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Post by streetpizza on Dec 14, 2017 17:14:21 GMT
Sure but they never need to walk through it like the wolves would. If Siege is close enough to have LOS to that location then he's close enough to be shot by CRAs after maneuvering around the wall. If he's got a screen in front of him then the reeves can target the screen without needing to worry about the wall.
In short Reeves do not care about razor wall beyond a minor positioning inconvenience.
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Post by redcathal on Dec 14, 2017 23:33:39 GMT
Ended up not playing siege but Hayley 3. Rough battle report below
My list is the one from the beginning of the thread but with a gnarlhorn instead of shadow horn
His list is something like
Hayley Triumph 2 grenadiers Long gunners + Ua Regular trenchers with ua Express team dog Trench buster Hitch Trencher solo with slugger Ragman
Scenario the pit 2
Terrain big ass house in the middle taking up most of the round zone, a wall on each side of the left hand zone with his objective, forest on my right just in front of my deployment. There was some other stuff but it's irrelevant
My Deployment: reeves morraig and the war wolves on the right, grayle and the battle group in the centre skin walkers on the left
His: long gunners opposite skin walkers combat solos near them, Hayley express team and triumph in the middle, ragman, dog and trencher infantry opposite reeves. One grenadier for each rectangle zone
My first turn cautiously advance trying to keep stuff out of threat ranges where I can, put out death march on the skin walkers and storm rager on grayle. Trample and earths blessing on gnarly, grayle also gets that.
His turn he moves up and makes a cloud wall, express team do like 3 damage to gnarly. Left grenadier takes some pot shots but ultimately doesn't damage skin walkers 😞
Turn 2 gnarly gets out of the by trampling and EB,, grayle moves up feats and gets rid of cloud wall, wolves run into position, reeves go, some CRA into grenadier to trigger sic em (1st one missed 2 others leave him on 3 boxes), the rest start shooting up trenchers leaving half alive, morraig runs to engage (this may have been a mistake), on the other side two sacrificial skin walkers go into the zone with the rest either hiding behind the wall or in the feat. Battle group chill in the middle zone near grayle behind the house.
His 2: not in exact order but he feats, trenchers kill morraig and do other random damage engaging gnarly etc, baby Haley kills 2 wolves with force hammer, something else kills the last one, express team does no damage to gnarly but grevious wounds is on a hit so when his mind gets crippled I'm sad, normal Hayley repudiates deathmarch and sacrifices die and I don't get vengeance😑 Long gunners shoot skinwalkers in cover and get a couple. Scores 1 with his grenadier.
My 3: wolves ambush in, killing his grenadier, the combat trenchers (machine gun guy and trench buster) as well as doing most of the work on his objective with power swell, remaining skin walkers finish objective and kill some long gunners, grayle frees up gnarly and sprints to the corner of the house, gnarly slams express team gunner through 2 trenchers into Hayley (without his mind boosted 9 get in there) but she isn't in melee range after follow up 😑, She takes minor collateral damage, reeves help clear zone, ripper goes to score, feral moves away from long gunners, I score to go to 2-1
His 3: he contests my zone, finishes gnarly with triumph, baby Haley tries to slam feral into grayle to no avail (hehe) long gunners and future Hayley try kill grayle after which he has like 11 boxes left. Still 2-1 to me. Worth pointing out at this stage he has 2 seconds left on clock to my 8:30 something but we're both new to these lists so it's not gonna be a win condition
My 4: grayle kills off some trenchers and baby Hayley who are between ripper and regular Hayley, reeves finish clearing zone, feral primate up gnarly and moves into my zone (mistake should have sent him after future Hayley who attacked last turn so was corporeal as grayle was scoring me that zone anyway but meh) reeves clear some other trenchers, the dog and ragman who are also in the way, ripper charges and I realise I should have healed his body which was crippled However it matters not as he proceeds to missed all 3 boosted initials into regular Hayley 😭 Def20/18 sucks but I still should have hit once on average dice 🤷♂️
At this point we call it as I've clocked and the shop is closing. He thinks he would go for assassination on grayle again but with 3 transfers, I think he survives and while the rip horn probably dies I think between grayle and the feral Hayley dies but who knows, very good game to play and Grayle is a lot of fun.
