50 point skarre queen of the broken coast tournament army list

I think I have found one of the army lists I will be using for the before mentioned tournament. I will go through the list and shortly justify why these where my choices.

Skarre queen of the broken coast (+6)

With black spot she can take high defense down to a more manageable level.

Death Jack (12)

Is great combined with Perdition Fate weaver and deathward. Also great without ;)

 Deathripper (4)

Is a much needed archnode to get of perdition, backlash, black spot and occasionally bloodrain.

Stalker (4)

I want to try putting some pressure on the enemy caster and with fate weaver the stalker can do just that.

Saxon Orrik (2)

Fixes the pathfinder problem.

 

 Bane Lord Tartarous (4)

 Increases the potentilal of the Bane thrall unit, and is a good target for fate weaver. Thresher!

 

Satyxis Raider captain (2)

 Increases the threat of the raiders, and is a great objective grabber. Also since the list lacks shooting she can clear out some charge lanes.

 Full unit of Bane Thralls with UA (11)

Takes care of heavy ARM such as colossals, and with tartarous and black spot they are effectively MAT 10 against that hard to hit unit.

Full unit of Satyxis Raiders with UA (10)

Punish any warcaster with a jack. With a backlash caster they become the best counter to aggressive colossals. 14 inch charge ;)

The Withershadow Combine (5)

Gives me the dispel option. They also have a few other trick going for them (understatement)

 Necrosurgeon (2)

This unit is in here to block charge lanes against skarre and to compensate for blood trade and the cost of fate weaver.

 

This list has a strong assassination game with the death-jack-bullet, a stalker and backlash. It can also do good in an attrition game but has the downside that I have nothing ranged apart from the random solo UA and spells. This might become the failing point of the list keeping me from getting the upper hand. I will try the list this Tuesday against Cygnar. It will also be my game Nr. 100 with Cryx since I started player about a year ago, but that will be the subject for another post. Still working on list Nr. 2 but I am unsure what to settle on yet.

As you can see I still need to do some painting for this one, but I think I will be okay. Just 5 models, I fear my other list will require a bit more painting.

Making lists for tournaments



 

During the past few months, I have taken part of a yearly Danish league called “The Imperator League” and it has been a joy. They have some simple rules such as, do not play against the same opponent twice, which has made me widen my circle of regular opponents a little. and i enjoyd that a lot. I also qualified for a tournament by ranking highest in points and 3ed highest in number of games.

You can find the score here: http://www.asgaard-games.eu/imperator-5/roster.htm

 The tournament one of the bigger in Denmark and since I did so well in the campaign I wanted to participate, which got me thinking on; what makes a good tournament army list? I found 4 important points. More are out there, but over the coming weeks I will try to find out which 2 lists I will bring using these 4 points as a part of reference as well as any other information I will obtain to give me an edge.

1)      A way to deal with terrain. Pathfinder units can do this for you but often a model that can give pathfinder (or better) to units that need it are a much better investment. Outside factions there are two models that come to mind who can do just that, the piper of Ord and Saxon Orrik. In Cryx we do not have access to the piper, but luckily we have some quite good casters with Ghost walk.

2)      A way to deal with big models. With Colossals being quite common in my local meta, I find that I need some way to deal with these big boys. This can be done by applying weapon masters, but I would always recommend bringing Gorman in at least one of your lists. As a Cryx player another way to deal with colossals are Satyxis Raiders with a Backlash caster. If I get the charge then they have the “theoretical” potential to deal 33 points of damage to the controlling enemy warcaster regardless of defensive stats.

3)      Bring dispel options. The some of the best combinations in the game rely on upkeeps, so removing those makes taking out that awful combination much easier. Some has it easy by being able to bring Eiryss but in cryx we do not have it as easy (with this part not in general). Withershadow combine can use unbinding, the blood witch UA has dispel on their weapons, and we have some casters with Hexblast.

