35 point Pirate Queen Skarre List

Already battleworn Pirate Queen Skarres army get ready to raid another village

Pirate Queen Skarre (+6)

Battle Group

Leviathan (9)

Leviathan (9)

Solos

Skarlock Thrall (2)

Scrap Thralls (1)

Satyxis Raider Captain (2)

Units

Satyxis Raiders, Full (8) with Sea witch attachment (2)

Satyxis Blood Witches, Full (6)  with Satyxis Blood Hag (2)

Based on my thoughts and Experience with Pirate Queen Skarre I made this Army List for a local tournament. I found no reason not to use her tier list as the models that I could include made good use of her abilities. First Tier grants amphibious Jacks advanced deployment, second tier grants pathfinder to all friendly models during the first round and tier 3 allows you to place a number of 4 inch shallow water markers which is the final tier requirement this list meets. The markers seemed to be the least useful bonus, but it was okay to make outflanking enemies spend more time circling around.

Leviathan

These are 9 point jacks with one P+S 17 attack with an open fist, and a range and POW 13 ROF 3 gun. The gun also has burst fire giving +1 POW against medium base models and +2 against large based models. The jacks are great but to function they are extremely focus hungry, as they have less attacks when in melee than our normal jacks and need 2 focus to benefit from ROF 3. The reason why I added them to Pirate Queen Skarres list is because she has a lot of focus when using ritual sacrifice and no way to make hitting easier for ranged attacks, thus having the ability to boost ranged attacks made hitting even relatively high defense models possible. I tried playing the list using melee oriented jacks, but that left me with no shooting, and sometimes shooting is needed to clear charge lanes. I also find that in objective based missions, I often need a jack to hold the objective, but the melee jacks are just wasting their time when holding an objective, where the leviathan can still deal damage. The P+S 17 claw and the gun can also lay down quite a lot of hurt on jacks and beasts, something this list has a hard time doing outside of feat turns. Therefore I was happy using two Leviathans, especially with advance deployment enabling them to fire on the first turn if going second or threatening the opponent to hold back his forces if going first.

Skarlock

This model is used so Pirate Queen Skarre can spend all her focus on keeping the Leviathans fuelled and casting Dark guidance when the stayxis gets into melee. Its job is to cast Ritual sacrifice most turns. Remember that even the best-laid plans will have to be revised during the game. I have spend this model running to hold an objective, cast blood rain to get rid of infantry and even gained a caster kill with Hellfire. The Skarlock Thrall is a great solo in this army list, and is the only reason I can run 2 leviathans.  

Scrap Thralls

These are targets for Ritual sacrifice, but I have also used them to block charge lanes and placed them between gunmages, after which the Leviathan shot it in the back, killing the unfortunate gunmages with the AOE by bypassing their high defense. Their only weakness is that they are soloes unable to hold objectives in steamroller, but for a single point, I can live with that.

Satyxis Raider Captain

This solo has saved the day more than once just by running to an objective 14 inch away. As mentioned before she makes Skarre harder to assassinate by making her immune to Knockdown, when in her command, and this also work on all other satyxis (no sleeping on the job “satyxis”). As this list is full of them, she turned out to be a must. She also has desperate pace, which she can use to grant satyxis raiders + 2 movement, which gives them a threat of 14 inch. A last point I would like to highlight with her is that she can remain behind the frontlines and still be useful by doing the before mentioned actions, as well as fire her hand cannon, or charging and returning back behind the frontlines using Sprint.

Satyxis Blood Witches

One lost a horn when a Judicator trampled over it to get to Skarre

This unit has speed 7 (in high heels) two attacks and with gang they hit like a dream. When they kill with their Ritual Blades they can perform a special action, either making a cloud effect or getting an automatic hit on a model within 4 inch of their target using the unmodified toughness of their original target as POW. What I have found to be even more amassing about this ability is that you remove the model from play, making some feats and special abilities unable to function.

These abilities are awesome at 10 models for 6 points, however what you get by adding the Blood hag is even more crucial to this Pirate queen Skarre army list. She has the ability to use blood shadow once per game, making the unit incorporeal at the end of activation (this means after attacking, so no loosing incorporeal). Without this ability, the units low DEF 13 and ARM 13 makes them ideal target for ranged attacks. The ability gives them a genuine chance to survive and hit their targets. She can also dispel on a successful hit, which has helped me overcome Ironfleshed kayazy assassins more than once. The dispel ability is something that in many cases are needed when a buff spell is hurting your chances so reduce the impact of a retaliation. Against certain opponents, most important ability she has is to remove tough from those enemies within her command. The reason why this ability is need so bad in this list, is that the list has one round where it shines and is cannot take a grinding match. A few successful tough rolls on you feat turn can mean be the difference between crushing all resistance, or turning the game into a grind that this list cannot win. Yesterday I played a game against a friend of mine who uses boom-howlers with tough on 4+ in the center of the board. This unit is awful to take out, and luck of the dice decides if the battle will become a grind, something Cryx in general does not approve of. I had the blood Hag, and I killed more than half of the boom-howlers in one turn because the blood hag removed tough, winning me the game.

