Post by grimworks on Jan 11, 2018 11:03:26 GMT
Fellow Komrades,
It has come to High Kommand’s attention that one of our kommanders despite strong showing by local specialists such as auraco has been underutilized by the rest of our forces, I speak as some of you may understand of Kommander Oleg/Viktor Strakhov. To assist our armies in marching faster towards even greater conquests, High Kommand has dispatched me to provide some field advice to our local kommanders.
(Fluff aside and some disclaimers: I’ve been a longtime reader of these forums from the PP days though never decided to write something until now. I’m a fairly decent player and I’ve primarily played strakhov for the past 2 years. However, this really isn’t a guide per se to strakhov as it is an introduction to some of the concepts/options that I’ve found to be useful/possible and to lower the barrier of learning to understanding how a strakhov list might function, as I still consider him one of the most underrated casters in khador and it could be fun for a lot more of our fellow komrades to pick him up for a spin. I'm also really interested to hear what everyone else to say about this and improve play together)
Initial Discussion
Strakhov has often been described as primarily an assassination caster. However, I would like to propose that he can also be played as an attrition and scenario caster, but that requires a deeper understanding of what strakhov can do by both the strakhov player and his/her opponent.
This progression happens by the following process:
1) Opponent does not respect Strakhov’s threat range = Assassinate caster.
2) Opponent respect’s threat range on caster but still leaves key pieces in threat range = Alpha the opponent.
3) Opponent now respect’s the threat range on both caster and key pieces, backs them off = Play scenario by constant leverage of threat ranges.
4) Opponent now respects all threat ranges but strikes a balance of scenario and piece trading = Play piece trading to try and pry open for assassination or aggressively play clock as your opponent will likely be utilising significant time to play well/cautiously.
Throughout this process, the strakhov player should have an understanding of the options available to him/her to achieve those various objectives (to be covered later) and to process those relatively quickly during the game; the multiple vectors that Strakhov can provide may become a massive time liability if you’re not familiar with the possibilities while under the deathclock.
Mk2 to 3 Transition Changes
For those who have yet to play him in Mk3, there are several key changes that have happened in the mk3-2 transition: Jacks gained powerup, khador gained forgeseers, and he gained resourceful while his signature spell had a reduction of 1 in cost and could be casted multiple times. Effectively on a 5 jack battlegroup with two forgeseers, this means he can have a total of 11 (5+3+2+1) extra focus on a feat turn (assuming you cycle superiority) compared to his mk2 rendition.
Secondly, the mk2 to 3 transition caused a decline in infantrymachine and while that has been rewound somewhat since the themepocalypse, there are far more viable jack/beast only builds which has implications for strakhov as his signature spell (overrun) requires a trigger on destruction. Infantry grunts targeted by blast templates at range were the ideal target, but since then there have been games where overrun has to be triggered off heavies which affects the choice of jacks in his battlegroup.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strakhov is a caster with a good assassination game but with a weaker attrition and scenario game. Most of this should be familiar so I won’t spend too much time on this. Strakhov’s main weakness is that he does not actually buff much of his army in terms of statline changes:
What he can do is offer multiple vectors of delivering jacks and it leverages on the strong baseline stats of our general beatstick heavies to accomplish the job, however without an appropriate build, strakhov can suffer in attrition and scenario due to few direct statline buffs. These considerations will then influence the theme/composition of his army.
Building a List
Strakhov runs jacks well but there are synergies with LoS, WGK and WoW. Another important consideration is what models can benefit from his upkeeps and how that synergise with his game plans. I won’t discuss this much at this point as this is primarily about the caster and his options, however for the showcase of these options I will be using the pieces available to my current list:
Strakhov
Yuri (free)
Marksman (free)
Min mechanics
Concepts & Nomenclature
Now we get to the serious stuff. There are two terms that I think are important in understanding how strakhov can play:
The first is the concept of a ‘core battlegroup’. This ‘core battlegroup’ refers to jacks that are within 6” LoS of Strakhov at the start of your turn. This is important because these are the jacks that can receive superiority and/or overrun from him prior to his movement. For those that don’t know, Strakhov’s feat works on charge/slam targets within his ctrl area, hence he often needs to move into position for the rest of his jacks to do their things. Additionally, overrun is cast by strakhov however the receiver can trigger outside his control area but the beneficiary still needs to be in his ctrl area, hence there is this viable movement triangle formed by strakhov, the overrunning jack and the charge target. By keeping a few jacks in 6” LoS of strakhov, these jacks can be easily targeted by the relevant spells prior to strakhov’s movement, removing an additional requirement/complication of setting up his feat run. This also means that during your deployment if you intend to have strakhov charge the first turn he should be positioned 0.5" behind the deployment line so he can still maintain LoS to some jacks after charging to allow for 2nd turn core battlegroup application
The second concept is ‘point of failure’. This refers to a situation where strakhov’s assassination threat is no longer viable. While this can refer to a situation where his feat has been spent, or more often when there are no longer the jacks necessary to perform it. For me, it often comes when I’m left with a juggernaut and a marauder/viktor. The juggernaut is the actual assassination jack while the marauder/viktor is the reliable overrun trigger. Loss of pieces beyond this minimum number represents this ‘point of failure’ where assassinations become significantly harder.
