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Post by Trollock on Dec 4, 2018 14:17:44 GMT
The Tharn A-Z continues (sort of). I played a game against mercs. He had Magnus2/Ossrum and i had Krueger 2 and Kromac 2 that i wanted to play (not saying they make a pair). We discussed what match ups would be fun/playable for the both of us and ended up with Kromac 2 vs Ossrum. This is something that most of us SHOULD do when we go to gaming night. Talk to your opponent and figure out a fun game instead of just playing what ever you want. You can do a regular tournament selection of lists if you wanna, but if you have a couple of lists kicking around that you want to try out and your opponent does the same, you can get more meaningful games with some discussion. My last game with Krueger 1 vs Siege was an example of a match up that was terribad for my opponent and it wasnt a super fun game. It was not that i had teched against him, but i only prepared one list, and so did he, and then things can go awry... Kromac 2 DH vs Ossrum Irregulars This match up felt decent for the both of us. We figured that since he had spray bunnies rather than gun bunnies he might not remove my heavies at range trivially, and i have some real punch with my feat to handle his feat. He will get the alpha most likely, but i might be able to retaliate hard enough. Lets see how it works! Lists He has lots of sprays that REALLY hurt my Ravagers, but he has limited options to hurt my beasts. I have played K2 once before and he has never played Ossrum, so... expect some sub par play ok? Terrain, Scenario and Deployment As always, he wins the roll to go first (that damned Anastasia...) and chooses to do so. We play invasion. He has proxies a lot of spray bunnies with Cinerators.
He deploys symmetrically with bunnies on the flanks and heavies in the middle. Kell is to the west and Eiryss to the east. I decide to stick all the Ravagers to the west. That way they will not be exposed to half the bunnies which is nice. I did chose the west for them cause i figured the forest might be useful, and i think i can use the central forest as a base for my battle group. Ghetorix deploys to the east as i figure he is the only sturdy piece i have and he might be able to lure in an alpha and my other stuff behind the forest could perhaps counter punch. Mercs turn 1 He moves up pretty aggressively. Going first against a list with very limited shooting allows him to set up outside run-and-engage-range and he threatens 13" with his SPD 4 heavies next turn so... Ill just have to take them to the face and hope for the best? Circle turn 1 Ghetorix tramples up with animus. He is in threat range of a LOT of stuff if he feats, but i do not think it is viable to be much more careful as i might get pushed out of scenario. I also take a leap of faith and do NOT feat. I know his feat is coming nest turn , but if i feat defensively my counter punch will be weak, and i have claimed very little board space. Im hoping he can survive, allowing for a crushing counter attack. B&C and the other beasts stay behind the forest outside threat ranges. Caul gets corpses in preparation for next turn. Kromak walks up on the hill. He does not get any spells out cause he cant reach Ghetorix (bad play) for Vengeful and Awakened Spirit seems sort of weak (should have put it on the stalker though). The cauldron did not move up, which was a mistake that will hurt later on. I place 2+2 Ravagers in the zone. He can kill them, but not the others (i however forgot about the +3 SPD from the feat...) and he might not want to trigger vengeance, and if he does, my other ravagers could perhaps charge in next turn. Mercs turn 2 He goes for the feat and allocates 2 to one of the drillers. He did something else with his focus too. Upkeeping im guessing but cant remember, but only one Driller was loaded. He feats and moves up pretty far, but outside serious threat ranges. He shoots Ghetorix with all the sprays, hurting the stalker and Caul a bit, but not killing them. He then sends in the one driller and dings me up seriously, but does not kill me. Second driller charges, and sticks the unboosted 8, then the boosted 13 needed to kill ghetorix. *womp womp* On the west flank he sticks kiss on the ravagers and starts shooting. He is not fully commiting deep with the feat move and he kills perhaps 5 Ravagers. Anastasia ambushes and charges the CA on the gray Ravagers in the back (if i could only remember to plan for her once...) and with the help of Kiss, she one shots him, taking away vengeance. His artillery with FFE shoots at the Pureblood, and the blast hits Brighid. It does exactly 4 points of damage to her though which was super important. I could have used Hyper Aggressive on the pureblood i think, but i forgot. [pic missing] Circle turn 2 His feat is up, and i lost my best heavy. Lest feat and punch back and see what happens shall we? Kromac gets corpses from the pot. The non-vengeanceing tharn kill Anastasia and one of them goes to be sliced up for inspiration for Caul. Kromac has to go before the beasts if i want the feat, and that means he cant reach the heavies. Instead he goes in against two gun bunnies on the west side, carefully staying far enough east to allow me to contest with the stalker and be in the feat still. He kills two bunnies and ends up camping 2. The white tharn charge in and ding up the remaining bunnies, but i do not think they killed any. Stalker walks to the east in to the zone and murders one driller who was the prey. It then punches one of the blasters a bit. B&C moves Prey to the other driller and charge in. They do great at first, with Brighid rolling like a boss, but Cauls dice are poor, and i kill the driller to the last box on the last attack. phew! Prey goes on the Blaster that was dinged up by the stalker. The Pureblood cant reach anything in melee now, so he assaults Kell, getting him, and A&H in the spray. He boosts and kills all three! This is looking way more fun already! no scoring yet.