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daveg
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Post by daveg on Dec 15, 2017 13:24:14 GMT
Sure but they never need to walk through it like the wolves would. If Siege is close enough to have LOS to that location then he's close enough to be shot by CRAs after maneuvering around the wall. If he's got a screen in front of him then the reeves can target the screen without needing to worry about the wall. In short Reeves do not care about razor wall beyond a minor positioning inconvenience. Reeves are certainly less directly affected than Wolves. I can envision scenarios where you can block off chunks of the table in combination with terrain (houses) to limit their field of fire. Siege can create an approximate gap of 14.5" from the leading edge of the wall and his base between the 12" control area and jump. Reeves threaten 18" with walk and shoot. I haven't worked out the geometry and a typical "cloud" formation but all of the Reeves shouldn't be within that gap (including the need to walk around the wall) to make large CRAs into Siege. Perhaps I am envisioning the table positioning/geometry incorrectly. Against Reeves, I expect it'll be a tool that is only sometimes used. Does that make sense? Razor Wall will also be useful against Skinwalkers. It won't kill them, but it'll chip in damage if they run in to engage which might kill them with the other small arm fire/grievous wounds/low healing rolls. Siege2 is strapped for focus and making him have to make hard choices about where/if to put up razor wall/his hill/camp will affect your choices. I expect it will be a dynamic game in terms of decision making.
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daveg
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Post by daveg on Dec 15, 2017 13:35:48 GMT
Ended up not playing siege but Hayley 3. Rough battle report below. Thank you for the report! It's funny, but the warbeasts are the least accurate thing in the list and against H3's silly defense, dice can get angry very quickly. The Gnarlhorn animus is pretty nice in this list and slam is a good tool for that high def. Did you think he was worth his points? Just in this matchup? I've switched my battlegroup to include a Pureblood because of the propagation of Incorp in the game and the goat was one of the sacrifices. It might have been a mis-remember, mis-type but Grayle couldn't cast the Slam Goat's animus 1st turn. Storm Rager costs 3 now and Death March is 3 so he can't cast it and it is Self only animus.
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Post by redcathal on Dec 16, 2017 16:10:31 GMT
It might have been a mis-remember, mis-type but Grayle couldn't cast the Slam Goat's animus 1st turn. Storm Rager costs 3 now and Death March is 3 so he can't cast it and it is Self only animus. You're correct must have been the second turn Grayle cast it cos I do remember having it on Grayle at some stage... On the slam goat yeah i liked him in the list, that said I just don't have the jumping goat so I think I'll try the list out with him as well
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daveg
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Post by daveg on Jan 23, 2018 15:04:47 GMT
It’s been a little while but I wanted to do a quick follow up from my experiences with Grayle at the ATC. I was the only person who brought Grayle and played him in all 5 rounds ending up 3-2. Our team ended up in 7th, going 3-2 beating the 3rd place team in round 2 (3-2) and losing to the 1st place team in round 4 (2-3) and the 5th(?) place team in round 5 (2-3). All three rounds were close and I was happy and impressed how we played overall. It was especially nice because two of our original members ended up not being able to make the tournament maybe 10 days before. Our coach/alternate had 7 games total practice with his lists and all the weekend before the ATC. It’s been too long to do batreps properly and I’m unconvinced I could skillfully execute such a thing anyway. However, I thought someone out in internet land might enjoy a quick lessons learned.
1) One of the biggest things that came up is how small a pool of casters and factions I had experience against. The ATC was my first steamroller since Nova 2016 (16 months ago) and the meta has certainly changed immensely since then (no theme forces/CID/SR 2017). It would have helped to do some additional homework especially about where my lists were weak and what I could reasonable expect them to do. I’m not sure how much or how best to do this yet.
2) Battle Engines!: In the 5 games, I played double battle engines in three of them. If you include Xerxes2, I fought against a total of 8 battle engines. The stated design goal to get them on the board seems to have been met. I fought double Derp Turtles in games 1&3 and double TEPs in game 2.
3) Derp Turtles: These things are really really good and oppressive if you don’t have a plan. The good thing is that the Grayle list I used (see bottom of post) has answers. Game state matters a lot but the key is ambushing Wolves of Orboros. The big thing, that I learned the hard way, is that they kill the Derp Turtle on average dice but barely. It’s roughly a coin flip if the BE gets dead.
It not being dead and remaining fully functional is terrible for you. It will clear most of the WoO back and they’ll never be able to hurt it again. Further, the beast handlers will heal it. You have to have back up damage to improve your odds of killing it. In my list that comes down to the three war wolves killing it with Sic’ Em or an assault spray from the Pureblood. Maybe even both if you can manage it.
