We Moved!

I just wanted to say I had a good time with this blog, but unfortunately, I decided to move on to a generic warmachine blog. The new one can be found here:

http://theironkingdomsorlando.blogspot.com/

This means Pillers will no longer be updated, but I will be posting my Skorne thoughts still in this new format. Because I play several factions, it has been hard thinking of new things to post for Skorne, while thinking of what I am going to try out with my other two factions, so I figured a more generic blog will serve my purposes more in the long run.

Steamroller 2012 and Tournaments Win Conditions

Steamroller 2012 and Tournaments Win Conditions:

Or, what I learned over the weekend.


"Sometimes it is all about the coins"

Nobody is a perfect player, we are all learning and growing the more we play. I have been playing Skorne for two years now, and I am finally getting to the point where I am comfortable in large events.

This past weekend, I played in a single list, 35 point steam roller event. I took pHexeris because his feat was the biggest force multiplier I could apply, and had a pretty decent answer for any rough Cryx match-up I faced. I had no idea that a tournament with an expected 6 or 7 arrivals turned into a 20 man tournament, with every faction save Retribution getting represented. I had a fun time, even though I went 2 - 2. One loss was due to my opponent misinterpreting a spell, and my not reading it for myself, and my second loss was against eCain, where I just couldn't stop the assassination, even though I was in a place to almost take out his army and play for scenario.

My two wins however where fairly glorious, I won both of them on scenario. The first one was against an eLich player, and was a hard fought game, I killed almost his entire army and survived the feat turn, but barely had anything left to actually win the game. Dice down was called, and my one tough Agonizer held the zone. My second win was against a pKreoss player who really knew his stuff. I was able to stuff the feat turn from killing my caster, out attrition him, and contested the zone as much as possible for a dice down win.

So after this tournament experience, I felt like I learned a lot. I wasn't necessarily going there to win, as single list events are way to "luck of the draw" for me. I saw the eCain player and knew I wouldn't win against that assassination run, which was proven right in the last round.

However, I felt like I wanted to share what I learned.

Understand the Tie Breakers:

This is just good general advice. Steamroller 2012 puts a lot of emphasis on scenarios and the tie breakers prove this.

The actual game time you have is limited in scenario play. For 50 point games it could be anywhere plus or minus 100 minutes, and you are never sure when time is going to be called. Because of this, you have to have an understanding that if your turn was going to end right now, you need to still satisfy the tie breaker conditions in a way that ensure that you will win.

In Steamroller, the Tie Breakers are the following, in this order:

1. Player that has the most Warcasters/Warlocks in play - Rarely comes up, but important to remember in team events. Winning by assassination means you win regardless anyways, so this in most common events will be skipped in the tie breaker breakdown.

2. Player with the most control points - This means read the scenario, and if you can grab a control point, do so. Control Points are critical towards your standings anyways. This is the reason that almost anytime you are faced with a long shot assassination or a quick control point grab, you go for the control point. That ensures if dice down is called while you are struggling to get that caster kill, you still win.

3. Player with the most points in the designated zone - This was the even bigger one for me. Basically, if there is a zone you needed to control and you have more points in it then your opponent, you win, regardless of how much you actually lost. This forces you to contest zones, especially in late game. You can use that to your advantage as well, of you know a game is getting low on time, you can jam into the zone and prevent your opponent from just running away and winning on army destruction. It basically is here to prevent VP sniping and running, which was a tactic used by some. It also can be used to set up counter charging. If your opponent's only way to win is to have more points in zone, you know the minimum they would have to place, and where they have to place it. Put a model or unit to threaten them, and you put your opponent into an almost unwinnable situation. Pay attention to this as well, a savy opponent knows the same thing, I had a player part his caster and his last jack in the zone and constantly camp on focus. He knew I would have a hard time straight killing him, so I was able to turn a possible loss into a win by getting and filling the zone myself. Also remember, this has to be the zone you have to get. Enemy models in that zone is irrelevant for scoring.

4. Army Points destroyed - So killing the opponents army is important. Good thing we are good at this.


So as you can see, you have to always be as focused on the scenario as possible. Control points and holding control points is a big deal.

As far as Skorne is concerned, I think it plays to our strengths a little. What we do well is kill things. We are not the most attrition tuned faction (that award goes to Trolls, with Menoth and Khador not far behind) and on the flip side, we are not very assassination focused either. What we do well is look at the army across the table and kill it.

How does Steamroller play to our strengths, we can win on scenario by just flatly killing the things in control zones. The nature of a melee heavy force, means we can cross that distance, kill the army with fists, and be sitting to grab control zones.

Granted this is a little easier said then done, and every match up is different, but , I feel, as long as you put scenario and destruction of your enemies first, Skorne can do very well.

I will say, that Objective Destruction missions are very tough. We have only minimal ranged threat to pick up objectives, and if our army is too melee focus, we will be struggling to kill the opponent's army while trying to get to scenarios, while more ranged heavy armies can get to grips with them quicker. The only thing I can think to do, is kill the opponent's heaviest shooters before that can happen. It is possible, but a bit of a struggle. If you face that situation, killing your own objective can possible deny that win condition. Just make sure you can put it down or you give a free opponent to your objective. Read the scenario carefully, and make sure that can't come back to bite you.

I will post more as I attend more events. I still have Adepticon on the horizon, and that will be, by far, the biggest Warmachine event I will attend. I will post reports afterwards.

Caster Reviews 2: Dominar Rasheth

Caster Review #2

Dominar Rasheth

"I apologize... for nothing!"

I like to divide our caster stable into two categories. On one hand you have our "Martial" casters. Casters that buff our already impressive melee potential. Their maybe other tricks to those casters, but the general principle of "apply fist to face" usually wins you games with them. On the other hand we have the spell slingers, casters almost Cryxian in nature. They are less about mixing it up in melee and instead rely on their casting potential and tricks to win games.

Raseth is probably the caster the emphasizes that play style the most. He literally has no melee potential himself. He sits on his fat ass tossing spells around all game until your opponent is dead, or someone knocked him off his sofa.

Raseth is a very interesting caster and is most definitely not for the newer player. When talking about Raseth, there is almost two separate armies here; his fantastic tier and outside of tier. It is an interesting proposition. His tier is really about the strength of that army with Raseth just buffing/debuffing, whereas outside of tier, Raseth's casting can take greater importance. I have played it both ways, and I feel the tier is the stronger way to go, but outside of tier, you can do some pretty cool things. Outside of tier, Rasheth is really the only Skorne caster that brings some decent board control, which we will get into later.

Chain Attack featured him in previous podcast which you can hear here. They gave him a "D" rating and again, I am going to have to disagree. Is he a top rated tournament caster? Not really, can he be plenty competitive and fun to play, why yes, yes indeed.

But enough set up, let's get into this.

Base Abilities and Stats:

Rasheth has some of the worse defensive stats in the faction, maybe the game. At a very low DEF and ARM, he can be assassination bait a little. He is also on a large base, which means he is rarely getting hidden by intervening models so it will be a hard time to keep protected from ranged assassination, unless you bring your own clouds or block him off with several large base modes.

Also note that he doesn't have any actual weapons. Without a Melee weapon, he can't even try to charge to get closer up the field. More often then not you are advancing him just enough to pull off the spells and possibly stay out of the kill box.

However, you do have some pretty interesting special rules in play. The first one, impervious flesh does help in his ranged weakness aspect. That one less die of damage from ranged is a pretty big deal. Unfortunately, because of his low ARM stat, it still doesn't prevent boosting to put a lot of hurting on him, but you can buff that a little with the Krea's animus. He does have stable as well, which prevents knockdowns, but at his low low DEF anyways, usually it isn't a good protective ability.

