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Post by sand20go on Jul 1, 2019 2:31:53 GMT
They are pretty darn solid (yeah, no power creep <giggle>) A lot of the more straight forward answers sorta get screwed over. Mass shooting - you have to deal with Decel (almost guaranteed) and the double shield guards. Grind? They can grind with the best of them and with Wretch's FA 3 and Marked they are going to have extra Horrors out there pretty quickly. Stationary (what I would like to use to deal with pesky support) - the almost autoinclude of Hauke. Alpha? Wiith the Gate and all three casters having access to speed buffs (Agathon - tether/teleport/hellmouth trick; Omod - Feat; Zaat - equivilent of Road to War) - you are looking at 13 inch threats by those jacks - Zaat meing the most dependent on killing your stuff to trigger RtW). They have a fair amount of chaff clearing (Zaat removed 20+ doomreavers fairly trivially even with the spell ward) and their horror can be buffed so pound (what else is new) above juggers fairly easily.
What are people thinking? At least three folks in our meta bought in.
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Post by hocestbellum on Jul 1, 2019 7:15:55 GMT
Haven't faced them, but not worried. They look like the very bane of single-wound infantry, but they're squishy (24 hp heavies, anyone?). They can't spend full essence without deleting themselves at the end of the turn. If you can deny them souls (oh, hello Archons) and deal with the Cultists it seems like the army would eat itself?
Those are just my knee-jerks, though. As I said, haven't actually faced them.
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Post by hocestbellum on Jul 1, 2019 12:13:46 GMT
I'm going to come at this from a different direction; Sand, you have a tendency to focus on things your opponent does well, and how this ruins your plans. Instead, can we focus on the weaknesses of the Infernals, and how we exploit them?
Squishy Horrors
Horrors have some pretty cool rules, but stats-wise they are absolute glass cannons. Their two 'heavies' are 11/19/24 in terms of DEF/ARM/HP. That's an insanely low HP; most light jacks have 26. The Lights are 13/13/17 and 13/14/18. They are more fragile and easier to hit than a Cryx Bonejack. This is obviously a foil to the summoning mechanism, but it means we can take them to pieces if we can land a good blow.
Hitting power?
How good are they on the damage front? Their hardest hitter has 2x P17 attacks and 4 Essence. All told that gives them a 16% chance to one-round a Khador heavy even with the Chain Attack. Reasonably atrocious, but it's got a lot of attacks so they will multiply debuffs really well. A -2 to ARM will put that up to 80%. All of the casters have some way of boosting damage: Synergy, Curse of Shadows and Scything Touch. For non-caster options they have the Desolator, whose SP8 causes a -2 to ARM.
Their infantry doesn't really have high end hitting power, topping out at 13. Even with buffs it'll be an uphill struggle for them to dent heavies significantly, but they are pretty good into medium infantry. Grievous Wounds Berzerk is great into a lot of things at the moment.
It seems like they would struggle into high ARM? Particularly jack-heavy lists where they can't get too many souls. They have the debuffs to pull it off, but can they apply those debuffs to enough targets before their crazy low stats get them killed?
(EDIT: Just had another thought on this: because of the rules of Tithe, it can be risky for a Tormentor to go all in. It has its chance to smash a Juggernaut, but if it uses that 4th Essence then it will automatically vanish at the end of the turn if no cultists top it up. I think the Cultists are the only way to get them an essence mid-turn? If it plays safe and doesn't use the 4th, even with a debuff it only has a 50-50 to break the Jugger. And if it goes all in and gets beefed by the Cultists, then hey! You have some Cultists to kill. This might also mean that feats like OW1 (killing on advance) and Z1 (preventing Special Actions) could really mess the Cultist economy around)
Soul & Essence Economy?
Are there things that can be exploited here? They need to kill a mook with a soul every time they want to get essence back, and since they'll probably be taking Regna that's two guys a turn. Their options are Cultists, Croe's Cutthroats, and their enormous stable of solos.
They need to keep the Solos for actually summoning horrors, so they might not be keen on using them for Sacrifice targets. That said, you can take 12 of them, so who knows? But coming in at 4 points or more per model it's a very cost inefficient way of doing it.
