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Post by danfromchicago on May 9, 2018 21:40:58 GMT
But I like Midas, so hey
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Post by apoc2148 on May 9, 2018 22:00:28 GMT
Calaban has upkeep/animi denial, which Maelok doesn't. He also has essentially S&P for his spells, so while maelok might need to boost to hit targets higher than def 15, Calaban will just hit them. Calaban's feat is more than just a timewalk as well. Maelok's army wide buff only affects warrior models, while occultation can be cast on anything. Parasite vs mortality might have to go to mortality for the tough denial.
I don't agree that Maelok is a better calaban. Maelok does arm spam/attrition grind much better than Calaban, but Calaban can table opponents much faster and seems to be less forgiving for opponents. Both Jaga and Maelok want to hang back and buff their army while Calaban is more offensively geared. Which suits my playstyle more.
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Post by Gaston on May 10, 2018 3:53:31 GMT
The croak trappers I personally don't have and am not sure I will get. If accuracy-fixing is an issue for Calaban than taking a unit that has a lower rat (than croak raiders) and needs to directly hit to knock down doesn't seem all the advantageous. Of course you don't have them, you're not an idiot. They messed them up pretty good between CID and release. However, the reason I bring them up is statistics. Yes they have a worse Rat than Raiders, but that can be mitigated by CRA or Puppet Strings or dumb luck. But what they do is remove hitting from the equation for Croak Raiders, which is important as Croaks rely on volume of fire. Even needing 6's to hit Croaks lose 25% of their damage output, which is a big deal.
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Post by Gaston on May 10, 2018 3:56:46 GMT
Dojo Side Note: For a fun time, take Lynus and Edrea with Calaban and give him Applied Knowledge. 2 boosted Bone Shakers will rip an Arm off a jack on average dice.
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Post by apoc2148 on May 10, 2018 12:01:42 GMT
The croak trappers I personally don't have and am not sure I will get. If accuracy-fixing is an issue for Calaban than taking a unit that has a lower rat (than croak raiders) and needs to directly hit to knock down doesn't seem all the advantageous. Of course you don't have them, you're not an idiot. They messed them up pretty good between CID and release. However, the reason I bring them up is statistics. Yes they have a worse Rat than Raiders, but that can be mitigated by CRA or Puppet Strings or dumb luck. But what they do is remove hitting from the equation for Croak Raiders, which is important as Croaks rely on volume of fire. Even needing 6's to hit Croaks lose 25% of their damage output, which is a big deal. Just reviewed the changes between CID and release. -1 rat and knockdown has to be direct hit. Yeesh, that was a bit much. I have been thinking about adding hutchuck into more of his lists. I have him in the WWFF lists and he has been extremely useful. Dojo Side Note: For a fun time, take Lynus and Edrea with Calaban and give him Applied Knowledge. 2 boosted Bone Shakers will rip an Arm off a jack on average dice. That could be hilarious. Especially during feat turn where Calaban should be able to cast 2-3 of them for free at least. I don't have them yet but I might proxy them on my next game. It would also help against any cloud wall army, which I've been dreading facing with Calaban.
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Post by apoc2148 on May 10, 2018 13:38:30 GMT
Got a game in last night against the Grymkin player again. Didn't have time after work to change out what lists were in my bag so I just threw the WWFF list that I played against him last week. He brought a Dark Menagerie list lead by the Dreamer, we used Standoff as our scenario. No pictures again, he wasn't a fan of me taking them.
My list: Calaban WWFF -Blackhide -Swamphorror x2 -Bone swarm x2 -Blindwalker -Soul Slave Full Nyss hunters Kwaak Lanyssa Hutchuck Bone shrine Boil master and cauldron
Grymkin: The Dreamer -S&M x2 -Cage rager x2 -Rattler x3 -crabbits x2 Full dreadrots Elias Lady Karianna Gremlin swarms x3
Terrain: (Directions are from my POV) Two forests on the N and S sides of the left circle. House in the middle of the board. Rubble on the S side of the right circle, wall on the N side with a hill by my rectangular zone.
Deployment: Grymkin won the roll and chose side, making me go first.
Grymkin deployment: From left to right: Dreadrots, S&M, Cage Rager, Rattler Lady K, Dreamer/crabbits/gremlin swarms, Rattlers x2, S&M, Cage Rager, Elias.