Satyxis Raiders

This unit works well with the satyxis raider captain to give them a 14 inch threat range making them a fast unit. They are also able to fool enemies since they can run 16 inch and thus redeploy after the enemy has decided the best matchup for the unit. They have 14 def and 12 arm, making them hard to hit but easy to take out with AOE.

This is why the Sea witch is in there, giving them force barrier (immune to AOE and + 2 defense). This makes the unit one of the harder cryx units to take down with ranged fire. The mobility of the unit also goes up as they gain pathfinder (again in high heels). As I have mentioned before this list has one round where everyone are crazy dangerous, and not so much in all other rounds. This is where the Sea Witch ability power swell comes into play, giving the Satyxis raiders an addition damage dice for a round. This effectively give them two rounds where they can do damage to high ARM enemies in place of one, and this is just what the list needed to be complete.

Conclusion

I have played this list a lot, and the conclusion was bringing it to my first tournament which was a local steamroller tournament. I used the list for all 4 games, and won every single one. Naturally there was some luck involved, but I managed to be best player of the 14 that participated, and I am sure that some of the reasons behind this was that the list works extremely well. I it was my first tournament and to remember and reward all the models that took part I gave them a gold coin on their base as a trophy, hoping of more to come.

The list might not be everyone’s cup of tea, due to the frail nature of the models included, but I got to the exact composition of the list through playing with the caster and trying out different combinations. A lot of models left me wanting more and thus they remained in the figure case. The army list is not an internet auto-win list that I found, but rather my own creation based on my experience playing with Pirate Queen Skarre (I assume others have used the same list, but I have not heard about it so I claim it as my own). I cannot promise that it will work for you, and it has some “hard counters” but I have had luck with it and hope you will too.

Seeya soon

Pirate Queen Skarre

YARRRR!!

 

 

Skarre enjoyed feeling planks beneath her feet, gold was for the weak, and together with Deneghra she decided to venture into the Fanatic Showoff to teach all the lesser factions that girl power and a great rack is all that is needed to bring home the victory. She brought with her experience from many successful, and many failed, raids on the cattle races and she knew that it was this knowledge that would be her greatest shield in the coming battles for the golden coin.

Skarre was the second caster that I got and I have played using her in more than 20 games. She is different to Deneghra in play style, and at first might seem more straightforward (= boring). This is however not true once you understand and use all her abilities.

1)      Defensive

Skarre comes with 16 def, 15 arm, 16 damage boxes, 6 focus, and lifedrinker on a dagger but little else in her repertoire is defensive abilities. Her limited control area forces her closer to the enemy then her stats normally would recommend. Just like Deneghra she is protected primarily by her high defense, and therefore she is in danger of becoming knockdown before assassinations. If you can pull of a knockdown and have a ranged unit close by then she will be shot to pieces since she does not have stealth to rely upon. There is however a cure for this, the Satyxis Raider captain.

 

 

Making her and other Satyxis immune to knockdown when within her CMD. There are other ways to made defense count for nothing, but I have not found any way to counter these, so just be aware that stationary is a real threat, and keep you caster back.

The spells available to Skarre are not that protective, but her feat on the other hand is. She can give up to 5 additional arm to all models in her control area by suffering an equal amount of damage. While some of her best friends will still not be able to take a charge from anything, jacks will love this.

I mentioned lifedrinker on her bloodwyrm dagger, but in truth it support her offensive abilities more than anything. Killing a solo or something, a little to close to the queen will increase her survivability after she took some damage from using her feat or an offensive weapon ability(explained below).

2)      Offensive

This is where Skarres spells excel, Backlash makes a well hidden warcaster take some damage from having a jack positioned offensively (each time it takes damage, the caster suffers one damage). This spell only work when playing WarMachine factions, and not hordes.