His third ability is Dark Rituals which is a once per game ability that turns any warrior model into an arc node at the expense of a little damage, which usually means the end of a single wound infantry. Note that Incorporeal models are not effected by this damage, so a Void Spirit and/or a Feralgeist can actually make a pretty good mini arc node for him. This is a fantastic ability, which really leads us to what he actually brings to the table.

He is a Fury 8 warlock with a faily good spell list. He is a caster, and in fact, you have no reason not to cast spells with him and a Fury 8 on a Warlock is a fairly big deal. If you camp on transferes with enough heavies around, it can make him very hard to assassinate, but probably the bigger deal is how much fury he can potentially leave on the table. A good common practice with Hordes casters is to leave at least 2 transfers on the caster to make assassinations hard. At Fury 8, he could leave 6 fury on the table and still be able to reave it all back. We are already in Skorne, so we can make sure our back line Animus jugglers are fury free, but that does put us at the abilitiy to have 2 heavies in the front lines mixing it up and not have to worry too much about over extending the fury. It is a good thing for us, because we can't clear fury and enrage the same beast, being able to juggle that is very nice.

But make no mistake, the primary reason he has the Fury stat that he does is to cast spells. Fury 8 makes hitting easier, fury 8 gives you more fury to spend. Fury 8 gives you a massive control area to use Dark Rituals with.

Spells:

Rasheth is a "look for the answers on the spells list caster" and in that respect, you can't expect to have all your spells cast, or even use all of your spells during the course of the game. This does give him a lot of interesting options throughout the course of the game.

Blood Mark - I basically refer to this as the Hordes version of Parasite, in that it comes with an ARM debuff and then gives your caster some additional protection. In this case the ARM debuff is a -2, and this allows you to transfer damage to the respective target. Remember, according to the rulings on this spell, all the normal fury transfer rules apply. You can't transfer to the affected model if it is outside your control area, and you can't transfer to a beast on full fury. Casting this on a multi wound model can be funny, but remember all excess damage bounces right back to you. A lot of people say "get this on the caster and do it early", but I am not a fan of this. Considering a Warcaster can just step out of your control zone and kill Rasheth with his army is troublesome. My recommendation is to treat this just like any Parasite caster treats that spell, as an ARM debuff and use it offensively. Granted, our beasts usually don't need any help, but with Blood Mark on a large target, you are essentially giving all the rest of your units a +2 to their damage. A nice thing about this spell is that it doesn't require the target to be living, so it is perfectly good to use on a Warjack. Gators become an effective POW 17 against a large target, Immortals become POW 15's. So the spell has it's use. I would consider the transfer aspect of it as a fringe benefit.

Breath of Corruption - I think this is his signature spell, and the one I use the most. Basically it is a 3" AOE that causes a POW 12 on everyone underneath it, it is not blast damage, and it stays in play for a round causing a point of corrosive damage for models that enter or end their activation in it. It gives him an answer for high defense, especially if you target your own models and it gives him board control. Here is a handy tip. With Raseth's Fury 8, he can still cast it twice in a turn and sit on 2 transfers. If you place 2 of your own infantry models in front of the rest of the unit and cast it twice on top of each of their heads, you can provide a wall of 7" that other melee infantry can't pass, or they just die. If you are out of tier, you can extend the threat range of this with craft talisman from the Shaman and Marketh can put a third instance out there. It is really the only hard board control that we have, it comes with a price in models and resources, but it can be a game saver or just ensure the first strike from the rest of the unit. You can also be dirty with this spell and cast it on top of a medium or large base model and make it immune to non-reach melee infantry. Medium bases are roughly 1.6 inches, and Large bases are 1.9 inches. With a 3" centered on the base of either, it is impossible to not take the damage and still be in melee range. You can also run a model right outside of melee range of a stealthed or otherwise support solo, and thanks to dark rituals, arc this spell right at them. Never boast because even if you miss, with a minimum on where you can scatter, you will still catch that model, and POW 12 kills most models like that. A Void Spirit or Feralgeist can even run through the opposing army to deliver this. Fantastic spell that really meshes with his abilities.

Carnivore - Is awesome until it is not. You get a MAT bonus to the effected model/unit, and Rasheth heals a little anytime that model/unit kills something with a melee attack. It's major downside is it only effects against living targets. To be fair, there are few undead targets with a high enough defense that Carnivore would be missed, however, since now that all Hordes factions have access to a 3 point solo that makes units undead, it can be hard to see the spell used often. When it comes into play though, boy does it. Having problems with high DEF beasts, pop this on a Bronzeback and now you have an effective MAT 9. This cast on units like Gatormen or Nihilators puts you are a stat where even DEF 16 is in possible trouble. Like Blood Mark, look at the healing aspect as a side benefit. The spell also removes the models hit from play, keep that in mind against the limited amount of casters that can resurrect living models, as you deny them this ability. You also deny soul tokens which is hilarious against certain Menoth builds and opposing Skorne.

Castigate - It is an awesome spell, but like most things Rasheth, again situational. It basically shuts down Arc Nodes in his control area. It doesn't stop Arcing into his control area, and more importantly, doesn't stop channeling. So most ways Hordes arc spells around this does nothing to. It is very handy against certain Warmachine builds. Any magic heavy caster on the warmachine side would be casting spells through an arc node, so this shuts it down. This is golden against any caster with the possibility of spell assassinating you, which is rare these days. It makes it a great anti-cryx spell, but considering all his other abilities are very living model focused I try and avoid that match up with Rasheth.

Influence - Is another interesting spell, but I believe the worst one on his card. It only works on living models, and it depends on the fact that said living model is in melee range to do anything. Sometimes I pray for the day I can make my opponent's Warwitch Siren shadowbind something, but a smart player will just never give you that opportunity. Against clumped up, average defense, reach melee infantry, it can be hilarious. But that is so situational it might never happen. I have cast it maybe once in the year or so,

Sunder Spirit - This is his other magic missile. It has decent damage and is probably the one you reach for when you are trying to spell assassinate a caster. Removing a warbeast's animus is pretty useful, especially when it can be such things as killing the gator toss, or stopping angelius' from pushing out of control zones.

Feat - Plague Wind:

In my mind, I go back and forth on whether this is an effective feat, at all. I think this ties with eMorghoul as our worst feat. Essentially living enemy models suffer -2 STR and -2 ARM and if a living model is destroyed, Rasheth heals damage. Like all Rasheth healing consider this a fringe benefit. Notice though on the healing that it applies to your own models as well, so if an opponent is trying to nickle and dime you dead, but have to kill models in the way it does add a tiny, tiny extra layer of protection.

The fact that this only effects living models is what cuts me about this. There can be whole games where the feat is worthless, and it really hurts a caster's effectiveness, if he literally has no feat. It doesn't effect Jacks, it doesn't effect Hordes armies with access to undead, and it barely touches Cryx.

However, when it shines, it shines. That -2 ARM makes pretty much everything in our army more effective. Breath of Corruption becomes POW 14 effectively. A Cannoneer's shot becomes POW 17. You effectively give all our beasts +2 STR for a turn, which really helps our damage output versus other beasts. Beast thing is that it can stack with Blood Mark, to really bring the ARM down to almost guaranteed to kill levels. The -2 STR is dirty as well, as enemy beasts will have a hard time putting down our heavies. Feat plus the Agonizers -2 STR aura gives our beasts an effective +4 ARM. Knock the animus off a Dire Troll one time on your feat turn with Agonizer coverage, and it is hard to dislike this feat.

It also opens up the assassination on a lot of casters. Feat plus Blood Mark, can swing arm to a point where whatever damage you put on the caster, it will hurt, a lot. Even other hordes casters, as they try and transfer it, could be looking at least at losing a beast in the process.

So I put this as second worse in the faction. It has it's use, but walking into games against massed undead sucks.