Mercs turn 3 This turn my opponent does almost nothing. My feat in combination with him having no heavies means he has a real tough time killing anything. He shoots a little but nothing significant happens. Both my heavies are half dead though. and he did kill B&C.
no scoring now either.
Circle turn 3 I decide that the Pureblood is more important than the Stalker and leave 2 fury on the stalker. He passes the threshold though. I try to give corpses to Kromac, but im way too far away now. Between Kromac and the Ravagers i do clear the west zone though. The pureblood charges in against Orin in the middle, killing him with the spray, but missing ossrum with the boosted spray. I wail at the objective, but do almost nothing to it The Cauldron boosts a lash at the hurt Blaster and does the last 3 points needed to it. The stalker punches the bunnies a bit, but doesnt kill any i think. I score the west zone, so 1-0 to circle. Mercs turn 4 He has been too passive with his artillery and even if he runs he cant contest my west zone. Instead he focuses on my two heavies, and between all the shooting he has he actually kills both. Ossrum enters the east zone to score. He kills the blood shaman i had placed in the middle zone for contesting, but not my objective. We score one each so 2-1 to circle. Circle turn 4 I have the ravagers press forward to kill his objective. Kromac runs to score the middle zone. I cant contest him though.
5-2 to circle
Mercs turn 5 He thinks he has to assassinate and goes for it with the two sprays and the gunner and eiryss. He does not roll well and leaves me on 8 boxes. In retrospect i should have stayed back with Kromac and not been greedy to score, but i got lucky and survived. He contests the west zone with artillery and the middle with bunnies. He still scores the east zone.
5-3 to circle
[pic missing]
Circle turn 5 I heal Kromac with the objective (should have used fury too i guess) and run back to the west to hide. the gray Ravagers kill the artillery in the west zone. The white Ravagers kill the artillery in the east, one contests his zone and the others ding up his spray bunnies. I score the west zone.
6-3 to circle
Mercs turn 6 He has no clock left, and he will lose on scenario on turn 7 we figure if nothing else. He cant get any attacks except Eiryss on to Kromac, and he clocks out before doing anything really.
Circle win!
Post game analysis I think it was a fun game. It was even and i vastly prefer such games. We both made mistakes and learned a lot. I think the match up was as reasonable as i had hoped, though i underestimated teh threat of his bunnies. +3 SPD makes their threat 18" with sprays, and if he really tried he might have been able to cripple the ravager units more on turn 2, which would have helped him a lot later on.
I like my list actually. Kromac does very little for the list, but he just becomes such a beast himself with divine inspiration and corpses that it skews things. I really prefer playing against heavier targets such as this, but against infantry, the ravagers will be all stars with MAT 9. I can really recommend trying this if you want something different!
