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Post by drach42 on May 2, 2018 15:00:15 GMT
Hello everybody
I have been thinking about certain casters in our stable for a while and wanted to discuss them with everybody.
Aiakos2, Shade1, Morty2, and Terminus.
Let me start by saying that I know that we can win with these casters, I have played them enough and am able to win with them. What I do want to discuss is their kits, play style choices, and competitive viability.
Aiakos2: My opinion is that he is super close to doing what you want to do, but doesn't get there. I play him most with a heavy battle group and he is one of the casters that I still bring DJ with because stranglehold is amazing. When I play with Aiakos it doesn't feel as fluid as with other casters, the 12" control area coupled with foc 6 makes positioning quite difficult, at least it is ok because of his leap. His feat while really cool in concept is underwhelming. I find his feat difficult to use, because he is pretty easily kill-able that when I feat he has to be in a compromised position so needs to be camping and can't cast the spells he wants, or he stays back and his battle group gets out of his control. He is such a cool caster and has great tools, I find that he just doesn't feel good on the table.
Shade1: I love Shade, he is probably my favorite caster(all Real incarnations). That being said his kit feels so warbled. Shadowmancer is such a cool spell but doesn't jive well with his kit the nerf to his meager command range and the fact it isn't an upkeep makes him feel clunky and not really powerful on the table. I love his feat, probably one of my favorite feats in the game, and I like lamentation but wish he would have still kept Mage Blight.
Morty2: My favorite thing about Morty2 is her field marshal, it enables interesting plays., plus with Failsafe it feels like her battle group really is more durable than it should be. My only real complaint about Morty2 is that her feat has lost me more games than it has won me. I have kind of resigned to using it just as a deterrent for my opponent not to alpha me. It is extremely difficult to set up properly against good players. You can't use it early because Morty has to get so far forward to use it she has a high chance of being assassinated the following turn (especially if you set it up well and took several pieces with it). If not then it is really underwhelming in the late or endgame because you would have to group jacks up in order to use it drastically reducing your already smaller board presence. Overall her spell list, and field marshal are great and the reason I play her but her feat is more of a liability.
Terminus: He just feels wrong. I have tried him in almost every theme force with multiple builds, he never feels strong to me. With banes why take him instead of a shade or skarre or gaspy. With mechthralls tough mechthralls are still mech thralls, and now you don't have de-buffs or buffs to make the mechthralls do anything. He doens't give tough to either fleet so you just lose out on buffs/debuffs from other casters to gain nothing, he can't even collect their souls (even with his feat) or sac pawn to them. There is an argument to play him with Ghost fleet, but it isn't a good one. He does nothing to help them at all and they are sub par models and need help to get work done.
Again I want to reiterate I think these casters are playable but they just don't feel as strong as other casters and I feel as though you cannot play them competitively (maybe with the exception of Morty2 she is just on the list because I see no reason for her to be hamstrung like she is).
Pick your favorite and let me know if you agree or disagree and maybe point out other problems/interactions for either side of the coin.
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boozy
Junior Strategist
Posts: 429
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Post by boozy on May 2, 2018 15:12:47 GMT
On the topic of 'Shade1, I'm curious if anyone else has tried a strategy I've toyed about putting out. The idea is to run him in Black Industries heavy on Desecrators, and leverage a Turn 1 feat to fuel them. It gets around the normal restrictions of available units, and frees up more focus for his spell list and enables strong warjack out put.
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Post by tiberius on May 2, 2018 16:23:24 GMT
Good discussion drach42.
I think you are right about Aiakos 2, he is almost there. I think 6 focus is right for him compared to other similar caster, but his personal threat needs to increase in the form of damage. Maybe some sort of innate black spot ability, or just +2 damage with his weapon would be sufficient. Because I can get him and his army there pretty easily, Deathjack with a 15" threat range is ridiculous, but it is hard to finish the job. Currently I want to use him as an assassination enabler with White Squall, arcing to my target of choice and either assaulting a ton of warjacks on it or shooting it to death with a leviathan or kraken. The only thing he is missing in my opinion is the ability to do work himself.
Goreshade the bastard is a bastard and he has always been like this with a few big abilities that you have to pick and choose from. It used to be mage blight, a 5 cost spell that denied all living models from casting and using feats in his control area...no wonder it was retired...way overpowered. But lamentation is really good and shuts down some casters and lists, while shadow mancer is really where it is at for me. He brings his own unit of banes as well, which is really one of the most unfair feats in the game. According to my opponents. I think he is in a really good place right now, and with his various damage and accuracy buffs (remember the deathwalker with her -2 DEF debuff) and dark shroud all over the place, he and his army have little problem closing and getting it done. Its hard to avoid a charge from 6 ghostly weapon masters that I can just place wherever I want in a turn of my choosing.