The concept of a core battlegroup affects the formation and how you play. The concept of ‘point of failure’ dictates your piece trading order and the list building options. (eg. if you run a strakhov1 list with 3-4 heavies, you can only afford to lose 1-2 jacks of a particular type before your assassination run becomes very difficult) Also, point of failure can also lead to significant loss of control potential for strakhov's list.
Understanding these concepts, we can then proceed to see what options are available for Strakhov in a game.
Initial Discussion
Strakhov has often been described as primarily an assassination caster. However, I would like to propose that he can also be played as an attrition and scenario caster, but that requires a deeper understanding of what strakhov can do by both the strakhov player and his/her opponent.
This progression happens by the following process:
1) Opponent does not respect Strakhov’s threat range = Assassinate caster.
2) Opponent respect’s threat range on caster but still leaves key pieces in threat range = Alpha the opponent.
3) Opponent now respect’s the threat range on both caster and key pieces, backs them off = Play scenario by constant leverage of threat ranges.
4) Opponent now respects all threat ranges but strikes a balance of scenario and piece trading = Play piece trading to try and pry open for assassination or aggressively play clock as your opponent will likely be utilising significant time to play well/cautiously.
Throughout this process, the strakhov player should have an understanding of the options available to him/her to achieve those various objectives (to be covered later) and to process those relatively quickly during the game; the multiple vectors that Strakhov can provide may become a massive time liability if you’re not familiar with the possibilities while under the deathclock.
Mk2 to 3 Transition Changes
For those who have yet to play him in Mk3, there are several key changes that have happened in the mk3-2 transition: Jacks gained powerup, khador gained forgeseers, and he gained resourceful while his signature spell had a reduction of 1 in cost and could be casted multiple times. Effectively on a 5 jack battlegroup with two forgeseers, this means he can have a total of 11 (5+3+2+1) extra focus on a feat turn (assuming you cycle superiority) compared to his mk2 rendition.
Secondly, the mk2 to 3 transition caused a decline in infantrymachine and while that has been rewound somewhat since the themepocalypse, there are far more viable jack/beast only builds which has implications for strakhov as his signature spell (overrun) requires a trigger on destruction. Infantry grunts targeted by blast templates at range were the ideal target, but since then there have been games where overrun has to be triggered off heavies which affects the choice of jacks in his battlegroup.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strakhov is a caster with a good assassination game but with a weaker attrition and scenario game. Most of this should be familiar so I won’t spend too much time on this. Strakhov’s main weakness is that he does not actually buff much of his army in terms of statline changes:
- No damage buff outside feat (BG free charge)
- No hit buff outside superiority
- No defensive buff outside superiority +2def, no KD (and occultation)
What he can do is offer multiple vectors of delivering jacks and it leverages on the strong baseline stats of our general beatstick heavies to accomplish the job, however without an appropriate build, strakhov can suffer in attrition and scenario due to few direct statline buffs. These considerations will then influence the theme/composition of his army.
Building a List
Strakhov runs jacks well but there are synergies with LoS, WGK and WoW. Another important consideration is what models can benefit from his upkeeps and how that synergise with his game plans. I won’t discuss this much at this point as this is primarily about the caster and his options, however for the showcase of these options I will be using the pieces available to my current list:
Strakhov
- Viktor
- Devastator
- Juggernaut
- Juggernaut
- Marauder
- Devastator
Yuri (free)
Marksman (free)
Min mechanics
Concepts & Nomenclature
Now we get to the serious stuff. There are two terms that I think are important in understanding how strakhov can play:
The first is the concept of a ‘core battlegroup’. This ‘core battlegroup’ refers to jacks that are within 6” LoS of Strakhov at the start of your turn. This is important because these are the jacks that can receive superiority and/or overrun from him prior to his movement. For those that don’t know, Strakhov’s feat works on charge/slam targets within his ctrl area, hence he often needs to move into position for the rest of his jacks to do their things. Additionally, overrun is cast by strakhov however the receiver can trigger outside his control area but the beneficiary still needs to be in his ctrl area, hence there is this viable movement triangle formed by strakhov, the overrunning jack and the charge target. By keeping a few jacks in 6” LoS of strakhov, these jacks can be easily targeted by the relevant spells prior to strakhov’s movement, removing an additional requirement/complication of setting up his feat run. This also means that during your deployment if you intend to have strakhov charge the first turn he should be positioned 0.5" behind the deployment line so he can still maintain LoS to some jacks after charging to allow for 2nd turn core battlegroup application
The second concept is ‘point of failure’. This refers to a situation where strakhov’s assassination threat is no longer viable. While this can refer to a situation where his feat has been spent, or more often when there are no longer the jacks necessary to perform it. For me, it often comes when I’m left with a juggernaut and a marauder/viktor. The juggernaut is the actual assassination jack while the marauder/viktor is the reliable overrun trigger. Loss of pieces beyond this minimum number represents this ‘point of failure’ where assassinations become significantly harder.
The concept of a core battlegroup affects the formation and how you play. The concept of ‘point of failure’ dictates your piece trading order and the list building options. (eg. if you run a strakhov1 list with 3-4 heavies, you can only afford to lose 1-2 jacks of a particular type before your assassination run becomes very difficult) Also, point of failure can also lead to significant loss of control potential for strakhov's list.
Understanding these concepts, we can then proceed to see what options are available for Strakhov in a game.