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Post by Trollock on Dec 7, 2018 9:12:39 GMT
And the Tharn journey continues. The time HAD come to Krueger 2, but im playing against mercs in CID and we decided that it would be a too one sided match up, so i cheated a bit and played my Mohsar list instead. This report will be posted on the CID forums as well both from my perspective and from my opponent's together with our comments on the viability of the models tested. Mohsar DH vs Damiano's SteelheadsListsI have never played Mohsar and therefore i insisted on including a wild Argus for jank assassination. I also wanted some good shooting to finish off any caster i can catch, but other than that this is fairly standard stuff. I did NOT include the corpse-package, so no LotF, Croc Pot or Blood Shaman. That package is super good, and it might be even more so with Moshar due to being able to charge pillars and then shoot with LotF but i have played it with basically every one, and it DOES eat in to the options for the list. I wanted something a little different this time. Terrain, Scenario and DeploymentWe play stand off and i lose the roll to go first. I give my opponent the side where he will have the most terrain to struggle with as he cant ignore it like i can. He deploys pretty symmetrically with a unit of halbs and cav on each side of the forest. each side gets a jack, but the rifles are more to the east side. Support is fairly central. In response i place my army in a very skewed fashion. Two champions and the shadowhorn (proxied by snapjaw) to the west. My bloodtrackers are to the east. My Ravagers are slightly west of the center and two min units of bloodpack (proxied by trollkin champions) are more to the east. Moshar is placed to take advantage of the rubble. My argus and Feral are both behind the infantry. I figure they do not need to be very far up here.
Mercs T1 He runs forward, but respects my shooting threat ranges. His army is sort of layered but Stannis (right behind the objective) makes that viable. Circle T1 I put Mirrage on the bloodtrackers and fan them out, mostly outside 12" of the halbardiers. They can run 12" and engage 2" more but if i place 2" backwards i can disengage any tracker who was not B2B with a halbardier. I have Prey on the halbs, so im hoping they run in and i get to murder them all. I put up two pillars in my zone for no real reason. My ravagers run up so he can charge 2 of them, but that would trigger vengeance and allow me to reach him with my other Ravagers.
The Shadowhorn walks, puts up animus and jumps forward. He cant really be attacked but i need the fury anyway. the two Champions hang out in the woods outside charge range and facing the board edge to not get screwed by Anastasia. While im positioning those two i remember that there is ANOTHER flank as well, and Nuala is in easy charge range for Anastasia. I use my night witch to run straight to the side and stand so that Anastasia can actually not land anywhere in the back arc of Nuala. She can still shoot, but maybe this helps? The night witch should be able to kill anastasia in return at least. My Argus also runs to the side as a backup plan. Poor placement on my part. You would think i had learned by now... The Bloodpack fan out in the middle. They cant do anything this turn but could be nasty next turn. The Feral runs up with warped ARM just behind the pillars. Mercs T2 He brings in Anastasia to go for Nuala. He does that activation last, but he hilariously does not roll high enough on damage to kill her with the knife. He needs a boosted 9, but that is only 72%(?) chance, and this was one of the other 28% apparently. Phew! The rest of his turn is colored by poor die rolls. He does run in with the halbs against the trackers. He can engage 2 of them B2B. The horses move up and one of them can reach with a shot against a tracker but misses. The Rifles shoot at my pillars i think, rolling poorly but killing one in the end i think. Alten and Rocinante shoot at the Feral, but does not cripple it. On the west flank he does give the halps Repo 5" and send them in against the two Ravagers. Despite MAT 11 (he has the spell on those guys) he actually misses one attack and i tough another and he actually only kills one of them. His other halbs try to repo back to not be in vengeance range at least, but this looks bad. His cav stay behind with Sure foot, hoping to counter punch. [pic missing] Circle T2
On the west side my ravagers pop minifeat and go to town on the halbs, killing all but two (who were hiding behind the central obstruction). I trigger counter charge on the Toro who charges forward on kills one ravager. On the east side i shoot down all but one halb and two horses using bloodtrackers and Blood pack. My witch kills Anastasia, and the argus helps with killing a halb. As my Feral had nothing else to do, he charges one of the remaining horses, warping ARM and kills it.
