Knightmares: Tactics 101 (Patreon)

Tactics are a mechanic that's included in the four Knight expansions (Flower, Lion, Dung Beetle, Green) and they're an interesting part of the game's design space that is probably going to expand as time passes.

In each case, they are a set of cards which are randomly drawn at the start of the showdown if you have a survivor wearing a Badge (or the Green Plate). There are a total of 9 cards and you get 3 from each Knight monster expansion.  

They are part of the Knight theme along with the Parry Mechanic (which is also used by the Gold Smoke Knight because it's basically the same type of entity as the Flower Knight) and they provide a unique ability that's based around positioning (most of the time).

We're going to look at each one in this article, discuss it and review it.

But before we do that, let's look at the 4 ways you can get these cards in roughly the order you'll get them:

Flower Knight Badge

This one is very powerful because it comes with an evasion token, evasion is a very powerful stat (as I keep mentioning) and any way you can get access to it with additional benefits is very important.

This is also the odd one out of the badges, because it's keywords include badge instead of knight. I suspect this is an oversight/typo that has come from having different designers on each monster.

Rating: 5/5

Lion Knight Badge

+1 accuracy is easily the weakest of the possible bonuses you're getting, however it still is relevant when you are wielding weapons with lower accuracy. So this badge is more of an offensively orientated option than the other two.

Rating: 3/5

DBK Errant Badge

Unlike the other two badges, the DBK Errant Badge refers to a knight errant rather than just a knight. I wonder what the lore implications are in respect of this, are DBKs considered knight errants?

This is also the only 'craftable' badge, the other two are given out as rewards, so it perhaps reflects on the DBK's more 'lowly' status in the world of Kingdom Death. Because this is a monster that sculpts a Phoenix face onto its ball in order to scare off would-be predators (I have no idea what would dare mess with a DBK in the wild however, it's an absolute powerhouse beast and Adam wouldn't provide any additional information when I asked him).

1 armor to all locations is a decent ability that can help a lot of lighter builds have some durability so it's good for all classes.

Rating: 4/5

Green Plate

Part of the best armor set in the game, Green Plate is on another level when compared to the other "badges" and it's not really fair to compare it. It is super expensive to make and it also has a host of other benefits, I really love the 'your weapon gains the club keyword' bonus on the set, it's crazy what you can do when you have Club/X as your weapon type and 2 masteries to mix. 

Rating: over 9000/5

Tactics

So that's the four ways you can get tactics cards, and between them they give you the ability to draw between 1 and 6 tactics cards per showdown. Now the more cards you draw, the more powerful the Tactics deck becomes, because you have a higher chance of hitting the stronger cards and getting ones you are building your strategies around.

I actually wish that you drew the tactics card before departure, so you could focus your hunt party around your options, but that is a messy way of performing that mechanic, so instead you will have to try and take advantage of the cards you are dealt after you have already decided on builds.

So before we move onto talking about each tactics card separately, lets make sure you're aware of how they work in general terms.

On arrival you get to draw a tactics card equal to the number that your gear lets you draw, these tactics cards are assigned to that specific survivor and in most cases they are the only one who can activate them. At the end of the showdown all tactics cards are archived (returned to the tactics deck).

OK, that done, let us run through each of them (Image is at the top of the article!)

Trip Formation (Lion Knight)

The art is a little deceptive on this one, the owner of the tactics card must be in the magenta position, which is directly in front of the monster and the other two survivors must be in the monster's blind spot (blue). The monster is knocked back 1 and knocked down. This means that it will collide with the other two survivors. Additionally this has to be done during your act, it costs an activation and its once per showdown.

You'll need those two survivors to have acted already (or be ready to encourage them), and ideally you want to have another survivor ready to go in order to take advantage of the monster being knocked down. Honestly this one is a duff result and probably the weakest of all the tactics cards because of how expensive and situational it is.  You can't really take proper advantage of it without surging and encouraging the two knocked down survivors, so I have to give this one the lowest rank of all the options.

Ranking: 8th

Reviving Tactics (Lion Knight)

You have to be in this formation at the start of your act (that's just your act, not all survivors, so the other three can move to the tactics user before this is activated), and then this tactic heals all locations, all armor points, removes all bleeding and restores all survival up to the settlements survival limit.

That's a complete reset on all your survivor's durability apart from severe injuries and it's obscenely powerful, the only limitations are once per showdown, getting into position and having all 4 survivors still alive. 

I'm always happy to draw this one, because it gives a huge margin of safety for a hunt party.

Ranking: 4th

Confounding Formation (Lion Knight)

I love the art for this one, but it's also really, really powerful. At the start of every single monster's turn when you are in this formation you get to put a priority token onto one of your survivors. 

