New Necro vs new orcs- how should I kick green skin arse?

[TheDoc]

It's pretty much as it says in the title. I have a league match against Orcs tomorrow and need some advice how will my new necro: 2 wolf, 2 golum, 2 wight, 1 ghoul, and 5 zombies beat the greenskined horde??

I was thinking about screening and running like mad. What would everyone else add to that??

[pelle]

Use your zombies to tie up the Black Orcs, use them as road blocks. Meanwhile hunt for the Blitzers with your wolves.

[swilhelm73]

The big thing to remember is that your faster players - wolves, ghouls, are faster then his.

So on offense, get him to commit to one area, and then run away. With a handoff you can move 15 or 16 spaces in one turn...

On defense, you own the sidelines. Slow him down in the middle and pick off players with the wolves. If he gets desperate and starts sending individual blitzers out, hunt with the wolves, and then foul with the zombies.

[MKL]

(...)
I was thinking about screening and running like mad (...)

Something like this

Just to add my two cents:
-Be careful with the Wolves: do not commit 'em early. Till at least a Wolf is out of reach, the Orcs have to be careful.
-Use the Golems to frustrate the Orcs in the middle and lure them towards the sidelines. If you got the chance, crowdsurf mercilessly.
-How many rr do you have? Use them sparingly. They are critical to a new Necro team: you need the rr to pick up, dodge the Wolves out of troubles and clean up their fumbles (2 frenzy sans block fumble a lot ).

[TheDoc]

Cheers for the advice. I was thinking of on Defence to try and get them to run down the sidelines. On offence attempt to get them to commit but am slightly worried about the st4 and blocking blitzers.

[Digger Goreman]

You only have one extra zombie... so foul meticuously (throwers... or well supported fouls against positionals)....

Tie up and leave the Black Orcs alone....

Get supported blocks by Wolves vs Blitzers in a way that you can do 2d x 2.... Careful not to get your furry tail twisted by a 2d cum 1d (or worse)... especially against Blitzers.... Sometimes it's better to blitz with a wight to clear the lane rather than risk failure with a blockless wolf!

[MKL]

Cheers for the advice. I was thinking of on Defence to try and get them to run down the sidelines.

This is my usual tactic. I like to keep the Golems close together, to support each other and interdict a big swath of field. Use a Wight to blitz free the Golem if needed, but keep the Golem in front of his cage: hopefully, he will grow frustrated and try for the sideline.

On offence attempt to get them to commit but am slightly worried about the st4 and blocking blitzers.

You got good reasons to be worried
With a rookie team, I use a Wolf as ball carrier and the second one to blitz. With MA8, you can threaten the td from a huge range. Everyone else is good for screening (yes, the Ghoul too)!

[klauser]

The trick is to mark his Black Orcs with your Zombies on the off-side, i.e. with the BOs facing away from the play. That way, when the block and follow up on your Zombies, they will be moving away from the action.

The other important advice is to preserve your rerolls. That's means rerollling only crucial blocks (mostly your Werewolves') and GFIs, while accepting early turnovers if at all possible.

Keep blitzing their Blitzers with your Wolfie and try to move back behind a screen afterwards.

Also, I wouldn't risk fouling. You will need the manpower on the pitch.

[TheDoc]

Right well I played.... I used the zombies as chew toys for the black orcs. I screened with the wights, wolves and Golums. I ran like stink on my offence after I created a bit a of a gap and came out on top 1-0 with 3 casualties 2 done by my wolves on blitzers and 1 on a thrower.



Thanks for the advice. I hope my luck and skill improve for the next game - chaos dwarf!

[RogueThirteen]

Going up against Chaos Dwarves will involve some of the same general tactics. Use the Zombies to mark the Dwarves or Centaurs when possible (but given the speed of the Centaurs, it's unlikely you'll get much chance to put a Zombie on them for long).

Again, your wolves should use their claws on the dwarves whenever they can (this should also be your blitz each turn, unless you need to really make a whole or can hit the ball-carrier). The centaur(s) will also be an important target to hit, but Str4 may become a bit difficult to secure 2D hits against, especially with Frenzy and the slowness of your team. So I'd just focus on the Dwarves themselves.

I wouldn't risk fouling the hobgoblins, as you don't want to go down in numbers against a team with so much Block and resilience. In general, I wouldn't risk fouling against fairly sturdy bashy teams. Save fouls for really valuable AV7 or AV8 pieces (throwers, wardancers, skinks, etc.). If you get a Dirty Player / Sneaky Git Zombie later on, then you can consider fouling a more universal strategy.

[RogueThirteen]

Also, you may well be aware of this strategy but just in case:

to stop a grindy cage team while you're on defense, try to put two-deep "columns" of players in front of (but not adjacent to) the cage, with two horizontal spaces between each column. This means the one blitz, assuming it gets some sort of push, will only reinforce your defense as the downed player will block off an avenue and the player behind him is still in the way. Once they mark this defense, you can try and push the marking corners back or attempt to dodge back one square. The best solution will often depend on who is marked.

Something like this, where O represents a defender:

X -- X
-- B --
X -- X
-- -- --
O -- -- O -- -- O
O -- -- O -- -- O

This makes it darn hard for a bash team to push through without steadily removing your players from the pitch or shifting around. But against someone as slow as Chaos Dwarves, going around is very hard. If they try to use a centaur to run the ball (some will, some won't) watch out and make sure to add some columns wide on each flank/side of the cage to prevent the beast from galloping around your columns with a sprint.


Finally, while his cage is advancing (probably very slowly), do your best to have zombies or even wights marking his other dwarves or hobgoblins, because each one you keep away from the caging action weakens his defense for the ball-carrier and his flexibility of where he can form up a new cage each turn. For instance, if he's only got 7 players near the ball-carrier, that means four HAVE TO become new cage corners at the end of the turn, meaning only three can afford to get caught out of position or stuck somewhere else. If he's got all 10 other players near the ball-carrier, his cage options become much more flexible and harder to both anticipate and stop.