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Post by auraco on Aug 28, 2019 12:29:50 GMT
If I were running a Vlad2-Sorscha3 pair, it would be Vlad2 in Wolves and Sorscha3 in AK. Vlad2 in Wolves is a good list that can handle most things, but does not like gunlines. Sorscha3 can handle gunlines and high ARM lists (especially huge bases, if you include Marauders). She's also got more of a long game than Vlad2 in Wolves, which can lose steam after the feat and as losses mount amongst the Doomreavers.
As for what to run, I like double Shocktroopers and agree about the Demos being not very resilient. That said, I do sometimes include a min unit of Demo Corps. Sorscha3 can fairly reliable freeze a single model if you need it, which makes your Demo Corps weapon master equivalents. If you can freeze it, 3 Demo Corps can deal with a Juggernaut chassis jack on about average dice. But they're a reserve, not the core of the list, and certainly not a large points investment.
For me, the core of the list is double Shocktroopers with at least one Kovnik, Tankers and Ragman (doesn't just buff the Shocktroopers, but can use their 2" melee to spread the ARM debuff around so your jacks can benefit from it and Flank simultaneously). Jack load out and the rest is more flexible. Kodiaks and Marauders are both good when you add Flank to them. Kodiaks give some pathfinder, which the list is otherwise lacking.
I am not convinced S3 handles gunlines. Most gunline casters will have ways of getting around clouds. Why they are a "gun line". Many will have a means of dispelling the IF. So essentially you are running vanilla MoW into the teeth. Add in that with Sprays being the new Black you are either multiplying the volume of their shots or running just ARM 17. Will work fine into Gearheart or 90% of Cygnar. Will "suck" in to things like Railless or the Blockader or to a certain extent (more scenario play) the Cockatrice. No. It has to be Zerkova because if you want to shut down gunlines it needs to shut down, at least right now, high powered sprays. This needs to be taken with a grain of salt, a pretty big one at that. First, yes gunline casters tend to have a way to ignore clouds, but it comes with an important but. They usually have a way of mitigating clouds, not outright ignore them for the entire army, and it still cost ressources. Against say the dreaded crucible guard, there is only one guidance in the list, a lot of the list shoots but only one of the railless will get to ignore the clouds, and the debuffing rockets sure won't be ignoring it. A lot of the list have access to guidance, but just a couple of guidance still means most of their army isn't doing work into your, yes you might take some loss, but not nearly as much as if you didn't have the clouds. As for the dispel... It's far from every gunline that has access to easy dispel, heck even syvestro with purification might think twice about casting it to purify iron flesh since he's using a 4 focus spell to remove your 2 focus spell upkeep and he also removes his own upkeep by doing that, so no admonission, no transmutation. Sure he can recast those, but it ends up costing him close to his entire stack and no super fuel just to remove iron flesh... It might be worth it at times, but clearly now always. I'll also live with trading ironflesh if it means no super fuel a lot of the time. I'm just talking about the syvestro match up because it's the one that gives Sand PTSD, but unless your going against Sloan, Sorscha3's feat does offer shooting mitigation that can be leverage to help the list against shooting. About the railless, Man o war are fairly sturdy against them, especially if you have clouds to protect against the rockets. Sorscha3 also gives concealment to stuff in her control, against guns def 10 vs def 12 is pretty much the difference between all the shot will always hit and some of the shot might miss. Haven't played against the blockader yet, but yeah this thing scares me. About the clockatrix, what are you doing playing Man O War into grymkin in the first place? Man O War are terrible into grymkin and we have a couple of other theme that can handle them pretty well. Heck Vlad wolves of winter pretty much stomps on all of grymkin except maybe a king of nothing list teched out just to play into Vlad2, and even then, it's a game, not that bad of a match up for us. I'm pretty sure Zerkova1 Flames will also fairly easily stomp most of grymkin without much of an issue.
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Post by borderprince on Aug 28, 2019 12:51:11 GMT
Question is...do i really need three Kodiaks for cloud wall yolo? No, you don't.
You take Kodiaks for hitting, headbutting, throwing and Venting Steam when near lots of warrior models. The cloud they make can be handy, but it's a bad idea to rely on it (and you need to remember order of activations - the Kodiaks start behind your units due to the Advance Move theme benefit). Sorscha3 can often make enough clouds for your key turn.
