Combinations in the Cryx army

I would like to point out a combination that many proberbly know, and that I will be trying out in a small tournament this weekend. We are bringing two 35 point lists that must have a minimum of 20 points of jacks/beasts and maximum of 5 points of soloes. As my local meta is Warmachine more than hordes, I wanted something that could take out the big-guys without going to Banes. A friend and opponent of mine who also plays Cryx brought this combination to my attention by using it against me.

What I am talking about is the withershadow combine and Malice. Malice is a Reaper character jack and therefore brings a harpoon. It has the Drag special rule, so you can pull an enemy model of equal size or smaller directly towards its base. This is good for the combine but the Reaper can do the same. The reason why I picked Malice is that 1) it looks more awesome with souls coming out of its back 2) it has possession which means, if it hits with a melee attack it can spend a soul token to possess the enemy jack, which can then make a full advance and an attack. This can be used to make the jack come closer to the combine, and expose its back to a charge. The combine is able to takeout most heavies after they have been hit twice by Malice, so when we can pull of this trick Dark Industries will give a new jack and a huge point advantage, especially in a 35 point game.

This trick has a limited range so to get the most from it, I would recommend eSkarre as she has perdition making Malice threat of harpoon 20 instead of 14. This would make any unscreened jack an easy addition to the Cryxian empire and your army.

As a little “what is happening in my hobby” I can tell that yesterday I just finished the Umbra league. It was fun, though I would never include any of the seasonal scenarios in any tournament as they where all caster kill. Caster kill as the only win condition favors a defensive play-style and that is not my favorite games. In my experience they take longer, they reward certain casters over how the caster is used, and finally they reduce the impact of the models I love to paint the most, soloes.

With that said, it was fun to tryout, and bacon the barfing beast who drunkenly moved in a random direction and then made a 10 inch spray of corroding barf was fun, I liked the idea of fighting in a hurricane, and had the local games store had more buildings I could imagine a cool western style game in ghost town.

I almost forgot, I got a shiny thing for getting the most points!

 

On the painting front I did manage to finish pGoreshade

I especially like his skintone. Will remember that one.

 

 and I will bring him to the tournament with a list that looks something like this:

pGoreshade (+6)

Deathripper (4)

Seether (9)

Malice (9)

Banelord tarterous (4)

The withershadow combine (5)

Satyxis raiders with sea witch (10)

Any comments or questions, feel free to post. If not, thank you for reading.

 

Will paint for Cryx!!! And other illegal substances.

I am painting a little for a friend who in return gave me a wraith engine and 6 different forge world weathering powders. This has put painting Cryx on hold a bit while I squeeze out the 15 hours of painting soloes that I promised. I only have to paint the models themselves except for three that has micro art studio bases. I am trying out some of the ideas I have for bases on my next army project (only 26 battles until I am allowed to indulge in another faction), as well as the forge world weathering powders. For these models I have used light and dark earth, and on the base some orange rust. I got so say, I love these powders and how these models turned out.

 I found that I paint slower than I thought. I was right about the time I spend on base coats, underestimated the time I spend correcting small errors, was faster at shading than I thought and finally was surprised how the time flyes when I am highlighting and doing small things like eyes and belt buckles. Every time I have been highlighting it felt faster than the clock told me, so I must be enjoying myself.

7 hours and 47 min of Work was spend on these

I live how her eyes turned out. Har to tell but she has White green and Black in those things

I was inspired by the gloves I use when washing dishes for his gloves

Ruthger is just so damn western. Cant help but think he would fit in Firefly

Even if I should keep my focus on these commissions, I hope to finish the wraith engine by Tuesday as we are finishing this months umbra league, and winning the league for falls on me painting more than my Searforge Friend, as he is just below me in points, and has a lot more new stuff to paint.

I actually played him using the pGoreshade list that I mentioned in the last post and I made a small error in the placement of my UA for the satyxis raiders, which cost me the mini feat. My leviathan harmed a spray bunny so it lost its gun within the first game turn. In turn two, Gruntback had an open flank, so I cursed him with tarterus so the banes pGoreshade conjured with his feat could hit reliably and killed him. A little luck made the feat assassination material rather than just pressure.

I also tried the witch coven and they performed quite good. eHalys bonded colossal surprised me, killed death jack and took out Selene and left me with a limited control. A unit of blood witches did good and killed the colossal with some help from tarterous, and a debuff. I managed to turn the thing into a grind which i was winning, but forgot a stormpod that he used to perform a Hail Mary lightning leap with the storm strider and killed the last two girls. I need to remember to remove those damn pods.

