How would you rank the characters of Sentinel Tactics?

Other Games Sentinel Tactics
#21

We have two major favorites: 

  1. Hazards, Hazards, Hazards: Ra, with two hazard generators; Turret Bot, with radius two hazard; Operative with HBS(+ Bitter Spiral for super effectiveness);  or AZ.  AZ has the added benefit of forcing Tachyon to use an extra point of movement if she wants to hypersonic through the hazard, but this is debatably helpful. This strategy is doubly potent if Tachyon cannot get behind your targets, as Hypersonic Assault must pass through targets to hit them, or if your targets are so spread out as to make hypersonic assault only hits one target at a time, forcing the card use with maybe an unrelenting momenutm to make it reasonably effective per turn.
  2. Wait her out. Tachyon's Traditional Terror Turn is Push the Limits, Unrelenting Momentum, Lightspeed Barrage(on extra turn). Then she's at one health. Most teams we've seen like to 'cap her there, for the easy point. We think this is mostly folly, as it lets her pop up and hit harder, without having to travel(most times). If you let her sit at one health, you force the other team to waste an action healing(if they thought to bring Dawn or Legs to the fight, but then it's a different match entirely), or give you a point to push the limits and start all over. Either way, Tachyon is more valuable as a walk-off point, as she is never quite as effective at one HP. Sucker Punch can still be potent, but that's just knowing what she has in her deck and avoiding the opportunity.
#22

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.

#23

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.

#24

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.

#25

Kite?

#26

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.  

#27

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.

#28

Ah, I see. Haven't played WoW and never heard that one before.

#29

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.

#30

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.

#31

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.

#32

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.

#33

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.

#34

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.

#35

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.

[The Wraith] won't debuff Tachyon enough with the sheer volume of attacks Tachyon puts down.
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.

#36

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"!

#37

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.

#38

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.

#39

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. 

#40

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.