Savage Tactics

I wanted to go into a little more detail on why I thing Savagry is such a fantastic spell with pMakeda, here are a few (but not all) of the tricks you can do with this spell:

1. All Hail King Hakaar!

I almost always take Hakaar with pMakeda for this simple tactic. The basic set up after a first turn run is this:

As you can see I have 3 Nihilators up front to prevent another infantry unit from being able to plate the back Nihilators without having to take some sort of free strike (just keep your opponent honest about the charge lanes they take).

The Nihilators highlighted in Green are all models that Hakaar can claim righteous Vengeance for if they are destroyed. Makeda or Marketh can cast Savagry on Hakaar during that first turn.

So here is the rules interaction. Rightous Vengence triggers before you decide to upkeed a spell or not. If your opponent kills any single one of those Green Nihilators here is what he/she is looking at after your maintenance phase.

Righteous Vengence is an Advance, Savagry is a speed buff when you make a full advance. Hakaar has a 9" move with reach to make an attack and he probably has a Soul or two from losing a Nihilator in his range. That can easily put Hakaar into charge range of a lot of things, with the killing potential to put a lot of hurting on something. If your opponent plated your front line, even better.

At this point you can choose to upkeep Savagry or let it expire, which would entirely depend on what you intend to do with him. He is faster under Savagery then when he makes a charge, but if you intend to Combo Strike (which you should if you need to put a hurting on a heavy), Charging is your better option, so you can easily let it drop.

Hakaar is MAT 11 under Carnage BTW. So with a boost you can hit anything in the game and POW 13 is pretty impressive.

Oh, if you are worried about a ranged attack that can take Hakaar out (thanks to his larger base), park a Brute within 2" of Hakaar and Makeda and remind yourself why Shield Guard is awesome.

2. Solo Hunting with Rhadiem

This is a very simple tactic. Rhadiem is SPD 8 base, 13 when he makes a full advance under Savagery, with a 5" leap on top of that. He has MAT 8 and an Armor Piecing attack. By the way, he has reach on top of all of this.

So any troublesome solo needs to watch out for his 20" threat range. Rhadiem under pMakeda is one of the best Tartarus hunting items in the faction. Hitting that guy on a 5, and on average dice killing him. Very hard to avoid due to that leap. Plus you have a combat rider attack to toss around to.

You can also hunt high DEF solos rather easily since Carnage can pump him up to MAT 10. This requires Makeda to be fairly aggressively placed, so I don't try and set that up unless I truly need it.

3. Thank you for getting rid of that infantry for me Karn, appreciate it.

A common eLich tactic is to hide a unit behind a number of clouds like so:

This presents a pretty big deal for us as a faction. Some factions have eyeless sight spraying beasts, some factions have arcing fire barrages, enough to throw out that at least something would stick, but us? We can only soulward a single model at a time, and our infantry just dies if trying to advance through those clouds.

The downside to that tactic is that it naturally forces the Cryx player to "clump up". Expose any Banes to the sides and you can set up possible ways for side step/overtake/ whatever to hit one model and move into optimal position and start munching on Banes.

With Savagry and the Archidon's animus, you can easily lazily advance Karn right here:

So with a simple side step after the first initial, you can threaten a lot of banes.

Why the Archidon's animus and not Rush? Well, with Savagry, your threat range is already an impressive 13" (with reach) so you easily have the distance to out threat them. However, with Rush, you will have to save at least 2 fury to cast Fate Walker on yourself to get back out of danger.

The Archidon's animus lets you spend all 5 fury on attacks, for 7 total. If you are in Carnage range, you are only effective MAT 9. Your two initial side steps plus reach can let your threaten a lot, and I mean, a lot of infantry. Any hit you connect with with Karn is a dead model, period.

Sprint is also better, order of activation wise, because you don't have to wait until the end of the turn to make the advance. Simply advance 11" back to your lines, move infantry around Karn to block off any reprisals. And since nothing in this strategy required enrage, your pain givers can pull all 5 fury of Karn. Hey, guess what? you have more opportunities for Intuition to really mess with your opponent, especially if Karn has the Brutes animus on him (but you should only do that if you are really concerned with losing Karn).

This strategy isn't just for eLich, Circle with forest creation, swamp gobbers, you name it. Anything that hurts charge targets with LOS issues. If difficult terrain is a factor, you can easily go with popping Rush on Karn, and only have your 5 attacks to play with. pMakeda easily has the best Karn yo-yo tactic.


I hope these tips are helpful. Savagery is such a fantastic spell.

Chain Attack Podcast and Future Posts

I wanted to bring up one of my favorite podcasts, Chain Attack.

Though I don't always agree with their rankings of our casters (though they always are fairly close), they provide a varied and consistently quality podcast, and that is the reason I linked them in my Blog.

