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Post by bigk on Jun 10, 2018 9:52:15 GMT
Hello all! Newish pig player here, ended up playing today against a Madrak1 list with 2 units of champions, fell callers, glacier king, along with other stuff I didn’t know. As pigs, do we have anything that gets through the mass of troll bodies when they are no knockdown, tough and defence 16? I tried out some Carver with the meat thresher as I thought the knockdown would help against the tough, but Madrak has a spell that eliminates that. I know Malock with all the posse may work well with snacking but I don’t have those models. I was thinking maybe Arkadius but don’t know how to get around all the bodies for an assasination.
Any suggestions? Thanks for your help!
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Post by Gaston on Jun 10, 2018 16:01:16 GMT
Hmmm....pig only is tricky indeed into that match up. I have only tried it with Jaga thus far, but she was quite dominant. I'd take a few lessons from her and try to apply them to our Farrow friends:
I think that gunline is the way to play into him for a few reasons. The Madrak list is more or less based around a core of double champs. They have Retaliatory Strike, get extra defense in melee, and RFP/No Tough on their melee attacks. These are all things that SUCK for piggies. So take them away with the fine power of gunpowder. Once you settle towards guns, I'd offer up Midas. You figure that in order to blow through a unit of Champs you have to deal with Def 14, Arm 18, 25 Wounds + 8 Skaldi + 15 for the Sorcerers; total of 48. And you have to do it all in one turn. With Prey Brigands are Rat 7 Pow 14, so 7 shots will hit, 3 damage average, 21 damage total. A good start but not amazing. However, with Calamity, you jump to Rat 9, Pow 16. At which point 10 shots (of 12 counting Warlord) hit, 5 damage per, 50 damage. MUCH BETTER.
There are some other caveats here too. Obviously with tough and uneven distribution of damage you will not clear the whole unit in one go with just 1 unit of Brigands. However, Midas with Bone Grinders and Calamity is Range 12. Brigands are Range 10, Repo 3. Champs only charge 9", so you should be able to get 2 rounds of shooting at them, or one round of shooting, one round of Hog Wild, depending on how things break.
I imagine it will still be a very difficult game, and quite positioning intensive, and require some luck, but I believe that style of pig list will be more advantaged into the match up than a beast brick. If you prefer a beast brick, we can work on brainstorming for that as well though.
Unfortunately since you are a newer pig player, I don't know what you collection looks like, so it is hard to give more tailored advice; I certainly don't want to be like "buy these X things" if it is a situation where you would rather change strategies than put down money.
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Post by danfromchicago on Jun 10, 2018 17:52:08 GMT
MAT 9/11/13 Slaughterhousers seem not to be the worst in this particular match ...
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Post by danfromchicago on Jun 10, 2018 17:55:53 GMT
My wm/h discussion groups seem to think slaughterhousers aren't bad, maybe a point too much costwise
The main problem is Thornfall; the benefits are lackluster at best.
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Post by bigk on Jun 10, 2018 18:17:10 GMT
Thanks for your replies! Gaston- I have access to most of the pig side of the faction. 3 road hogs, 3 war hogs, 3 gun boars, 2 splatter boars, 6 razor boars, 2 units of bone grinders, 2 units of brigands, 2 units of Valkyries, and most of the support solos with all the casters. As well as the meat thresher.
I have to say even with the “bad match ups” we have, I do love this faction! Maybe I’ll pick up some slaughterhouses......
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Post by Azahul on Jun 10, 2018 22:41:55 GMT
I would strongly second Midas. I've been running Midas infantry-heavy for a little while now and there are hardly any Troll lists I wouldn't rate it strongly into. Between Death March, Calamity, and the native high Mat of pig infantry (Brigands with Prey, Slaughterhousers with Powerful Charge, Valkyries with Gang, etc.) and strong damage dealing it isn't hard to remove the likes of Champions, and Slaughterhousers and Bone Grinders have the added advantage of being able to ignore Tough. danfromchicago is also right that the main weakness of pig infantry lists is that Thornfall is a poor theme. I give Commandos a miss and run a battlegroup made entirely of Splatter Boars and I'm not exactly wringing strong value from those Mat 5, P+S 11, 0.5" melee range Retaliatory Strikes. Feels like playing a theme force that only gives you free models most of the time.
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mazog
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Post by mazog on Jun 10, 2018 22:59:35 GMT
Troll player here. I have some counter-arguments for Gaston, but first I will tell you that champs really dislike simultaneous attacks and fire. Farrow are very good at applying both via road hogs. Boostable AOEs will also make them unhappy, and corrosion doesn't help. Mostly, though, go with the sprays.