4)      A way to deal with high DEF. Bile thralls are the best cryx option for this, but Dark guidance on Skarre1 can do it, and getting some AOE’s rolling can also be a solution. The nasty high DEF relies on buffs like iron flesh, and that can be resolved by bringing your dispel options, so if you have a DEF debuff, buff to MAT or just plain old gang going you have a fair chance of getting a hit as long as you got the dispel option handy.

 

Release the Kraken!!!

Why would you have an amphibious colossal stay on the deck of your ship? For the sake of consistency on the bases, that’s why!

Yesterday I finished painting my own colossal the Kraken. Normally I hate painting models of this size but this time I managed to finish it before growing bored with it. The quality of the paintjob suffered a little due to my unwillingness to repaint anything on the model but I am happy with the result anyway.

 

I have been playing with the kraken for a while now and I have used the following casters:

1)      pGoreshade – offers Shadowmancer (buff: dark shroud), Hexblast (Offensive: Dispel) and the Deathwalker (breathtaker: living models gets -2 STR -2 DEF). Against those models where it matters it is quite possible to gain dark shroud by applying bane thralls reducing the relevance of shadowmancer. Hexblast and breathtaker makes it possible for the kraken to take out some high DEF infantry even with a DEF buff.  Poor choice for your kraken.

2)      eGoreshade – Offers Phantom hunter (Buff: Ignores LOS, concealment and cover) curse of shadows (Debuff: -2 ARM, can advance through enemy models, cannot make free strikes) and Hexblast (Offensive: Dispel). This enables the kraken to take out important soloes and try for the enemy caster. Curse of shadows combined with dispelling of potential buffs and a well-placed bane thrall makes the kraken able to take out enemy colossal. Curse of shadows can also be used to get out of a tar-pit and into a caster without having to miss out on its initials. Performed well – needs more research

3)      Witch coven – Offers Infernal machine (Buff: +2 MAT, +2 SPD), curse of shadows (Debuff: -2 ARM, can advance through enemy models, cannot make free strikes) and their feat: nightfall (Debuff: -2 MAT, -2 RAT, LOS reduced to 5). This increases the krakens threat to 14 inch, and with nightfall you can place it quite aggressively without fear of too many charges. The increase in MAT brings the kraken to a solid MAT 8 increasing the efficiency of Sweep. Nightfall is also the only way I have found in which you can deny line of sight to a colossal. Curse of shadows is even better with the movement increase offered by infernal machine. A good choice for your kraken.

4)      eSkarre – Offers it Death ward (Buff: +2 arm, I pick column), Seas of fate (Passive: boost after seeing result) and black spot (debuff: - 2 def, kill gives additional attack ignoring ROF). This makes the kraken mode focus efficient, able to take more punishment and a beast as a ranged model. Hypothetically it can get 6 shots with its Hellblaster (range 16, AOE 4, POW 14) as each successful shoot from its flayer against a unit hit by black spot grants an additional attack, but not necessarily from the same weapon. This is a good choice for your kraken.

I have found a few tricks that I would like to share with you about using the kraken.

1)      Keep it second wave most of the time – The Kraken is an expensive model and losing it early will cripple your army.

2)      Stay away from weapon masters – These models, when getting the charge, can take out big chunks of your kraken. It may look tasty to get some corpse tokens, but it is rarely worth it if it leaves you open to more than 3 weapon masters.

3)      In any list, no matter the caster, use both shooting and melee to get the most of the Kraken.

4)      When going into melee with a different colossal, stay more than 2 inch away from it. Then run infantry in base to base with the enemy colossal to keep it in place. This forces the enemy to spend a load of resources removing these infantry models before it can strike back. A favorite is satyxis raiders since shooting them will be close to imposible, and if they place models in melee to take them out, they will likely stand in the way for the lesser colossal and its melee potential.

5)      It is okay to sacrifice the kraken to win. When people see a Kraken within reach of their caster, it is easy to forget about the mission objective and focus all of the power they have on taking down the big guy, leaving you with a sweet win out mission.