Moshar feats (lol!) and walks towards the middle of my zone behind the objective. He has a plan... He puts up 3 pillars, two to protect himself and one to protect the Feral. The Shadowhorn can now walk and jump to reach the Toro. He throws him at one of my champions (yeah, you are actually allowed to do that) who is out of range. One of the champions charge him in the back, and the other walks and leaps and punches him in the back and i JUST kill him. In retrospect i could have left him for a turn, since he was knocked down and outside control, but it felt really good! We both have forgotten to contest each others Zones so we score one each. 1-1.
Mercs T3
Alexia places 3 thralls and walks back. With those thralls and the remaining Cav and Nicolas, he kills the shadowhorn and several ravagers. on the east side he manages to kill the pillar protecting the Feral (though a combined charge from two halbs and a boosted hand cannon from Damiano both failed) and the Rifles and Alten kill him to the box. Roccinante who only has one Focus (as he forgot to allocate and my feat prevented power up! yeah!) shoot at the Argus, blasting 3 bloodtrackers, killing 2 of them and crippling the Argus. his remaining Halb and cav on the east do very little though. We both forget to contest again, so 2-2 i guess... Circle T3 Losing both beasts feels really bad, and does not bode well for a long game. In retrospect i might have been able to keep playing just fine, but instead i go for the lol-mode assassination. The blood tracker (who survived the blast from roccinante) can place 2" and run to within 2" of Damiano. Mohsar places up to that girl and casts doppler bark followed by curse of shadows on Damiano. He punches him once and actually does 4 damage. I can shoot him with one wolf rider (not in the back) and 4 Bloodpack and he dies with one blood pack to spare. Post Game Analysis I played a bit too "yolo" with my beasts. I did not need them to kill his models in a long game really, but i did need them for Fury. I could have gone for attrition, and cleared both zones pretty trivially, scoring 3, possibly 4 if i had attacks to spare for the objective. I do not think he could have recovered after that, but as we both played new casters we did not have too much clock left, and i did not want to lose that way. Assassination was fun at least. Him being so close to the objective made it harder to see him though in combination with the obstruction. The assassination is WAY more reliable if that is a forest instead Mohsar felt fun and worked just fine, just like all other things basically. I can definitely see myself playing the list again. Not having the corpse-package might be the wrong move in the end. Reducing the battle group to a heavy and two lights might be a thing, and i do have a lot of solos, some who can be part of that package instead. Felt fun with something different though. the Shadowhorn especially seems like a very fun piece to play. Moving the opponents models IS the most fun thing in the game imo
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Post by LoS Jaden on Dec 8, 2018 2:41:28 GMT
I think the corpse package is really strong with Mohsar. Being able to charge your own pillars is soooo dumb with LotF.
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Post by Trollock on Dec 8, 2018 6:33:47 GMT
I think the corpse package is really strong with Mohsar. Being able to charge your own pillars is soooo dumb with LotF. Yeah, you are probably right. LotF would have finished off Damiano by himself pretty much if he was standing near thr objective like that. Still i Love the fact that the list didnt feel weak without that package. Really speaks for the depth of the theme imo.
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Post by Trollock on Dec 15, 2018 22:19:18 GMT
Here is another battle report with Grayle. Ill most likely bring him to the next tournament, so i have played him a couple of times. He is surprisingly deep, and i think a good player could do great things with him. He probably has the best feat i never use in the game Grayle DH vs Maelok Blindwater I have played against Maelok several times now. With Krueger Bones and with Kaya 3 Argus spam. It has gone horribly bad, so lets see what DH can do against the high ARM and boxes here!
Terrain, Scenario and Deployment
The terrain can be clearly seen below. We play Recon II. As always, i lose the roll to go first. He has a lack of pathfinder (though he can ignore the water, which i forgot). In retrospect, i think i should have taken the other side as it would have funneled his army something fierce on turn 2, and that cant be bad for me, though he would probably just feat and ignore everything anyway. I took the flag with the trench, that was basically my thoughts on the subject here lol.