Morty2, I was initially underwhelmed by her until I actually tried her out. Locomotion makes the deathjack or any heavy beater really dangerous with a long threat. Failsafe is really good for our warjacks that lose arms with a sneeze, and curse of shadows is a great debuff and mobility enabler. Her other spells are more niche but also solid. Her feat was where it was at for me, giving the models in her battle group flank. That is really powerful for a faction with as many 4" reach warjacks as we have, the only draw back is it is command range so the stalkers don't get the free assassination every feat turn. boo hoo... I did miss deryliss with her but the ability to take the withershadow combine with her is really good.
Terminus is one of my favorite casters. He is simple and straight forward, no fuss, no mess. You move him forward. Check and see if you can charge a threat or your primary target. If you can, charge it and kill it. You don't worry about him helping your army, you worry about setting up a good delivery mechanism for him. The army only matters in that it can remove threats to terminus and open up charge lanes for him, and even then with flight, you only need line of sight. I miss his tankiness he had last edition, as he is a lot easier to kill now, but then banes just suddenly got a lot better over the last year, so fielding a swarm of them with him at the center is more than most lists can really handle.
In my opinion of course.
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Post by drach42 on May 2, 2018 17:52:02 GMT
On the topic of 'Shade1, I'm curious if anyone else has tried a strategy I've toyed about putting out. The idea is to run him in Black Industries heavy on Desecrators, and leverage a Turn 1 feat to fuel them. It gets around the normal restrictions of available units, and frees up more focus for his spell list and enables strong warjack out put. Yes I have run it like that and also in Dark Host to get the clouds, and IM for the Hyper aggressive. This is one of the reasons that I brought him up. It never worked out like I wanted it to. Desecrators are good on focus efficiency but unless you get lucky with crits mat 6 pow 17 isn't good enough. If you just run the banes to apply dark shroud not only will you run out of them by turn 3 you will lose your focus efficiency. So what you want to do is cast shadow mancer so that your jacks hit hard enough to actually threaten a heavy but then you run into the cmd range difficulty as well. Also if you activate shade to give your jacks the buff they want you can no longer cast his really cool signature spell soul gate to move them backward. This is why I say he doesn't feel right.
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Post by drach42 on May 2, 2018 18:06:04 GMT
In response to tiberius.
I am looking at these casters as competitive options, and other than Mort (maybe she is) they are not. As much as a special snowflake as I am, if I want to win a tournament there is no way I am going to bring Terminus. Yeah I might be able to eek out a win against somebody in rounds 1-3 but 4+ not only will I not be likely to win if I decide to drop him, I will be at a disadvantage because my opponent will likely know which list I will be forced to drop. In my opinion he isn't even able to be a dark horse there is nothing he does that somebody else doesn't do better(remember against good players).
I don't think these casters are unplayable that isn't what the thread is about. I do play them pretty often at local game stores and win with them more often than not. However, if I was being serious I wouldn't drop them. I think that is a problem that should be addressed.
On a separate note let's not mention Death Jack. He used to be one of the first models I reached for when starting lists, now he is consigned to be played in only rare circumstances.
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Post by tiberius on May 2, 2018 18:54:49 GMT
I can only speak from my experience which is very small tournaments and the same 1-2 people in my meta. I am sure I would get destroyed in any major tournament, but in the small ones I go to, I have pulled out 2/3 wins with terminus just recently with Dark Host. But, as you pointed out, that could just be luck, or bad players, or something. He is about as tanky as Cryx can get and I like it.
You are right about Goreshade, he cant really do shadowmancer and run warjacks and do the warjack teleport trick and contribute all in the same round. And to really be a top tier caster, he really needs to.
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Post by Gamingdevil on May 4, 2018 14:37:54 GMT
I wrote up a massive post yesterday and then lost it in a server hiccough I'll try to recreate it somewhat. Terminus is actually a part of my main pairing at the moment and while he does have some weaknesses, he can be very hard for you opponent to effectively deal with and often wins you the game just by being there, similar to the Butcher. I think Dark Host is the best theme for him and write from that perspective. He's good at: - Not dying. Just be sure to keep heavies and bunches of weapon masters away from him. Do this by putting Banes in the way. The Wraith Engine can also be very useful for this, even though it can be move through, it still a huge base your opponent has to get past. He's of course virtually immune to the ranged assassination, especially with ARM 20 tough Bane Knights baby-sitting him. If you happen to make the WE corporeal, you can also sac pawn to it. Do keep in mind that you shouldn't get overconfident, as this is his biggest pitfall. Baiting an opponent is fine, but make sure the odds of actually dying are close to 0. 14/18 by itself is not unkillable, even with 20 boxes and Tough.