6)      Use it to control zones. With a 12 inch long zone just place the kraken on your edge. It is quite hard to remove it, and if they put anything into the zone to contest, you know the kraken can charge it with its 12 inch charge range.  

While I still need to tryout more casters and play styles with the kraken, I find that it offers some something that I missed before getting it. It is by no means an auto include but can (in my local meta) be used competitively. So Cryx casters, take out your krakens for a spin, I know I will.

50 points witch coven army list

Last Tuesday I wanted to tryout kraken and coven combination so I build this list around those two choices.

The Witch Coven of Garlghast (+5)

Kraken (19)

Death Ripper (4)

Death Ripper (4)

Necrotech with Scrap thrall (1)

Necrotech with Scrap thrall (1)

Full unit of Bane thralls with UA (11)

Minimum unit of Bile thralls (5)

Full unit of satyxis Raiders with UA (10)

The coven offers the kraken Infernal machine giving it a ranged threat range of 23 inch and a melee threat of 14 inch. It also ups the MAT on the kraken to 8 making its sweep attack much better. The coven needs an arch node to get of curse of shadows, which can increase the krakens chance of one rounding heavies. Their feat is as far as I can tell the only way to give my kraken a round where the enemy is unable to target it with ranged attacks and charges making them a great fit. I enjoyed using this against a galleon, which turned out to be loosing the gunfight between the two. This was done by using curse of shadows and a running bane to reduce its armor to 17 (it had an ARM buff) and dealing 26 damage in a single round of shooting, after which it would be unable to strike back due to the covens feat. The Necrotechs helped repairing most of the damage it had sustained from the galleon gaining the first round of fire. I added those to the list for that exact reason (as well as fixing any lost aspects).

While the coven has an ARM debuff but with the many colossals I am fighting in my local meta I still needed another strong option apart from the kraken to take out these, and that is why I added my bane thralls. Banes are however not the best at taking out infantry, especially not without tarterous, so I went to the bile thralls to take care of this threat. Finally I got a unit of satyxis raiders with UA. This unit gives me a zone/objective because of advance deployment and melee threat 12. In my second game I fought a dwarf player (seerforge) and because of this unit he felt it necessary to advance in shield wall from turn one. In his second turn he had to use his jacks to contest the objectives. In my turn three I had killed most of his infantry with the satyxis raiders, his driller and two gun bunnies with the kraken and his last heavy with the banes. The biles never made it close enough to do a difference (due to smart targeting by my opponents ranged weapons). It was the fact that most of the game got to be on my opponents table half that won me the game, and that was due to satyxis raiders.

In both games the kraken did great, not just because it kills stuff, but the threat of a colossal forces the enemy to hold back much of his army or lose it. This means that I experience winning on the objective, which is the first tiebreaker when attending tournaments because of the krakens huge base and threatening attitude.

With regards to the coven, I have experienced making a turn 1 caster kill with their offensive spell stygian abyss. This is done by putting infernal machine on a death ripper. It can then run 18 inch. I can then use its archnode to cast 4 stygian abyss spells with range 10 and pow 12. You need a warwitch siren to give the jack a focus to make the run, so for a 6 point investment you can take out most light casters in turn 1 if you go second and they are unaware of the danger of this 28 inch assassination threat.

With this list I have enjoyed putting occultation on my bile thralls making the entire army hard to get with ranged attacks. I bought them to counter pHaley/stormwall and I believe that they can do so with much success. I have tried twice and won one of the times, so better than usual when facing that combination.

Sorry about the lack of pictures, but both the coven and the kraken are WIP, so they will have to wait until later.

50 point Goreshade the bastard army list

 

I have been playing with Goreshade the bastard, just because I love his fluff. I am drawn to the sad story that he wishes to help his people, but in the process of helping his people he forgets about ethics and is shunned as a monster when he resorts to extreme measures.