Play style, Optimum Pieces, and Must Haves:

Like I said in the opener, Rasheth really is two armies; Tier and non-tier.

The tier army builds itself, easily. You will be taking massed titans, Gatormen, the two agonizers, and season to taste. It is our strongest tier list, and the only one I would take to tournaments. Against most hordes armies, it is a rough list to handle. All the board control and debuffs Rasheth brings plus cheap Titans in massed numbers, Gators with Carnivore, and mass Agonizer coverage? Yes please. It is even pretty solid against a lot of warmachine armies. It is hard to bring that army down. Rasheth can even take a Krea and cast the animus on himself behind Gators for some excellent ranged protection. It was the first tier list I built as a Skorne player and the first list I actually won with. It struggles versus Cryx but that is what second lists are for. It is a solid A army, and won a hardcore tournament for a reason.

Outside of tier, things become a little trickier. The only reason you want to step out of tier is to maximize his spell casting abilities. Outside of tier you get Marketh, who can cast Breath of Corruption or cycle your upkeeps. You can get a Cyclops Shaman to knock off offensive upkeeps on your own models and can increase Raseth's non Dark Rituals spell casting with craft talisman. An Extoller Soulward can give Raseth more options on his targets, and loves to see a Blood Marked Living Beast in it's gun range. So there is a lot of interesting options outside of tier, and honestly it is worth exploring. Basically, you want to take advantage of his casting as much as possible. Some of the same things in the tier list can still make it into a non-tier one, but more often then not, I look at other synergies I wouldn't have had otherwise when I step out of tier. The primary motivation to do so is almost always Breath of Corruption spam, and that is only possible with a Shaman and Marketh.

Final Thoughts:

If his abilities where not so living model dependent, I could easily say that he can be a top rated caster for us. Yes, he is a little easy to assassinate, but the amount of tricks and answers he brings to the table can allow him to be a very favorable match up against a lot of armies.

Unfortunately, Undead is just rough for him. His tier is really the only saving grace for him. It makes him a very solid B rated caster for our faction. You can easily take his tier into a tournament as your second list, and when you run into Cryx or any other army that can offer a lot of undead, simply switch to a caster that can cover that match up.

If you really want to try this caster, what I recommend is starting with his tier and avoiding Cryx like the plague. If you get proficient with him, try him out of tier.

Don't discount him because of his living only abilities. He still has some interesting plays even against Cryx.

The long and short of it, is that he is an extremely fun caster to play. Yelling "I apologize for nothing" while dropping a Breath of Corruption on some models head on the other side of the table is a rewarding experience in and of itself.

Know Your Enemy: Cygnar

Know Your Enemy #1:

Cygnar


"Technology, I has it"

I know I have dedicated a lot of time to anti-cryx articles, and all of them are good to know, but what of the other factions? Well, here is the first of a multi-part series that will briefly go into the other factions, their strengths and weaknesses, and what we could do to make victory against them easier.

This is in no way an extensive list. I am not going to go into specific casters unless I have a specific request to do so. This will be more of an overall look at what core concepts we can apply to winning games against these factions.

So first of, Cygnar!

Cygnar Strengths:

What Cygnar excels at, more so then any other faction, is ranged threat. The majority of their strength comes from their ability to pick models off the table from a distance. Most of their strongest units can do this while also ignoring most of the ranged defensive abilities of the game. They can lay down templates that ignore stealth, they can field units that ignore concealment and cover.

They also can be very good at extending the time it takes you to get across the table. Between pushing from gun mages, and certain abilities, feats, and spells, they can maximize amount of time they can have to shoot you down.

They are no slouches when it come to melee either. They have access to elite melee units and pretty decent melee warjacks to finish you off once you get there.

They are also the masters of anti-infantry and the anti-support solos/units. They can absolutely punish melee infantry with straight up denial or making sure they just die before they get across the table. Cyclones can block off sections of the board with covering fire. They can chain lightning across multiple models to avoid high defense and line of sight. They have multi firing weapons, melee weapons with chain lighting, and certain models that will just clear infantry off the board with a single action.

Cygnar Weaknesses:

Armor. Especially at range. Most of their weapons are usually in the POW 10-12 range, which, if you present them with ARM 17+ models makes it very hard to put down. Gun Mages are awesome, but the best thing they can do is Critical Brutal Damage which is not reliable, and really only adds another die to an already low POW. Long Gunners are usually their best answer for high ARM with dual shot high pow CRAs, but most Cygnar players rarely field them. If they do, they quickly become your first target. They have some other answers in the form of feats, so just spamming armor isn't an auto win, but it does help.

They also have no incredibly strong melee threat. None of their elite units are weapon masters save Precursor Knights who only get it for a turn. A few of their jacks can be fairly impressive, especially under certain casters, but they will not match the damage output of a lot of other factions jacks/beasts. To be fair, they are a faction designed around getting damage out during an enemy advance, and finishing them off with the melee threat that they have. They would be broken if they had crazy good melee on top of the ranged threat that they have.

Skorne Versus Cygnar:

For new players, Cygnar can be a very rough opponent for you to face. The "skorne trap" of new players it to rely on melee infantry, and Cygnar just punishes you for it. A focused melee infantry Skorne army will always struggle to take Cygnar down. Especially casters like pCain, both Haleys, and others. pHaley is extremely annoying to play if you go melee heavy because she will prevent you from charging or running all game and just shoot all your infantry down, while putting damage to your beasts enough to make an assassination on your caster a probability.

However, there are a few things that we can do that can turn the tables.

First is armor, outside of trolls and Khador, we have some of the crazier armor options availible. We have mostly ARM 19 beasts with a few ARM 21s in there. We have access to the Krea that can make that an effective +2 ARM (with a DEF bonus as well) against ranged attacks. We have spells like Defender's Ward and Iron Flesh to provide protection going in. Beast heavy Naaresh can be a big deal to Cygnar players, especially on the feat turn. Xerxis with Sheild Wall Cetrati, and careful use of defenders ward can be annoying. Tiberion sitting with an ARM buff contesting a zone is very difficult for Cygnar to dislodge.

Cygnar also has very few units with access to protective abilities like stealth or spell immunity. So it actually opens up our own range and spell options. Reivers are a pretty decent choice against Cygnar, with CRAing stuff dead. Spell slingers like both Hexeris can have fun times against Cygnar. A well placed ashes to ashes can put a real hurt on a Gun Mage unit, and you can avoid that high defense by hitting one of your own guys, in some games you can do it by hitting a DEF 5 objective, which is hilarious. If the cygnar player didn't spread out, you can drop an arced Obliteration through an eyeless sight arc node and catch a few models.

Models like a Cannoner, the Raider, the Shaman, anything with a ranged attack of it's own has the potential to shine. eHexeris offers black spot to up the effectiveness of those units. pHexeris offers spell slinging of his own, and a feat that doesn't need you to close the distance to get your damage in. Raseth can arc spells of his own to get damage in. Even the good Void Seer can channel a couple of sprays in key places off infantry models to cause some damage, especially if the Cygnar player was kind to feed you souls.

eHaley's feat still sucks a little. Just remember to contest the zone early, and make it hard for Cygnar to push you out of it. A Bronzeback with the Safeguard Animus is rather fun for those times they want to Thunderstrike your heavy. They can never knock it down, and if they ever cause any damage, it can simply walk back into the zone. A simple thing like another heavy blocking the Gun Mages ability to push a model out of a zone can save you heavily in games.

The nice thing about playing Cygnar with Skorne is that it forces you as a player to not rely so heavily on all melee all the time. We have a surprisingly decent ranged game of our own, and our protective abilities help us survive the war or attrition. The lists I love to take against Cygnar are beast heavy lists, because I know I can survive through the firepower, and start putting things down when I get there.

