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Post by michael on Sept 3, 2020 15:30:34 GMT
If WoW is so bad why does it see competitive lime light? Why are people like Chris Davies able to terrorise their metas with it? I don’t know who that is or how other people are using Wolves. Hence my “maybe other people know something I don’t” comment. (Why don’t I know who that is? Because I don’t care to become a cog in the Facebook big data money machine. Why does some random company need to know anything/everything at all about my life, just because I just want to hear some people talk about playing with toy soldiers? But yes, social media data aggregation is a different topic for a different day.) I will say, unequivocally, that I have played post-CID Wolves to death (quantified: somewhere between 50-75 games with Wolves and only Wolves between L&L 2019 and Feb. 2020) and I think it could be better. I play in the same meta as Iron Gauntlet winners and perpetual U.S. national tournament evergreen players. I have knowledge and experience germane to the topic at hand. (When, in the post-game breakdown, both my and my opponent’s analysis is “Yeah, I don’t think you could have won”, that’s telling.) In my opinion — based on experience — the Ternion is a massive waste of time and energy. They would never be taken if they were not free. Having a Koldun that wants and needs to do a minimum of three separate actions each turn is not fun, it’s not “letting the player make a choice”, it’s frustrating. (Far too many other models/armies out there get to use all their tricks full-force each turn, while Wolves is partially hamstrung by 80% of all the really good stuff being on the Koldun.) List building is highly inflexible. Nobody’s going to come out with endless variants of cool ways to build the army, because it is basically “Doom Reavers or bust.” Additionally, I find it frustrating to lose games on deployment simply due to the fact that the opponent brought archons. The list doesn’t have tools to deal with archons. (“Charge more Doom Reavers at it!” is not a functional tool.) But, horses, dead, etc.
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Post by michael on Sept 3, 2020 15:33:15 GMT
^That, as a pure khador theme, not including warrior of the old faith and flame in the dark, it's by far our best theme and it can hold its own in a competitive tournament environement. Everybody else clearly knows something I don’t. What, exactly, makes Wolves so great?
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Post by auraco on Sept 3, 2020 15:43:10 GMT
I still don’t get the comment about archons hard countering wolves... even if you don’t get the full stationnary from several ice cages, just one or two is usually enough to make reavers easily kill archons.
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Post by michael on Sept 3, 2020 15:56:58 GMT
I still don’t get the comment about archons hard countering wolves... even if you don’t get the full stationnary from several ice cages, just one or two is usually enough to make reavers easily kill archons. If you can land the ice cages in the first place, sure. But my experience has been that the random Ternion members that manage to survive long enough to attempt it often miss. They usually need 7+ to hit in the first place, and that’s before adding any of the ubiquitous modifiers such as cover, concealment, or target in melee. Thamarite and Void archons can mow down huge swaths of Reavers safely on the approach. Menite and Morrowan archons can pretty safely tank Reaver charges when we’re in a “need 8+ to hit” situation. And so on and so forth.
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Post by auraco on Sept 3, 2020 18:58:05 GMT
Couple of things here, the Thamarite one can be problematic, but it's also very luck dependant, if he rolls 3 shot and you don't roll any tough yeah sure, but the odds of that happening are not that high, the void is also a weird one here, you outthreat it in melee, and it's spray is good but not a catch all against bunched up reavers, if he advances spray and teleport to punch you he might get 3 or 4 reavers, then probably die because it's in the middle of the army, it's not what I'd call a hard counter, both are glass cannons and can easily do damage to the other.
Ternions tend to hang back, and are clearly lower on the priority kill list than reavers, they tend to survive longer than the reavers in front of them, and it can be worth it to puppet master the unit and to possibly guidance one or two of them to ignore concealment on the first hit, even if you hit with just one or two ice cage, you're not in a bad position, it still makes hitting the archons with reavers way easier.
Also we're not playing in a vacuum, you have caster support here, I've been playing a lot of Vlad2 and between the feat and arcane might hitting archons even without ternion ice cage hasn't really been a problem. Sorscha1 who's an other popular choice to run a wolves list can just casually transfrom archons in blocks of ice without much of an issue. The only one that struggles with actually helping your army hit them is OW2. I'm mentionning these 3 because they are the 3 most popular caster to run the theme, if you're trying to run a weird build with an off caster it might be problematic sure, but it hasn't felt like it's a hard counter when I play against them.