As a warcaster he is not the easiest to get started with. He has a great feat in that he summons a minimum unit of bane Thralls. He has 5 spells, but I rarely cast more than hex blast, mage blight and Shadowmancer. He is a 7 focus caster, but with expensive spells (3,5,3). I know that he is considered one of the “lesser” cryx casters, but I have played him for a while and my last 4 games has been with this 50 point list shown below.

This is an explanation of the choices I made while list building.

I will start with my choice of warjacks.

I picked deathjack first. This is not only because he is a hard hitter but also because he can cast spells. As I mentioned above goreshade has a five focus spell, mage blight, and this leaves him with less focus than what is needed to cast hex blast. By allocating 2 focus to deathjack, I can boost a hex blast and still be able to keep up mage blight. This makes deathjack a great spell buddy for goreshade. Beyond that, death jack is almost always able to show off by killing a jack, beast or even hurt a colossal.

Next up, I wanted an arch node to get hex blast on the opposing flank to the death jack. I am a big fan of the Defilers spray as I can use its attack while using its arch node. That is, however, just my personal opinion, and I know people who swear by different arch nodes. Goreshade offers stealth and Darkshroud which arguably is better on melee oriented bone jacks, but if my arch node is in melee I just lost the reason why I brought it.

Since one of the spells I use the most offers buffs that fit melee jacks rather than shooting jacks I wanted to bring an additional one of those. Goreshade is a little starved for focus, so seether was a logical choice. On its early turns, it needs no focus, and when it goes crazy 2 focus is enough to fill it up.

Next up, my choice of soloes.

I bring 2 pistol wraiths. These are good objective grabbers, but are quite expensive. The shooting can clear some charge lanes, but I bring infantry that can do the same. They are rarely what wins me the game, but my opponents play their soloes more carefully and on the random occasion getting a colossal to forfeit movement or action they pay back their point cost with interest.

I bring Bane Lord Tartarus to increase the impact of Goreshades feat. Goreshade charges forward, uses his feat to create 6 bane thralls as far in front of him as possible. Then I activate Tartarus and hopefully charge a unit of living models close so the target of my banes. On my best day he created an additional 4 thralls with his thresher while being able to curse a colossal. They where then able to charge and kill the big fellow. I have used just getting him close to the enemy caster for the curse. This gives Goreshade a 23,5 inch threat on his banes. Love this guy with Goreshade.

I also bring my Styxis Raider Captain. I have used this model for some 50 games and I use it to clear charge lanes by charging and killing an annoying model and using sprint to get away. I always play it behind my front line, because she has no survivability and it is always good to be able to run 14 inch and claim an objective. For the first few rounds I use her to buff satyxis raiders with desperate pace.

Finally units

As Goreshades lacks defense debuffs beyond the fragile Deathwalker I like to include bile thralls. Their purge ability makes to chances to get a caster assassination with his feat much larger as well as gives you a great options for taking out Iron Fleshed Winter Guards. Just about one purge will probably payback your point investment, while giving loads of great options for the rest of your army.

I see a load of units with tough standing between my hardest hitters and the target I want to get. To overcome this I bring a minimum unit of blood witches with UA. With ethereal they can also be combined with bile thralls, as they become immune to purge.

To get a unit to give me the alpha strike and force my enemy to stay on his side of the board I bring Satyxis Raiders with UA. This unit can cover a flank, take out soloes, harm hard model/units with UA mini feat, and can run and engage models within 18 inch to reduce the impact of ranged models. Goreshade gives nothing to this unit, but it does okay (read awesome) on its own.

The List looks like this

Goreshade the Bastard (+6)

Death walker (0)

Deathjack (12)

Defiler (5)

Seether (9)

Pistol wraith (3)

Pistol wraith (3)

jBane Lord Tarterus (4)

Satyxis Raider Captain (2)

Min size bile thralls (5)

Min size Satyxis Raiders with UA (7)

Satyxis Blood Witches with UA (6)

And on a picture something like this:

 

But don’t forget that with his feat you will also get these

 

And with this guy, I have had them almost double in numbers on a single turn.