Good Cygnar players are still scary opponents, so don't expect any easy matches. I don't want to hear "Mahu told me high ARM just wins, why doesn't it", because as with anything in this game, there are no concrete answers. Just experiment with other casters, try some beast heavy lists with some defensive buffs, or Xerxis with Cetrati and a Krea, and see how you do. As always, try and recognize those things that threaten the strategy of your army the most and make sure you have a way to take that out in your list.

If you have any specific questions, or if there is something specific in Cygnar that you are struggling with, please post a comment, and I will try and answer it to the best of my knowledge.

Back to Basics: Keeping your Warlock safe from ranged threats

Back to Basics

Keeping your Warlock safe from ranged threats


"Sure, you got me. You don't have to be a dick about it"

The primary win condition of Warmachine is assassination of the caster or warlock. First person that does it wins and it is always a win condition of any Warmachine game you play.

The nice thing about scenario play (and why I always play be scenario) is that if you make it incredibly hard for your opponent to take out your warlock, you can force the game to be about the scenario, or you can cripple your opponents army to the point where they have no chance to win outside of an assassination win.

This is an important concept, especially for Skorne, because we have few really good assassination victory conditions. Outside of the Molik Bullet, which is really hard to pull off against a good opponent, we are much happier maximizing damage on the opponents army.

We have some pretty good survivability options. First, we are a Hordes faction, so we will always have the superior protection mechanic of fury transfers, but because of the melee nature of our faction, we love forcing the engagement and turning the game into an army on army game. The more we grind with the opposing army, maximizing the amount of damage we can do, the more we can force an opponent into a lose-lose situation. We trade a little bit of attrition for raw damage, but if we get those excellent charges we can force the opponent into having to assassinate your warlock, or they just lose.

So making sure your warlock isn't looking at his own death comes with time. You need to be able to recognize the threats your opponent has and plan for it. Even I still get caught by an assassination angle I didn't see, but that has almost always been because I get greedy and extend my warlock to far.

It's a delicate balance, on one hand you want to bring as much to bear as possible to stomp over your opponent's army, on the other hand you don't want to just lose because you opened up that window.

There are essentially 3 types of assassination; Ranged Assassination, Melee Assassination, and Magic Assassination. In truth, most assassination runs involve all of the above as part of a play, but some armies are designed around the possibility of one being really strong over the others, and planning for it. Good players usually bring more balanced lists designed to handle many different types of scenarios, but this is a beginners article, this is for the new Skorne player that might be frustrated after the 8th time eLilith shot him off the table.

This article will focus on the ranged assasination. Here is a few guidelines.

Understand the Line of Sight rules:

"I rulz the Hunger Games"

Basically, Line of Sight works like this.

First, every model has a volume defined by it's base size, this rarely comes up, but it is important to remember. They are defined to have a set size based on the size of the base, you are not required to know what those sizes are exactly, just remember that a small base model is shorter in height then a medium base model which is shorter in height then a large base model and so on and so forth.

Second, line of sight is determined by being able to draw an imaginary line between any portion of a models base to any portion of another models base. This makes actually getting line of sight not incredibly difficult.

Thirdly, and more importantly, is that if that line passes between an intervening model it automatically misses. An intervening model is any model with an equal to or larger base size as the target.

The volume of the base thing usually throws new players off. It is a common misconception to think that because you are on a larger base, and your volume is higher, you can see over smaller base models. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

So your warlock can be buried behind a simple thing as an infantry unit and be immune to being targeted by that ranged jack or beast on your opponent's side.

This can backfire on you though if you are over aggressive. Most small base infantry models can be cleared away, and fairly quickly. Remember, the "any line from a portion of your base to another" rule? If you rely on an infantry unit to block line of sight, that puts you in a position of maybe one or two models between you and instantly losing.

If you are having a lot of difficulties with ranged assassination, you could always use medium based infantry to block LOS. Cetrati work well for this because in Shield Wall, they generally want to be in base to base, and they can push their armor to the point where taking them out at range is extremely difficult. A lot of casters though dislike this, because they might "trip" over the models in the way. It can also be a bad idea because this game rewards aggression over protection, and sinking points into a medium base unit just to keep your caster alive is considered a negative. For new players, if they are just frustrated with ranged assassination, exploring this option isn't necessarily bad.

Also remember that the reverse on line of sight is true. Raseth, bless his fat ass, will have a really hard time not being shot at. At least he has impervious flesh to help him out and plenty of transfers.

Again, it all comes down to being able to recognize those threats and plan accordingly, you can never be 100% protected in this game, which leads to...

Make them work for it:

Another aspect of ranged assassination is that most of the time it is not easy. The game is built around the idea that most ranged is difficult to either hit or damage versus capabilities of melee attacks. It is rare to see a ranged attack from a beast or jack with a ROF 3, most often it is a single shot. It is also rare to see extremely high power shots. Some units have CRA, but that is hard to bring to bear due to line of sight issues. Sometimes they block each other off from participating. Beasts and Jacks usually average POW 15 or lower, with a single attack, only being able to boost the attack and damage roll.

So when you see what is across the table from you, look at what they have and compare it to what you have.

Do they have ranged that ignores concealment? cover? Line of Sight? Spell effects? If yes, then do any of those attacks miss something on the list of things they ignore? If so, take advantage of that difference.

For example, Legion has a lot of ranged, with a lot of instances of eyeless sight. Eyeless sight doesn't ignore two very specific things, Line of Sight and Cover. So understanding the Line of Sight rules is one thing, but if you can somehow gain cover, you make Legion's task extremely difficult. If you have trouble against Legion, one of the things I recommend is to start insisting on midfield obstacles in your game. They should be evenly placed, and follow the steam roller rules of not giving one player an advantage over the other. But I am amazed by how much properly spaced terrain actually balances this game, almost like they designed it that way.

So if you face against Legion, you can pop behind cover and dare them to come after you. Outside of pLylyth, Legion does have a hard time with high defense.

Armor also matters. The only extra ranged die I am aware of is critical brutal or poison. Most of those attacks are POW 10 or 11. Extra damage die is awesome, until you are shooting at ARM 20, which is possible with a few of our warlocks.

We also have a few protective abilities that can be incredibly useful. The Krea can provide it's plus 2 DEF and ARM buff animus. The Brute can provide knockdown immunity to force players to deal with your defense plus comes with shield guard. Sure there are ways to get around these things, but it usually revolves around resources spent to do it. The less resources they can bring to bear on that actual assassination, the riskier it can become.

The more risky you make it for your opponent the less likelyhood they will go for it, which gives you the opportunity to start taking resources away from them.

In conclusion:

This is by no means an exhausted list. When I go into more caster reviews, I will go into more depth about how each caster deals with ranged defense. Some are really good at it. But if you are new, this does give you some ideas to start using to help out your game.

Battle Report 3: Lord Tyrant Hexeris Versus Lich Lord Asphyxious

Battle Report #3

Lord Tyrant Hexeris Versus Lich Lord Asphyxious

Time for another Battle Report!

This post was originally supposed to be a 2 in 1 battle report post. In the recent weeks, I have challenged my excellent Cryx player regular opponent to a battle against eLich. eLich is arguably the best competitive warlock in Cryx (with eDenny and eSkarre not far behind), and is a regular on the tournament scene. I wanted to nail down an overall good list for tournament play with a caster that can also really screw with Cryx. I nailed it down to two casters; Mordikaar and pHexeris.

