Post by octaviusmaximus on Apr 7, 2017 3:20:21 GMT
It was games night last night and id been feeling a little bit of a rut. My lists felt like they weren't doing what I wanted them to and id been feeling that my tricks weren't mattering. My guns were being countered trivially and my expensive pieces were being forced to commit into unfavourable trades.
I played a game, Caine 2 Storm Division into Grymkin and just got *crushed* by old Witch with piggies and skin and moans. Call it a bad matchup but I'd been feeling that i've been facing nothing but bad matchups for a few weeks now.
Child vs stryker 1 (did you know that child's skin and moans does 84.5 damage to a arcane shielded hurricanes 56 boxes?), old Witch vs anyone with guns, wind blast from Vlad 2, zerkova 1s clouds with masses of iron fangs, lylith 3s windwall.
What I was facing was cheap heavies being buffed to the nines and launched at me while being protected on the approach using means I couldn't reasonably penetrate without being punished.
So I got a feeling, one which I want to briefly talk about, which is the feeling that my lists and tactics were 'old fashioned'.
Its a feeling that happens occasionally and it's a hard one to get a handle of sometimes. It's when you realise that the thing that is holding you back are the pieces and techniques you have been crutching on. Also, pieces that you found to be less than useful may actually have more of a place than you considered.
Meta's evolve, it always happens if you have a meta that is part of the competitive scene. What is important is that new releases stir innovation, but not only through their inclusion, they can often remind players that certain styles of play and certain models are more valuable than they thought. The Iron Fang theme has certainly caused everyone's creative juices to flow about the many applications of counter charge, for example, and it's effectiveness when brought in bulk.
With the constantly shifting and evolving list designs that are in everyone's heads, it is easy to get stuck in a loop where what you feel you should be capable of, doesn't match reality. That is where innovation is needed, where you need to employ problem solving strategies to come up with new solutions, and those aren't always handed to you.
So, after a crushing and tilting defeat, I spoke with my opponents over dinner and, after expelling some salt over the state of things, came up with a list of things that have been causing me trouble recently.
1) skin and moans, especially with wraithbane and shroud. Arcane shield and it's various friends simply aren't stopping much meaningful offensive power. People aren't removing it with spells, they are ignoring it with blessed.
2) wind blast stopping short ranged shooting like dynamo) as well as shield guards being a huge Nuisance when you put high value guns into threat. If you have 2 skin and moans base to base with a crabbit 3" behind them dynamo doesn't get to shoot them. If you kill the crabbit, then shroud goes down and dynamo doesn't get to kill them again and before you know it you are 3 turns behind in actually doing what you need to do to win.
This also applies to Wind Wall, where your opponent packs their army within 3" of lylith and then uses her massive threat extenders and assassination threat to blunt any offensive you have.
Also, Wind Storm, where your guns of range 16 or less leave you within threat range to kill your valuable shooting pieces.
3)threat extenders. Enemy models with really long threat ranges compound the above shooting problem into defensive tech because it means that they maintain an effective advantage at shooting and melee. The child's skin and moans has a 15" melee threat and kills almost anything in the game in one round barring amazing defensive feats, Strakhov maintains a pretty casual 20+" Threat on a bad day. Every legion caster with a speed boost actually has 2 due to the seraph. Lyliths carniveans charge 13" and can assault spray 10" against a stationary caster.
Coupled with this is enemy shooting, mostly from Khador, where shooting that can threaten our heavies is the norm, rather than the exception, with access to pieces like Behemoth and rockets.
So where all of this comes down is that these are the requirements to play the game now. If I cannot have some level of answer to these pieces while not playing directly into their strengths I will be in a very negative position starting into the game.
After reviewing my options, I had the list of casters who give me some tools into these matchups. I needed to make sure that I had threat range, I didn't rely on shooting, I could effectively one round enemy pieces and as a bonus I want a way to defend against their long threat ranges and hitting power.
The list is not something you would generally consider at the top of the cygnar, but Jakes 2, nemo 1, nemo 2 all rose up in their abilities to increase threat, relying on multiple vectors of heavies and being able to play a more competent attrition game without relying too heavily on shooting to do the heavy lifting.
Jakes 2 runs a fast battlegroup with a +3 potential threat extension to 1" melee heavies. She also gains a lot of effective use of sprint in order to maintain attrition advantages because you can either send heavies forward to lock up enemies (note: powerhouse lasts for a round) or move them back to force opponents to move their pieces into the threat of other of jakes' pieces.
Nemo 1 also brings +3" Threat range to his battlegroup with locomotion and also has the sweetness that is allocating 4 focus and adding extra damage From lightning shroud. Finally he adds deceleration to protect his army from shooting and a feat that is genuinely very good against enemy jacks and things like crabbits.
His problem is that he is very easy to kill and that while he has a huge stack of focus, he is quite inefficient with it.
Nemo 2 is theoretical, but primarily he can still run a Hurricane and not lose it so easily because of Polarity field. No charging is massive, reducing a lot of threat ranges to below 10", meanwhile your ironclads have a threat of 11".
Haley 2 can probably play the game too, relying on tk and her feat to prevent the enemy attacking you, but she does have a major weakness to out of activation movement when she is relying so heavily on her feat and tk. She also lacks an additional damage buff which makes cracking armour far harder.
Also, some pieces which have floated the top unexpectedly were ironclads and hammersmiths. These cheap beaters certainly have some strong points to recommend themselves, but primarily it is their cheapness compared to their mat and hitting power.
