for example, Simon had heavily committed to the left side of the board with his high-value placements, my 0 pointers would still have went to the right side of the map, just to make sure he didn’t get anything out of me hard focusing that side. That said, you want all your placements to be as convincing as possible. While you should never assume your opponent will make a mistake, there’s always merit in giving them the chance to do so.
Continuing our recap:
- Use low value objectives to block off placement.
- Always try and make every Counter placement look like a 2-pointer of value.
- Don’t worry about every placement being perfect; you’re threading lots of needles at once.
The last little detail is in revealing Counters. You’re going to give up a lot of information with your deployment, because unless you have some god-tier amount of Unit Strength, you’re likely going to be weighting toward the area you want to fight on. That’s fine – your opponent will do so too. But, again, we’re not in the habit of giving out all the info for free, so we should think about the big reveals of value. For Fool’s Gold, you just need to be ready for Turn 3. Don’t make your push super early if you can avoid it, but definitely set up to be able to do so. But, for Smoke and Mirrors, you have a choice. Reveal what you think are high-value, or what you think are low value. I would always say to reveal high-value as fast as possible, using the principles we’ve discussed above to get an idea of where those are. If you can feint towards your low-value Counters to the point where your opponent might be willing to flip them, great, but don’t underestimate your opponent unless you’re really sure you can pull this off.
Our recap in full, therefore, is:
- If your opponent is playing shooting, make them come forward to take high-value objectives, and don’t give them good firing lanes or safe places to shoot from.
- If your opponent is playing melee, look for spots you can cut their forces off, and force them to choose between staying back to hold objectives or move forward to fight.
- Use low value objectives to block off placement.
- Always try and make every Counter placement look like a 2-pointer of value.
- Don’t worry about every placement being perfect; you’re threading lots of needles at once.
- Try and reveal your opponent’s high-value Counters as soon as possible, and risk a feint to the low-value ones you placed only if you reckon you can bait a reveal.
As always, thanks for reading. I’m going to try and continue with the Start Competing stuff for Kings of War, and we’re slowly getting set up for faction reviews, so I’d love to hear what you want to read next. For now, though, I have my own army to work on, so watch this space for some hobby-focused content around getting it ready in the next few weeks.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