 

I always preffere to play with painted miniatures, but deathjack still needs some finishing touches. I am extremely happy about how the freehand turned out, and even with colossal all over the place I hope it will make him stand out as a centerpiece for any army that includes him.

Before I made this list I played some 5-10 games with Goreshade, with decent outcome (more win then loss). Since I made the list I played with it against eStriker (in this game mageblight was key to winning) Irusk with colossal (Shadowmacer until feat turn for win) Vyros with two colossals (all feat, turn 2 attempt, dice raped – luckily opponent made a ballsy call and failed his assassination run by 1/8^th of an inch so I got a second chance. This time I did not fail) and finally Zaal (won due to Seether, feat and Goreshade who destroyed an objective and cleared a flag).

He may be among the worst casters cryx has to offer, but he still manages to pull some wins against the best in my local gaming environment and had fun while doing it.  I can hardly wait to try out his epic version, but before I get to that I have this urge to use my kraken more, as well as my witch coven and it looks like they might go together due to infernal machine.  

I love this unit!

 

At first when I looked at this unit I thought to myself, I have no use for sprays that cannot hit. That was until I noticed the OMG that is disgusting purge. This is the unit I have been looking for because they can blow up and auto hit iron flesh assassins!

Purge is a special attack with automatically hits all models within 6 inch and in the front arch of a model-using purge. As it is part of your ranged weapon you cannot charge and purge. This is the bread and butter of the unit, and that is the best counter I have found in the Cryxian army to high defense without looking at casters.

After having bought and played with these models for a few weeks told my good friend about how awesome they are and what a counter they could be to one of his factions most commonly used combinations. He then replied, “do you know why I always bring widow-makers? Well now you do”.

I good friend and nemesis of mine gave me half of this unit so an “official” thank you needs to be in this post. Thank you Søren! I will use this unit often and with great success, such as when I beat your WTC list with Goreshade1 due to purgeing my way through your “tarpit” getting my Raiders the opportunity to tie up your gunmages, journeyman, stormsmith and caster attachment.  It gave you the kind of crappy turn needed to assassinate eStryker with pistol wraiths. So once again, thank you!

Here is a picture of the full unit.

 

As you can see, I gave them yellow rubber gloves. I love the contrast it provides to an otherwise dark and ominous looking model.

I enjoyed painting these models especially the leaks. The biggest downside was having to highlight this behind!

In all, a unit I can recommend for anyone if your army lacks ways to overcome high defense. It is not the only trick to deal with high defense, but it is a good, cheap one and it does not rely on having a specific caster.

It is also a unit, which can remove huge amounts of infantry. This is something that can often stand in the way of getting that objective, or assassination run, so recommend trying them out, even if you manage without, because it can open up for opportunities that did not exist without them.

Little side thing.

I am trying to win the award for most geeky guy with a nespresso machine so this Sunday me and some of the gents are meeting up for some manly stew and some pathfinder society roleplaying game. Now, you ask, why do you post it in a blog about warmachine when it has absolutely nothing to do with warmachine? Good question, the answer is that for this type of game we also use miniatures and I have been painting up the character I will be making as my society caracters as well as my friends dwarf. As a hobbyist I always enjoy watching painted models and so shall provide pictures of said painted models.

 

This is my guy, a guide ranger working as a secret agent man for the Andoran faction in the pathfinder society

This is a dwarf, as he is a dwarf I thought is was a great time to practice painting a drunk man’s nose.

 

Both models still need their shields, but as I do not have them yet, I cannot show them.

On the warmachine front, I have bought the Kraken and played a few games with it. 3 to be exact, and so far it has killed two Hyperions, Molik Karn and shot at some nosey casters. Played it with eSkarre with great success, played it with goreshade who does nothing for the kraken, but I want to learn how to use him due to my love of his fluff. So far, I can conclude that eSkarre makes it awesome, and goreshade applies banes as the only buff. Needs more field testing before I get to most form the Kraken, might try eGoreshade and mortenebra to get the most of the thing.