The Cultists seem like the obvious choice; 6 of them for 7 points, so they're the cheapest until you start throwing in the WAs and the CA. But they also play a very important role in keeping the Horrors up and running. They can grant them essence and heal them; given that a) a summoned Horror only has 1 Essence and b) all Horrors pay a 1-essence Tithe at the end of each of their controlling players' turns or vanish, the granting of Essence is super important. You can get the Essence from the Masters, but you would effectively be paying upkeep for each Horror on top of their actual upkeeps.
Croe's are just Croe's, but here they double as lunchables.
In a way it seems like the Cultists are the weak link; they play an important role when alive, but they are also forced to Sacrifice them. The range on their abilities is also super short; 3" in both cases, so they would have a hard time supporting the front lines without getting danger-close. But your opponent can get 18 of them for 21 points or 27 of them for 39 points. They only have CMD6, and absolute victim stats. Is that exploitable? How many will your opponents bring, and how many would you need to kill to really impact the economy?
The Masters
There's one stand-out thing there: They're all on large bases, which means drawing LoS to them is going to be fairly easy a lot of the time. The Umbral Guardian is a very effective Shield Guard, so outright ranged assassination is probably out, but the threat of it, along with all the high-value solos, probably means that any list is going to take multiple Guardians. Because the Masters use Transfers, not the focus mechanism, they would look to be reasonably robust to shooting. But I think having some high power shooting against them is still a great idea, just because they have so many things they need to protect.
Summoning
If they don't have the Infernal gate it's pretty inefficient (with the exception of Roget, who is effectively a cheaper-than-free Horror and as such will probably always be taken); to summon a heavy you are paying 4 Essence and a 4-point solo to get a model that can't attack that turn and only has one Essence. To have it full power next turn requires an expenditure of 8 Essence, which is part of why the cultists are vital. The Infernal Gate helps with that by lowering the costs by 1 within 8"; combined with its other rules I'm expecting to see the Gate pretty much all the time. At 5/19/25 it's very breakable, though; the squishiest structure, and arguably the squishiest Huge Base (Death knell is lower HP, but much harder to hit)
Summary
So anyway, those are my initial thoughts on them, based on no experience whatsoever. It seems like having a shooting threat is important, but you'll be unlikely to be able to shoot an army off the board. Cultist units and the Infernal Gate look like they'll be the most important factors in the effectiveness of Summons, and if you get a chance to smash either you should. I'm not sure how many Marked Souls lists will end up bringing, but if the number is relatively low they become targets. The Horrors themselves are just too squishy for me to take seriously, and I think they may prove to be a bit lacking in the ARM-cracking department too when they run into a wall of jacks.
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Post by michael on Jul 1, 2019 12:59:39 GMT
Point of order: there are only 9 Marked Souls in-faction: the 6 named solos and the FA: 3 Wretch.
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Post by hocestbellum on Jul 1, 2019 13:27:43 GMT
Runewood, Orin1/2, Regna, The Hermit, Roget, Nicia, Saxon, Valin, Eilish, and three Wretches. All of the Partisan Marked Souls are specifically named in Dark Legacy, so they can all be taken.
Of that list, only Roget can't be taken in Hearts of Darkness, I think?
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Post by michael on Jul 1, 2019 15:02:23 GMT
Runewood, Orin1/2, Regna, The Hermit, Roget, Nicia, Saxon, Valin, Eilish, and three Wretches. All of the Partisan Marked Souls are specifically named in Dark Legacy, so they can all be taken. Of that list, only Roget can't be taken in Hearts of Darkness, I think? I must've missed the Mercenaries. Whoops!
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Post by sand20go on Jul 1, 2019 17:00:05 GMT
I'm going to come at this from a different direction; Sand, you have a tendency to focus on things your opponent does well, and how this ruins your plans. Instead, can we focus on the weaknesses of the Infernals, and how we exploit them? Squishy Horrors
Horrors have some pretty cool rules, but stats-wise they are absolute glass cannons. Their two 'heavies' are 11/19/24 in terms of DEF/ARM/HP. That's an insanely low HP; most light jacks have 26. The Lights are 13/13/17 and 13/14/18. They are more fragile and easier to hit than a Cryx Bonejack. This is obviously a foil to the summoning mechanism, but it means we can take them to pieces if we can land a good blow. Hitting power?