The first match was with Mordikaar against eLich. Here was my list:

Void Seer Mordikaar +5 points
* Cyclops Brute 5 points
* Cyclops Shaman 5 points
* Titan Cannoneer 9 points
* Titan Sentry 9 points

Agonizer 2 points
Extoller Soulward 2 points
Gatorman Witch Doctor 3 points
10 Nihilators 8 points
4 Paingiver Beast Handlers 2 points
Tyrant Commander & Standard Bearer 3 points
6 Venator Reivers 5 points
* Venator Officer & Standard Bearer 2 points

Basically a lot of Cryx hate. I had a Gatorman Witch Doctor Tough and Undead the Nihilators, which also got Banishing Ward to really make them a super annoyance to Cryx while the Reivers got Hollow and did their best to stay away from Admonia. It was a solid list and both armies mauled each other. Long story short, I knew I was actively losing, but had an opportunity to hail mary some decent strength Essence Blasts on Lich's head, but my dice said no. The Sentry was in the list because I felt I needed another heavy hitter, but I think he will soon be replaced for a Raider and a Drake or Krea. I love Mordikaar, I really do (one of my favorites, fluff wise) but I always struggle with an end game with him. He has denial out the ass, but how he wins games is what I have to figure out.

So I moved on to pHexeris. I feel pHexeris doesn't get enough love. As much as I love his epic form, and I do, I feel that pHexeris is still one of Skorne's strongest casters. In my opinion, his feat is the best feat in the faction, sure it hates low MAT, high DEF troops, and tough, but offensively speaking, if can cause way more damage then potentially your army could that turn. I look at is as an added bonus when trying to kill the opponent's army, rather then banking on it's kill ability by itself. He has a straight MAT buff that doesn't require him to be up field, he has the better arcing abilities because of Soul Slave, and Psychic Vampire just makes certain units cry. He also has an excellent denial reeving mechanic. I once wrecked a Legion heavy and 3 lesser beasts between a combination of Beat Back, buying attacks, and reeving the fury. After that turn, I still had him sitting on 5 transfers. He is an excellent caster, my only complaint about him is that it can be difficult to build his list.

I have a simple rule when it comes to list design. Is this the list I would take to a tournament with? I may take a caster that is a favorable match up with another caster, but I always have one list per caster, I never build specifically for a match up.

However, I knew I walked into this match up with an advantage. Any bane I kill on Hexeris' feat turn is permanently dead to eLich. It is a huge deal for an eLich player because he struggles to bring his feat to bear. The typical answer I get from an eLich player is "well, I will just kill my own stuff", to which I usually reply, "sweet, so I only have to deal with your army for one turn". pHexeris is also a fantasitc anti-cryx caster because Banes Fuel his feat, especially Knights. With a Large Control Zone for the feat, pHexeris on his feat turn could potentially waste an entire Bane Heavy Cryx army and deny any resurrection abilities save Tartarus.

To be fair, I didn't build a specifically anti-eLich army. I built, what I feel, is a solid pHexy army with some anti-cryx options.

So, enough explanations, on to the lists:

Mike

Lich Lord Asphyxious +6 points
* Cankerworm 5 points
* Helldiver 3 points
* Nightwretch 4 points
* Scavenger 4 points
* Stalker 4 points

10 Bane Knights 10 points
Bane Lord Tartarus 4 points
6 Bane Thralls 5 points
* Bane Thrall Officer & Standard 3 points
6 Bile Thralls 5 points
Darragh Wrathe 4 points
2x Warwitch Siren 2 points each
Withershadow Combine 5 points

Mahu

Lord Tyrant Hexeris +6 points

* Cyclops Raider 5 points
* Cyclops Shaman 5 points
* Titan Cannoneer 9 points
* Titan Gladiator 8 points
* Aptimus Marketh 3 points

Agonizer 2 points
Extoller Soulward 2 points
5 Gatorman Posse 9 points
10 Nihilators 8 points
4 Paingiver Beast Handlers 2 points
Paingiver Task Master 2 points
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew 1 point

I really struggled with this list, I really did. At the end of the day, I decided to not worry about high defense with this army. There is a list I am playing around with that involves Orin Midwinter, a Thrullg, and Skornerpult (shocking) but I didn't have the Catapult model, and I was hoping that MAT 9 Nihilators and MAT 9 Gatormen with re-rolls to hit would be enough. My list also only has 2 really strong heavy hitters, but the infantry hate is here, and I think it can be a good match up for a lot of builds.

We rolled scenario and came up with Gauntlet from SR 2012. We rolled for first turn, and Mike got it.

This is set up. I deployed the Nihilators across from the Banes because it is easier to receive a charge from Bane Thralls then it is Bane Knights with Single wound infantry, as eLich doesn't have Ghost Walk, and you can play the blocking games I described in an earlier post. The Gators went after the Knights as even though they out threat me, with tough and medium bases, again, I can make it very hard to take out the whole unit with a charge, and even two Gators plus my feat can wipe out that whole unit. All the beasts and the rest of the army stayed central.

His first turn sees the typical running. I saw something I never saw before, Lich charged a Bane Knight to kill it and popped three Caustic Mist right in my face. I assume it was to try and prevent my advance onto the scoring area, but I figured I had yet another turn before I needed to contest the zone.

Here is my advance up. I "clouded" the Nihilators forward to try and bait the charge, but try and stay far enough away to not lose my whole unit to a purge. Gators Dirge of Mists advanced up and got tough, everything else got into position, trying to stay out of most of the threat ranges of his army, but still in a position to threaten him if he got close. I did get fortunate, a Sniped, Eyeless Sight Cannoneer put a massive hurting on the Stalker, crippling it enough to not have to worry to much about it.

What I expected to happen, happened now. Lich arcs an excarnate into my Nihilators, but thankfully, I pass my tough roll. He does it again, and get it off this time. I felt fortunate because now there was no focus for the Caustic Mist clouds. A Bile thrall was only able to catch a few Nihilators and the Swamp Gobbers in the purge. I felt kinda dumb because I didn't Death March the Nihilators which would have been handy. The Purge also got the Agonizer, which all Warmachine players love to hate, but caused minimal damage. I love that malnourished little guy. The Bane Knights advanced towards the center to avoid the Gators that will be there momentarily.

Going into this turn, I felt the perfect set up for the feat was given to me. I think Mike spread out enough to force Hexeris to move forward to possibly set up an assasination, but with midfield obstructions and some smart play, I felt I could capitalize the most on my feat and still keep Hexeris relatively safe. So between the initial charge of the Gators, shots from the Shaman, and the Raider, and the feat, I put all the Bane Knights away, including a couple of bile thralls. The Gladiator charged and finished off the Stalker. I felt that meant I lose my Gladiator next round, but that did put another ostacle in the way of getting to Hexeris, and the last thing I needed was a luck hit from a crippled Stalker to prevent transfers on Hexeris. Death March Nihilators clear a lot of Bane Thralls. I get fortunate here as well, as two Thralls under the feat did the impossible thing and actually hit Mike's one Arc Node, and after rolling fire on damage, left it with only a single point of health left. I couldn't get to Tartarus this turn, which was sadness, but Mike was Smart and played him as far away as possible. I was out of feat range and out of sniped Cannoneer range. The two downed Nihilators get behind the Gladiator to further block of charges to Hexeris. Marketh cycles Death March to the Gators. I did that because I knew Mike couldn't retaliate on them enough to put the whole unit down, and I wanted to put him in a place of, sure you can kill a couple, but then I an opportunity to get them in range of a lot of things. As you can tell from the picture, this was overall a great turn for me.

Even though I mauled his army, he is still Cryx and can put a hurting on my army with minimal guys left. Tartarus curses and Threashers 4 Nihilators which unfortunately make no tough rolls. Fresh Bane Thralls continue to wreck my Gladiator, but some of the Nihilators he failed to hit. The Shaman dies to the Canker Worm and some Withershadow fire. Lich pops Caustic Mist Clouds in front of the Gators to prevent charges and generally moves his army into position for the assassination.