Perhaps I should make a real battle report someday soon. Leave a comment if you would like to see one done, and what format is the favorite one?

New warcaster onboard - Goreshade the Bastard

I just bought the Witch Coven and Goreshade the Bastard, expanding my number of caster from 4 to 6. Today I will tryout Goreshade and he looks to be quite different from my Skarres in playstyle. For the game today I will be playing 35 points and perhaps a quick 25 points.

Gorehade adds to his battle groups damage output (Shadowmancer = Darkshroud) and therefore I will need some melee jacks to benefit from this. A seether will be my first choice, as goreshade lacks upkeep spells and need to cast spells every turn to impact the game (lacking a ranged weapon and the survivability to use his melee weapon on a regular basis/special actions) the focus efficient nature of this jack will be ideal. As I see him as a mid/back caster due to his def/arm (deathwalker helps a bit)I will need an arch node to use hex blast, which is an okay blast spell with the awesome addition of dispelling upkeep spells/animi. Finally I would like a ranged jack. Two reasons for this, first being to take out screening models that might rob my infantry/seether a good charge, and secondly I will attend a 35 points tournament where we have to spend 20 points on Jacks/beasts and maximum of 5 points on solos so I might as well get some games with less infantry. My best ranged jack is the Leviathan and on most turns Goreshade will have a few focus to throw its way, making it fit the requirement. For the tournament I hope to replace this with malus (I have yet to own the model) and include the wither shadow combine. In my local meta there is a load of steam powered players so they will have plenty of options to use their dark industries (especially with 20 points of jacks). In combination with malice drag and possession, they can hide back and still get a clear charge lane to the back arch (good against those set defense models they miss more often than not).

Having spent 22 points on jacks I will take a unit that is able to hold its own without buffs (because Goreshade offers none), a unit that will not be the ideal target for ranged weapons (because the battle group gets stealth most turns), and finally a unit that is good at taking out infantry. This unit will be a full unit of Satyxis Raiders with Sea witch attachment. Another choice might have been bane Thralls, but I will need them for Goreshades feat, and I find them to be less effective in taking out infantry than all satyxis due to Mat 6 and one attack (the Bane Lord might give then more Mat but that still does not give them reach or 2 attacks).

For soloes I want a war witch siren, to give focus to my arch node leaving mode for the leviathan, a satyxis captain to gain an insane treat range on the satyxis raiders. In place of the withershadow combine that I will use with malice, I will take Tarterous and a necrotech+scrap thrall. The thrall can be used with soul gate to return a jack from a dangerous position, the necrotech can repair any damage it gained during that time. Tarterous will bolster the numbers of the bane thralls gained by Goreshades feat.

So the list looks as follows

Goreshade the Bastard (+6)

Seether (9)

Leviathan (9)

Deathripper (4)

Satyxis Raider Captain (2)

Warwitch Siren (2)

Bane Lord Tarterous (4)

Necrotech and scrap thrall (1)

Full Satyxis Raider unit with Sea witch (10)

Total 35 point (41/41)

If you have some different ideas on how to use Goreshade, please leave a comment, otherwise I will return with some more on him once I get some experience with his playstyle on different point levels and with different army lists.  

Skarre Queen of the Broken Coast

 

 

Winning the tournament I knew that it was time to try out a new caster and expand my force. I had never tried Skarre queen of the Broken Coast, but thought that she would be the ideal 3^rd caster I played, because of esthetics and her abilities which looked equally good.

I started out by just swapping the caster but keeping the list that I mentioned in the last post, but already in the first game I found that this incantation of Skarre has problems taking out heavy armor and boosts shooting out the wazoo. I ordered some new models and BAM she started winning. I made a 50 point list which I will go over at a later point, but in this post I will just take a look at her abilities and the changes that has happened since she was just a pirate queen.

