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Post by jisidro on May 28, 2018 22:36:34 GMT
The Shield Guards have the tools not to be KD'ed (Book or Gravus), Girded is also available as a jack or Paladin.
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Post by paradox on May 28, 2018 23:39:08 GMT
The Shield Guards have the tools not to be KD'ed (Book or Gravus), Girded is also available as a jack or Paladin. Assuming FM, youre at the Book.
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demonic
Junior Strategist
Posts: 649
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Post by demonic on May 29, 2018 1:06:23 GMT
x.O; the points we are taking about just to make something work is taking up too much space in the list. You should always try to keep yourself under 20pts of pure support and 40 pts if it has other playable functions (the battle engine can be quite a nasty ranged weapon and spam sweeper as well). Having too much support bloat just to make your caster "unkillable" will just make people take out the only things in your list that have valid functions and then camp scenario while sniping off your support one by one.
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Post by Gamingdevil on May 29, 2018 8:40:10 GMT
Or how about Cryx, which basically ignore Awe entirely, and have plenty of fast jacks and threat extensions to reach a highly visible large base? Note that Cryx jacks (the fast ones) don't have a lot of access to Pathfinder outside of Asphyxious 3 (the Ghost Walk casters usually don't play a lot of jacks), so if you stay 0.5" behind the FM wall, they have a hard time reaching you, especially through your army.
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Post by maplewhisky on May 29, 2018 8:56:32 GMT
Or how about Cryx, which basically ignore Awe entirely, and have plenty of fast jacks and threat extensions to reach a highly visible large base? Note that Cryx jacks (the fast ones) don't have a lot of access to Pathfinder outside of Asphyxious 3 (the Ghost Walk casters usually don't play a lot of jacks), so if you stay 0.5" behind the FM wall, they have a hard time reaching you, especially through your army. In addition to that you can just place a couple models to the left and right of Harbinger to deny 1" landing zones.
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Post by jisidro on May 29, 2018 9:15:50 GMT
x.O; the points we are taking about just to make something work is taking up too much space in the list. You should always try to keep yourself under 20pts of pure support and 40 pts if it has other playable functions (the battle engine can be quite a nasty ranged weapon and spam sweeper as well). Having too much support bloat just to make your caster "unkillable" will just make people take out the only things in your list that have valid functions and then camp scenario while sniping off your support one by one. This is because Harbinger intends to run low on life herself. Also her SG and usually weapon masters who will make their weight felt as the game progresses. She is all about using an extra resource, life, and that has a cost in defenses...
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Post by paradox on May 29, 2018 11:30:23 GMT
Or how about Cryx, which basically ignore Awe entirely, and have plenty of fast jacks and threat extensions to reach a highly visible large base? Note that Cryx jacks (the fast ones) don't have a lot of access to Pathfinder outside of Asphyxious 3 (the Ghost Walk casters usually don't play a lot of jacks), so if you stay 0.5" behind the FM wall, they have a hard time reaching you, especially through your army. My opponents play lots of jacks with most casters, Ghostwalk or otherwise. Stalkers are an ever present threat, or Denny2, who can just Dark Banish you.
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Post by paradox on May 29, 2018 11:33:48 GMT
Note that Cryx jacks (the fast ones) don't have a lot of access to Pathfinder outside of Asphyxious 3 (the Ghost Walk casters usually don't play a lot of jacks), so if you stay 0.5" behind the FM wall, they have a hard time reaching you, especially through your army. In addition to that you can just place a couple models to the left and right of Harbinger to deny 1" landing zones. Yeah, and I guess she Martyrs those too, amirite? Martyr all the things. And also doesnt get killed from all the shield guards she martyrs. And Martyr the troops youll have hit. She literally has an undying force, and youll never deliver anything to her.
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Post by correlion on May 29, 2018 13:02:40 GMT
It was just in a CID last year. Yea, I am confused. Why do you want the VoJ in the CID? You can already take it in the exemplar theme and as you stated, the combo is already good. Because VoJ doesn't count toward free points in Exemplars, like WE in Cryx Dark Host or Storm Strider in Cygnar Storm Division. So we have 18+2(techs) pts cost and wasted free slot. I don't see any reason to use this BE
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Post by macdaddy on May 29, 2018 13:13:43 GMT
In addition to that you can just place a couple models to the left and right of Harbinger to deny 1" landing zones. Yeah, and I guess she Martyrs those too, amirite? Martyr all the things. And also doesnt get killed from all the shield guards she martyrs. And Martyr the troops youll have hit. She literally has an undying force, and youll never deliver anything to her. I know your being sarcastic here but sadly that’s not an innacurate analysis of what she does. Her attrition game is...really stronk. Her force may not be undying but certain prices of it can feel like they are unkillable. (Punch monks and Champs) You need specific tools to deal certain aspects of her general kit and list construction, it’s really hard for a decent number of factions and lists to deal with her. my issue with her is not that she has counters, it’s that she is super gear checky.