Minion deployment: from left to right: Blindwalker, Boneswarms x2 with BM&SC behind them, Swamp horror, Soul slave, Lanyssa, Calaban, Kwaak, Blackhide, Nyss hunters, swamp horror. Bone shrine gets placed in the right circular zone.
Round 1:
Minions: Everything runs! Cauldron generates 2 corpses and hands it off to a bone shaker. Both bone shakers, one swamp horror and the blindwalker head to the left circle zone. Nyss hunters get stealth and head to the right zone along with the 2nd swamp horror. Everything else heads up the center of the board.
Grymkin: Gremlin swarms run up into his rectangular zone with the dreamer and crabbit escort following. Right S&M gets mirage and it along with the right cage rager and Elias run up near the wall. Center 2 rattlers run up the center as far as they can staying about an 1" apart. Left S&M, cage rager, and rattler all run towards the left circle with only the rattler getting in the zone. Dread rots and Lady K run up behind the beasts by the left circle. He places an artifice of deviation onto the left rattler.
Round 2:
Minions: Hutchuck ambushes by the right S&M. Upkeep occultation for free. Cauldron generates 1 corpse and passes it off to the bone shaker that had 2 on it. Kwaak enlivens the left swamp horror and wrastler. Lanyssa tries to hunter's mark the rattler in cover but misses. Blindwalker moves back out of all threat ranges and puts up its animus. Calaban gives rage to both the wrastler and the filled boneshaker and advances completely into my rectangular zone and puts up swarm. Buffed boneshaker charge the rattler and knocks out its mind and body. Wrastler walks up and kills one of the two rattlers in the center. Hutchuck walks into the back arc of the right S&M and knocks it down with quake. Nyss get a run/charge into the right cage rager and S&M. One gets onto the cage rager, and 3 onto the S&M. Light damage dealt to the rager and decent to the S&M but nothing knocked out. The rest spread out in the left zone. Left swamp horror toes both the rectangular zone and the left circle. Soul slave shuffles forward. Right swamp horror moves up behind the nyss hunters.
Grymkin:Drops artifice, upkeeps mirage. Right S&M apparitions away from the nyss. Left rager and rattler team up to kill the buffed boneswarm, pops out an med base phantasm. Dreadrots run and spread out in the left zone with the left S&M staying out of threat ranges behind them. Right S&M and cage rager kills the 4 nyss surrounding them spawning a small phantasm. Said phantasm runs to block the wraster in. Elias unbinds occultation and deals 3 to calaban. Dreamer hits the wrastler with enfeeble. Gremlin swarms run to contest my all zones. Rattler shifts and hits the wrastler for a bit. He scores his zone 0-1 CPs.
Round 3:
Minions: Blindwalker shifts around and puts up its animus. Calaban activates, feats and starts slinging spells, killing a gremlin swarm, a couple dread rots and tossing rage onto the wrastler. Hutchuck knocks down the right S&M again. Nyss charge in a kill elias and the S&M but are out of feat range. Kwaak sprays down the phantasm blocking in the wrastler and gremlin swarm in my zone. Right Swamp horror pulls the rattler off the wrastler and kills it. Calaban cast carnivore onto the wrastler for free. Lanyssa walks up and hits the dreamer with hunter's mark. Wrastler charges the dreamer but is out of control and misses all 3 attacks needing 9s to hit. Left swamp horror runs to his rectangular zone. Left boneswarm runs to clog up the left rager and rattler. Soul slave runs to left circle as well. I score my zone and the right circle, 2-1 CPs.
Grymkin: We talk through some options and he ends up conceding. I have two heavies staring down his caster and clogged up enough of the rest of his army that he can't get anything meaningful to help his caster.
Victory to Minions!
Thoughts on game: My opponent had some deployment issues and ended up leaving his caster very exposed in the center with all his beasts too far out on the flanks to be able to help. Some talking about the game afterwards and he was still running on mostly mk2 rules, so the fact that incorporeal models can be moved through and aren't intervening caught him off guard. He is still very new to Grymkin and still getting used to triggering arcana on my turn. So far he hasn't used any arcana in the two games I've played him.
The +2 spd first turn and free running really allows this list to be super aggressive first turn. I was able to place models in such a way that he either had to run into my threat range or hang back and lose scenario presence. Calaban only got a handful of free fury this game, netting a free rage and carnivore. Overall I've liked this list setup, not sure that I would change much about it.