Gaston, you are planning for an extreme worst case scenario, I don't think any experienced players put more than one (maybe two) sorcerers on the same unit, even if it is legal. The other concern I have with your advice is that without calamity or dice spikes, most of the champs will survive and get feated back to full health. I would have no concern running my champs to engage your gun line, and under cold stone speed buff they should be fast enough to do it. The hog wild will also not get you any charges if Madrak1 feated this round, since his models cannot be targeted by charges for a round. Oh, and if you don't overkill the champ a lot, Sanguine Bond lets me ignore tough-breaking things like sniper and anatomical precision by declaring the damage to be from SB, not your attack.
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Post by gobber on Jun 10, 2018 23:36:08 GMT
FWIW, while I agree with the Midas-is-probably-best advice Helga also does pretty well in this matchup. If the champs cluster for defensive line, then they're making your entire army pseudoweaponmasters on feat turn. Distraction can debuff champs' defense and retaliatory strikes; Glacier King has to worry about being locked out of the game via distraction/muzzle/valkspam. Dash lets your pigs keep up with the northstone on threat ranges, and the brigands can back out of jam if need be with parry.
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Post by Azahul on Jun 10, 2018 23:45:07 GMT
Gaston, you are planning for an extreme worst case scenario, I don't think any experienced players put more than one (maybe two) sorcerers on the same unit, even if it is legal. The other concern I have with your advice is that without calamity or dice spikes, most of the champs will survive and get feated back to full health. I think you can reasonably expect Calamity at the very least, and the nature of making 12+ attacks is that dice spikes are pretty much guaranteed. Unless your opponent gets very lucky on the Tough checks they'll probably lose a couple of Champions no matter what. I would have no concern running my champs to engage your gun line, and under cold stone speed buff they should be fast enough to do it. The hog wild will also not get you any charges if Madrak1 feated this round, since his models cannot be targeted by charges for a round. Oh, and if you don't overkill the champ a lot, Sanguine Bond lets me ignore tough-breaking things like sniper and anatomical precision by declaring the damage to be from SB, not your attack. The two Tough-ignoring rules pigs (and Midas specifically) are likely to leverage are Grievous Wounds (on hit, so Sanguine Bond doesn't get a chance to trigger) and Take Down (on Slaughterhousers, who might even have Battle Lust, so overkilling by a lot is usually a safe bet). I don't think we actually have any Anatomical Precision or Sniper off the top of my head since the Efaarit lost it in the edition transition.
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mazog
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Post by mazog on Jun 11, 2018 1:49:43 GMT
Yeah, that works pretty well. My minion player mostly plays Gators, but he got rather distracted by menoth and grymkin this edition, so I don't have as much experience with Farrow as I thought.
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tomw
Junior Strategist
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Post by tomw on Jun 11, 2018 7:15:52 GMT
I’ve been playing madrak 1 solidly since he changed in CID. I have to agree with others that Midas sounds like a good call. Calamity is great (although you will be needing 10s to hit, or 8’s with curse), then death march and battle list are great for doing the amount of damage you need. Do remember though that if the troll player is playing in band of heroes, Midas probably won’t be able to use his feat.
Madrak also likes to play very central, so if you can run models into the far corners of zones to contest, it can be very problematic for him. Feralgeists or gremlin swarms can absolutely ruin his day, as often, madrak will have to deal with them himself.
The other thing is that you absolutely have to out-threat him, ideally by a significant margin. Lanyssa is super helpful, but again, she’ll need 9s to hit.
Dr Arkadius is probably better than you’d imagine in this matchup. Sanguine bond is great for spreading around little rifle attacks and such, but really painful for spreading around big hits from heavies. Arkadius threats so far that madrak will have to use his feat early, losing the healing aspect. Then, primal, overtaking war hogs will eat champion units.
One final thing- grevious wounds is good because it ignores tough, but doesn’t get around sanguine bond, as there is no damage removal element. As far as I know, nothing in the game gets around sanguine bond.