Changes

They might look alike, but they sure play different

When looking over her base stats the first thing you should notice is that, she got another focus giving her a great control area of 14. This makes her a better at running her army spread more apart than with her prime version. The second thing to notice is that she had forgotten her awesome Bloodwyrm sacrificial knife and replaced it with a hand cannon and a gun blade. While I am all for having a hand cannon, she lost Life drinker, Sacrificial Strike and Ritual sacrifice to gain it. The loss of Ritual Sacrifice will make the extra focus she gained come in handy as well as the extended control. She kept backlash and blood drain but changed all other spells, making her play completely different to her former self. She lost Dark Guidance, the spell I made my army around, and it is replaced by Black Spot. The Hellfire as a spell assassination opportunity has been replaced by Perdition. On top of that, she has gained two upkeep spells, Admonition and Death ward. Skarre has also found new ways to use her blood with Blood trade, allowing her to upkeep spells by suffering 1 damage point in place of the focus cost. She has gained Inspiration Satyxis (never flee and immediately rally) and Seas of fate allowing models in her battle group and within control area to boost attack and damage rolls after seeing the result of the roll. The final big change in how she plays comes from her feat. She still suffers up to 5 damage from using it but this time for each damage taken she picks a target to be effected. If friendly it cannot be targeted, and if enemy cannot make attacks for one round.

Offensive

With perdition and Black Spot Skarre can harm enemies from a safe distance

Her offensive has changed from melee attacks, and the random spell assassination into jack bullet and ranged fire by two spells; Perdition and Blackspot. Perdition replaced the, rarely used, spell assassination option with a great “jack bullet” option. Perdition is a range 10 pow 10 spell that if damages enemy model a jack in the battle group may make an advance towards neares enemy. As we have fast heavy jacks, an additional advance can give 6 inch of addition treat (8 if you use nightmare close to his prey), and because it is only towards and not directly towards I have used it to get a great trample lane. Most importantly, when used in combination with her feat you can leave a jack within charge/trample range of the enemy caster, which is almost impossible to handle without allocating enough resources that it was worth the effort. Gained a few caster kills in this way.

This guy has beaten Skarre in melee, now perdition allowed this seether to grant her revenge

 

Black spot gives enemy mode/unit -2 defense and when a friendly faction model destroys affected models it gains an additional attack/shot ignoring ROF. This increases the range potential of the army exponentially, and ensures the shift in the foundation from a good Pirate queen Skarre army list with lots of multiple attack infantry  to a good Skarre Queen of the Broken Coast army list with something shooty.

On a good day this guy can kill 4 infantry models a turn with Black Spot

 

Backlash is still an option but without sacrificial strike and the option to make satyxis raiders harm jacks reliably, the assassination in this spell has gone away. Blood rain is still situational, but due to Black spot and including ranged weapon models, I find that I use it even less with this Skarre then before.

Defensive

Skarre gained Death ward, a spell that is equally good on units and jacks. The unit gains +2 arm (not good for high def low arm satyxis in my experience) and the jacks gain the same as well as you getting to pick the column that suffers damage. I have tried only having 6 damage boxes left and still have a fully functioning jack because I got to place the damage where it did no harm. With 1 wound infantry I found that getting to 17+ from 16 – is the biggest change in survivability and if you can do that for a unit, they have changed their level of survivability against shooting quite a lot. This is due to the nature of numbers allocation using 2d6 and the fact that several commonly used ranged weapons have a POW of 10 (gun mages,…). The second spell, admonition, is one that puts pressure on the enemy because it can deny him charges and assassination runs. Basically when an enemy model ends its move within 6 inch of the target you can activate the spell to advance up to 3 inch without suffering free strikes. I have used this spell to make clear charge lanes only partial lanes, getting the caster to safety when charged by a jack, and even used it as a follow up when an enemy caster tries to escape your jack bullet. Finally I need to mention fate weaver, the feat, which protects up to 5 models of your own, or makes 5 enemy models useless. While they cannot be targeted, common way to deal with a jack that has this effect on is run a friendly model up close to it with back ark towards, say, Gorman. Gorman will then cast black oil (blind thing) on your target, but also hit that protected jack, making the feat wasted.   

Conclusion

The combination of perdition, seas of fate and fate weaver, Skarre is able to make one hell of a “jack bullet”. Black spot gives Cryx a good ranged boost needed to have an effective ranged game. This makes queen of the broken coast a completely different caster to use when compared to her prime version. I found this Skarre to be lots of fun. I would also mention that having these extremely offensive jacks standing under the effect of her feat can lead the enemy to keep his models back, giving you a great opportunity to go for the objectives and a solid win in steam roller. She is an effective caster that people will fear once you learn what models to use with her, and how to use them effectively. I went for a 50 point list that I will show you one of the days, and I have had much luck with the list.

Until then, be good, have fun, play some games, subscribe to this blog, give be some comments if I forgot to add something.

Ohh and I have now 03.03.2013 played 70 games so only 30 left to picking a second faction.