- Granting Tough. This can be very tilting for your opponent and is always something they have to account for in their plans, or if they don't, they have to adjust every time you pass a test. At worst, it takes some time off your opponent's clock (get good at rolling dice immediately after your models get disabled, so you don't lose too much time)
- Killing things. He has flight, so no matter what, he can get where he wants to. If you get a Dark Shroud bot in position, you can swing at something at effective MAT 9 POW 20. Eventually your opponent might make the mistake of putting 2 heavies relatively close to each other and that's when you go for the throat as it's most likely all that can threaten you, do this preferably on feat turn while your army fuels it. If the opportunity doesn't present itself, just keep going until you reach the caster, which you eventually will with killbox and scenario.
Don't forget to use that 10" POW 14 spray with Assault, it can kill lots of support. (hello Aiayana) - Not having a feat against some lists doesn't have to be a problem, you just can't camp in the middle of the table and be invincible. Against all warjack armies, your Banes will wreak plenty of havoc, so you probably won't really need it anyway. Try to look for a good (assault) spray taking out a couple of support models.
Weaknesses/pitfalls: - He's not as unkillable as you want your opponent to think he is, protect him well.
- Even though a gunline can't kill Terminus, a well played one that exploits their superior range can kill a lot of Banes before you get there. Hopefully you can get ahead on scenario and/or get the drop on their caster before they kill too much.
- High DEF is a real problem, because you most likely won't be playing a lot of Bane Riders if any (they're too fast to stay in the Tough bubble), but if there isn't too much of it, Terminus can get some work done himself and if you throw enough MAT 7( 9 next to Terminus) Banes at it, some will hit eventually.
- He doesn't support his armies output very well apart from the occasional standing somewhere for Malediction, so attack volume is important. The more dice you throw, the more good rolls you'll get.
- Anti-Tough can be a problem, especially if it's army wide, try to overwhelm your opponent with sheer bodies and you might still pull through.
I guess the generally good thing about him is that you basically make your opponent play the game instead of you. All you do is move your army forward, don't die and roll tough. Remember that nothing matters as long as Terminus gets there. Your opponent is the one that has to figure out how to contain you, get through Tough and hopefully not die to the inevitable Terminus to face. This can be valuable in a longer event so you don't fry your brain all the time. The others will be much shorter as I haven't played them as much Aiakos 2: I don't really understand why he had to lose Stealth while growing up and still got stuck with bad defensive stats. If he were a bit less fragile, he could play forward a little bit. Upping his (melee) output slightly would also help making him a credible threat on his own feat turn. I find that even if he makes it there, he will most likely have boosted his harpoon shot and/or cast a boosted White Squall, which puts him at 1-2 focus before upkeeps. So he's not going to do much with his POW 13 melee, even with Grievous Wounds. For the love of god, give him RAT 6 if he's supposed to use his harpoon from time to time. He really does suffer from his low FOC stat, even though it does "make sense". Maelovus and Deathjack are both better at casting his offensive spells than he is. He wants to take jacks for his feat and has 2 upkeeps, so I always feel forced to start my list with Withershadow Combine, Deathjack and 2 Warwitch Sirens just to prop him up a bit. Also, Scything Touch is currently just a bad spell, it took a double nerf at the start of MK 2 (+2 damage changed to just Scything Touch and it became single target) If it applied to a whole unit again, it would at least be harder for your opponent to shut down the turn after you cast it. In his defense, he is pretty fun to play and has a lot of shenanigans, but they're probably too unreliable to pull off. It's kind of a shame he wasn't included in the Black Fleet CID, but I guess we were all too happy for Denny 2 and getting Kharybdis, so we wouldn't be forced to take him anymore. Shade 1: He's actually not that bad, Shadowmancer is better off as a non-upkeep so it doesn't clash with Lamentation. The latter is extremely valuable in many matchups, especially into hordes. Have you considered playing him in Slaughterfleet with minimal units? He brings his own unit which then effectively gives the jacks +2/+2 or even +2/+4 if you decided not to cast Shadowmancer that turn in favour of fueling your jacks. Also don't forget the Deathwalker giving -2 DEF to living models, making your jacks effectively +4/+4. If you want to go true anti-living, take a theme that allows Darragh (Infernal Machines or Dark Host) and you can be at an effective +4 ARM between the Deathwalker and Darragh. He also threatens surprisingly far with a feat assassination, though at MAT 6(8) they might have some troubles hitting. Morty 2: I can understand that they don't want Flanking Stalkers at 28" when looking at the Una precedent. But I honestly wonder if it would be so bad. Apart from Curse of Shadows abuse, she doesn't let her model ignore free strikes and Stalkers can't fly. Scavengers and Shrikes can, but they only have 1 initial. Even Stalkers have only 2 initials compare to 3 of the Griffons. The biggest letdown for me is that Spellpiercer is actually so situational. I was pretty excited because of it when she was first release, but it's honestly not useful often enough to take her just for that and the rest of her kit isn't really special compared to other casters (Locomotion is cute though) That actually may have come out longer...