How good are they on the damage front? Their hardest hitter has 2x P17 attacks and 4 Essence. All told that gives them a 16% chance to one-round a Khador heavy even with the Chain Attack. Reasonably atrocious, but it's got a lot of attacks so they will multiply debuffs really well. A -2 to ARM will put that up to 80%. All of the casters have some way of boosting damage: Synergy, Curse of Shadows and Scything Touch. For non-caster options they have the Desolator, whose SP8 causes a -2 to ARM. Their infantry doesn't really have high end hitting power, topping out at 13. Even with buffs it'll be an uphill struggle for them to dent heavies significantly, but they are pretty good into medium infantry. Grievous Wounds Berzerk is great into a lot of things at the moment. It seems like they would struggle into high ARM? Particularly jack-heavy lists where they can't get too many souls. They have the debuffs to pull it off, but can they apply those debuffs to enough targets before their crazy low stats get them killed? (EDIT: Just had another thought on this: because of the rules of Tithe, it can be risky for a Tormentor to go all in. It has its chance to smash a Juggernaut, but if it uses that 4th Essence then it will automatically vanish at the end of the turn if no cultists top it up. I think the Cultists are the only way to get them an essence mid-turn? If it plays safe and doesn't use the 4th, even with a debuff it only has a 50-50 to break the Jugger. And if it goes all in and gets beefed by the Cultists, then hey! You have some Cultists to kill. This might also mean that feats like OW1 (killing on advance) and Z1 (preventing Special Actions) could really mess the Cultist economy around) Soul & Essence Economy?
Are there things that can be exploited here? They need to kill a mook with a soul every time they want to get essence back, and since they'll probably be taking Regna that's two guys a turn. Their options are Cultists, Croe's Cutthroats, and their enormous stable of solos. They need to keep the Solos for actually summoning horrors, so they might not be keen on using them for Sacrifice targets. That said, you can take 12 of them, so who knows? But coming in at 4 points or more per model it's a very cost inefficient way of doing it. The Cultists seem like the obvious choice; 6 of them for 7 points, so they're the cheapest until you start throwing in the WAs and the CA. But they also play a very important role in keeping the Horrors up and running. They can grant them essence and heal them; given that a) a summoned Horror only has 1 Essence and b) all Horrors pay a 1-essence Tithe at the end of each of their controlling players' turns or vanish, the granting of Essence is super important. You can get the Essence from the Masters, but you would effectively be paying upkeep for each Horror on top of their actual upkeeps. Croe's are just Croe's, but here they double as lunchables. In a way it seems like the Cultists are the weak link; they play an important role when alive, but they are also forced to Sacrifice them. The range on their abilities is also super short; 3" in both cases, so they would have a hard time supporting the front lines without getting danger-close. But your opponent can get 18 of them for 21 points or 27 of them for 39 points. They only have CMD6, and absolute victim stats. Is that exploitable? How many will your opponents bring, and how many would you need to kill to really impact the economy? The Masters
There's one stand-out thing there: They're all on large bases, which means drawing LoS to them is going to be fairly easy a lot of the time. The Umbral Guardian is a very effective Shield Guard, so outright ranged assassination is probably out, but the threat of it, along with all the high-value solos, probably means that any list is going to take multiple Guardians. Because the Masters use Transfers, not the focus mechanism, they would look to be reasonably robust to shooting. But I think having some high power shooting against them is still a great idea, just because they have so many things they need to protect. Summoning
If they don't have the Infernal gate it's pretty inefficient (with the exception of Roget, who is effectively a cheaper-than-free Horror and as such will probably always be taken); to summon a heavy you are paying 4 Essence and a 4-point solo to get a model that can't attack that turn and only has one Essence. To have it full power next turn requires an expenditure of 8 Essence, which is part of why the cultists are vital. The Infernal Gate helps with that by lowering the costs by 1 within 8"; combined with its other rules I'm expecting to see the Gate pretty much all the time. At 5/19/25 it's very breakable, though; the squishiest structure, and arguably the squishiest Huge Base (Death knell is lower HP, but much harder to hit) SummarySo anyway, those are my initial thoughts on them, based on no experience whatsoever. It seems like having a shooting threat is important, but you'll be unlikely to be able to shoot an army off the board. Cultist units and the Infernal Gate look like they'll be the most important factors in the effectiveness of Summons, and if you get a chance to smash either you should. I'm not sure how many Marked Souls lists will end up bringing, but if the number is relatively low they become targets. The Horrors themselves are just too squishy for me to take seriously, and I think they may prove to be a bit lacking in the ARM-cracking department too when they run into a wall of jacks. I think this is smart on except for the Horrors being a bit pillow fisted. I think the way they will play is as Missiles. You will take one, load it up with essence from your clockwork backline and then send it forth. Zaath and Agathon both have Arm Debuffs which can stack with the Desolator's spray. Used this way you are looking at POW 21 Tormentors. Moreover, I think a pretty common play will be to sally forth with them and then leave them on 1 essence so they can path the tithe. Goal in that turn will also be to grab some souls - not really that hard to do if you brought much (any?) infantry. Convert souls to essence and then allocate so you can get what work you need done with them the second turn. Spend them to zero. Rinse and repeat. Who goes up in value in that scenario are mechanics.....cause that way you can ensure the required sytem(s) are up (Juggers) to be able to counter back at straight dice and remove the thing with prejudice.