If you are playing with a dedicated tank (and you should be) then this formation essentially destroys most monster AI because it is forced to come at the target you choose turn after turn. The only real drawback here is that the two survivors on the sides (Lucy and Erza in the picture above) need to have ranged/reach weapons in order to be able to attack and maintain the formation, while your tank needs to be in the middle.

There are few monsters this is bad against, mostly things that can Grab and run or Retch.

Ranking: 5th

Spiral Formation (Flower Knight)

This one has a relatively powerful offensive ability, cancelling all reactions for one attack can let your DPS survivors really cut loose. It is a phenomenal way of letting high speed builds work, and if you could draw this one in a regular fashion and build for it then it would be very powerful and useful. 

You are never going to be disappointed with drawing this one, for one survival it makes a single attack per survivor turn almost completely safe (except for the Trap) and it combos well with Trapper class survivors. But it has less power than other options.

Ranking: 7th

Lance Formation (Flower Knight)

Standing in this awful formation (that requires a bunch of reach/range weapons on the blue space survivors) gives the magenta survivor +2 speed and +2 strength. Now if you are playing with a Green Knight in the magenta position then this becomes very powerful, but in most situations this tactic is of questionable use. It is not bad, but it is certainly weaker than anything else you could draw.

Ranking: 9th

Diversion Tactics (Flower Knight)

This tactic gives all survivors in the blue spots the ability once per monster attack to spend 1 survival to cancel one hit on any other survivor being attacked. It doesn't matter where the target is, so typically you'll have two survivors adjacent while the rest are wherever they want.

About the only thing holding this back is the need to spend survival, but it's spread out across the whole hunt party and it gives a very powerful way of mitigating damage that stacks with dodge, block and other cancellation abilities.

This one gets the nod over Block Formation because it's more flexible, even though it costs more to use.

Ranking: 2nd

Quad Strike

This is the one that people point too most often when talking about the Tactics deck, and it's for good reason. This tactic provides a way of dealing automatic wounds without drawing hit locations, and as we've discussed before, automatic wounds are a ridiculously powerful way of dealing with dangerous monsters.

You will need to roll 1d10+strength for each survivor and total them up. Without including strength bonuses this is an average of 22 on 4d10, so most monsters are going to be hit by this tactic. 

Additionally you can use it as many times as you like in an act/showdown and the monster gets knocked down as a part of the trigger.  This even works against L3 monsters if you perform the following (assuming everyone has reach/range weapons).

• Spend all but 5 of your X survival to slam the monster into the ground over and over for X-5 automatic wounds.
• Spend 1 survival, knock the monster down for 1 wound.
• Survivor 1 attacks, and just before their final Hit location is resolved, Survivor 2 Surges. When they complete their attack, the monster will stand and then react only to Survivor 1's final HL card (which can be the weakest one).
• Spend 1 survival, knock the monster down for 1 wound. 
• Survivor 2 attacks, and just before their final Hit location is resolved, Survivor 3 Surges as above. 
• Spend 1 survival, knock the monster down for 1 wound. 
• Survivor 3 attacks, and just before their final Hit location is resolved, Survivor 4 Surges as above. 
• Spend 1 survival, knock the monster down for 1 wound. 
• Survivor 4 attacks, and just before their final Hit location is resolved, Survivor 1 Surges as above.  
• Regain all your survival through some method like reviving tactics.

Only the Trap will stop this, and it doesn't work at all vs. the first step.

So yeah, it's kinda broken and overpowered and I hope this card gets reduced to either once per showdown or once per survivor's turn when we get an update to the expansion monsters. Automatic wounds with no risk are not fun.

Ranking: 1st

Block Formation:

This is an awkward formation to stand in, but it works if you have reach/range in the back two spots and it gives everyone a free automatic hit cancel. That's powerful, and the only issue I have with this is that the formation is quite vulnerable to the way certain monsters behave.

I absolutely love this one when you're facing monsters with Minons however, and I think it's fair to rank this 2nd best, it's super close between it and Distracting.

Ranking: 3rd

Attack Formation:

There is no downside to this tactic, because you are not punished for ignoring the order, you just lose the benefits. What it does is make you pre-decide the order that your survivors will attack in, and they gain benefits for doing so. This one is great for an offensively orientated team that has a hybrid support/DPS character or multiple Bruisers/Trappers, they are able to constantly attack the monster and feed off each other's successes. 

It can be fatiguing to constantly remember the order in which the survivors are supposed to attack, and to remove the strength bonuses on missed attacks etc. However, it is a solid benefit.

Ranking: 6th 

All the tactics cards are very, very powerful however as they give you access to strategies which you cannot get in any other way. Having access to more options, even if it's just the Trip or Lance formations is still of a benefit to a group, and I'm kind of the opinion that you should jam as many badges as you can in all your hunt parties.

Tactics, don't leave home without them!