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Post by apoc2148 on May 14, 2018 12:58:32 GMT
Got some work done on my modded Calaban sculpt. I think I'm to the point where I can start painting bits and pieces of it. The base is going to be set up so it looks like the blindwalker is rising out of the swamp. There will be a resin water base and swamp foliage around the base as well. This is the only (bad) picture I have of it sticky-tacked together, it literally fell apart about 10 seconds after the picture was taken. The only thing I'm missing from Calaban is the back part of his headress (going to have to green stuff something together) and his bone necklace. P.S. My swamp siren next to it will be receiving the same resin water/swamp foliage treatment once it is painted as well.
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Post by apoc2148 on May 22, 2018 14:45:23 GMT
Got some games in last night, but unfortunately they weren't standard WM games. We played one guildball game and two COI games.
I've talked a lot about the pros of Calaban but it is important to shine light on his short falls as well.
Statline: Mat 5: While he can become a psuedo-weapon master by taking a point of damage if you are forced to use his melee attacks, things must not be going well. Def 14/ARM 16: Def 14 is high, but not untouchable by any means. Any elite RAT units or boosted guns will hit him. Arm 16 isn't anything to write home about and boosted pow 12s will kill him.
15 HP: He is tied with Rask with having the lowest HP of any Blindwater caster. Considering all minion casters he is tied with Dr. Ark and Helga (and Rask) for lowest HP of any minion casters.
Spell list: Mostly offensive spells with 2 FF buffs. Because he needs to be slinging spells each turn to make any contribution, spell hate becomes that much more of an issue for him. No innate threat extension or non-offensive rat booster, carnivore is situational and actually has some skonergy with his feat since they rfp the enemy model and the feat states the models need to be destroyed.
Feat: Can swing from allowing you to cast 2-5 extra spells a turn, to only netting you a couple extra fury to camp. This is so dependent on what your opponent drops and in a list chicken if they see you have a Calaban list they may drop their lower model count army regardless of your second list. This could work to your advantage but it means Calaban won't hit the table often.
Aggressive play-style: Before Kossk blessed the Blindwater with the Bone shrines and Blindwalker, Calaban had to get really close to the front lines to be able to contribute meaningfully to the battles. This would expose him and his low statline/hp to enemy attacks. Now with the advent of both, he can stay a little safer and still be able to contribute to the battle. This play style also leaves little room for error and relies heavily on dice cooperating since he has little way of dice manipulation (apart from Dark Power).
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Post by apoc2148 on Aug 1, 2018 13:08:54 GMT
Finally gave B2 a rest and dropped Calaban into my local meta again, this time against the new and shiny Crucible guard. Scenario was Standoff.
Voodoo Gators Calaban – WWFF -Blackhide wrastler -Swamp horror x2 -Blindwalker -Bone Swarm x2 -Soul Slave Hutchuk Lanyssa Kwak Bone shrine Full Nyss Hunters (proxy by hex hunters)
Crucible guard Syvestro – Magnum Opus -Vindicator x2 -Toro (proxy by stormclad) -Vanguard (proxy by lancer) -Alyce (proxy by jr, big alyce proxy by gorax) Full Rocketmen + UA + 2 WA Full Assault troops Combat Alchemist Trancer x2 (one is mini-crate ashlyn) Dragonbreath’s Rocket
Deployment: Gators win the roll and choose to go first. CG picks the side at the top of the picutres.
Gator deployment:
CG Deployment:
Round 1:
Gators: Everything runs! Nyss get occultation, Calaban puts swam onto himself and moves forward. I try to keep everything out of his first turn move + shoot range. CrocPot fills a boneswarm.
CG: He runs most things up as well. Combat alchemists move up and cloud wall. Rocketmen get transmutation and do their +2 def order and advance up. Assault troops and DBr move up to the right zone. Jacks move up and spread out. Syvestro hunkers behind the wall while the trancers fly up to the building.
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Post by apoc2148 on Aug 1, 2018 13:09:45 GMT
Round 2: Gators: I forget to ambush hutchuk (this become a trend ><) and upkeep for free. Nyss move up and do a 4 man cra to kill one trancer and a 3 man cra that misses. They take a couple pot shots at assault troops for little to nothing. Everything else moves up to absorb his alpha. Left boneswarm puts up swarm, kwak enlivens the wrastler and right swamp horror.