Blood rain is an AOE with pow 12 and a range of 8. For 3 focus I rarly find this my first go to spell. I have used it several times against one wound infantry with high arm and shieldwall or some other reason for standing around in clumps, since the continues corrosion takes out 2/3 of the models affected. 3 focus does put a limitation to how many times you can cast the spell, but the spell ritual sacrifice (kill a friendly for 2 focus, gain d6 addition next turn) can get Skarre to cast 3 or even 4 of this spell. In my experience swordknights backed up with officer+standard and buffed by a journeyman warcaster usually stand in about 4 clumps and they are relatively easy to hit, so this spell can take out quite a few of those. Otherwise they are darn hard to take out with the units I like to use on no-feat turns with Skarre.

Dark guidance is an aura that effects each model within Skarres control area, and gives them an additional dice to hit in melee. This spell color my armylists quite a lot combined with the feat that offensively grants up to +5 str to all friendly faction models in her command (per damage she takes) as it is the two unit/jack buffs she has. She increases to hit and damage, but only in melee. This made MAT and STR less important and number of attacks more so. Lets take the example of the mechanathrall. With a MAT of five they need help hitting most things, but with Skarres Dark Guidance the hit DEF 16 with half their attacks. With two attacks each that is one hit per mechanathrall against casters such as Skarre. On a charge that is an average of 6,5 damage a model and thus we need 3 thralls to kill her. In case they are effected by her feat on top of that, damage a per model is 11,5 making 2 thralls almost overkill.

Hellfire is  her tool for spell assassination, with range 10 and pow 14 for 3 focus she can easily takeout exposed casters through an archnode but only if she had a good roll on the Ritual Sacrifice since one is rarely enough.

Often I have used Skarre to takeout jacks simply by having her charge them. She does not even need Dark Guidance or her feat to take out most heavy jacks because of life trader on Takkaryx (her sword) and knockdown on her great rack (horns not boobs.. I think). Use the charge attack on the sword if fighting a high ARM target and then use life trade to gain an additional damage dice. This makes her average damage roll 27 giving a headache to even Kadorian Jacks. Then use her great rack to remove having to hit from the equation.

You need more than 6 focus to take out an unharmed ARM 20 Jack. Luckely Skarre can get up to 12 focus.

 

Based on the arm of the jack you are faced with you should boost damage rather than buying more attacks when faced with 20 or more. (if your average damage is below 3,5 per attack, boost. This goes for all casters unless there is another effect to the weapon).

Another trick for killing that damned high DEF caster is to use Sacrificial Strike (action not spell) to hit automatically. You have to remove a friendly model from play and the POW is equal to the models unbuffed ARM. You can boost the damage, and this when combined with some damage from backlash can take out most non-frontline casters without having to get to them. The danger comes from the range on this attack, which is only nine so you have to get close and generally, assassinations that are “win or lose” are rarely worth it. When trying to get rid of Sorcha, running around with DEF 20 against ranged and killing her without rolling to hit even once is a great feeling and you have to try that just once.

Normally DEF 20+ would make you feel safe, but not against Skarre

 

3)      Jacks

At first glance Skarre looks as though she would like self-reliant jacks, but after playing around with her I found that if you use a Skarlock to cast Ritural sacrifice on these guys

Cheap and expendable Scrap Tralls are ideal to kill with Ritual Sacrifice

You often end up with a load more focus then you need. Therefore, I actually think that she is able to have a few (2) jacks with 3 focus each quite often. Due to this, and her feat I know that I will have to try playing her with the Kraken once I get a hold of the model. She is not a greedy caster, and often I only use 4 focus a turn to cast dark guidance. While archnodes are great for casting bloodrain and hellfire while keeping Skarre safe, they are not needed as much with her as with Deneghra and I find that in lower point I would rather have more multi attack infantry.

4)      Conclusion

Skarre is a caster with a punch, that runs a relatively tight formation due to her “low” focus stat and two important auras. She packs a punch in melee, but do not let the fool you, she is spends her health on feat and extra damage in melee, so only use this when there will be no retaliation. She can have more focus to spare then most casters and therefore can keep a few focus hungry jacks running while still having enough to do other things. She benefits from killing her own units so take some “sacrificial lambs” with a low point cost per model. Her strength comes from having several tools, so remember them all, because there will be situation where each of her abilities wins you the game.

To put my money where my mouth is, my next post will be about the Skarre army list I brought to the tournament, reasons behind the choices and show you the models I used.

Playing WarMachine

 

As I felt the rush of playing the game, I also experienced money leaving my pocket at a regular basis, buying stuff for my Cryx army. I felt my enthusiasm rice, and thus the need for more armies. In a short moment of clarity, I decided that I would write down every battle I played, and not until I had played 100 games with Cryx would I allow myself to shift to another faction.