2 Kodiaks and a Marauder is a good battlegroup for her. I've also found 2 Marauders and a Kodiak to be fine in terms of hitting power, but can struggle with terrain.
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Post by auraco on Aug 28, 2019 13:06:28 GMT
Haven't played her since the theme force change, but I used to run kodiak, kodiak, maraudeur, pretty much always taking the pathfinder objective. Armored corps list tend to have low volume of attack so can struggle a bit with swarm of jaming models, the kodiak helps a lot with the steam vent here. The kodiak main problem is usually hitting power, but flank solves that so the kodiak is pretty much the perfect jack for Sorscha3.
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sorokin
Junior Strategist
Posts: 775
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Post by sorokin on Aug 28, 2019 13:23:37 GMT
Haven't played her since the theme force change, but I used to run kodiak, kodiak, maraudeur, pretty much always taking the pathfinder objective. Armored corps list tend to have low volume of attack so can struggle a bit with swarm of jaming models, the kodiak helps a lot with the steam vent here. The kodiak main problem is usually hitting power, but flank solves that so the kodiak is pretty much the perfect jack for Sorscha3. It's "Marauder", not "Maraudeur." We haven't seized them from Llael. Sorry to be a grammar comrade.
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Post by borderprince on Aug 28, 2019 13:26:41 GMT
Sorry to be a grammar comrade. Just to be picky, you're more of an orthography comrade.
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Post by auraco on Aug 28, 2019 13:34:12 GMT
Haven't played her since the theme force change, but I used to run kodiak, kodiak, maraudeur, pretty much always taking the pathfinder objective. Armored corps list tend to have low volume of attack so can struggle a bit with swarm of jaming models, the kodiak helps a lot with the steam vent here. The kodiak main problem is usually hitting power, but flank solves that so the kodiak is pretty much the perfect jack for Sorscha3. It's "Marauder", not "Maraudeur." We haven't seized them from Llael. Sorry to be a grammar comrade. Damn my native french is creeping into my warmachine post...
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Post by borderprince on Aug 28, 2019 15:01:13 GMT
It's "Marauder", not "Maraudeur." We haven't seized them from Llael. Sorry to be a grammar comrade. Damn my native french is creeping into my warmachine post... I thought you were just trying to improve local support for the Umbrean liberation forces by naturalising the names of the jacks they use for advanced urban redevelopment operations.
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Post by auraco on Aug 28, 2019 15:30:22 GMT
Damn my native french is creeping into my warmachine post... I thought you were just trying to improve local support for the Umbrean liberation forces by naturalising the names of the jacks they use for advanced urban redevelopment operations. Yeah, right, clearly that, nothing to do with speaking french at all, carry on...
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Post by wasted79 on Aug 28, 2019 16:05:44 GMT
It's "Marauder", not "Maraudeur." We haven't seized them from Llael. Sorry to be a grammar comrade. Damn my native french is creeping into my warmachine post... From where are you, exactly?
(I'm a french canadian from Montreal)
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Post by auraco on Aug 28, 2019 17:01:18 GMT
Montréal
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Post by wasted79 on Aug 28, 2019 17:09:28 GMT
Montréal Salutation, compatriote!