He deploys as one could expect. Beasts and caster in the middle, and Gators all around. You cant see it in the pic, but this guy has this whole army painted up to a great standard, despite playing minions for less than 6 months AND having 4 kids. Amazing!
I elect to have my Ravagers mostly to the east, with Bloodtrackers to the west. My beasts are behind the Ravagers, cause i dont want to spread out very much, and they will not be frontline anyway. Snapjaw is the Shadowhorn, and Baldur 1 is Grayle. Bloodtrackers Prey the western Gators and B&C Prey on the ones second from the east.
Minions T1 Runs forward.
Circle T1 I am reminded that playing against Ambush is SUPER annoying. I am seriously considering starting to put Bloodweavers in my lists again. They never do anything, but this feeling of having to watch the flank is horrible. Bloodtrackers want NO part of a gatorman Husk in the face.
I fan out the trackers and get Death March up on them. Ravagers also fan out, and i deliberately place a couple of guys in threat range to threat vengeance attacks. LoTF gets Stormrager and full corpses and runs to the Trench. The rest of the force stay passive to counter punch. Grayle wals toward the flag.
Minions T2 He ambushes in one Husk on each flank. On the west i have stayed outside run and engage-range, but on the east he can actually get a charge on a ravager. He scatters a blast at the Bloodtrackers with the spitter and kills 3-4 of them(!). He feats and charge in with Gators on the east. One can reach LotF and hits him for 4 damage. He also kills a Ravager. The Husk there miss its attack. He charges a Ravager on the east too, and i think he triggers vengeance and i survive. He debated trying to keep his wrastler outside threat range of the Stalker, but with my feat that is 14" and i could get to him by charging the objective even if he is behind the cloud, so he walks up a bit. He places the Chef (proxied by a FG) on his flag.
Circle T2 I have a face full of ARM 22 Gators, BUT i didnt take much damage. Lets see what this list can do shall we? Grayle charges and kills a Gator. In a super corner case i put down a cloud on the east Husk so it cant spray when i punch it. He sprints to the flag. On the east my Ravagers kill maybe 2 gators and the Husk. The explosion kills one Ravager though. My Champion stabs a bit and repos forward to engage 2 gators.
The shadowhorn jumps forward and throws a gator at another gator to control them. I think my stalker killed a Gator and sprinted back too. Seems i killed 5 on the east flank all in all. LotF shoots at the knocked down Gator and places in there. He murders like 2 Gators, the Soul Slave and cripples the Spitter. He is empty on corpses after that and will die, but getting that Soul Slave is important.
On the west flank i have two Ravagers kill the Husk. One of them toughs from the explosion, and was knocked down. The rest of the unit kills another gator, but that is about it for them. The bloodtracker shoot at their prey, but only manages to kill one gator. That was worse than i expected, but in retrospect it was roughly average.
I cant contest his flag, and i couldnt clear mine, so he scores, 1-0 to Minions.
Minions T3 I killed quite a lot on his feat turn, and he tries to recover. He casts Mortality on the west Ravagers and kills 3, including the CA. He also kills several Blood Trackers with 2 gators. On the east though, he accomplishes almost nothing. He does kill LotF, but he does not kill my goat despite sending in a Wrastler (totally unbuffed though, and it had to charge). He triggers vengeance on the Ravagers though.
He scores his flag again, so 2-0 to minions.
Circle T3 WTF? nothing really happened? It feels like i can grind this down now. I clear my flag and zone with Ravagers and Grayle. B&C who had hung back charges and kills the Wrastler with the help of the champion. The Goat throws the damaged Spitter in to my lines and gets dodge up too. I kill it with the stalker who can then sprint back. I think i feated this turn but it had no effect what so ever lol.
Blood Trackers do nothing really and i think i only kill like 1 Gator on the west flank. I still do not contest his flag, but i score 2 points to make up for the loss. 3-2 to minions.
Minions T4 He is really running out of steam. He kills my champion with a sac strike on the void leech. He kills Brighid with another sac strike on another void leech. He kills like 1 more ravager and maybe a bloodtracker or two.
We are not contesting each others flags, so 4-3 to minions.