Killing the Derp Turtle on one side lets Grayle and the Warpwolves come out and play. It threatens farther than you and the boosted knockdown tail means that it’ll kill anything in your list. It’s the fulcrum of the Winds of Death match-up.
4) Changing plans: The Grayle list, as I’ve poorly described before, is an options list. It doesn’t ask hard questions as much as give you answers. The last round, I didn’t change plans fast enough and didn’t understand how much damage I could do to the jack spam Amon list. I needed to focus on killing Amon and try to make situations where that could happen but instead I tried to attrition and scenario as per normal and got ground out.
Alternatively, in game 3 I learned my Derp Turtle lesson as described above due to the slightly less than average dice. I then proceeded to make a mistake with positioning and my feat and was stuck on the precipice of falling into super tilt. I talked myself off the cliff (something I’ve been trying to work on) and realized I needed to try and kill Rasheth. My opponent made the mistake and allowed me to get the assassination. Pivoting and realizing I had to try was the important part.
5) Control Feats: Axis’ feat really caught me out with all of it’s clauses and effects but I’ve had similar problems with Fyanna’s feat. I need to not ape out and be over aggressive under those feats. I’m not going to get enough done. Just position to not lose too much on scenario or attrition next turn.
I’m not convinced the list has enough staying power to make it thorugh the double alpha. It’s not fast enough (11” threat isn’t much). Skinwalkers just aren’t actually tanky at all. Something I’ll need to figure out if I want to keep playing Grayle or address in the other list.
List as used in ATC: Grayle: -Pureblood -Feral War Wolf x 3 Morraig Wolves of Orboros (max) +UA Skinwalkers (max) +UA Skinwalkers (min) + UA Reeves (max) + UA
Changes to the list after a tournament: I feel like I need more damage and the Skinwalkers aren’t providing enough tank or enough damage. I’d probably switch out the min Skinwalkers find another two points and put in a second unit of WoO with UA.
I’m also unhappy with the battlegroup but I’ve never been happy about it in the first place really. The Pureblood was added because I felt like I needed magical weapons with all of the Incorp running around and the utter lack of magic in the list in general. The Feral has been a disappointment. Even at 14/18 he just dies too much or I can’t get him into the game at all. I also miss having more bags of hit points running around. I feel that Grayle needs to be an aggressive mid-table caster and that means I need both Fury to transfer and somewhere to transfer the damage. Maybe you can get away with two goats and a Gorax but that limits your matchups even more.
I’m not exactly sure where I’d go next. I think it’s got legs and is a pretty good list but there are a lot of matchups to cover between the two lists. I’m going to take a break from Circle for a while as I’m not particularly interested in most of the casters and feel the faction isn’t what I signed up for in MK 2 when I started playing. Off to Minions and especially pigs for a while. All of that is exciting and interesting.
Happy to discuss (civilly) the tournament or the list!
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Post by redcathal on Jan 23, 2018 22:34:16 GMT
Sad to hear your bored ofncircle but new minions do look tasty although gators more than pigs for me but whatever floats your boat
Second match with Grayle tonight, no pictures unfortunately as I forgot
My list is still the one from page 1 this thread with slam goat rather than jump goat
Opponents list from memory was:
Durgen Madhammer Earthbreaker 3 gun bunnies Siege crawler Forgeguard Eiryss1 Aiyanna and holt Reinholdt Gobbertinker Thor
Terrain Big ass forest in the middle, house and hill in my deployment, difficult terrain, water and a hill in his. A wall on the far side of each zone.
Deployment His caster the gun bunnies and most of his solos towards his zone, colossal centrally battle engine on my zone with the hammer dwarves in between it and the colossal
The reeves and war wolves on his zone, gnarlhorn, morraig and skinwalkers centrally, grayle, feral orientated towards my zone and on the far right the riphorn
He advanced deployed eiryss centrally and the wolves went into ambush mode
His objective repair, mine pathfinder
Dwarf turn 1 Running, which for dwarves wasn't very fast. Eiryss hides in forest.
Circle turn 1 War wolves run into positions to be annoying, reeves move forward and mini feat. Skinwalkers move forward to disuade eiryss from coming near grayle who storm ragers himself and death marchs the skinwalkers (these two spells stay up the entire game), rip horn toes the zone and feral warps armour and hides behind grayle 😂🤷♂️
Dwarf turn 2 So the battle engine has periscope which means grayle is sitting naked in the wind more or less, fortunately for me it can only get close enough to use its big guns and needs a 9 which both miss. Phew. A gun bunny advances and shoots or ran but either way grayle was still ok.The hammer dwarves advance but due to the battle engine only 2 of them can get in the zone.