At the time it seemed like I would never get beyond the hundred games, and I was okay with that. Because I was unable to divide my focus between several factions I actually started finishing the paintjob on quite a few models, played loads of games, and buying more Cryx. Rather than getting a superficial understanding of loads of factions, I started to get a deeper understanding of the models I own, as well as how they play against other factions. I am still no master, but I have more than a hundred 100points painted up, and when I write this 22-02-2013 I have played 65 games getting closer to my target every week. As I started actually getting closer to my goal I made up new partway challenges. After my game Nr. 50 I had to sign up for a tournament, which I did. How that went will be a story for another post, as I would like to explain my choice of caster and units first, I can however post this picture.

 

For my game Nr. 100 I will play a 100 point game with fully painted armies with a good friend who is building a gaming table specifically for that game. The only spoiler I have gotten about the thing is that it will be a harbor in menoth (he is a menoth player). We are discussing if we are going to use one or two warcasters, what do you think? Post a comment below explaining why we should go one way or the other

All I can say for now is that I am loving WarMachine and hope to continue to have fun with gaming and painting in the coming years as well. Hopefully the post will keep coming during the these years, and next up will be a rundown of Pirate Queen Skarre the caster i used for the local tournament.

Pirate Bitch Deneghra!

 

We all remember who was the first, of the cryxian nation, to touch the destiny of the young child Deneghra; Scarre Ravenmane, and since that day, Deneghra always saw her as her cool aunty who plundered, pillaged and even (dare I say it) raped (only males and they truly did not mind) who ever she wanted to. In her teen years Deneghra often went on extended weekends with Scarre, and to the crew of the Widower she became known as “Pirate Bitch Deneghra”. These where here wild years, before Asphyxious tamed the crazy teenager in Deneghra, and Her exploits are many.

Deneghra is the warcaster included in the Cryx battlebox and will therefore often be the first caster that those about to start collecting the faction will get their hands on. The plastic model in the new battlebox looks great, but the old metal one I have I never felt strongly about. To help those about to start Cryx, I will go through what she can do, beyond the common “she is like what Cryx is all about” which was what I could find when looking into her.

1)      Defensive

Deneghra has 16 Def, 14 Arm, 16 hit boxes, stealth, 7 focus, Parry, and Shadow bind. This makes her a hard target to shoot down for those who find a way to ignore stealth, but easy to kill in melee. If, however, a melee assassination run fails she can use shadow bind against non-reach enemies to keep them in place, or parry to run away. She is vulnerable to blast damage, as her armor is low enough that a random scatter will harm her, and if boost able hurt her a lot. A threat that always exist with these high defense casters is to become knockdown. So be aware of jacks slamming her screening models into her for knockdown, and AOE (Area Of Effect) with knockdown (ask you opponent if he has anything other than power attacks that can knockdown). A knockdown makes her become easy enough that support units might have a go at killing your caster (imagine jack slamming another jack into her, then said enemy jacks mechanics beat her with her wrenches).

2)      Offensive

Deneghra uses debuffs to aid her army in overcoming dangerous foes. Even P+S 8 attacks are useful against most jacks due to Crippling Grasp and Parasite (cannot have both on one model/unit though), since it can bring arm down. Especially when combined with her feat which gives minus two to all stats except for command (that would be just WOW). This means focus as well (though not furry) reducing the area that other casters can effect. The feat can be combined with parasite to reduce arm by 5. In an example we have a khador jack with arm 20 go down to 15 through this combination making a charging mechanithrall able to make a combined attack for an average of 10,5 damage. 4 models (priced at half a point each) take out 7 points (at least) jack.

Comming soon to a Cryx Caster near you

The only problem with Denghras spells are that they are all offensive and they have relatively short range so you need to overcome this with arch nodes.

 

Such as those from you battlebox. She is however a caster that likes to use all her focus from turn two and forth, so I like to use focus efficient jacks, like this one

 

3)      Control

This is what I have experienced my enemies being most horrified about. Deneghras feat makes models unable to run, charge or make special attacks on the turn you are effected, as well as giving you a minus 2 speed. Jacks that are too far away from their casters will also experience lacking focus needed to hit her and therefore you can place her quite offensive without fear of repercussions. In that respect, Crippling Grasp does the same thing, just to model/unit and my enemies have felt like that spell just takes out the model/unit the needed the most each turn, making her quite horrible to play against. But these are controlling enemy units, she also has a spell that is often forgotten (by the enemy) Ghost walk. Not the fact that they gain pathfinder and can go/charge through terrain unhindered, but just as much making them immune to free-strikes. Experience players often leave room between their models so they can move about unhindered, does not get hurt as much by AOE and makes it possible to stop charge lanes in a wider area without exposing them as obvious spray targets. This is a good idea, however not if the enemy can become/are immune to free-strikes, and this have given some assassinations and taking out support models that looked well protected. The spell often have to fight for focus against parasite or Crippling grasp, this is why I like this model in her armies

