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.

 

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.

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