It's funny to see how much little we know about the people with who we're talking in those forums lol
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Post by sand20go on Aug 28, 2019 17:33:22 GMT
I am not convinced S3 handles gunlines. Most gunline casters will have ways of getting around clouds. Why they are a "gun line". Many will have a means of dispelling the IF. So essentially you are running vanilla MoW into the teeth. Add in that with Sprays being the new Black you are either multiplying the volume of their shots or running just ARM 17. Will work fine into Gearheart or 90% of Cygnar. Will "suck" in to things like Railless or the Blockader or to a certain extent (more scenario play) the Cockatrice. No. It has to be Zerkova because if you want to shut down gunlines it needs to shut down, at least right now, high powered sprays. This needs to be taken with a grain of salt, a pretty big one at that. First, yes gunline casters tend to have a way to ignore clouds, but it comes with an important but. They usually have a way of mitigating clouds, not outright ignore them for the entire army, and it still cost ressources. Against say the dreaded crucible guard, there is only one guidance in the list, a lot of the list shoots but only one of the railless will get to ignore the clouds, and the debuffing rockets sure won't be ignoring it. A lot of the list have access to guidance, but just a couple of guidance still means most of their army isn't doing work into your, yes you might take some loss, but not nearly as much as if you didn't have the clouds. As for the dispel... It's far from every gunline that has access to easy dispel, heck even syvestro with purification might think twice about casting it to purify iron flesh since he's using a 4 focus spell to remove your 2 focus spell upkeep and he also removes his own upkeep by doing that, so no admonission, no transmutation. Sure he can recast those, but it ends up costing him close to his entire stack and no super fuel just to remove iron flesh... It might be worth it at times, but clearly now always. I'll also live with trading ironflesh if it means no super fuel a lot of the time. I'm just talking about the syvestro match up because it's the one that gives Sand PTSD, but unless your going against Sloan, Sorscha3's feat does offer shooting mitigation that can be leverage to help the list against shooting. About the railless, Man o war are fairly sturdy against them, especially if you have clouds to protect against the rockets. Sorscha3 also gives concealment to stuff in her control, against guns def 10 vs def 12 is pretty much the difference between all the shot will always hit and some of the shot might miss. Haven't played against the blockader yet, but yeah this thing scares me. About the clockatrix, what are you doing playing Man O War into grymkin in the first place? Man O War are terrible into grymkin and we have a couple of other theme that can handle them pretty well. Heck Vlad wolves of winter pretty much stomps on all of grymkin except maybe a king of nothing list teched out just to play into Vlad2, and even then, it's a game, not that bad of a match up for us. I'm pretty sure Zerkova1 Flames will also fairly easily stomp most of grymkin without much of an issue. Right back at you with some salt...... Going to go from Macro to Micro points..... A) As Chickenslayer/Loud Chris points out - the only meta that matters is YOUR meta (or the meta you care about). So understand that some of this is irrelevent if you are teching against a lot of peh peh shooting (aka THAT is the gunline) or that for whatever reason someone at your LGS is still playing Cygnar and a bunch of gun mages. That is the first grain of salt you should keep in mind. B) Clouds: Yes. Most things have cloud removal/mitigation strategies - either in one or both lists. In the case of CG not only do they have Alyce who can give out Guidance they also have the Retaliator - who can be given guidance itself if it need be or, in most cases, just spray down their own model to remove clouds. Retribution with G2 has Mage site and with Issyria has her feat. Menoth will have Rhoven. EVERYONE now has an objective in 50% of scenarios which hands out eyeless site. It just is incompetence to bring a list whose principal win condition is shooting to not be able to largely mitigate clouds. C) Dispel/Purification/Blessed. Again, what defeats gunlines? Things that let folks stack armor or defense or both. You bring tools to stop them. If Syvestro can take out a chunk of MoW of COURSE he is using his FREE purify to do that. Since likely turn 2 he doesn't NEED to cast superfuel. Any challenges to order of activation with transmutation, if present, are not that hard to deal with or at least require S3 to have things (rough terrain generation) which are not USUALLY in her kit (aka you probably didn't take a Victor and if you did you probably are shooting fire and not Rough terrain. Another gun line I see a BUNCH is Circle and those WoldWyrds LOVE to see Shocks with IF. as they leverage ROF3 to get off 2 big shots at 4D6. Even better with Geomancy because I am going to start by TK'ing them out of Shield wall as well as screwing with your cloud wall's effectiveness. Good times! The upside of this is that EVERYTHING in the game dies. It is just a question of whether ARM 23 on a unit with POW 14 weapons which S3 can not tune up to hit harder is worth expending X amount of resources. We could debate ENDLESSLY but the point is that most CURRENT gunlines are sorta "meh" about that and are built to deal with decent ARM. D) Specific to the GC/S3 matchup. What would happen in said matchup seems trivially easy to predict. Assuming best case (for Khador), a Trancer runs to the correct position, A Halbies go next and do whatever they need to do. Lets assume they are getting value out of Tranmutation so it was upkept. Retailator then sprays to remove 2 clouds (best case - he often can shoot on an angle and get three). Alyce gives DBR guidance. Syvestro then moves up to catch one of the Shocks, casts a free Purify, and feats. He then recasts Transmutation and is sitting on 4 focus. 