I think we agree that a key here is going to be weathering out the horror's alpha and then coming back in a way that both removes the horrors they sent AND as much support as possible. You really don't want to leave the horrors in play and you want to remove as much of the support as you can on the counter. The guardians make that somewhat more difficult than it should be but that would seem to really argue for some of our chaff clearing (ponies?; Fun Carriage;).
Denying souls is also going to be critical. It is painful, even with the attachment and the gate to summon like crazy. What you don't want to do is feed him souls with impunity.
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Post by anderfreak on Jul 2, 2019 4:47:31 GMT
Riflemen with rocketeers are absolutely devastating to their entire army. Almost feels like I'm playing early Mk3 =) Zaateroth's -3 range makes them sad, but rng 11 after the debuff is still pretty good.
A simple kossite unit in Jaws does wonders against their soul economy too, denying their ambushing cultists and allowing you to get annoying angles on their marked souls, forcing them to either spend a turn not getting into position for their summon or risk being removed altogether.
Butcher 1's feat turns literally everything into a credible threat to their horrors which really puts the glass cannon motif of their army into stark relief.
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Post by hocestbellum on Jul 2, 2019 9:12:11 GMT
I think assassination with Agathon is something that needs to be considered, too. They can run a solo, turn them into a Forboder, and hit you with 4 Dark Fires. His feat gives SnP, and there's the soul consideration to think of too.
It's not going to worry the chunkier casters much unless there's a lot of souls around, but fragile folk like Irusk and Sorscha might need to play carefully.
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Post by auraco on Jul 2, 2019 11:19:03 GMT
Riflemen with rocketeers are absolutely devastating to their entire army. Almost feels like I'm playing early Mk3 =) Zaateroth's -3 range makes them sad, but rng 11 after the debuff is still pretty good. A simple kossite unit in Jaws does wonders against their soul economy too, denying their ambushing cultists and allowing you to get annoying angles on their marked souls, forcing them to either spend a turn not getting into position for their summon or risk being removed altogether. Butcher 1's feat turns literally everything into a credible threat to their horrors which really puts the glass cannon motif of their army into stark relief. I'm not so sure about that, Deceleration is going to be in pretty much every list, and all the Wretches can give stealth to a couple of key models, it doesn't mean they are impossible to shoot, but they don't seem particularly vulnerable to guns to me.
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Post by sand20go on Jul 2, 2019 15:50:38 GMT
Riflemen with rocketeers are absolutely devastating to their entire army. Almost feels like I'm playing early Mk3 =) Zaateroth's -3 range makes them sad, but rng 11 after the debuff is still pretty good. A simple kossite unit in Jaws does wonders against their soul economy too, denying their ambushing cultists and allowing you to get annoying angles on their marked souls, forcing them to either spend a turn not getting into position for their summon or risk being removed altogether. Butcher 1's feat turns literally everything into a credible threat to their horrors which really puts the glass cannon motif of their army into stark relief. I'm not so sure about that, Deceleration is going to be in pretty much every list, and all the Wretches can give stealth to a couple of key models, it doesn't mean they are impossible to shoot, but they don't seem particularly vulnerable to guns to me. +1 Aurco. Between Decel, stealth from the Wretches and the "double" shield guard on demand I don't think they are very vulnerable. And ARM 19 (21 under Decel) isn't chickenscratch. You CAN likely take out lights and lessors and I can see that of value.