Colossal goes and due to the forest and the mini feat by the reeves he doesn't do all that much bar killing a skinwalkers (yay vengeance) and failing to hit the war wolf behind a wall. It takes the two other gun bunnies to kill said war wolf in the end and then my opponent creates a fort around his flag with caster and solos as well as aiyana and holt. Also at some point eiryss decided discretion was the better part of valour and fled behind the forest.
Circle turn 2 Ok so I see that battle engine has gotta go because grayle losing stealth every turn will lead to a dead grayle so i ambush the wolves who power swell and do around 12 damage and the feral primals up Ripper who does the business and kills him with a fury to spare.
At this point I have a gun bunny and two hammer dwarves that need to die for me to score two. I have the skinwalkers and grayle to do it. I think about doing some strange side step shenanigans with grayle but crit smite with the hammer dwarves make that risky so he just goes in, feats and kills the gun bunny. Nailing his charge attack, leaving it on like 4 and cleaning up with 2 bought attacks (fluffing the damage toll on one of them) Skinwalkers weren't in the best position but grayles feat allows me to get off three charges on the dwarves and I kill the two I need to and one guy doing a respectable 10 damage to the earth breaker.
On the other side the reeves and warwolves ding up some gun bunnys but fail to kill it proper but they're importantly contesting
Gnarly just kinda saunters around he backfield waiting for a later turn to be useful.
Score 2-0 to circle
Dwarf turn 3 Hammer dwarves and various others attack the skinwalkers who take it like champs, a couple die but still pretty good, 2 wolves of orboros die as well but crucially there's still just a couple of hammer dwarves and a gobber tinker in my zone.
The earthbreaker goes in and smushes my objective, a skinwalker and a reeve.
A gun bunny and holt kill my warwolves (taking a surprising amount of attacks) Mad hammer feats and clears the reeves in his zone leaving me with about 5
I still score my flag so we go to 3-3
Circle turn 3 Ripper frenzies into one of my skinwalkers and smashes him and then they vengeance into some hammer dwarves killing three. The wolves of orboros kill a few more and the unit leader cranks it to kill the gobber tinker, wolf lord morraig kills another few leaving just two hammer dwarves left who are outside the zone and would have to take a bunch of free strikes to get in so fairly safe there. The 3 remaining skinwalkers go try destroy the objective but leave it on 5 or so boxes.
The feral warpwolf and gnarly (who also toed the enemy zone) combine into the earthbreaker and both going to full (no primal unfortunately activations and positioning just didn't allow for it) leave it on like 8 boxes. This was all part of my cunning plan however (not really) but grayle is within charge range and sidestep plus sprint range back to the flag so he had to kill it with his two initials, i decide against combo striking to give me extra initials in case I fail to kill with just the combo which was very lucky cos my charge attack was rubbish but my second initial was insane 6641 or something so grayle could happily sidestep and sprint back to my flag ⛳️
My reeves are either in run and contest the flag range or walk and shoot his objective range, I end up running to contest (whilst engaging as much as possible) as it's a sure thing as opposed to maybe killing the objective that definitely does next turn
Score 5-3 to circle
Dwarf turn 4 Madhammer and co clear the reeves from his flag but not gnarly from the zone and eiryss runs cross field to contest my flag and zone.
5-4 to circle
Circle turn 4 Feral frenzies into gnarly who takes 6 damage. No vengeance 🙁Grayle stabs Eiryss she dies and he hops back to his flag camping four, the skinwalkers finish off the objective, the rip horn runs to the edge of control glaring at madhammer and so does gnarly from the other side putting up his animus. So there's no escape for the dwarf. Morraig runs to contest the flag. At this point I'm running low on clock so I don't bother finishing off the hammer dwarves.
8-4 to circle
Dwarf turn 5 A+H go after morraig who tanks it like a boss due to some unfortunate rolls by my opponent Madhammer goes and kills a skinwalker and camps 3 I believe. Something runs to contest my flag and zone again. At this point my opponent has 8 seconds left on clock.
Circle turn 5 2 Skinwalkers vengeance into madhammer and do a little. They activate and do some more. Grayle leaves the flag to primal Riphorn who goes in and misses his charge attack but redeems himself by killing Madhammer on the first bought attack. With 3:53 left in my clock.
Circle Assassination victory!
