unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Post by unded on Jun 14, 2018 16:32:51 GMT
Continuing the adventure, I finally got the Scourge solos painted (Axiara, Severa, Blood Priestess, Misery Cages) so last night I took Skarre out for a pait of adventures in scourge.
This was my list, still trying to decide what / where to tweak:
Skarre, Admiral of the Black Fleet Kraken Defiler Blood Priestess full Satyxis Raiders + Sea Witch full Satyxis blood witches + blood hag Black Ogryn Ironmongers Satyxis gunslingers Axiara Wraithblade Severa Blacktide 2 x Misery Cages
feedback on performance:
Holy wow, Batman! While the black industries variant had a (predictable) weakness playing into lots of infantry, this variant can play well into both jack-heavy and into infantry-heavy lists. Severa is just as unfair as she looks on paper, I'm going to have lots of fun with her. The pleasant surprise was Axiara - I really wasn't impressed by her card when I saw it, but she has convinced me of the error of my ways. Tactician is ludicrously good when you are shooting with Severa and a unit of gunslingers, especially when you can use black penny bullets. Fun fact, Skarre is a living model, and so also can fire her gun and cannons through friendly living models without them blocking LoS. Piece-de-resistance is being able to give Skarre reposition - this lets her blast away with her cannons and then back off to be 15" away from the front lines instead of 12", or even charge a heavy and back off a bit. The new side-stepping blood witches are really versatile, and raiders are still the best unit in Cryx (No, Banes are not. Shut up, you're wrong). Dash proved an amazing spell with satyxis, with Parry really allowing them to get in to places they shouldn't be able to. Deceleration was more effective than I expected, allowing UAs and solos to actually survive blast damage and in one case a widowmaker shot, which I really appreciated (I hate losing my sea witch).
Thoughts for future play (won't change up the list just yet though):
- Not sure about the defiler. It's there you move dragon's blood on to blood witches when they ambush, and to clear infantry with guided fire sprays. So far it hasn't been that useful, but I think I've just played it poorly so I'm not sure it's fair to blame the defiler yet. - Unsure about the blood priestess. Sucker is cute, but also a liability if you're not careful. I like the free upkeep, but that's all she's bringing right now. - I'd like a second unit of gunslingers. The synergy with Axiara and Severa is disgusting, and I need more of that in my life - I could free up points by making the blood witches a min unit, but so far I really like the board presence of a max unit.
Well, that's this week's experiment. I'm quickly settling on the conclusion that Skarre3 is one of the strongest casters in the game. If she's not in your stable of casters, you need to fix that.
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Post by tiberius on Jun 14, 2018 18:57:37 GMT
If the defiler or the blood priestess isn't cutting it, you could get your points back from them and get your second unit right there. Even -1 misery cage and drop the blood priestess, but that is cutting into the focus efficiency of the list pretty hard. Glad it had really positive results. It looks good to me!
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unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Post by unded on Jun 14, 2018 20:01:02 GMT
I really was liking the focus efficiency, since Skarre likes to spend. Misery cage plus priestess means she can cast decel / guided fire, plus spend another 3 focus while still camping 2. I'll play a couple more games before messing with the list. The defiler looks great on paper, so I need to give it another couple of games before deciding if it's just me playing it poorly or if it doesn't serve much purpose in the list. If I drop it then there's the points for more gunslingers easily. I was quite impressed with how useful the second cage was - you can deploy it on a scenario zone, and force enemies to commit stuff they normally wouldn't, while holding the second safer to ensure the focus efficiency.
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Post by Gamingdevil on Jun 15, 2018 8:47:28 GMT
Would you consider taking out the Kraken for 2 Leviathans? It makes Guided Fire slightly more efficient and the Kraken doesn't get an awful lot from the list I think? Are the Ironmongers just there to be a (expensive) repair module, or do they perform other tasks?
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unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Post by unded on Jun 15, 2018 8:57:27 GMT
The Kraken is fantastic.