Circle T4 I get a grip on his stuff now and kill a lot of stuff. I think he didnt cast the +2 ARM, but rather revived or something, so i could chew through lots of stuff. I could not clear my zone though, but i killed the witch doctor scoring his flag and his objective. We are really low on clock now though-
5-4 to circle!
Minions T5 He has an assassination that basically requires him to roll a LOT of 6s (im camping 0, but have dodge up). He can spray to get rid of my blood witch who is blocking a charge lane. Then i can revive a gator who can POSSIBLY get in range to the witch doctor for a sac strike. He can then get a gator charge (no bite) and a sac strike. The plan fails right away though as he fails to kill the blood witch. He has no time, im up on CP and Maelok is in easy charge range of a LOT of stuff, so we call it there.
Circle wins!
Post Game Thoughts This list is a LOT of fun actually. I think that if i played it 10+ times i might be able to start using the feat and then i think it is a really strong list in many cases. The feat is much harder to use than i expected, and it requires you to plan our turn well, but if you can pull it off i think it can be very strong. Also, i allows you to play in to guns way better than one would think, as you get a turn of stealth. Its not a strong anti gun list i think, but if you lose list chicken you still have a chance to do some things.
LotF is absolutely bonkers. I would love to have a pureblood in the list to have all the support possible for him and caul, but i am not willing to drop the stalker, and i cant get the points to quite work out well without it. I CAN drop the Champion as it is not essential to the list, but im not sure it is worth it. The Goat is also super good in the list. The threat to walk 14" and then throw on the feat turn is very frightening, and throwing heavies back in to my lines is super fun!
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Post by macdaddy on Dec 16, 2018 14:02:31 GMT
Happy to see you give Grayle a spin. He’s a blast and his super solos get lots of work done. Caul under storm rager is disgusting lol
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Post by Trollock on Dec 24, 2018 22:45:22 GMT
I did some magnetizing
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vlad
BattleBox Champ
Posts: 53
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Post by vlad on Dec 25, 2018 15:06:16 GMT
Thanks for all the battle reports - always enjoy reading them.
What’s your impression of the Bloodtrackers with Grayle? Would it be worth considering Blood Witches + Haruspex and the Death Wolves instead for a similar price tag?
I’d really like to hear what you think.
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Post by paradox on Dec 25, 2018 16:14:59 GMT
I did some magnetizing I especially ran into issues trying to get the gnarlhorns head to fit when I did my kits.
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Post by Trollock on Dec 25, 2018 20:35:59 GMT
Thanks for all the battle reports - always enjoy reading them. What’s your impression of the Bloodtrackers with Grayle? Would it be worth considering Blood Witches + Haruspex and the Death Wolves instead for a similar price tag? I’d really like to hear what you think. Bloodtrackers are super solid imo. The extra MAT and vengeance that Grayle can provide is nifty for sure. As for Bloodweavers, im not a fan in general. Especially not with the Haruspex. I can totally see myself paying 8 points for an ambushing unit that is super annoying, but 12 points is way too much. They really need to do work if you pay that much...
I can totally see the Death Wolves with vengeance be a thing, but they DO place severe restrictions on list building, as they will either cost you a free solo (bad) or force you to play a minimal battle group and then bend over backwards to get exactly 60-61 points of tharn as you will spend 5 points on the pot. I have a build for that i have not tried yet, but i actually went with min wolfriders there rather than Bloodweavers.
All of this is speculation though
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vlad
BattleBox Champ
Posts: 53
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Post by vlad on Dec 26, 2018 13:21:03 GMT
Thanks for all the battle reports - always enjoy reading them. What’s your impression of the Bloodtrackers with Grayle? Would it be worth considering Blood Witches + Haruspex and the Death Wolves instead for a similar price tag? I’d really like to hear what you think. Bloodtrackers are super solid imo. The extra MAT and vengeance that Grayle can provide is nifty for sure. As for Bloodweavers, im not a fan in general. Especially not with the Haruspex. I can totally see myself paying 8 points for an ambushing unit that is super annoying, but 12 points is way too much. They really need to do work if you pay that much...