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daveg
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Post by daveg on Jan 24, 2018 16:25:17 GMT
Nice! With both Reinholt (strip stealth) and the Battle engine (strip stealth) as well Eiryss1 to strip fury, Grayle's going to have to be very scared. Got a little lucky he missed both 9s early but you must have done a good job at positioning after that to stay alive and to contribute. The three beast battle group came up big here as well to push through the damage you needed on his armor. Switching back to the original list means I lose 4 "free points" of UA but gives me a solution to the punching and bags of hit point problem.
The other thing that you could consider in this match-up is aggressive use of Wind Blast. Durgan's Earthbreaker is fast enough to walk out of the template (Spd 4 huge bases aren't) but it is only 10" dangerous. You could predict where it might need to end up and keep it from shooting entirely. The more I played, the more I'm convinced good use of windblast is important to get full use out of Grayle.
I still love Grayle, I just continue to be not be as excited about other circle casters (maybe Tanith and Baldy1) as I'd like. Pigs need work to figure out how they can play and I've got more than a little special snowflake disease (shocking to hear in the Grayle thread). But if history is any indicator, I'll be back to Circle in a few months.
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Post by kuririnad on Jan 25, 2018 3:29:10 GMT
Sad to lose a druid, if only temporarily. Good luck making pigs fly - see you back here after the Tharn CID!
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Post by redcathal on Jan 25, 2018 10:48:00 GMT
The other thing that you could consider in this match-up is aggressive use of Wind Blast. Durgan's Earthbreaker is fast enough to walk out of the template (Spd 4 huge bases aren't) but it is only 10" dangerous. You could predict where it might need to end up and keep it from shooting entirely. The more I played, the more I'm convinced good use of windblast is important to get full use out of Grayle. You know I never even thought of that, wind blast is great but I always think of it as anti-cloud tech as opposed to anti-shooting but on huge bases it really could screw them hmm...
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daveg
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Post by daveg on Jan 25, 2018 17:14:38 GMT
It saved my bacon in the first game of the ATC. My opponent was running a really nasty Basilisk Drake spray spam list with Xerxis2. If the Krea paralyzed me or under feat turn Grayle would just be blown up to the sprays. (For reference, two sprays under feat killed a full Pureblood.) I used windblast to make sure that he could never get that assassination vector on me. The nice thing is you can get it pretty far up the board by casting it after killing something but before sprinting. It's also been changed to not an upkeep, so you can put down multiple 5" templates to cover a lot of no shooting ground.
Between that and Stealth in control area, Grayle has some really nice anti-gun tools.
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Post by redcathal on Jan 29, 2018 21:21:24 GMT
Not a full report today but just on this I got a grayle double sidestep assassination off tonight, against creators might Amon camping one. Through a forest. Charging a crusader dodging a free strike from a devout. Off the crusader into a vassal mechanic, off the mechanic into Amon 7s to hit, hitting every time. Third bought attack doing the business. Gotta love grayle's versatility and surprise factor. My opponent had played circle and new my whole army bar Grayle. Gotta be honest I think I was pretty screwed otherwise.
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Post by Forsaken on Feb 6, 2018 14:58:27 GMT
Enjoying the reports. Hope to see you back in the Circle soon Daveg. (Did you see the pun?)😁
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daveg
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Post by daveg on Feb 8, 2018 15:12:07 GMT
Not a full report today but just on this I got a grayle double sidestep assassination off tonight, against creators might Amon camping one. Through a forest. Charging a crusader dodging a free strike from a devout. Off the crusader into a vassal mechanic, off the mechanic into Amon 7s to hit, hitting every time. Third bought attack doing the business. Gotta love grayle's versatility and surprise factor. My opponent had played circle and new my whole army bar Grayle. Gotta be honest I think I was pretty screwed otherwise. Congrats! It's nice when you can pull off jank. One of my favorite parts of Warmachine/Hordes is that there is always that out of a caster kill. I've only played that match-up once and sadly I had this idea afterwards. In that matchup, at least using a Wild Hunt list, I think you have to angle for assassination the whole time. Morraig, War Wolves, and a warping for speed Feral were the pieces I would try to get there using the 3" movement from the feat extension. If I let a Dervish get to my caster with two-sidesteps, I should survive. This should force Amon up to keep the Dervish in range. It's a tight positioning game and depends on the PoM player falling into a trap but should be playable. That's all theory at current. The Amon player of course has ways to counter play that but it'll force a skill/who doesn't make a mistake matchup. Which is still better than trying to grind down that many boxes and armor.
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