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Post by NephMakes on May 6, 2018 19:44:57 GMT
[Mortenebra2's] feat was where it was at for me, giving the models in her battle group flank. That is really powerful for a faction with as many 4" reach warjacks as we have, the only draw back is it is command range so the stalkers don't get the free assassination every feat turn. boo hoo... On a recent Turn Extension podcast, somebody mentioned a potential wide-ranging rules change where feats that increase damage are being changed so that enemy models need to be in your caster's control range, not just your own models. So if Mortenebra2's feat read something more like "Models in your battlegroup gain Flank against enemy models in your caster's control range", it'd fix the issues people have with her feat without making Stalkers too crazy good with her.
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Post by tiberius on May 6, 2018 19:49:07 GMT
Well that would limit the effect to something more manageable, which is why carnage (+2 to hit vs models in the control area of the caster) is a pretty fair spell. You have to be close to cast it. The other way around makes the stalker double control area too viable. But it is limited to command range for now, instead of control so it is a moot point. Does that imply they are changing the command to control?
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Post by NephMakes on May 6, 2018 20:09:34 GMT
It sounded like a change to a few different feats as part of the Crucible Guard CID. Butcher1 and Mackay were mentioned. Here's where they discuss it. I'm not part of CID, and they didn't mention Mortenebra2 specifically, but if PP is looking at feat tweaks this one seems like it would work well for Morty2. Presumably her feat is command range because control range would make Stalkers too good.
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Post by Gamingdevil on May 7, 2018 6:26:49 GMT
So far they have indeed made Mackay's feat like that and announced that they want to do the same with Nemo 3. Problem is that they only do that for things they are currently looking at, mostly as a downgrade. I don't think Butcher or Mortenebra are on their radars at all at the moment (nobody plays them anyway)
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Post by theghost on May 20, 2018 9:14:58 GMT
I just recently acquirer Terminus so would like to hear concrete lists people have been running him in.
especially from peoplw in this thread saying they been having success with him.
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Post by tiberius on May 21, 2018 11:09:39 GMT
First I will qualify this by saying I am not much of a competitive player and the people I play against are not world class professional opponents (they are good, are fun, but not top teir tournament dudes). I have had success with a similar list to this:
Lich Lord Terminus (Dark Host) - Barathrum - Desecrator - Seether Wraith Engine Bane Lord Tartarus Darragh Wrathe Eilish Garrity Bane Knights (max) Bane Warriors + CA
Closing Darragh makes everything faster and your wraith engine + tough helps protect things from ranged and magic attacks. Eilish is there to discourage some casting in your direction and remove beneficial upkeeps on your opponents stuff. Terminus casts malediction and just upkeeps and charges forward every turn. Banes move to keep up, or charge things that threaten terminus. Send Terminus with the knights and the desecrator with the warriors if you decide to split up for scenario, that way everything is tough and you have sufficient heavy hitters and body blockers all around. Barathrum and Seether can set up counter charges to whatever threatens your lines, or more importantly terminus, who should be at the center of a bane swarm.
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Post by drach42 on May 23, 2018 17:47:54 GMT
I just recently acquirer Terminus so would like to hear concrete lists people have been running him in. especially from peoplw in this thread saying they been having success with him. If you have him play him. Just don't try to win a WMW qualifier with him.
He works well with self sufficient models (because he doesn't do anything for them) like seethers or Bane cav. I personally don't like him in Dark host.
I just had a thought on how to make him awesome. Give him elite cadre gang for Thralls.
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Post by grotsnik on May 24, 2018 5:26:05 GMT
I just recently acquirer Terminus so would like to hear concrete lists people have been running him in. especially from peoplw in this thread saying they been having success with him. If you have him play him. Just don't try to win a WMW qualifier with him.
He works well with self sufficient models (because he doesn't do anything for them) like seethers or Bane cav. I personally don't like him in Dark host.
I just had a thought on how to make him awesome. Give him elite cadre gang for Thralls.
Imho gang [thrall] for thrall models should be the benefit of a thrall theme, that or something that makes recursion worthwhile, but I dont see this happening anytime soon, and neither a rework on thrall models and IM like errants had or like ret will have soon... we ended up with a CID that made everything worse except for bloodgorgers and gerlack if I remember correctly, and IM is still untouched (they had no trouble in nerfing denny, coven and GF though, and I am totally ok with that, but at least they could have tweak IM too) Am I the only one that feels that our caster are not that much (if any) better than other factions casters to make up for our troops? Maybe most of our troops are not worse either (not too sure) but thralls feel like they are either not cheap enough or need more support rules and models than they currently have... thoughts?
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