 

4)      Conclusion

Deneghra is a great debuff caster, but hungry for focus so get a focus efficient heavy (they look good so you have no excuse not to do it. She needs archnodes to keep her safe, and a scarlock for the extra spell. Other than that, she can make just about anything a good choice, so a great first caster where you can just buy what you think looks good and it will still work great.

Why Cryx?

Last year I was sitting in a train with some friends who were traveling from the big city and to my part of Denmark. I asked why they would venture away from Copenhagen and they told me that my local gaming shop was having a sale on WarMachine and Hordes, and about all the stuff they were going to buy. It sounded like a good deal so asked them to buy a Cryx Battlebox for me. I intended to paint the models to a relatively high standard since it had been quite a while since I had done anything but batch painting. When I got home, I went to privateerpress.com and looked at the models. Cryx had everything I want, boney war-machines, zombie pirates and casters with a great rack. When my friend called and told me that there was no battlebox, I was disappointed. He told me however, that he had an old battlebox lying about, and that I could paint it up if I liked to. I got them a few days later and started fixing them, and preparing to paint them.

I spend hours painting the deathrippers and the defiler, and they turned out great. I had this crazy idea that I wanted gold coin bases, so by the time I got to Denegra my energy was a little spent (thus the awful blue lips).

 

Every coin is handmade and there are several hundred on each base. At that point a good friend of mine told me that he played a load of warmachine and that he would play it with me. I played three games the first day, and that opened my eyes to why this is such a good game. I bought a few units and played a bunch of games. The bases where however a burden for me to finish so I talked to an insanely talented sculptor and special effects guy that I know who could help me make a mold to get easy access to more bases. Here is some of his work that he made on beer coasters in a few hours while drinking said beer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As well as, just what you need!!! A baby with correct weight proportions! He yelled, “catch!” and threw it at me. Nasty stuff.

 

Before long, I changed the theme for the bases into something faster and equally appropriate, but I will show you that in my next post.

Why Start a blog about WarMachine?

I have been enjoying the game for the last few months, and during this time, I have enjoyed reading about other people’s experience with building, painting and learning the finer details of a warmachine army. Looking at people getting their armies into shape, and learning how to use them has been a huge inspiration and I now feel that it is my time to give something back. While I am not as good a painter, player or writer as many out in the World Wide Web, I hope that some people will find my experiences helpful, and my painting inspirational.

Before I get too deeply into my hobby, I will introduce you to me. I live in Denmark with my girlfriend and our cat, I study in Copenhagen but will (I hope) be done within the year, and I have been painting and playing with small toy soldiers since 1996.

I first had a fling with Warmachine, or rather hordes back in 2008 (I think) during Mk1 where I got some store credit at my local gaming pusher. After buying loads of random stuff one of the locals got me to buy the trollblood battlebox, a krielstone, a unit of champions and a fell caller. He also gave me a diretroll mauler. I enjoyed painting them, and tried to learn how to play the game. The person who gave me my intro game was the least beginner friendly person in the world, I moved my models, then Madrak was assassinated, and the guy spent the next half hour telling my why the circle caster he had used was awesome. That game led me to a few weeks of painting without playing, but I returned to the shop and at that time, a league had just started, and I joined. It seemed like a laugh and I lost 7 games straight, but it was okay because people was nice about it, and taught me bits of the game between pawning me. Game Nr. 8 was my fist win, against the nicest guy playing in the campaign. He looked like comicbookguy, but rather than being sarcastic, he was the most enthusiastic person about the narrative of the game I have ever meet, and it was a joy to play him. I played a few more games until I meet THAT GUY. He played poorly, but had a better army, which countered my army completely. It was a bad experience, I lost, and I felt cheated. That got me to put the models on the shelf for a while, and before my love was rekindled I was hired by a competing miniatures company, and put them on hold. Last year my trollbloods were sold to a nice person who will love them more than I did. I do however have some pictures from back in their prime.

 

In the next post I will start talking about my return to Warmachine about summer 2012 and the love affair I have going on with Cryx.