Lich still had his feat, and I had no more remove from play. I felt maybe I could possibly range assasinate him this turn between the Raider and the Cannoneer. The Gators advance up with +2 STR from the task master and try and put a hurting on the Canker worm, which they don't. In hindsight I should have just run them back for Hexeris to hide behind. The Raider tests the waters for an assasination run by shooting at Lich with a boosted to hit and misses. I should also mention that I had Psychic Vampire up the whole time, and Lich had taken 5 points of damage during the course of the game. After that miss, I decided to play it safe. I threw what shots I had left, from Marketh casting Soulfire, etc, to kill the last of the Bile Thralls. I wanted them dead so that if Mike went for the desperation assassination, he didn't have an easy way to fuel his feat. No, if he wanted to kill his own models, he needed to do it himself. I pull the Cannoneer (who killed a Bile Thrall) and Hexeris back, and surrounded Hexeris with Paingivers to block off any potential charge from the feat. Again, should have used the Gatormen to do this, as you will see in a minute.

So Lich decides to go for it, between a couple of banes, Wraithe, and a charge from the Chankerworm, he was able to kill Tartarus. For his feat, he had two Thralls, Tartarus, and a Bane Knight. Lich charges in with puppet master on him and casts Death Knell right on top of a pain giver's head. At this point I am cursing in my head for being dumb enough to not remember that spell. He rolls to hit and misses. Puppet master kicks in, and he rolls to hit again. Again, he misses, the template scatters to far away to hit anybody in the way. With the charge angle lost due to particularly bad dice rolls, he calls the game. Especially with Hexeris and a Cannoneer looking Lich in the face with no focus.

To satisfy curiousity, we play the game whether or not he did hit. If he hit, the Paingivers would hav just died, and between a Helldiver knocking Hexeris down, and Tartarus, two Bane Thralls, and a Bane Knight, it would have cause the exact amount of damage past transfers to kill him. And I mean exact, one less on the last damage roll would have kept Hexeris alive and pissed.

So I win a game against the scariest caster in the game, but in a situation where I probably shouldn't have.




Like I said, if I ran the gators and used them as protection instead of the Paingivers, there would have been no way I would have been assassinated. At that point, Lich may or may not would have used the feat to just kill my army, which was also a fear. One of the strategies I had going into this was to try and cause as much damage with Psychic Vampire as possible, and set up a possible ranged assassination run. I almost had it too. If the Raider had hit with his ranged attack, I would have tried. Lich was in aiming range of the Cannoneer two, and I would have arced a Boosted to hit and damage Obliteration to try and finish him off. A POW 13 boosted, a POW 15 boosted, and a POW 14 boosted to take out an already damaged Lich? Maybe.

I felt it was a good game, and a simple mistake on my part almost lost it for me. A win is still a win though. I really like this Hexeris list, and will probably take it to the next local tournament instead of my eHexeris list. See if I can bring some glory to the caster that initially drew my to Skorne.

I have some games lined up, and the next battle report will hopefully be a Hardcore match.

Caster Reviews 1: Master Tormentor Morghoul

Caster Review #1

Master Tormentor Morghoul

"These gloves are cool, but maybe I should get a fan. Fans are intimidating, right?"

Everything came together for me to talk about this caster. I recently tested my pMorghoul list in the Hardcore setting (Death Clock is something to get used to). Doug Seacat, writer extraordinaire, did a nice little fluff article, which you can locate here, and the first caster Chain Attack did with Skorne was pMorghoul, which you can listen to here. He is also the first Skorne caster you usually start with as well, so this article can apply to new players. Lots of reasons to write this article.

Chain Attack gave pMorghoul a rank 3 (which I assume is a "C" ranking in the newer format), which I strongly disagree with.

pMorghoul is one of the top tournament Warlocks in our faction. Competing with eMakeda and eHexeris for a top spot, though I think he loses to those two. So lets look at him:

Base Abilities and Stats:

pMorghoul is a Fury 5 caster with a very low ARM but an impressive DEF and a wide array of abilities.

He has pathfinder naturally with is excellent to get around obstacles and obstructions. It is especially important with all the movement shenanigans he can have.

Anatomical Precision is a situationally excellent ability, to be able to say "I don't care what your ARM is, just take the damage" is very useful against high ARM targets (like say a Warcaster), but unfortunately it only works on living models. Just don't take pMorghoul against Cryx, and this ability is extremely handy.

Maltreatment basically makes pMorghoul a Fury 6 caster, and really ties things together for him. Most of the spells he will be casting is a Fury cost of 2, so if you start with 5, you can cast 2 spells, and Maltreatment a beast to put you back at sitting on 2 transfers. Maltreatment also allows you a degree of Fury management. It does cause damage to the beast, but you can use your paingivers to heal if necessary. A rather crazy move, is that if you have only minimal health on a Beast, you can Maltreatment the beast, kill it, and reeve all that fury for transfers, or as part of an assassination run where Morghoul needs to buy attacks.

Overtake is awesome in that your opponent will never want to bunch up his models. It is only an inch advance on a model with no reach, but because he is immune to free strikes, he can easily charge into the middle of a unit, bounce around a little, and retreat to safety. I have had Morghoul kill whole units before when my opponent didn't see it coming.

Perfect Balance is fantastic. First off you can ignore knockdown without spending fury. Typically, if Morghoul was knocked down, he is dead, but certain feats, slams, etc. might get him and it is good to remember this. We have an animus that can almost ensure we never have to deal with this, but more on that later. He is also immune to CRAs, CMAs, and Backstrikes. A very important point because it forces your opponent to have to deal with their base MAT/RAT against your high defense. He doesn't have stealth, so this can be a big deal. The biggest deal is that he is immune to free strikes. It lets him walk away from models trying to tie him up, it lets him charge past models to get an optimum placement or get to a caster, he can advance wherever he wants, when he wants. It makes him very hard to tie down for your opponent.

He also has double strike, one fury buys 2 attacks. With Maltreatment and two initial attacks, his maximum attack output is 14 attacks. That leads to what I would like to call "death by a thousand cuts". If you can get to a knocked down living caster with only 14 damage left on them, you can just tell your opponent you win. 14 autohitting, autopoints of damage puts people down. More often though, you will use it to get 4 or 6 attacks in an activation to kill infantry while you bounce around the unit with overtake.

Finally he has Sprint, which is awesome, and really helps him with his style. His high MAT plus Anatomical Precision ensures that if you have a good charge target, you might as well take it. Even if you only kill a few, you can use sprint to get to safety. The biggest deal with sprint to me, is that it allows you to threat better with your control area. Charging 10", bounce around a unit a little, and sprint back to the point where you know you can get your beasts where you need them in your control area is extremely helpful.

So his base stat line allow him to play like a super solo a little, what about his spells?

Spells:

It is a small list, but a good one. Sometimes it isn't the size of the spell list, but how you use it.

Abuse - His signature spell. Probably the best beast buff in the game. It is a flat plus 2 SPD and STR for a minimal amount of damage. The best thing about this is that it isn't an upkeep, so can be cast multiple times. With Maltreatment and Marketh, you can cast this 4 times, but that would generally be inadvisable. The best thing is that you can still cast Admonition on the beast, and Rush. Coupled with Rush, a Beast adds an effective +4" speed to a charge. Suddenly a SPD 4 titan has an 11.5" threat range, which out threats a lot of jacks. Add reach, or a slightly higher base speed, and you have insane threat ranges on your beasts. The thing that keeps it under control is your small control area. But like I said, with Sprint, if your opponent places something within 10" of Morghoul, you can use that to get into optimal positioning. The other thing about those threat ranges is that, you are not forced to aggressively place your beasts. You could have a beast chillin near or slightly in front of Morghoul himself. This lets you guarantee that other Jacks/Beasts really can't stop you from getting the Alpha Strike, and played smartly, puts your beasts in the prime position to charge when they need to without risk of getting charged themselves.

