Wanderer DM & Heretic piggybacks

I played a very similar Heretic list to yours at a small steamroller, and it was fantastic.

The basics of the list were the same, so your's should function very similarly. Here's what I learned from that experience:

1) unpacking the army can be really difficult. My advice is to deply the hollowmen centrally and the death knell just behind them.

2) don't be scared to lose models early, you need them to fuel the corpse train

3) Don't forget the desolation arcana. You can completely control enemy infantry with an acid-bath plus a wall of fire.

4) You're never going to keep all 10 piggies in the death knell's aura. Pick which side matters most and commit heavier to that side.

5) Respect your piggies. Charging at POW 18 (20 if you use the reckoning) is freaking terrifying, make your enemies fear the piggies.

6) Most of the time it's better to attack less and just keep on shield-walling with the piggies. Really abuse the tankiness / recursion.

7) Use an hourglass formation for your piggies. You want some to survive so the twilight sisters can keep them going.

That's all I can think of for now. I'd probably prefer a skinny to the cage rager as well since he gets more out of the corpse train, but that's personal preference.

Njoy, let us know how it goes.

-und_ed

Exactly that formation.

If you're facing something that can be expected to go through more than 2-3 piggies (like say a chain weapon reach warjack) then just hang two out in front with the other three detached back, but most of the time that hourglass works a treat. There's so little that poses a genuine threat to piggybacks (especially once they're protected by Warmth of the Grave) that you can keep that piggy train rolling all game. Add in the control of weaponmaster infantry that Wall of Fire brings, and it's a really hard question that your opponent has to answer.

Thanks for the BRs Doopsie

What would you say is a good cryx matchup? I feel wanderer does more defensively than any other defier - though agree the likes of Goreshade3 were always going to go badly.

Perhaps all we can do is play Bump and spam bodies? Hope for hollowmen to do most of the work and harassing mad caps pull their weight.

gedditoffme
I cannot say for sure yet what I find to be a good match-up, because while Cryx is one of my more common opponents, I simply cannot play enough to get tons of experience. That said, so far I've found some amount of success with all the other warlocks vs Cryx.

unded
So this is a continuing concern of mine with discussions in the forum, but I cannot treat having multiple corpses on the Cage Rager as simply assumed. They don't get bodies themselves easily, so the only decent reliable source is from the Death Knell as Dread Rots drop, but most opponents know that, and so will go out of their way to either kill the Death Knell or will just ignore the Dread Rots. Even if they do kill the Dread Rots and provide bodies, then it'll still be another turn till you can get those bodies over to the Cage Rager, at which point it may be too late to get good use out of Arcane Vortex.

As for Denny3 herself, she's casting Mortality with souls, which she gets from her feat and, even more annoying, can get from the Dread Rots. So she can match souls to corpses, and chuck out enough Mortalities that they are eventually going to stick.

Thirdly, unless you are keeping the Gorehounds super-close to Wanderer, how are they making great use of star-crossed? The enemy model has to be within 12" of Wanderer to be under star-crossed, which goes contrary to the Gorehound's extended control and the role I, at least, typically use them for (flanking/solo hunting).

Fourthly (this is getting silly), how are you seeing the road markers stopping the trade? I'm assuming using two is just to make sure that the attacking model HAS to contact one of them, as a model can only move once per turn from Hidden Paths. But unless I'm very wrong, models can still end on top of the road marker as it is a marker, not a model, and so a model with 2" reach could still get in B2B with your heavy, at which point the 2" move doesn't really help. Don't get me wrong, it's useful, but this is what burned me and lost me my Death Knell, so I want to be sure I'm correct.

Fifthly, you are absolutely correct in that I did not use Veil of Mists correctly (actually, I never cast it...). I never felt I was in a spot where a single cloud would provide the protection needed, but maybe I'm wrong on that and just didn't see it.

Finally, I would like to state that I could be completely wrong about all of this. These were only my second and third games with Wanderer, so I'm sure I did plenty wrong. I will state, though, that in discussion after the game my opponent stated that Wanderer is the only caster he doesn't really worry about in Grymkin (there are two Grymkin players in my meta,so he's played against Wanderer about 5-6 times by now). So for now, I may just be sticking to those I find greater success with.

Ok, for 1 & 2, our milage clearly varies. Yes, I also always have at least a min unit of Dread Rots in DM, always within 8" of the Death Knell to give bodies, and always have 1-2 crabbits near the Death Knell. My problem is that, unless going into a gunline (which Cryx generally is not, and very few people in my meta use), by the time I'm able to gather bodies, the lines have crashed. So if they got the alpha (pretty likely, especially with Cryx), then I could stop at most 1 spell with the Cage Rager, assuming it's even close enough to the target. After the lines crash, it's typically best to use bodies to charge up a S&M to wreck 1.5-2 heavies, so again the Cage Rager will be body-less. I still find the Cage Rager useful, but primarily as an arc-node rather than a one-shot Arcane Vortex, and Wanderer does not need an arc node (unless you expect to get use out of Repudiate, which isn't a terrible idea).

#3, I'm not, and I apologize if that's the impression I gave you. However, with trying to fit everything in a 24" bubble (Death Knell & Wanderer in center, then Dread Rots have to be within 8" of the Knell, and beasts within 12" of Wanderer and preferably within <9"from Knell), I find it preferable to use Gorehounds to harass flanks. Goreshade game the gorehound went to engage a flanking unit of Carrion Thralls (almost got all of them, only one was able to move away and be a feat-target), second game it went around to engage Devil's Shadow Mutineers & a Leviathan to try and stop that flank being shot to death.

#4 and #5 (and #3 to an extent) this is the difference between playing the game, and providing commentary after the fact based upon little information. What works in a vacuum doesn't necessarily work on the table.