A big part of the kraken is that it does dual-service as both a shooting platform and a great melee threat. It's benefitting from both Guided Fire and when necessary Dragon's Blood. I also dislike the focus efficiency risk of double Leviathans - if you load up a Kraken, you always have enough shots to boost every damage roll. Loading up Leviathans is always risky, and doubling up actually doubles your chances of wasting focus.
Ironmongers have 3 tasks and one extra in-a-pinch task. The first two are repairing the Kraken, and repairing Skarre. The next (and this is huge) is using curse to make the Kraken more accurate (great for further anti-infantry work, and it often means you don't need to cast Guided Fire, so instead you can cast deceleration and just spend focus in other ways. The last is tough, medium bases to sec pawn on to and to use as meat-shields to block charges on to the huge-based targets. They even come back when Skarre provides reinforcements, so they're a gift that keeps on giving. Irongmongers have been a sleeper hit for me - way more effective than they looked on paper, almost as surprising as Axiara.
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Post by tiberius on Jun 15, 2018 10:46:21 GMT
Yeah, when I get around to playing Skarre 3 finally, I definitely want to use the iron mongers with her for repair and if nothing else, sucker targets from the blood priestess. On paper it seems really good. I am glad they have more than just those applications. I keep forgetting about their curse.
I can see the kraken being a benefit of being a single focus sink vs two, though its going to be pretty matchup dependent. But with all those bodies on the field, it should be fine regardless of what your battlegroup is as your opponents going to struggle against the dude spam and cracking a kraken. usually a list is build for one or the other.
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unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Post by unded on Jun 15, 2018 11:57:38 GMT
I can see the kraken being a benefit of being a single focus sink vs two, though its going to be pretty matchup dependent. But with all those bodies on the field, it should be fine regardless of what your battlegroup is as your opponents going to struggle against the dude spam and cracking a kraken. usually a list is build for one or the other. Very much so. high-power, high-quality shooting is poor against the Satyxis, and not fantastic against a Kraken benefitting from Deceleration (and really dislikes seeing 3d3 + 3 repair). Low-power, accurate shooting is useless against the kraken, and the shooting of the list is really vicious against weaponmasters and not insubstantial vs heavies. I've loved the Kraken ever since its MKII release, purely because it makes that ever-present "cryx drop" much harder to fine-tune.
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germanicus
Junior Strategist
No jokes round ear...
Posts: 358
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Post by germanicus on Jun 28, 2018 8:42:33 GMT
A couple things since I'm slowly buying into SotBC, but specifically for the Satyxis Blood Priestess, so far what have you been using to trigger Rites of Blood? And what about the Captain for no KD? Or is that more of a Skarre1/2 thing in your opinion?
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unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Post by unded on Jun 28, 2018 9:21:51 GMT
I almost never trigger rites of blood. Sac pawn is the real winner here - Cryx casters love to blow their FOC, and Skarre3 is certainly no exception. The ability to sac pawn off to ironmongers or something similar is a huge boon to Skarre. Think of it this way - the free upkeep saves you 1 FOC, the safety of not fearing 3-4 high-power guns saves you another 2-3 FOC in safety camping. That's 3-4 FOC you can spend all from the priestess, on a caster that can do a lot with her FOC. Last night I played Asphyxious I in scourge, and the same benefit applied - I could leave Gaspy on 1-2 FOC, and not care that I'm staring across the table at Behemoth.
The raider captain is a tough call. When I revise my Scourge list for skarre3 I'm probably going to drop a misery cage and downgrade the defiler to a deathripper to fit in a captain and see how it goes. The immune to KD is very situational for Skarre3 - basically when facing the dreamer or barny or Kreoss1 it's gold, or maybe Hero's tragedy or something like that, but usually it's meaningless. The reason I want her is to have knockdown on a stick that has a 15" non-linear threat with parry (Base SPD 7, charge 10, reach 12, dark waters 14, dash 15). It's a really nice piece of tech to have, especially with Axiara handing out tactician, so I want to play around with it a bit - I was previously working with the defiler, but that's proved much less impressive on the table than it looked on paper, so I'm happy to downgrade to a deathripper to move around Dragon's Blood.