Admonition - This is also a fantastic spell. Basically when anything advances within 5" of the admonition model, that model can immediately make a 3" advance, ignoring free strikes. It is a "can" ability, so you get to decide when to trigger is. It is awesome to cast on that forward placed beast, so if your opponent does get a charge in on you, you simply walk away. When a enemy unit charges you, you can wait to see how each model is positioned, and use admonition at just the right time. It is an advance, so a smart opponent may try and run models behind you to prevent you from getting away. This is why judging threat distances is so key, if they run that first model behind you, and you see another model or two have the distance to do so, just immediately trigger it to get behind whatever got behind you. Now, you messed with that unit's charge lanes and distances. Another way to get around it is to knock that model down. However, we have an animus for that. Another way is to knock it off (since it is an upkeep), you can use shield guard from the brute to save yourself from eEiryss, admonition away from a Thrullg, or just stay more then 11" away from Admonia. Played smartly, it is an extremely hard rule for your opponent to get around and can save your beasts bacon.

Torment - This is a very, very, situational spell. It is a magic missile, so can be handy to kill annoying incorporeal solos. It's benifit is that you can prevent transfers on a warlock. Considering Morghoul's base speed and the speed of his beasts, that can be super handy for an assassination run. Any of our beasts punching any warlock with inability to transfer equals a dead warlock. However, it is very risky to cast, Morghoul is only a focus 5 warlock, so against most other warlocks, on a boost, still puts it a a 10 or 12 on three dice. Still enough to fail, and you will have to boost to get damage on the caster to. So for 4 Fury, is it worth it? Questionable. I personally have never cast it. Not that I wouldn't, but because of how he plays, there are more important things to do with his fury most of the time.

Feat - Pain & Suffering:

I rank this as feat number 3 in our faction in order of effectiveness (eMakeda being 1, pHexeris being 2). It is very simple, while within his control area, no Warmachine model may spend focus, and no Hordes model may be forced, healed, or transfer damage. In my experience, the best use of this feat is as a defensive measure. Keeping your beasts inside your control area while your feat is up makes your army incredibly hard to put down, especially in combination with admonition on a key piece. Basically, you can push forward aggressively, pop your feat, and wait for the chance to strike. Thanks to scenarios, you put your opponent in a position where they have to move forward or risk surrendering points to you, and if they move forward, you can start applying beasts to your opponent's face next turn. It also can assist in the assassination of a warlock, but to do so, you better have Morghoul in that area, and can easily get a beast to that caster. Otherwise Morghoul may not like where he is at. It can really put a beast you where able to hit but not finish, no healing means that if it lost a spiral it is truly lost, and no forcing just rubs salt on the wound.

Unfortunately, it doesn't help against high damage dealing infantry. You do have admonition, but you can only get that on one piece. So judge your counter attack well, and use the feat to maximize your protection, while setting up a counter charge angle.

Play style, Optimum Pieces, and Must Haves:

If you are new to the game, you may be surprised to hear that pMorghoul is a beast caster. He actually competes with Naaresh as the best beast caster in the faction.

It is all about speed and threat, while being very protective of Morghoul. Because he has a low control area, you are forced to be very aggressive with his placement, which can scare players away. Because of this and his low ARM, you need a Brute with him. The Brute does nothing but keep casting immunity to knock down on Morghoul. Sure, upkeep hate does take this off, but if you are careful, outside of Purification or an arced Hex Blast, there is very little to knock this off that can't be either shield guarded or simply staying outside of threat ranges. Once you are in the thick of it, cycle Admonition onto Morghoul if you see the possibility of something reaching him.

He has the possibility of adding a cumaltive +4 SPD to a Beast. With a Shaman, Marketh, and the Gladiator doing nothing else but casting its animus, you can push that to two beasts, and still have fury to sit on for transfers.

The Bronzeback is my favorite front line beast for Morghoul. There is an interesting interaction with admonition and counter charge. Since they trigger at the same time, you can choose the order. It is depended on what is getting close to you, but to be able to admonition out of engagement range, and then counter charge a model, usually putting it down, can be quite fun. Also, because of the beast heavy nature of a typical pMorghoul list, beast back is phenomenal in allowing you to bounce around an infantry unit, or beat backing to a caster. I have just recently started using a Sentry as another Beat Back Target. With reach, it doesn't need abuse for the additional threat (though the threat range on an abused enraged Sentry is insane), but you can charge into an infantry unit, and between 3 initials and 4 fury, really put a hurting on it, even if they are spaced out. If you have a Shaman, you can use his ghost shot to clear that optimal charge lane, or just let Morghoul do it for you.

If you do take infantry with him, make sure it is very self sufficient, as he provides you very little infantry support. I usually run Gatormen and a task master with him, if I really feel I need it. With Beat Back and strategic use of admonition, you can actually get away with not needing any infantry sans the mandatory pain givers.

Final Thoughts:

Morghoul is not an easy caster to play, and he has some rough match ups. However, a well practiced Morghoul player will win a lot of games.

His biggest difficulty is recognizing threat ranges. Because of the tiny control area, it is hard to gauge exactly how far certain things are. More then likely, you have the greater threat on the table then your opponent. Use it wisely. Don't over commit your beasts and try and bait your opponent to charge one of your forward beasts with Admonition. Opposing armies find it very hard to put down 3 to 4 heavies, especially 3 to 4 heavies with such rules as Hyper Aggressive, Grand Slam, Locker, and counter charge.

I love me some Morghoul (or Catman as I have called him). He is very rewarding to play once you have his style down, and he can win a lot of games. A solid warlock worthy of a B+, A- rating.

Back to Basics: Infantry Positioning Versus Other Melee Infantry

Back to Basics

Infantry Positioning Versus Other Melee Infantry

"Hey, I have an idea, why don't we stab those other guys"

It occurred to me that a new player coming to this blog may not have all the context of basic play. Since I always need content, I decided to start doing some of the basic strategies of this game, especially in relation to the Skorne faction.

We are primarily a melee faction. We do have some ranged troops, but none of them are incredibly stellar. Reivers have a relatively low RAT in an army that provides very little buffs, and Slingers have some interesting interactions, but I will get to them later.

Bottom line, if we are fielding infantry our best options are melee ones. Because of this, it can be a frustration of a new Skorne player when they face off against melee infantry hating abilities, like covering fire, pHaley, eLich clouds, created forests, you name it, or other melee infantry that might even have a better threat range then our own.

Unlike other factions, we don't have stealth and very little denial game ourselves. We have our slightly above average base defense and the occasional tough.

When forced into these frustrating situations, here is a simple trick to still feel like you are contributing to the game.

If you are taking a charge, limit your opponent's options:

A common mistake, especially for players coming from other games, is that sometime people forget how restrictive the charge rules are.

Charging basics:

1. You must declare your charge target.
2. You must have LOS to the charge target.
3. You must end in melee range.
4. You must move in a straight line.

So say you are in a situation where a unit of Bane Thralls behind eLich clouds are now about to get the drop on your Nihilators. In this situation I try and keep my Nihilators spaced out like this:

Basically, as you can see, the Bane Thralls have to worry about the front three Nihilators. If they try and charge past any of their melee ranges, they suffer a free strike, which will mean a dead Thrall. The Green Bane Thrall cannot risk charging to the green Nihilator because even if it has the range, the free strikes will kill it.

After charging, it usually looks like this:

At worst you lost 3 models. The above scenario is likely, because the Cryx player doesn't want to over expose their own infantry unit, but they want to get at least two Thralls on your one Nihilator to ensure the casualty. But even if they want to do the one for one trade, you can continue to use positioning and the small fact that you have berserk and reach to hopefully grind out the extended combat.