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Post by streetpizza on May 29, 2018 13:52:07 GMT
my issue with her is not that she has counters, it’s that she is super gear checky. This is such a weird sentiment to me in regards to warmachine. Every good list in this game is a gear check so why should Harbinger be any different? Gaspy3 with slayers - armor cracking gear check with only melee being viable Troll champ builds - accuracy and grievous wound gear check Nemo3 - electro leap survivability gear check Cloud wall builds - eyeless / true sight / Lynus and Edrea gear check Skarre darkhost - magic weapons gear check Ghost fleet - RFP gear check ect. ect. The fun is built in trying to cover you bases and play around bad matchups. Thing is that harby has enough loose ends that you can deal with her while covering the gear checks of other lists such that she's not oppressive. The only time something should be looked at as being over the top is when you bring the right gear checks and the list still dominates the matchups or it becomes so dominant a gear check that the meta is warped around that list. See pre-nerf Nemo3 or Una2. This is certainly not the case the with Harby and I highly doubt she'll get there. She certainly won't be the main thing to tech for as long as those other bogey men I mentioned are still running around so things should be kept in perspective here.
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Post by macdaddy on May 29, 2018 14:14:03 GMT
my issue with her is not that she has counters, it’s that she is super gear checky. This is such a weird sentiment to me in regards to warmachine. Every good list in this game is a gear check so why should Harbinger be any different? Gaspy3 with slayers - armor cracking gear check with only melee being viable Troll champ builds - accuracy and grievous wound gear check Nemo3 - electro leap survivability gear check Cloud wall builds - eyeless / true sight / Lynus and Edrea gear check Skarre darkhost - magic weapons gear check Ghost fleet - RFP gear check ect. ect. The fun is built in trying to cover you bases and play around bad matchups. Thing is that harby has enough loose ends that you can deal with her while covering the gear checks of other lists such that she's not oppressive. The only time something should be looked at as being over the top is when you bring the right gear checks and the list still dominates the matchups or it becomes so dominant a gear check that the meta is warped around that list. See pre-nerf Nemo3 or Una2. This is certainly not the case the with Harby and I highly doubt she'll get there. She certainly won't be the main thing to tech for as long as those other bogey men I mentioned are still running around so things should be kept in perspective here. Maybe I should have clarified my meaning here. She requires very specific and very limited answers. You either have a large quantity of healing denail, or you can project a disgusting assassination threat. By disgusting I am talking like, a large number of high quality shots. (you have to get through def 18/20 and 3 or more shield guards. So math says you need to have around 5 or more boosted rat 8's (10's if you are living) to have a chance of killing her...not exactly a common ability for most factions. If you don't bring either on of those tools you are probably just flat out loosing the game on attrition to someone who knows what they are doing. As far as your preposed other gear checky lists... 1: gaspy. Yeah this one sucks. I agree that this list is bad in the gear check department. But I also thing its bad for the meta, un-intuitive, and boring. Thanks Soles... 2: Madrack 1: Not really? Bring guns...Bring a faster list than can jam up the champs, bring spell-piercer. There are also way more ways to increase accuracy in this game than there are to deny healing, but IME there are a decent number of lists that can play into madrack 1 and still have a good game. Its slow and bricky, and once you get the feat over with, you can chew through the champs. 3:Nemo3: Also an example of a list that is bad for the game. And nerfed accordingly. Not helping the argument that harby is ok... 4: Cloud-walls: Once again I hate how gear check oriented these are. But I also think this so broad a set of lists you cannot really use it as an argument here without derailing the discussion. All of the cloud-wall builds have different weaknesses IME. 5: Skarre1: Another list that I don't think is very good for the game. Let me just shove a bunch of arm 23+ models in your face. Oh BTW, 2 of them are incorp...have fun. Stupid, un-intuitive, blah blah. 6:Ghost fleet: Another example of something that was bad for the game, and was nerfed accordingly. I am not going to argue about where fun is had, because that's all subjective, but I will say, I think you underestimate just how strong harbinger is. There is a local in the area that literally wrecks face all the time with harby in FM. Even when you bring lists with tools to deal with her, its not a guaranteed win for most factions. Unless you have mass healing denial, or you are playing cygnar and can just shoot her off the table (a luxury not many factions have btw) you are going to lose to her almost every time. (especially against a good player) I didn't care about her being an issue at command 10, because she was close enough to the front-lines to be threatened by a lot and it balanced out her silly attrition minigame. At Command 12 though...she can play back pretty darn safe, can spread her army farther, and awe becomes significantly harder to play around.