On a slightly different (but related) note, I finally got my Slaughter Fleet models painted up, so I took Skarre3 out for a ride in Slaughter Fleet last night. Just wow. The dirge seers mean that the gun platforms (I took the Kraken plus a Leviathan, plus of course Skarre herself) are now much more reliable having magical guns with eyeless sight (my Menoth opponent was less than thrilled). Bloodgorgers are great with Skarre, really appreciating dragon's blood and Dash (and of course tactician, Axiara is just phenomenal). Slaughter is definitely the most well-rounded of the options for Skarre, making good use of every part of her kit.
I love the versatility of Skarre3. 3 Themes I've played, all three great (although Scourge and Slaughter I think are slightly stronger than BI). I'm now convinced Skarre3 is Harby- / Haley3- level strong, easily ranking amongst the top casters in the game. She doesn't play the hard skew like many of the top casters, but her versatility means she can play into almost any matchup imo, and her personal output and threat is almost unrivalled in the game, and is combined with very strong army support and incredible personal survivability. This is a caster that needs to be in any Cryx player's arsenal.
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germanicus
Junior Strategist
No jokes round ear...
Posts: 358
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Post by germanicus on Jun 28, 2018 11:13:04 GMT
I almost never trigger rites of blood. Sac pawn is the real winner here - Cryx casters love to blow their FOC, and Skarre3 is certainly no exception. The ability to sac pawn off to ironmongers or something similar is a huge boon to Skarre. Think of it this way - the free upkeep saves you 1 FOC, the safety of not fearing 3-4 high-power guns saves you another 2-3 FOC in safety camping. That's 3-4 FOC you can spend all from the priestess, on a caster that can do a lot with her FOC. Last night I played Asphyxious I in scourge, and the same benefit applied - I could leave Gaspy on 1-2 FOC, and not care that I'm staring across the table at Behemoth. What would you use as a Sucker target in Scourge, they all seem rather squishy...? Or is it simply the point that it's all taking flak away from whoever your caster may be?
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unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Post by unded on Jun 28, 2018 11:32:23 GMT
Whoever is handy, usually Ironmongers with Skarre3. If no Ironmongers are at hand, then a couple of satyxis blood witches or raiders will do. With Skarree I have Ironmongers around to repair her and the kraken, plus to curse stuff to fix the Kraken's MAT / RAT. When playing with other casters, their DEF is uaully higher than whoever would be taking the sucker hit so you're stretching the enemy resources pretty hard, which makes it a bad bet for them shoot at your caster.
The big things is obviously preventing high-POW boostable shots from hitting your caster. Cryx casters love spending most of their FOC, but often can get shot to death if they do. Freeing up that FOC is a really big boon to them.
Just in the example of Skarre3 (see? I can sort-of stay on topic...) consider how much she wants to spend on a typical turn:
- Upkeep dragon's blood (1) - Cast Guided Fire (3) - Boost damage rolls from canons (2) - Cast Deceleration (3) - Feed FOC to Kraken (2)
That's already 11 FOC I want to spend on my 7 FOC caster (8 with a misery cage). Obviously I cannot do everything, but if I just do half of what I'd like to do I'm still leaving my caster on only 2 FOC. There are a lot of lists that can assassinate a caster (even a 12/19 caster) at range who is camping only 2 FOC, and Skarre3 is much too big to hide. Sucker is a godsend.
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Post by tiberius on Jun 28, 2018 12:03:39 GMT
I agree with the Ironmongers. Their stats are not great but when you factor in multi-wound and tough, and the reinforcements ability from Skarre 3 to keep them going, it will have to be a very dedicated shooting list to get through that kind of defense. Unless they, of course, snipe out the source of sucker! But that is easier said than done.
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germanicus
Junior Strategist
No jokes round ear...
Posts: 358
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Post by germanicus on Jun 28, 2018 15:09:09 GMT
Well derp me sideways, I only had to give it a brief gander to learn Black Ogrun Ironmongers were available in Scourge...! -______-'
I'm not sure I'll be getting Skarre3 any time soon (my wallet is... very empty... and I still need to get together a viable 75 list in the first place), but noting above does answer a few questions.
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