Of course this doesn't work on other melee units that have Ghostly, or some other form of free strike immunity. At that point you can do a bunker set up:

As you can see a Knight literally cannot advance though those models, meaning when they charge they will only be able to hit the front 5.

Unfortunately, this does clump you up together for premium Bile Purges, breath of corruption, etc. So I usually wouldn't recommend it. However, if your opponent doesn't have these abilities, the bunker set up would work just fine.

Another option, which is more effective, is to mess with charge angles. Say a Bane Knight needs to charge the green Nihilator.

Now, if you examine it, the Thrall really has only two charge lanes. The red and blue lines in the following picture shows this.

As you can see, taking the red path, to be able to move in a straight line without conflicting with the base in its way will result in a failed charge because it will not be able to get within melee range before conflicting with the other Nihilator in it's way. Going along the Blue path will also result in a failed charge because the angle will take it right outside of melee range as well. To actually be able to get the charge, the Bane Thrall would either have to be on the outside of the unit or here.

But guess what? You are the one that decided where the Bane Knight is in relation to your infantry.

Keep your opponent honest, on those critical charges, make sure they follow the rules, and it just might save your bacon. Obviously the game is a little more complex then this and there is no hard answers. Shooting could open up charge lanes on your back lanes, purges or spells can do so as well. Part of the game is recognizing what would be the best move on your opponents part and planing for where that might leave them. Positioning is what makes this an extremely tactical game.

Road to Hardcore: Initial Thoughts

Road to Hardcore

Initial Thoughts


"To. Many. Decisions."

I recently made the fateful choice to exchange my Adepticon 40k Championships Registration for the Warmachine Hardcore tournament that Friday.

The reasons where many, but the bottom line is, that I feel that Warmachine and Hordes makes a better competitive system, and I am more likely to lose by my own poor decisions then dice. Also, I felt that with the current state of 40k, I would probably be facing the same armies over and over again.

I am really into my Skorne right now, and we do well in this format anyways. I don't expect to win, my opponent pool is far to shallow, but I figure, if I win more of my games then I lose, it is a success on my part. This is my first major event anyways. I am sure the player pool will see better players then myself.

Since painting is a requirement for this event, I better get playtesting. But first I have to settle on a list.

The Format and Scenario:

First, lets look at the Format.

Hardcore is a single list format centered around playing the same scenario in every match up. In addition to this, Deathclock is also in effect.

Deathclock gives each player a certain amount of time for the game, in this case 37 minutes. The first person to run down their Deathclock loses, so it is another victory condition to consider.

The Scenario is close quarters. You can get it from the SR2012 rules here.

Essentially, it is a scenario with two conditions to consider. One, I have to get across the board quickly enough to threaten taking my zone, and contest heavily my opponents so I don't lose on Scenario. Second, Kill Box is also in play, meaning if I end my Warlock's activation within 12" of my or any table edge I automatically lose.

My feelings on this, is that I want a caster who can handle spending 37 minutes in the middle of the table. I want an army durable enough to be able to take an alpha strike if necessary, and I want an army with an extremely small model count so I can push through my activations quickly and not run my death clock out.

The Usual Suspects:

The casters I feel best fit this format are: pMorghoul, Xerxis, Raseth, and Naaresh.

pMorghoul - Lord Tyrant Watt recently one Hardcore at Templecon with this caster, and I can see why. He is one of the top beast casters in our faction with Admonition and a fantastic denial feat. He most definitely will be making my play test rotation.

Xerxis - As much as I love this guy, I don't know if I have it in me to take him in this format. In order to minimize my actual play time, I would have to take an Elite Infantry heavy army to try and grind it out. I am afraid of eSkarre and Saeryn bombs out attritioning that army. Granted, he will eat beast and jack heavy lists if he comes to bear. But I am just not feeling him.

Raseth - His tier list won Hardcore at Lock and Load, though that was without the close quarters scenario. He is a tempting caster. His feat plus the gluttony of Agonizers can make him very durable to other hordes armies. He also has a little bit of board denial with Breath of Corruption, which would be useful if I actually do come across an infantry horde. Camping transfers plus Blood Mark could make him very hard to put down. He will make the rotation as well.

Naaresh - This is a very interesting choice. He can also run very beast heavy, and even though his feat isn't as much denial as pMorghoul, it is a very rough feat to come to grips with. With Iron Flesh on himself, the Brutes Animus, and tough, he can be very hard to put down, especially if I camp transfers. He is the caster I am leaning towards the most right now, namely because he is a personal favorite. Iron Flesh Gatormen with a Task Master, heavy ARM beasts that are incredibly hard to put down, and a caster that you will not assassinate.

The Initial Lists:

So leaving Xerxis out of it, because I don't feel comfortable with him in this format, I have settled on 3 different lists to try out.

"I likes the pain"

Master Ascetic Naaresh +6 points
* Bronzeback Titan 10 points
* Cyclops Brute 5 points
* 2x Titan Gladiator 8 points each
* Titan Sentry 9 points
* Aptimus Marketh 3 points

Agonizer 2 points
3 Gatorman Posse 6 points
6 Paingiver Beast Handlers 3 points
Paingiver Task Master 2 points

The basic idea is to rush the zone my opponent needs and pop my feat as soon as I feel like I am about to be hit. With the Heavy Arm of the feat, plus the denial aspect of the agonizer, I feel that I can survive with most of my beasts still in play. Also, I won't be dumb and offer all my beasts to my opponent on a silver platter. I went with 2 Gladiators in this list because they are overall a solid beast and it is nice to have some redundancy with rush, as Naaresh has no real way to buff speed outside that animus. The Gators with Dirge of Mists, Iron Flesh, and tough can provide a pretty good screen. And I always have a desperation assassination run with Cyclone and Blood Tokens.

Dominar Rasheth +5 points
* Basilisk Krea 4 points
* 2x Bronzeback Titan 9 points each
* Titan Gladiator 7 points
* Titan Sentry 8 points

2x Agonizer 2 points each
5 Gatorman Posse 9 points
6 Paingiver Beast Handlers 3 points
Paingiver Task Master 2 points

This is the list I feel it overall the most solid of the three. However, I am scared to death of a solid Warmachine army. If somebody does take a solid amount of infantry, I do have Breath of Corruption clouds to toss out to play a little bit of denial. However, having to juggle animi and Blood Mark, I probably won't have the fury available to do so, not if I want to camp on a bunch for transfers.

Master Tormentor Morghoul +7 points
* 2x Bronzeback Titan 10 points each
* Cyclops Brute 5 points
* Cyclops Shaman 5 points
* Titan Gladiator 8 points
* Titan Sentry 9 points
* Aptimus Marketh 3 points

Agonizer 2 points
Extoller Soulward 2 points
6 Paingiver Beast Handlers 3 points

I feel he might be my strongest choice. Marketh can get another casting of abuse out there without pulling from Morghoul's Fury. The Shaman can also get another Rush out there without having to pull from Morghoul or totally spending the Gladiator's activation. Admonition is better then Naaresh's feat to keep things safe, but can only effect a single beast. Morghoul comes to the table with the best feat of the three for straight denial. I can always defensively pop my feat to mess with the two casters I am most concerned with, eSkarre and Saeryn. The biggest appeal is the threat ranges. Of the three, Morghoul offers much more impressive threat ranges, and may even give me the opportunity to alpha strike myself. The Soulward can give me eyeless sight for terrain or denial for Morghoul or one of my beasts.



I have a metric crap ton of testing ahead of me. Don't be surprised if the battle reports posted are Hardcore matches, as this is now my top Warmachine concern. I am more then happy to receive advice or comments on my thoughts so far.