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Post by gobber on Jun 11, 2018 8:09:45 GMT
Do remember though that if he’s playing in band of heroes, Midas probably won’t be able to use his feat. Madrak also likes to play very central, so if you can throw models into the far corners of zones to contest, it can be very problematic for him. Feralgeists or gremlin swarms can absolutely ruin his day, as often, madrak will have to deal with them himself. The other thing is that you absolutely have to out-threat him, ideally by a significant margin. Lanyssa is super helpful, but again, she’ll need 9s to hit. Dr Arkadius is probably better than you’d imagine in this matchup. Sanguine bond is great for spreading around little rifle attacks and such, but really painful for spreading around big hits from heavies. Arkadius threats so far that madrak will have to use his feat early, losing the healing aspect. Then, primal, overtaking war hogs will eat champion units. One final things- grevious wounds is good because it ignores tough, but doesn’t get around sanguine bond, as there is no damage removal element. As far as I know, nothing in the game gets around sanguine bond. That's a good point about the feat. In that case Midas can probably still find a way to get the subpar use from it to heal a bit of chip damage on a beast though. This thread seems to be assuming thornfall alliance (which is one of the themes most in need of a release cycle and accompanying CID). You have to head over to WWFF for gremlins/feralgeists/overtake etc which is generally more powerful because of recent gator support releases but prevents brigands. Two things prevent sanguine bond: out-of-formation and not-an-attack. Orin's boosted arcs are good at finishing off wounded champs. Continuous effects (namely road hogs/splatter boars) can help as well. Helga's feat also (unreliably) threatens both effects: slamming champs into each other for non-attack collateral damage on the second one (collateral damage from a primaled heavy can absolutely one-shot champs) or more rarely getting them out of formation.
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Post by Azahul on Jun 11, 2018 10:06:52 GMT
I’ve been playing madrak 1 solidly since he changed in CID. I have to agree with others that Midas sounds like a good call. Calamity is great (although you will be needing 10s to hit, or 8’s with curse), then death march and battle list are great for doing the amount of damage you need. Do remember though that if the troll player is playing in band of heroes, Midas probably won’t be able to use his feat. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't Champions only Def 14 against guns and spells? Or are you assuming the presence of a Stone Scribe Chronicler? I can't say he seems to be a popular choice in my experience compared to the many other support options, but I guess it's a possibility. I'd probably care more about the Feat if I even used Midas's Feat even half my games into non-RFP. Losing Advance Move on his Warbeasts in the transition from Mark II to Mark III sadly means his more threatening, more fragile, non-recurring warrior models usually cop the brunt of enemy attention anyway. One final thing- grevious wounds is good because it ignores tough, but doesn’t get around sanguine bond, as there is no damage removal element. As far as I know, nothing in the game gets around sanguine bond. Yeah, the point about Grievous Wounds was more about how it shuts down Madrak1's Feat more than anything.
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tomw
Junior Strategist
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Post by tomw on Jun 11, 2018 11:47:45 GMT
I’ve been playing madrak 1 solidly since he changed in CID. I have to agree with others that Midas sounds like a good call. Calamity is great (although you will be needing 10s to hit, or 8’s with curse), then death march and battle list are great for doing the amount of damage you need. Do remember though that if the troll player is playing in band of heroes, Midas probably won’t be able to use his feat. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't Champions only Def 14 against guns and spells? Or are you assuming the presence of a Stone Scribe Chronicler? I can't say he seems to be a popular choice in my experience compared to the many other support options, but I guess it's a possibility. Sorry, should have clarified- I’m assuming the champs will be within 3” of the glacier king, so they’ll have concealment. Very good point about greivous wounds interacting with the feat though. It’s incredibly demoralising to bring a whole unit of champs down to a couple of boxes each and then watch them all heal back to full! Also, I hadn’t realised that Midas’ feat can be used to heal beasts who haven’t been returned to play- could be very useful!
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Post by Gaston on Jun 11, 2018 14:36:49 GMT
Well I will say that I am no troll player, just an outsider looking in. Gaston, you are planning for an extreme worst case scenario, I don't think any experienced players put more than one (maybe two) sorcerers on the same unit, even if it is legal. That matches what I have seen, but I would also rather math for the worst and leave myself some cushion for poor dice, terrain, unoptimal positioning, etc. The other concern I have with your advice is that without calamity or dice spikes, most of the champs will survive and get feated back to full health. I would have no concern running my champs to engage your gun line, and under cold stone speed buff they should be fast enough to do it. The hog wild will also not get you any charges if Madrak1 feated this round, since his models cannot be targeted by charges for a round. I think we are coming from slightly different play experiences with Madrak1. In my small pond he is typically seen in Band of heroes, so I don't get access to continuous effects (which I would obv love on Champs), but the upside is he doesn't get the +1 Spd, so I am able to kite him (13" vs. 9/10" charge/run instead of 10/12"). I would offer up since Northkin doesn't have the RFP that Band does, jamming with the beasts Midas takes could be quite valuable for gaining an extra turn of shooting, as then he will be able to feat them back.
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