Orboros/new meta

Have you heard the good word about Sturm and Drang?

Honestly, I think on the pig side both Arkadius and Sturm and Drang (with a Dracodile) have good game into Circle. I'd lean in favour of Sturm and Drang if they have Krueger2 Bones in their pair, and prefer Arkadius if they have Bradigus Bones instead. The games aren't cakewalks exactly, but I'd put them as pushing slightly in favour of the pig lists if they drop Tharn and slightly in the Circle player's favour if they play Krueger instead.

I've got a couple of games into Tharn under my belt. I think I only have pictures/a battle report for one of them though, and it was back when I was first getting used to the Sturm and Drang Dracodile list. I've played games since, and they're mostly fine. In my experience the big tools you have at your disposal are Dahlia and the Polarity Shielded Dracodile (keeping the latter out of range of any Night Witches they might have). There's very little in a Tharn army that can actually touch Dahlia through Haunting Melody, which allows you to gum up the works by denying orders and contesting zones with her. Meanwhile, the Dracodile can make things worse. If his spray hits a Ravager there's good odds that it's dead on the spot, but if it isn't then it's Blind and not going to be doing squat next turn. Plus, being unable to charge drops the damage output of Ravagers way down.

Skarath is no slouch either. If the snake has to square off against Ravagers then you still have reasonable odds of killing one with the Counterblast shot, then absorbing one charge attack with Vision, so realistically your opponent has to commit about five or six of them to kill Skarath, especially if Dahlia is shutting down charges or the Dracodile has left a couple Blind. The other heavies in the list can chew through other infantry or help deal with heavies or other warbeasts. Basically just make sure you keep Mire well away from anywhere the Lord of the Feast could get to. Play slow and careful and try to prevent your opponent from flanking you too much.

In terms of generic tactical advice, well, I'm not really a Gator player so I can only speak to what I know has worked from the pig perspective. Typically speaking, Devourer Host lists have a few pretty lethal forward ranging threats in the form of Lord of the Feast and Bloodtrackers. I find that I can get a good, cheap solution to the Bloodtrackers in particular then the piece trading typically ends up going my way. A couple of Gun Boars or solos like Orin Midwinter (combined with a Mist Speaker for Guidance) can put enough of a dent in the Bloodtrackers that there won't be enough of them to retaliate very effectively.

Against the male Tharn, like Ravagers, I would normally try to manage how they are able to commit against me so that they can't come down on me like a sledgehammer and actually completely remove warbeasts in a single turn. This will vary from game to game and player to player, but there are certainly many players who like to play their Vengeance units in two waves with a couple of throwaway models out the front and the bulk of the unit behind. In doing so, they sometimes leave themselves vulnerable to guns or hit-and-run attacks that can kill those lead models while still being far enough away to avoid the retaliation. I like Road Hogs for this, particularly with Arkadius where the Raw Adrenaline spray can reach deep into that second wave and rack up a few kills, and where the sprint move can pull the Road Hog back far enough to get a measure of protection from Arkadius's Guardian Warbeast ability, but honestly there are a fair variety of tools that can accomplish this sort of trick. Line of Sight blocking terrain or abilities, like the cloud creation offered by Rask, Bellows Crew, and Mire, can let you remove those bait models for free and punish your opponent's attrition game.

I will admit that in the above paragraph I am fully assuming that I'm running a Warbeast heavy list into Circle. Even before Tharn received their CID playing infantry into Circle always felt like a poor proposition, so the games where I did so were usually just for fun. But I think the general themes are that you're looking for guns and ways to whittle down the Tharn host before you actually need to start committing to the piece trading game.

I would if I had a Dracodile in the Arkadius list, or if Sturm and Drang had access to Raw Adrenaline. There are certainly more times than not that I wish I had something like Raw Adrenaline available for the Dracodile with Sturm and Drang... but I don't think he's worth it when actually taken with Arkadius.

Well, in a nutshell, I prefer Arkadius to have most of the Warbeasts in his list in his battlegroup to make the Feat better. I do take Mire in order to get a Wrastler for Rage, which I think he gets a lot out of, but Arkadius has no exceptional synergy with a Dracodile. Forced Evolution, Primal Shock, and Raw Adrenaline are all varying levels of cute to awesome when combined with a the big ol' Gator, but I'd prefer to pack more Warbeasts into Arkadius's battlegroup to increase the power of his alpha strike and get access to up to four castings of the Rage animus per turn.

Well, Blood Pack need 10s to hit Dahlia, she has transfers, access to Shield Guards, and with favourable terrain or Mire's help she can be Stealth. I'm not sure where "easily" factors into this, but I guess it's at least theoretically possible they could kill her compared to anything else in the army.

You do need to be careful about Lord of the Feast, I'll admit. Dahlia doesn't need to be mind you, since he can't hurt her. You can tuck your other squishy models safely behind the Dracodile though, just keep one or two Battle Boars in position to Shield Guard his Raven shot away (ideally chain Shield Guard it so he ends up 6"+ away from the Dracodile itself and only in melee with the Battle Boars) and make sure he lands somewhere irrelevant. You can't ignore him but he's easily manageable.

The Sturm and Drang list typically plays a slow attrition game, trying to make small favourable trades or just kill something for nothing each turn until the attrition edge is insurmountable. That said, it certainly has the tools for some solid assassination runs with Telekinesis and Skarath, and its attrition edge can be very strong if you can lock down a good chunk of the board to prevent opponents from contesting.