What kind of wolves list have you run that felt hard countered by archons?
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Post by P'tit Nico on Sept 4, 2020 9:13:08 GMT
Don't forget the Hermit: Telemetry is a huge boost to landing those precious Ice Cages.
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sorokin
Junior Strategist
Posts: 775
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Post by sorokin on Sept 4, 2020 11:10:18 GMT
If WoW is so bad why does it see competitive lime light? Why are people like Chris Davies able to terrorise their metas with it? I don’t know who that is or how other people are using Wolves. Hence my “maybe other people know something I don’t” comment. (Why don’t I know who that is? Because I don’t care to become a cog in the Facebook big data money machine. Why does some random company need to know anything/everything at all about my life, just because I just want to hear some people talk about playing with toy soldiers? But yes, social media data aggregation is a different topic for a different day.) I know him from tournament listings and podcasts not from facebook.
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Post by michael on Sept 9, 2020 19:03:56 GMT
Couple of things here, the Thamarite one can be problematic, but it's also very luck dependant, if he rolls 3 shot and you don't roll any tough yeah sure, but the odds of that happening are not that high, the void is also a weird one here, you outthreat it in melee, and it's spray is good but not a catch all against bunched up reavers, if he advances spray and teleport to punch you he might get 3 or 4 reavers, then probably die because it's in the middle of the army, it's not what I'd call a hard counter, both are glass cannons and can easily do damage to the other. Ternions tend to hang back, and are clearly lower on the priority kill list than reavers, they tend to survive longer than the reavers in front of them, and it can be worth it to puppet master the unit and to possibly guidance one or two of them to ignore concealment on the first hit, even if you hit with just one or two ice cage, you're not in a bad position, it still makes hitting the archons with reavers way easier. Also we're not playing in a vacuum, you have caster support here, I've been playing a lot of Vlad2 and between the feat and arcane might hitting archons even without ternion ice cage hasn't really been a problem. Sorscha1 who's an other popular choice to run a wolves list can just casually transfrom archons in blocks of ice without much of an issue. The only one that struggles with actually helping your army hit them is OW2. I'm mentionning these 3 because they are the 3 most popular caster to run the theme, if you're trying to run a weird build with an off caster it might be problematic sure, but it hasn't felt like it's a hard counter when I play against them. What kind of wolves list have you run that felt hard countered by archons? I sort of forgot about this thread for a bit. I do apologize for the tardy replies. To answer “what kind of lists”, well: I have yet to encounter a semi-functional Wolves list without at least 5 units of Reavers. Unfortunately, I can’t name any specific incarnations of my lists because: a) COVID, I haven’t played in such a long time that the relevant memories are now in cold storage b) I wiped all my Wolves lists out of War Room 2 after the last update, because c) I was beyond frustrated after playing the theme to spectacularly bad results dozens of times in a row But, regarding the “vacuum” comment: indeed. My opponents are adept at using their archons to full effect (offensively: void and Thamarite; defensively, Morrowan and Menite) and then layering their defenses around them afterward in order to keep them alive for another turn or two. Also, my opponents are well aware that Ternions are often the only way that Wolves has to adjust dice probability, and so the Ternions usually died early and often. Those that didn’t were usually irrelevant to the needs at hand anyway (unfavorable terrain, body blocked by Reavers, various other reasons). The absolute most miserable game I played was against a Llaelese Resistance army led by Ashlynn1, featuring Rocketmen, Crucible Guard Assault Troopers, and both a Morrowan and Thamarite archon. That game was truly lost on deployment. The combo of Awe plus Ashen Veil meant the entire army bottlenecked on the Morrowan Archon and Assault Troopers, because they needed something stupid like 8’s to hit the Assault a Troopers and 11’s (?) to hit the archon, all while being mowed down and corralled by the Thamarite’s Eruption of Ash gun and murdered with impunity by Rocketmen. Like, seriously, it was a bad day of “you basically need double 6’s to hit anything”, and that was even before Roulette came into play. I know what Vlad2 does, trust me. But — and I’ve been saying this for ten years at this point — if the answer to a problem is “use Vlad2”, that is the wrong answer. That answer indicates a much bigger problem is present. As for casters: I’ve used everyone with the list at least once, except maybe Vlad3, OW2, and Irusk2?