I can totally see the Death Wolves with vengeance be a thing, but they DO place severe restrictions on list building, as they will either cost you a free solo (bad) or force you to play a minimal battle group and then bend over backwards to get exactly 60-61 points of tharn as you will spend 5 points on the pot. I have a build for that i have not tried yet, but i actually went with min wolfriders there rather than Bloodweavers.
All of this is speculation though Thanks anlot for the input! I think I’ll give Grayle some table time in the near future, and see how they Weavers and Death Wolves work out.
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Post by Trollock on Dec 26, 2018 20:24:44 GMT
Bloodtrackers are super solid imo. The extra MAT and vengeance that Grayle can provide is nifty for sure. As for Bloodweavers, im not a fan in general. Especially not with the Haruspex. I can totally see myself paying 8 points for an ambushing unit that is super annoying, but 12 points is way too much. They really need to do work if you pay that much...
I can totally see the Death Wolves with vengeance be a thing, but they DO place severe restrictions on list building, as they will either cost you a free solo (bad) or force you to play a minimal battle group and then bend over backwards to get exactly 60-61 points of tharn as you will spend 5 points on the pot. I have a build for that i have not tried yet, but i actually went with min wolfriders there rather than Bloodweavers.
All of this is speculation though Thanks anlot for the input! I think I’ll give Grayle some table time in the near future, and see how they Weavers and Death Wolves work out. Great! Im really liking him atm. Hope you have as much fun and success as i have
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Post by Trollock on Dec 30, 2018 21:00:31 GMT
"Bottom of the Barrel"-Tournament
Yesterday i was at a small tournament (8 ppl) with a "bottom of the barrel"-theme. You could only play bad casters and there had been polls in the faction facebook groups to determine what casters were the worst for each faction. As a circle players i could chose from Kaya 1, 2, Krueger 1 and... Grayle. Turns out there arent 4 bad casters in Circle anymore it seems. I quickly decided to play Grayle, and agonized a bit on the second list, but i ended up with Krueger 1 built to kill ARM and heavy shooting. Game 1 - Grayle vs Horgle 2
This game was against ryssen2. Last we played he messed up totally and i killed him on turn 2 with Krueger. Before the game he said "this time you arent playing Krueger, so you cant just kill me"... That can surely not come back to haunt him, right?
His list was in KC with a Bomber and Blitzer and a WW. He had a unit of Highwaymen and a unit of Bushwhackers and two min units of sluggers. On top of that was the usual support.
Turn 1 I forgot to take pics before the game, but nothing fancy happened there. He got to go first and ran up. I also ran forward, and i Feated to buy a turn where his shooting would not be super bad for me.
Turn 2 He does some shooting. He triggered vengeance on both units of Ravagers by killing a couple, and he also had a nice scatter from the bomber that lit 4 things on fire, including my Ravager Shaman. I made a couple of tough rolls, and tough plus healing was VERY good this turn, as was the no knock down from the Shaman. He has the WW in the east zone, but is otherwise VERY far back.
OK, so Horgle is actually standing behind his objective camping 1... Time for the LotF! He is fully loaded up with Corpses and Puppet strings and Storm Rager. I think that if he hits all attacks (needing 4s) and rolls average damage he does 16 points to Horgle, who has 17 boxes. Might as well try! In the end i roll poorly and leave him on maybe 7 boxes (cant remember) and i actually have a Ravager who can charge him too. Still i do not get the job done, so i switch to attrition/scenario. In retrospect i had a fully functional Pureblood who could have assaulted, but when i activated him i had ditched the plan for assassination in my head. I do however clear the west zone and kill some Bushwhackers, but nothing crippling.
I score 2-0
Turn 3 He has Horgle feat and punch his objective twice to trigger ignition. He easily kills the Ravagers that was in his zone and plenty of the other ones too. He kills about half the blood trackers too. i had forgotten about swift hunter so he could reach more of them with the HWM than i expected. He has nothing to contest my zone though, as LotF had eaten him on the previous turn. That was SUPER key it turned out. His WW gets to live the dream a bit and runs over some Ravagers. We score a point each.