Marked souls (absent the Wretches) are not trivially removed. Princesses has essence to transfer; Orin 2 can sacrifice cultists, the dude on a horse is relatively tanky and no one is going to let you shoot their attachment till way late in the game and by that time he has been turned into a "free" horror.
I, for one, will be interested in seeing the Archon rules and seeing if they have a good place to help swing odds back toward the good guys ;-)
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Ganso
Junior Strategist
Posts: 932
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Post by Ganso on Jul 2, 2019 19:39:54 GMT
Kazazy Eliminators? To hunt for Marked Souls? maybe?
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Post by sand20go on Jul 2, 2019 20:40:39 GMT
Kazazy Eliminators? To hunt for Marked Souls? maybe? Problem there is that everything has eyeless sight. So unless flooding the field with eliminators it would seem a decent first turn move is to bring a Shrieker (if not already) on the field and go eliminator hunting. Moreover, with admonisher they can ping off something else. Not sure they will get a ton of play but the swarms also have Eyeless sight and then CRA providing ways of taking them out at range. Theme also provides for repo so they are going to be playing keepaway.
Increasingly think the "weak link" in the demonic clockwork machine is the regular cultists. While if you can take out a marked soul is "money" it probably isn't going to happen all that often. Having him bring out, however, the Guardian to shield guard a victor shot into the command _6_ cultists feels like money. Even Orin 2 provides only an increase to CMD8. Main issue there is that you are feeding them souls - so they WILL be able to essence up after you do that - but perhaps they will start to run out of steam.
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Post by hocestbellum on Jul 2, 2019 21:06:58 GMT
Kazazy Eliminators? To hunt for Marked Souls? maybe? Problem there is that everything has eyeless sight. So unless flooding the field with eliminators it would seem a decent first turn move is to bring a Shrieker (if not already) on the field and go eliminator hunting. Moreover, with admonisher they can ping off something else. Not sure they will get a ton of play but the swarms also have Eyeless sight and then CRA providing ways of taking them out at range. Theme also provides for repo so they are going to be playing keepaway.
Increasingly think the "weak link" in the demonic clockwork machine is the regular cultists. While if you can take out a marked soul is "money" it probably isn't going to happen all that often. Having him bring out, however, the Guardian to shield guard a victor shot into the command _6_ cultists feels like money. Even Orin 2 provides only an increase to CMD8. Main issue there is that you are feeding them souls - so they WILL be able to essence up after you do that - but perhaps they will start to run out of steam.
Unless there's something I'm missing from reading the card database, the Infernal Gate is the only model in Infernals that can make use of Friendly soul tokens, and it can't give them to anyone else. You can murder those Cultists and there's nothing the Masters gain from it. I think the confusion here is that Roget had Direct Spirits in the CID, but he doesn't have it in the card database
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Post by anderfreak on Jul 2, 2019 22:19:50 GMT
I'm not so sure about that, Deceleration is going to be in pretty much every list, and all the Wretches can give stealth to a couple of key models, it doesn't mean they are impossible to shoot, but they don't seem particularly vulnerable to guns to me. +1 Aurco. Between Decel, stealth from the Wretches and the "double" shield guard on demand I don't think they are very vulnerable. And ARM 19 (21 under Decel) isn't chickenscratch. You CAN likely take out lights and lessors and I can see that of value.
Marked souls (absent the Wretches) are not trivially removed. Princesses has essence to transfer; Orin 2 can sacrifice cultists, the dude on a horse is relatively tanky and no one is going to let you shoot their attachment till way late in the game and by that time he has been turned into a "free" horror.
I, for one, will be interested in seeing the Archon rules and seeing if they have a good place to help swing odds back toward the good guys ;-)
Between guidance from the greylord adjunct, and/or blessed from the greylord forge seer jack marshal, and/or harassment from kossites and AOEs forcing tough decisions on where to deploy the umbral guardians, plus a good chance of killing the umbral guardians in one hit instead of two if they choose to deploy into a rocket with butcher's feat up. Then your jaws or WGK list still has a bunch of warjacks to send in too. They have a lot of cool defensive tech but those hit box totals just make it feel like you're playing into a normal army. They're less difficult to shoot off the board than crucible guard imo.
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