So I've been rambling for a while now, but I hope ive helped someone get some ideas.
I played a game, Caine 2 Storm Division into Grymkin and just got *crushed* by old Witch with piggies and skin and moans. Call it a bad matchup but I'd been feeling that i've been facing nothing but bad matchups for a few weeks now.
Child vs stryker 1 (did you know that child's skin and moans does 84.5 damage to a arcane shielded hurricanes 56 boxes?), old Witch vs anyone with guns, wind blast from Vlad 2, zerkova 1s clouds with masses of iron fangs, lylith 3s windwall.
What I was facing was cheap heavies being buffed to the nines and launched at me while being protected on the approach using means I couldn't reasonably penetrate without being punished.
So I got a feeling, one which I want to briefly talk about, which is the feeling that my lists and tactics were 'old fashioned'.
Its a feeling that happens occasionally and it's a hard one to get a handle of sometimes. It's when you realise that the thing that is holding you back are the pieces and techniques you have been crutching on. Also, pieces that you found to be less than useful may actually have more of a place than you considered.
Meta's evolve, it always happens if you have a meta that is part of the competitive scene. What is important is that new releases stir innovation, but not only through their inclusion, they can often remind players that certain styles of play and certain models are more valuable than they thought. The Iron Fang theme has certainly caused everyone's creative juices to flow about the many applications of counter charge, for example, and it's effectiveness when brought in bulk.
With the constantly shifting and evolving list designs that are in everyone's heads, it is easy to get stuck in a loop where what you feel you should be capable of, doesn't match reality. That is where innovation is needed, where you need to employ problem solving strategies to come up with new solutions, and those aren't always handed to you.
So, after a crushing and tilting defeat, I spoke with my opponents over dinner and, after expelling some salt over the state of things, came up with a list of things that have been causing me trouble recently.
1) skin and moans, especially with wraithbane and shroud. Arcane shield and it's various friends simply aren't stopping much meaningful offensive power. People aren't removing it with spells, they are ignoring it with blessed.
2) wind blast stopping short ranged shooting like dynamo) as well as shield guards being a huge Nuisance when you put high value guns into threat. If you have 2 skin and moans base to base with a crabbit 3" behind them dynamo doesn't get to shoot them. If you kill the crabbit, then shroud goes down and dynamo doesn't get to kill them again and before you know it you are 3 turns behind in actually doing what you need to do to win.
This also applies to Wind Wall, where your opponent packs their army within 3" of lylith and then uses her massive threat extenders and assassination threat to blunt any offensive you have.
Also, Wind Storm, where your guns of range 16 or less leave you within threat range to kill your valuable shooting pieces.
3)threat extenders. Enemy models with really long threat ranges compound the above shooting problem into defensive tech because it means that they maintain an effective advantage at shooting and melee. The child's skin and moans has a 15" melee threat and kills almost anything in the game in one round barring amazing defensive feats, Strakhov maintains a pretty casual 20+" Threat on a bad day. Every legion caster with a speed boost actually has 2 due to the seraph. Lyliths carniveans charge 13" and can assault spray 10" against a stationary caster.
Coupled with this is enemy shooting, mostly from Khador, where shooting that can threaten our heavies is the norm, rather than the exception, with access to pieces like Behemoth and rockets.
So where all of this comes down is that these are the requirements to play the game now. If I cannot have some level of answer to these pieces while not playing directly into their strengths I will be in a very negative position starting into the game.
After reviewing my options, I had the list of casters who give me some tools into these matchups. I needed to make sure that I had threat range, I didn't rely on shooting, I could effectively one round enemy pieces and as a bonus I want a way to defend against their long threat ranges and hitting power.
The list is not something you would generally consider at the top of the cygnar, but Jakes 2, nemo 1, nemo 2 all rose up in their abilities to increase threat, relying on multiple vectors of heavies and being able to play a more competent attrition game without relying too heavily on shooting to do the heavy lifting.
Jakes 2 runs a fast battlegroup with a +3 potential threat extension to 1" melee heavies. She also gains a lot of effective use of sprint in order to maintain attrition advantages because you can either send heavies forward to lock up enemies (note: powerhouse lasts for a round) or move them back to force opponents to move their pieces into the threat of other of jakes' pieces.
Nemo 1 also brings +3" Threat range to his battlegroup with locomotion and also has the sweetness that is allocating 4 focus and adding extra damage From lightning shroud. Finally he adds deceleration to protect his army from shooting and a feat that is genuinely very good against enemy jacks and things like crabbits.
His problem is that he is very easy to kill and that while he has a huge stack of focus, he is quite inefficient with it.
Nemo 2 is theoretical, but primarily he can still run a Hurricane and not lose it so easily because of Polarity field. No charging is massive, reducing a lot of threat ranges to below 10", meanwhile your ironclads have a threat of 11".
Haley 2 can probably play the game too, relying on tk and her feat to prevent the enemy attacking you, but she does have a major weakness to out of activation movement when she is relying so heavily on her feat and tk. She also lacks an additional damage buff which makes cracking armour far harder.
Also, some pieces which have floated the top unexpectedly were ironclads and hammersmiths. These cheap beaters certainly have some strong points to recommend themselves, but primarily it is their cheapness compared to their mat and hitting power.
So I've been rambling for a while now, but I hope ive helped someone get some ideas.