Over the course of the rest of the week, I will be reviewing each episode they have done for our Skorne casters starting from the beginning, analyzing lists, tactics, and reexamining the grade they gave.

So far they have covered 7 of our 11 casters.

Have no fear though, this isn't going to become a Blog strictly about Chain Attack's battles. I intend to cover a lot of different subjects, such as importance (or lack thereof) of certain models, overviews of casters, how to beat X, etc.

But as time goes on, I will cover their broadcasts, as they relate to Skorne. I do this with their blessing.

Why I prefer pMakeda over eMakeda.

Versus

Here are the reasons why.

eMakeda is a "burst" caster, while pMakeda is an attrition caster.

eMakeda is really about that one turn of hitting and hitting hard. I would admit that eMakeda's feat is decisively better, it is both offensive and defensive. But, it is only one turn and dice dependent. When you really need that hitting power from your army, you pop feat and light it up.

However, in competitive play, a good opponent will make it hard for you to bring your full army to bear, which makes it hard to fully take advantage of the feat. Outside of her feat, eMakeda offers nothing to improve the hitting power of your army. She has no Mat bonus outside of her feat, so you have to consider that against an army with high DEF. you have one turn to handle them, and if you can't bring your army to bear, or end by assassination, you lose.

Hence why I call her a "burst" caster. Whether by wrecking the army or Molik bulleting she throws out a massive burst of damage. But it is rare I see an eMakeda army go past that one really good turn and still pull out a win if the opponent was able to survive relatively unscathed. Not impossible, mind you, but not often either. I find when I play her, after my feat turn (assuming the feat is popped at an optimal time), unless I wrecked the army or the caster, I struggle fairly hard to maintain control of the game.

Now let us compare to pMakeda. Her feat is a little weak, but is very rewarding for competitive play. Proper spacing of models, and popping early can really set you up into a nice position. Because of chaining returned models it is very hard for your opponent to see where your models are going to come from. Her feat puts your opponent in an interesting place. They know any one they kill will come back unless they kill the whole unit. If you placed them correctly, you can make that very hard for your opponent to do, at least not without exposing his/her positioning. So unlike eMakeda, pMakeda allows you to be aggressively (but not stupidly) placed, and for a turn not fear reprisal. Both Makeda's want to get the jump on their opponent, but pMakeda allows you to be a little more flexible in how you do so. pMakeda's feat isn't that good once you take loses, but the same can be said about eMakeda's feat. However, pMakeda will always have her army buffs, where eMakeda will really only give her army Road to War.

pMakeda's spell list is decisively better. Defender's Ward is fantastic, especially considering the already relatively above average DEF of Skorne infantry. It is also a great tool to cycle onto Makeda in the late game to boost her DEF and ARM. With the Brutes Animus, you can force most opponents to have to deal with that higher DEF. Carnage is a great army buff, it is in her relatively average control area, but can be cast every turn, and boost our average MAT to very impressive levels. And let us not forget Savagry. In my opinion, it is the best movement buff in the faction, if not the game. Thanks to Marketh and the fact that it is an upkeep spell, you could have it on three model/units in a turn (upkeep it, cast it with Marketh, cast it with Makeda), it makes her army crazy fast. Don't be afraid to cast it on beasts. There is a little bit of Skornergy, in that an enraged beast can't benefit from the movement, however, a lot of times enraging isn't absolutely necessary. Since you are just advancing, you don't have to force to charge anyways, and the only other benefit is +2 str, which is wasted against certain targets, especially infantry. It still stacks with Rush, so you can walk a Titan 11". The Archidon makes Karn stupid good with pMakeda, not as an assasination tool, but a Savagery Karn can advance 11" side step twice, kill a bunch of infantry, and sprint 11" back to safety, and you can do this every turn. The biggest benefit to Savagery is that you don't have to "see" a target. It is just and advance. Clouds? Forrests? Who cares, you can place things right where you need them to.

Compare that to eMakeda. She has Engine of Destruction which is a solid boast, but she will rarely see combat. She has a better nuke, but to be honest, who is using that. She has Leash, which is a movement buff to a single warbeast only. And she has Road to War which is an amazing spell, is that better then Savagry? I think you could have made that argument before Marketh, but now, I am doubtful. +2 SPD as just a straight buff is awesome, don't get me wrong, but her army is dependent still on charging. How often does a massive amount of clouds or forests shut her down by making it hard to come to bear with the enemy? Like I said, Savagry needs no LOS for the unit affected by it, and against most infantry, a nonboasted attack from any of our melee infantry usually kills. Nihilators are POW 12, Swordsmen can autodamage, we don't usually need the charge advantage.

My point is that pMakeda is better at being flexible over time, where eMakeda will be better at ending the game quickly. I prefer to have that flexibility, as I feel eMakeda's ability to end the game can be a liability against a good opponent that can stop it and her inability to really offer much past her feat outside of a speed buff.