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Post by streetpizza on May 29, 2018 15:22:00 GMT
Your post illustrates my point succinctly. In almost every case your solution is to ask the devs to design out the gear check instead of accepting that they are a part of what makes warmachine warmachine. Bring your own big bad list (if we're talking tournament play) and see which comes out on top. You'll note my ect. ect. as there are tons more examples. A list by list discussion is ultimately pointless.
The other side of the coin is that if you continue down the "design out the gear check" path there are only more gear checks that pop up since you're designing out the solutions that were keeping them in check in the first place.
I think a time will tell approach really is the only response here that makes sense. I'm not saying that you're totally wrong and harby isn't an issue but I'm just highly doubtful considering all the other things we see in this game.
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Post by macdaddy on May 29, 2018 15:49:07 GMT
Your post illustrates my point succinctly. In almost every case your solution is to ask the devs to design out the gear check instead of accepting that they are a part of what makes warmachine warmachine. Bring your own big bad list (if we're talking tournament play) and see which comes out on top. You'll note my ect. ect. as there are tons more examples. A list by list discussion is ultimately pointless. The other side of the coin is that if you continue down the "design out the gear check" path there are only more gear checks that pop up since you're designing out the solutions that were keeping them in check in the first place. I think a time will tell approach really is the only response here that makes sense. I'm not saying that you're totally wrong and harby isn't an issue but I'm just highly doubtful considering all the other things we see in this game. My post is more about things that have incredibly limited gear checks. Its one thing to have counters, its another thing to say "did you bring this specific toolkit? ok GG!" What makes warmachine warmachine is also subjective. To you, its about list building and pair construction, for me, its about the game-play itself. Tactical decisions and nifty little rules interactions or janky tech. Nothing frustrates me more than having to play against a pair in a tournament where both of us know its a matter of what list we pick, not the game we play. If games are decided at list construction/selection whats the point of purchasing models?I don't think my solution "designs out the gear checks" I think my solution helps broaden the number of solutions for those casters with incredibly limited weaknesses. You can give small nerfs to certain problems (like Gaspy 3 slayer spam, or Ossrum with all the jacks) that open up play into them without stagnating the meta. Nemo 3 suffered a nerf in that he lost the biggest bull-crap in his toolkit (that is sparknodes) All that change did was allow for more defensive counter-play into him, which is good and healthy for the game.
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Post by oncomingstorm on May 29, 2018 15:50:40 GMT
Your post illustrates my point succinctly. In almost every case your solution is to ask the devs to design out the gear check instead of accepting that they are a part of what makes warmachine warmachine. Bring your own big bad list (if we're talking tournament play) and see which comes out on top. You'll note my ect. ect. as there are tons more examples. A list by list discussion is ultimately pointless. The other side of the coin is that if you continue down the "design out the gear check" path there are only more gear checks that pop up since you're designing out the solutions that were keeping them in check in the first place. I think a time will tell approach really is the only response here that makes sense. I'm not saying that you're totally wrong and harby isn't an issue but I'm just highly doubtful considering all the other things we see in this game. Some factions do not have 'gear check' lists. I do not, or instance, believe that either Circle or Retribution have such a list. Nor does Legion, or Khador, really. It’s very possible to have a meta that is not dominated by oppressive skew lists, if those factions are anything to go by. Of course, there’s always a dimension of gear check that’s intrinsic to the game, and that’s not something you can get away from. Bring a bunch of POW 10s to play into a Khador jack spam, and you’re going to have a bad time. Bring no magic weapons to play into Cryx, and you’re going to have a bad time. Bring a bunch of victim stat infantry to play into Tharn, and you’re going to have a bad time. However, where these lists differ from the aforementioned ‘gear checks’ is that in each case, there are multiple ways (many ways) to approach the matchup. Tharn can be shot, they bounce off high armor, and you can even just…place your models to avoid having them pacman the world. Khador jack spams have it rough on scenario, so even if you can’t attrition them easily, you can go for scenario victory, or assassinate the caster, use control effects to limit their ability to retaliate effectively, and/or just jam them up with way too many dudes and watch them lose on clock. With cloud walls, it’s a different story – they’re a hard shutdown if you didn’t bring answers, but every faction has some kind of answer these days, and most of them are locked to cheap tech pieces. Harbinger, Skarre1, Gaspy3…not to mention ghost fleet, Nemo3, and Mad Dogs of War were different in that they require not just a specific type of list, nor just that you bring certain tech pieces, but in that they demand specific, tailored answers, often just to allow you to play the game. You can’t beat harbinger on attrition without substantial anti-healing tech. you couldn’t play into ghost fleet without significant ranged RFP. And you couldn’t play into Nemo3 without substantial lightning immunity. These are the kinds of things which are bad for the meta.
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