Scenario 5: Extraction

Extraction is, in many ways, the bigger brother to take and hold. Similar placement of the flags, still has a killbox, but has two objectives into the mix as well.

It's a completely different animal. This can be a terrifically live Scenario, as any one of them that allow you to get three points in one turn have explosive potential, and the different pieces being so close together makes it fairly easy to concentrate a lot of fire power on any one of them.

This also leads to a lot of back and forth slugging it out after the initial class, and that makes an interesting game as well. This is one of those scenarios without a real gimmick to it, and choosing which side to commit most of your resources to after the lines have clashed will be your key to victory here. Going second doesn't necessarily lend you a great advantage either, since the ways to score are spread out quite a bit and require significant investment to take advantage of.

One thing I should note is that there are some armies that are fast enough and have enough bodies to go first and just run past the flags, setting the line of engagement very far into the opponents half of the table, which will prevent the second player from being able to contest or score for many turns. Lists like a Circle Advanced Deploy spam, Trollbloods with Fennblades, and other such lists can do this.

Going First or Second:

You should go first on Extraction if:
- You have a really fast, melee based list.
- Your opponent is playing a slower, grindy list without much in the list dedicated to unjamming models. A good example of this is a Karchev list with 6-8 heavies.

You should go second on Extraction if:
- Your opponent isn't playing a super fast swarm list.
- You have a control caster who can easily get 2 points on turn 2.
- You need to counter deploy to your opponent.
- Terrain heavily favors one side of the board.


Game Plan for Going First:

If you're going first, you need to prepare your army to do one thing - prevent your opponent from scoring more than one point on their second turn. There are a couple of ways to do this.

Your deployment should be pretty central (terrain dependent as usual), and you should spend turn one getting up the table as usual. If you have some self-sufficient units or solos like Daughters of the Flame or Man O' War Drakhuns, I like putting them towards the edges of the board in this Scenario so that they can charge in from the side in the coming turns.

Turn one, if your opponent has skewed their deployment, this is an excellent time to do what I call the first turn cross. Essentially, you move enough stuff (40% of your models say) to their skewed side to keep contesting for a few turns on the flag and then devote the remaining 60 ish percent of your army to coming around the opposite side of your objective. Your immediate goal is securing the flag, and your secondary goal is to feed your opponent enough stuff to keep him on his flag without giving him your whole army.

Turn two, make sure to spread your models that will contest his flag out so that if he wants to kill all of them, he has to commit multiple models. I've seen a lot of people confused by this idea, so consider this helpful little vassal diagram.

Obviously I'm speaking directly to clearing off models by using melee attacks, but playing against ranged armies is similar. By spacing things out, he will either have to commit really far forward to clear the back models contesting, or he will not clear off the flag with range attacks only.

This is what I would call contesting poorly. Sure, you've put six models next to that flag, but he can completely take them out with minimal investment of resources compared to say:

This. This is contesting awesomely. I don't even know how your opponent would get a RNG 2 model with multiple attacks where the right hand Typhon is, but with this spread of models, it will take a LOT more of an investment to clear the flag than the one above it.

A third option, and one that I would highly recommend adding to the second diagram, is having a counter-punch ready to hit back when your opponent comes in to clear your models. Obviously the placement of the models contesting in this example is poor, but notice how the green player has drawn his opponents' model into his charge range:

Those wouldn't necessarily be Mannikins, they could be weaponmaster infantry or another heavy or anything else with a serious bite.

Contesting and general flag play is a difficult area of play to nail down, but once you've figured it out, you'll start trading your resources a lot more efficiently than your opponent will. There will likely be an entire article dedicated to contesting, controlling, and counterpunch with regards to both flags and zones coming up after I finish the Scenario series.

Turn 3, you have a good opportunity to counter-punch on one or both flags. Ideally, you've been able to prevent your opponent from scoring more than one point, and on turn 3 you will counter by clearing both flags and controlling for two points. The game will continue to play like this until someone either messes up and gets assassinated, or someone wins on Scenario.

A quick note - DO NOT FORGET ABOUT THE OBJECTIVES. I have seen - and experienced - many games on Extraction where one player is up by one point, usually 3-2 or 4-3, and the other player dedicates all of his models to clearing one flag and killing the objective to win. Your objective is one of the most vulnerable parts of this Scenario after turn 2. Take advantage of your opponents and try to keep your opponents' models contained by the flags so they cannot take advantage of yours.


Game Plan for Going Second:

The game plan for second is remarkably similar to going first, except your goal is to score as many points as possible without giving away your army.

Models like Widowmaker Marksmen and other high Range, high accuracy models will be your best friend here as they can clear infantry off flags with ease.

Your general game plan should be to get to a flag, clear it and control it turn 2, and then look for ways to clear it and destroy your opponents' objective on turn 3. While you're doing this, you need to contest the other flag as efficiently as possible, or even control it if the opportunity arises.

Turn 1 run, choose the side they've devoted less models to as your focal point.

Turn 2, check and see if they've got any models currently controlling flags. If so, either kill those models and contest, or just contest on one flag and devote more resources to the other flag.

If they haven't put models in place to control the flags, and your threat ranges are higher, it can actually be totally okay to dance on the edge of their charge ranges with your models and wait a turn. If they commit hard to controlling a flag on their third turn, you can crush a big piece of their army and get a control point at the same time.

Make sure they won't score any points at the end of the turn, and if possible, take one flag decisively and prepare to go after their objective the next turn.


Conclusion:

This is one of the most balanced Scenarios in the packet, and as such it's hard to talk about in general terms. Most of the time, it's going to come down to who can contest and manage the flags best, as well as who has a plan for going after the objective. Even though this is a killbox Scenario, their warcaster/warlock can stay quite far back from the front lines and still influence the game. I would say that this Scenario doesn't lend itself particularly well to assassination for that reason, but if they ever commit their warcaster/warlock, look for ways to end the game.