CG: Upkeeps his spell. Trancer moves up and smacks the boneswarm in the zone back a bit dealing decent damage. Combat Alchemists move up and kill 3 Nyss and corrode another. DBr and vindicator on the right kill the boneshrine. Vindicator on the left aims and misses a shot at the boneswarm on the left. Assault troopers get two charges onto the right swamp horror for decent damage, knocking out its spirit. Rocketmen move up and shoot/drops grav bombs dealing decent damage to the boneswarm in the zone and killing more Nyss. An unlucky miss hits the trancer, who dies and explodes killing two rocketmen. Everything else shifts forward for next turn. He scores his zone 0-1 CPs.
Turn 3:
Gators: Forget to ambush again. Drop occultation and upkeep carnage for free. Calaban moves up and feats, misses his shot onto a combat alchemist, but hits him with a bone shaker and heals the right swamp horror, hexblasts transmutation off the rocketmen. Said CA moves over and kills another CA. Sends another two into the rocketmen, killing another two. Blindwalker tramples forward missing the rocketman infront of it and puts up its animus. Lanyssa icebolts the CA in the left boneswarm’s way. Said boneswarm charges the vanguard and burns through all its fury to take out its cortex and spear arm. Wrastler puts rage onto the right swamp horror and moves forward. Right swamp horror overtakes through 4 assault troopers, healing back up. Left swamp horror chew through the rest of the rocketmen and gets a bit too deep. Throughout this turn Calaban cast several boneshakers and moved carnage once. Two of the boneshakers sent the enemy models back to try and smack Syvestro but missed another one went back and killed little Alyce triggering her transformation. I score my zone, he scores his. 1-2. CG: He forgets to feat. But manages to kill both swamp horrors, and starts plinking away at the blindwalker and contest my zone. 1-3 him.
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Post by apoc2148 on Aug 1, 2018 13:10:25 GMT
Round 4-6. This becomes a grind that would have clocked both of us before the last turn. When we call it, he is at 6 CPs, I’m at 7 CPs, but he has more heavy jacks on the left while I’ve secured the right side. We call it a draw and leave it there. Below are the pictures in order. I had a couple frenzies that ended up having the wrastler killing my soul slave and setting me back a lot. I kill his objective.
Turn 4 Gators: I finally remember to ambush Hutchuk! Better late than never.
Turn 4 CG:
Turn 5 Gators:
Turn 5 CG:
Turn 6 Gators: Syvestro has admonition on himself, I try a jank assassination run by moving up the croc pot, triggering admo, spectral lashing the Vindicator out of the boneswarm’s way. Rage and carnage go onto the bonewarm and it gets a charge into Syvestro. Dice +3 but he is sitting on 4 focus. The boneswarm misses every single attack. We call it there.
Thoughts about the game: I got way too greedy with the left swamp horror. I really should have backed it up with the overtake movements so that it could have survived another round to deal with the heavies on that side. As it was I moved it up enough so that a transmutated Toro could pummel into goo. Forgetting to ambush huthcuk really cost me, the model was hiding behind my dice tray the whole time and I completely forgot about it. Not entirely sure about my solo selection. Lanyssa wasn’t able to get off a hunter’s mark, kwak was pretty useless and will probably become a witch doc. Hutchuck would have been good if I remembered to ambush him.
CG is an interesting faction. They have a lot of internal buffing and debuffing that makes the game a bit more interesting.
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Post by apoc2148 on Aug 30, 2018 18:15:20 GMT
Fun change that will affect Calaban from the Tharn CID. They re-wrote Carnivore so that the enemy model is destroyed before it is RFP'ed. So there is no longer any skornergy between Calaban's feat and Carnivore since the model now hits destroyed before it is RFP'ed.
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Post by apoc2148 on Sept 18, 2018 12:30:45 GMT
Got a game in last night, it was Calaban WWFF vs eIrusk Legion of steel. Scenario was stand off. Another swarm of tough, no knock down models.