2 if he needs to recast Admo for some reason. DBR next and tags the Shocks at Dice -5 (withering) under S&P. Next up Railless(s) at Dice minus -5 on the ice sprays (after figuring in Withering) ; the rocket shot at Dice-4 and the fire at Dice -7 all under S&P. Easily Repos out of threat range of your MoW (11 inches) or jacks (either 10 or 11). He now has easily "cheated the trade" - keeping his big ticket items safe, leaving you no way in S3's kit to get rid of transmutation and still out threatening you. And, lets be honest, depending on the board state and what you have done you have now "blown" your once a game feat and still are plodding along with minimal (depending on build) way of efficiently chewing through halbies in an army that like to bunch up (shield wall, Atlanta's bubble, flank) against an army (GC Double railless) that LOVES to see an opponent bunch up.E) Cocks are actually pretty good into Wolves because of both the placement effect, the healing and the animus to reduce their speed. It is generally a "fair" match up. And again, doesn't care about your stinking cloud wall (eyeless)F) I would LOVE s3 to work. But I found that in a world of sprays it just isn't happening. IF alone on 1 unit of shocks ins't getting it done. Relying just on the Kovnik makes them too slow to get back to where they need to be. CTR 6 on a caster whose best thing is flank is really constraining in the new kit and ultimately if cloud wallls ARE a thing you simply back off - staying scenario relevant enough to then just spray down the army the following turn. (BTW - I think where S3 works FAR better is as a counter not to gunlines but to single wound WM - leveraging the clouds for the autopoint.G) Zerkova1 solves many of these problems. The Cloud wall is doing double duty. Not only does it offer an approach solver (if you opponent obliged like Auraco's by not bringing tools) but the -2 to hit helps a lot when stacked with things with decent defense (aka not likely Manofwars). Her feat shuts down sprays. Hex blast deals with pesky things like Transmutation _IF_ you can follow it up effectively. And her kit gets even better in Flames - with Vengeance, a great stacking of Morrow models with the archon, access to an arc note to keep some opportunities for assassination alive. Bonus points for being cold immune and thus able to weather out SOME of CG's sprays. To me it is, in the world of sprays she is the place to look. Once we get the Void Archon Rules (and Legion of Lost SOuls and the new Morrow units) we will be able to make a more informed choice on whether to build in Flames or Wolves and how that, in turn, impacts other lists.
OK. All for now....onto my real job ;-)
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Post by auraco on Aug 28, 2019 17:43:31 GMT
Well you start to get a feel of people's personality after a while, sand20go plays a lot in the SoCal meta and is totally traumatised by Railless in crucible guard jdeckert is always right, and has always been right for what is it now? Close to a decade? More than that? @micheal is always joking, he is even funny sometimes
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Post by sand20go on Aug 28, 2019 18:32:14 GMT
Well you start to get a feel of people's personality after a while, sand20go plays a lot in the SoCal meta and is totally traumatised by Railless in crucible guard jdeckert is always right, and has always been right for what is it now? Close to a decade? More than that? @micheal is always joking, he is even funny sometimes "tramautized" is a bit strong but yes....since I talk about how to beat certain lists in my sleep there are some classic PTSD things going on.......'-) I think the thing about our meta is that it is REALLY competitive. Over time I would say 90% of the guys get pulled toward S tier casters. Lots of SR (nearly every weekend one fires SOMEWHERE in the southland), LGS have WM going multiple nights a week. But I am not sure that makes us "good". We don't have a great pipeline of new players so sometimes it is the same people and the same matchups. We really only have 1 con in SoCal (and that one is an iffy for 2020). Travel to other big cons requires either a long car drive (LVO, Phoenix open) or a plane ride - something that can be prohibitive to the wallet or family time. I TEND to think that the best "con" players are those that get into the habit of gearing up to play 6-7-8 games in 24 hours and mentally have go through that process over time. So Cal is reping strong at various cons the core group is traveling to so maybe that _IS_ what is needed - just that at this point our meta has yet to have a player that takes home the biggest of big hardware - though Juris is gunning for it ;-)
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Post by michael on Aug 28, 2019 19:50:34 GMT
Well you start to get a feel of people's personality after a while, sand20go plays a lot in the SoCal meta and is totally traumatised by Railless in crucible guard jdeckert is always right, and has always been right for what is it now? Close to a decade? More than that? @micheal is always joking, he is even funny sometimes It’s either that or stare into the black gaping maw of futile oblivion that awaits us all, and for which this game is but a brief distraction as we imperceptibly slide into the grave. Also I frequently make incredibly insightful comments on tactics and strategy, but usually it takes about 18 months for everybody else to come around to that point of view, and by that point I don’t have the energy to bother saying “I told you so.” So there’s that.
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