kovnikninehouse , yes we do have a good balance of casters showing up.
I decided to put this together. OCD. I couldn't help it.
So almost half the field is taking Vlad 1, and almost all of these players are taking him in WGK. The most common iteration was with 5 jacks and 9 rockets across 3 units, but there was some variation, notably dropping a jack for a gun carriage (I think I saw 1-2 double gun carriage lists in there somewhere).
Butcher 3 was our next most common drop with 39% of our field bringing him. He's most popular in Jaws (8/14), but people are also taking WGK (4/14) and out of theme (2/14).
25% of the Empress' sons and daughters are taking Karchev, primarily in Jaws but there was one WGK.
tesoe ,
h4ppynz beat me to the punch on putting up Chris Davies' list (
chickenslayer is on team Australia Drop Bear). He's decided to forego units (except for the min mechanics), and puts in 9 jacks with Karchev - 5 Marauders, 2 Kodiaks, 1 Juggernaut, and a marshalled Destroyer. He's taking for free: Dog, Marksman, 2X Forge Seers. I'll note that two other players are fielding the exact same list (and it's his own damn fault for bragging about how jank his tank was on a recent episode of Murder of Crows).
I love Karchev. So a bit more about the lists.3 with 9 jacks
4 with 8 jacks
2 with 7 jacks ... one of these has a Behemoth, and the other is in Winterguard.
The WGK list has 30 points of shooting (2X min WGRC, 2x Mortars (one is free), and a WMM) and four advance moves. That's Ryan McDermott's list. I hear he knows what he's doing so I won't call his list a special snowflake. I assume the WMM is there to score on flags (and thus, no Joe).
The folks playing 7-8 jacks with Karchev generally had room for a couple of units - primarily Eliminators or Scouts, which are both awesome RTW triggers.
The Destroyer appears to be the jack of choice in Jaws to jack marshal in Jaws lists, BTW. No surprise.
Strak 2 (19%, exclusively in Legion), Sorscha 1 (14%, exclusively in gunlines, one out of theme), and Zerkova 1 (14%, also a Legion machine) are the next most frequently appearing casters. Irusk 2 came next and is fielded in 3 lists (8% of players).
Appearing in 2 lists: Vlad 3 (people still play him?), Strak 1 (why aren't they playing him more!), Irusk 1 (maybe the MOW theme allows him to make a comeback) and Vlad 2 (still rocking out of theme).
Appearing once: Hark, Sorscha 2, Zerkova 2, and Butcher 1.
Some thoughts on the neglected casters...Hark was quite popular last WTC. He's been completely pushed aside by Karchev as a hard core jack caster. I think SR 2017 makes playing jack spam hard. Karchev has a few more jack points, and himself isn't squishy, so can get away with it. It's hard to crank Hark up to 8-9 jacks without leaving him really exposed.
Sorscha 2. OK, this is Richard Beech's list (England Lions), and I really like Murder of Crows, but man oh man I just don't understand it. I'm not saying it's bad, but I don't know what the list does.
He has: Marauder, Ruin, Reinholdt, WMM, IFP (max) + OS, Elims, Kossites (min), A&H + Valachev (old school!), and the original WGDS (Joe+WGI+OS+3 Rockets). I get the crazy feat turn...A&H + Rockets and Reinholdt means no hide and seek, and there's a bunch of stuff that hits hard. But most of the guns are short range and there don't seem to be enough to be a "gun list". I don't get the Kossites (yeah, they threaten zones, but lots of stuff threatens zones). Hmmm... maybe Richard is out there somewhere and can comment. If he's got the list to be the team's dedicated Denny Ghost Fleet drop then I don't know why you wouldn't just put her in WGK and drop in double rifle corps. Or out of theme for magic weapons, why not then put in a unit of Outriders? Hmm...
Maybe Zerkova 2 surges with the new greylord theme? And perhaps Butcher 1 will like the MOW theme? Butcher will still suffer from being slow, but if the theme grants a speed buff to his troops then it's possible.
The casters with no love? Malakov 2, Old Witch 1, and Old Witch 2. You had to be at Gen Con or other prerelease event to get OW2, so I get that. I don't play or really understand the other two casters, but apparently I'm not alone in that. Oh, yeah, and then there's Koslov. He's one of our casters, right?
In terms of theme drops, 75% of players brought WGK (Vlad, B3 and Sorscha 1), 61% brought Jaws (primarily B3 and Karchev) and 42% brought Legion (Strak 2, Zerkova 1). This all makes sense.
WGK - Either casters who dial up the rockets to 11, or a theme that delivers your caster.
Jaws - Why hit hard when you can hit harder?
Legion - Casters who can deliver their units.
22% of players are out of theme. I think once we get our MOW and Greylord theme this will drop to 1-2 lists just because someone wants to be a special snowflake.
Regarding the models taken, here's an overview. Sorry if it's a bit small. It's a copy/paste of the image on the WTC site, though.
My comments here...
The Marauder appears so many times because he's the inexpensive jack of choice. There is only 1 Beserker chassis jack in the field (Rager, taken 2 times in 2 lists). My simple fix? Drop all the Beserker chassis jacks to 8 points, put them all up to DEF 12, and change the "Unstable" rule to work like a "Threshold" check.
There are 60 rockets. The tax paid is 52 units of WGRC (min), 10 units of WGI (min), 7 units of WGRC (max), and 4 units of WGI (max).
kaos , you said there wasn't anything to see here -- Rocket Spam and Jack Spam. Well, yes and no. If our MOW theme is good and the Bombardiers get fixed (add Brutal Damage and extend the range to 12, then give them an officer attachment that does something cool), then we'll diversify our shooting. As it is, we have zero alternatives to field a viable gunline, so what do people expect us to do? I think it's a really viable strategy to want a shooty list and a melee list in your two list pair, and we have ONLY ONE alternative for the shooty list...Winterguard. For melee lists, I think you're not on point. 5 jacks is not spam in the current meta. 6 - 9, yes. So we see a lot of Karchev doing this, and a little bit of a few others (Vlad, B3). But Legion of Steel is a viable melee option, and we're seeing that. Also, there's a fair amount of Jaws lists with fewer jacks (50 point range), but then loading up on Kayazy.
I'm a little surprised and really disappointed to only see 1 Manhunter (and I think this was with Vlad 2, out of theme...), and no Yuri. Sad!
At the low end of the spectrum, out of theme we just don't find the MOW useful to take at all. Ever. Nor were Doomreavers or Ternion. But I digress...these guys don't have themes yet and everybody is playing in theme these days. All the kids are doing it. In theme, we only see Malakov 1 a single time. I agree with those who say that Malakov 1 should be available in Jaws (in any of our themes, actually).
On the subject of jacks. Despite Strakhov appearing 9 times we only see Torch 1, whereas Ruin shows up 18 times. The Grolar is only in 1 list. The Decimator appears once. The Spriggan shows up in 2 lists (he's our only non-character de-stealth tech in faction, and I think he goes to zero if we can ever take Reinholdt in theme). Victor did not get taken, although Connie is in 8 lists. Beast 09 shows up less than 0.9 times (despite Sorscha appearing 6), which is to say he's in exactly the same number of lists as Black Ivan.
Khador is not rocking the meta, and I don't see any evidence from competitive play that our cheap jacks (14 points or less) need to be increased in cost. However, our premium jacks just don't cut the mustard! They really don't. I don't hold out much hope for them getting fixed, but I really hope they do...