The lists:
Calaban WWFF -Soul Slave -Wrastler -Boneswarm x2 -Swamp horror -Blindwalker Full Nyss hunters Sac Vault BM&SP Croc Witch doc Hutchuk Boneshrine Gobber bellows crew
Khador eIrusk Legion of steel -Victor -Iron Fang Kovnik x2 -Sofya (proxy by black dragon ua) -Markov Full IFP + UA Full IFP x2 (proxy by sentinels and invictors) Great bears
Deployment: Khador won the roll and chose to go first. Crocs picked the side at the bottom of the pictures. IFP with the ua used advanced move.
Khador deployment:
Croc deployment:
Round 1:
Khador: Irusk puts FFE onto the victor, puts up steady ground and advances forward. Both units of IFP on the flanks run forward, with the kovniks with them, Sofya heads to the left, Malakov and the IFP+ua head up the center with the IFP shieldwalling.
Croc: I spread out and prepare to get hit with the alpha. Lead boneswarm puts up swarm and charges forward. Vault gets 1 souls, cauldron gets 1 corpse and passes it to the lead boneswarm. Shrine gets occultation, Nyss get carnage.
Round 2:
Khador: Irusk upkeeps both spells, fills the victor. Irusk advances forward and battle lusts the right IFP and feats. Victor walks up and pops calaban, gobber, boil master and cauldron with fire shot. Kills gobber, 5 damage to calaban, nothing to pot, 1 to boil master. Right IFP get a charge into the lead boneswarm while the rest run to tie up the blindwalker and right boneswarm. They kill the lead boneswarm. Left IFP run/charge to tie up the swamp horror, boneshrine and kill a nyss. Markov charges the Nyss I put in the woods and repos back. Center IFP charge in with mini-feat, killing a couple Nyss and repo 5 into shield wall to jam me.
Croc: Calaban drops occultation and upkeeps carnage. I begin to grind away at everything not under eIrusk’s cmd and they all die, feeding calaban’s feat while he tries to kill everything inside the tough-zone. Hutchuck ambushes in on the left to try and pick off some IFP on that side but misses. Wrastlers moves up to munch on some IFP in the center, gets counter charged by a kovnik who scalped out his mind. Snacks on the first IFP killed to regain its mind. The rest of its attacks either miss or they tough. (6 tough rolls made). I kill 2 of the 3 great bears after they each tough twice. Blindwalker misses both its attacks on the remaining great bear, stopping me from channeling through it to kill the kovnik on his flag. Swamp horror munches through some IFP and gets counter charged by Sofya, not knocking out anything. After all is said and done I’ve killed 11 models, all of which were out of tough range. Of the models in tough range I’ve only killed 4. I gain 1 cp he gains 3.
Round 3:
Khador: He ends his turn gaining another 3 to win 1-6.
Victory to Khador!
Thoughts: Another list jam packed with tough, no knock down models rains on the Voodoo crocs. B2 faired only slightly better against the troll version of this list by winning on a janky assassination due to pMadrak needing to commit himself more due to his low fury stat. My opponent literally made at least 12 tough checks on my second turn. My dice did go pretty cold on turn 2 but killing a model doesn’t matter if they end up making a tough check, which most of his models did. The Khador list was interesting with all the tactician and counter charging precision strike models.
After the game I went through the minion roster trying to find a way to counter the tough+no knock down that seems to be pretty prevalent. The only solution I could really come up with was to take Maelok for mortality. Minions have little access to mass amounts of grevious wounding models, and the only caster that can reliably do anything about is Maelok. Guess he is going to be a staple in my pairing from now on.
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daveg
Light Addition
Posts: 67
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Post by daveg on Sept 18, 2018 13:49:57 GMT
There are also Bone Grinders and Slaughterhousers in faction if you're willing to pig. Calaban only gets bone grinders out of those.
You can also get around it with the crit consume on Skarath.
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Post by apoc2148 on Sept 18, 2018 14:20:39 GMT
There are also Bone Grinders and Slaughterhousers in faction if you're willing to pig. Calaban only gets bone grinders out of those. You can also get around it with the crit consume on Skarath. Calaban out of theme isn't out of the realm of possibility. But, slaughterhousers and bone grinders are both out threatened by any spd 6 rng 2 infantry (bone grinders even more so by their 0.5" rng). Crit consume on skarath is a gamble that I'm not willing to bank on as with most crit effects they never seem to happen for me.
I've been considering looking at mass continuous effect applications to hamper the advance of single wound infantry swarms. So venom sprays (kwak, Skarath), croak raiders shooting and husks as another way to try to at least force more tough rolls.
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