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Post by Havock on Sept 9, 2020 21:22:49 GMT
Hving played with Syvestro and Rocketmen I know where you are getting at: DEF too much, immune to blast. The only problem they have is that they can't fight their way out of a wet paper bag.
But yeah, it's pretty rough on all melee lists; I played it into Wolves and he ground out the unit eventually but not before I eventually ground out the other part of the army.
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Post by michael on Sept 9, 2020 21:29:43 GMT
Hving played with Syvestro and Rocketmen I know where you are getting at: DEF too much, immune to blast. The only problem they have is that they can't fight their way out of a wet paper bag. But yeah, it's pretty rough on all melee lists; I played it into Wolves and he ground out the unit eventually but not before I eventually ground out the other part of the army. I will say that the models I mentioned are sufficiently capable of murdering Doom Reavers. They can break DEF 13 and ARM 14 very easily. Those stupid Eruption clouds, in particular, suck for many, many reasons. There’s no way, none that I see, of running a meaningful jack-heavy Wolves list. Nor do I see a way of building a Wolves list that focuses on Greylords. The theme really is “Doom Reavers or bust” as far as I can tell.
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Post by Havock on Sept 10, 2020 3:00:58 GMT
It's not so much doom reavers or bust it's "everything else is there to make the doomies work: Greylords are support models, and if doomies can't hit it, Greylords usually can't either (which is also why Ice Cage is more of a handy thing than an actual fixer, unless you are playing Z2)
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Post by P'tit Nico on Sept 10, 2020 8:29:18 GMT
It's not so much doom reavers or bust it's "everything else is there to make the doomies work: Greylords are support models, and if doomies can't hit it, Greylords usually can't either (which is also why Ice Cage is more of a handy thing than an actual fixer, unless you are playing Z2) Well, yes, but actually, no. Remember the Koldun Lord can also cast Ice Cage, and he has Magic Ability 8. Also, Hermit and Telemetry. But the most important thing is: once ONE Ice Cage has hit, everything else will have better odds to hit. You only really need one Ice Cage to hit and then the Doom Reavers will wreck the thing. And you've got like 6 Greylords + 2 Koldun Lords to try and hit that precious Ice Cage. As for the Rocketmen, well... good luck. Kill the rest of the army.
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Post by steeltitan on Sept 10, 2020 9:20:16 GMT
I guess one Koldun Lord could Puppet Master the second Koldun Lord, who can then Ice Cage a model, with Magic Ability 8 with a reroll, to start an Ice Cage chain for the Ternion...
...ok, i will leave and take my suggestions elsewhere...
Coming to think of it...if it removes an Archon, it's not bad...
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Post by michael on Sept 10, 2020 12:31:57 GMT
It’s great in theory but absolutely lousy in practice. Yes, the Greylords are support, but the Ternions and the Koldun Lords die excruciatingly easily. Everyone that I play, at least, understands that the Greylords are super squishy and kill them off rapidly.
And yes, Koldun 1 could Puppet Master Koldun 2, but those provide identical odds to both Kolduns taking a shot. Which means you have to spend 8 points on Kolduns, which introduces other problems (which Reavers don’t get CAs?) And boy, wouldn’t it be swell if both your best-odds DEF debuff AND your only ARM debuff AND your only reroll tech AND your “backup spell in case the other guy missed” AND your only “no shooting” tech were not all on the same, FA 2, fragile solo?
Because sometimes — in fact, around 40+% of the time in practice — MA 8 simply isn’t good enough to hit.
It’s frustrating to face so many point-and-click-look-it-worked abilities, while piloting an army of “everything I do, except for Wind Ravager, the clouds, and a couple things on the Escort, requires successful attack rolls.” Which isn’t bad, except apparently all the odds were based on dealing with base stat opponents? Like, did somebody forget that the other player has buffs, or can use terrain, to increase their stats? Very frustrating.
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Post by P'tit Nico on Sept 10, 2020 14:00:43 GMT
Well Michael apparently your opponents are just way better than ours And yes, of course we're spending 8 points on 2 Koldun Lords. That solo is da bomb.
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