3-1 to circle.
If i score 3 points i win. I easily clear the west zone and have the Pureblood assault the damaged objective to kill it off (1 box left). The Champion contests his zone and i win on scenario. I HAD wanted to see what B&C could do to the ARM 23 WW (who was their prey) with Stormrager and Wraithbane but in retrospect they wont nearly kill it. Maybe once the blood shaman is out they can kill it, but scenario saved me from having to play the game any longer. He has the edge on attrition and im running out of options. LotF killing the FG was the winning move apparently. I just disguised it as a failed assassination!
When counting the points, i had killed 2 army points (the FG). That is pretty impressive to win on scenario without killing stuff hehe.
Game 2 - Grayle vs Blaize This game was a bit of list chicken. His other list was Sturgis with gunmages. My Krueger list poops all over that list i think but the Blaize list is immune to electricity. I do not really care about that with Krueger though as he is also immune to POW 10s pretty much no matter if they are electric or not. I go for Grayle as i think that the gunmages arent good enough to chew through all the ravagers, and Grayle seems fine in to Blaize too.
He has a Hurricane and Gallant. He has Storm Lancers (and Laddermore) and Stormblades and then it is support for the rest.
Circle T1 I got to go first this time. I decide to put the Ravagers on the west flank and have the beasts and Bloodtrackers on the east. I press forward sort of as far as i can, but it is crowded between the two buildings on the west. The blood trackers spread out very much as to not get AoEed from the Hurricane.
Cygnar T1 He decides to be cagey and runs the Stormblades back sort of (they were Preyed by the trackers). His Hurricane runs up and stays outside threat of my beasts. His Lancers also stay back to not get charged by Ravagers. He does not trigger vengeance at all.
Circle T2 I run a couple of Ravagers in to engage and force vengeance triggers. The rest bunker up by the cloud. I place two(!) wind blasts in more or less worthless places to prevent an assault shot. No idea what i was thinking with the east one tbh... LotF stays hidden behind the building hoping to be forgotten... The Trackers switch Prey to the Hurricane and does a little bit of work against it, but i roll pretty poorly. My beasts move up outside melee threat of the hurricane, but that is about all they do.
Cygnar T2 He kills a few Ravagers, triggering vengeance. He Feats and the storm Blades assault and kills one Tracker to trigger vengeance. The hurricane aims, but that means he only has one big gun to shoot at the Stalker. He does 10 or so boxes to it but that is it. His Harlan walks up next to his objective, hiding behind the building. No one scores.
Circle T3 I decide it is feat turn. I do my vengeance moves, doing damage with the Ravagers, but nothing really with the trackers. The Ravagers make minced meat out of the Lancers, but Laddermore is only dismounted. I send in the Stalker (who had to shake) against the Hurricane, finishing off one side. The Trackers then shoot it for all they are worth and get it to a handful of boxes i think. They forget to reposition though which was bad. LotF shoot the objective and finishes off the Hurricane and Harlan. The Pureblood hangs back, waiting to retaliate.
I score the west zone with B&C, so 1-0 to me.
Cygnar T3 He decides things look really hopeless, but he has a lot of focus. The Stormblades kill the Stalker and a couple of Trackers and LotF. I think Gallant kills the Ravagers engaging him (triggering vengeance on both units) and he gets a couple more between laddermore and the remaining Stormlance. In a true desperaton play, Blaize then charges forward to the Champion (see the arrow in the pic), killing it and the nearby ravager. He has like 9 focus left. He runs mechanics and squire up to her to make it crowded and he passes the clock.
Circle T4
In a signature move i start to chicken out from an obvious assassination. Grayle charges the squire, killing it, and getting in range to cast Storm Rager on Caul. He sprints to the east back around the building to be safe from Blaize. My remaining Ravagers sort of accidentally murder the remaining Lance, Laddermore AND Gallant (who was the Prey of B&C). One of them charged Blaize too and put some damage in. B&C charges Blaize and easily kills her, after i decided that i should play for attrition instead lol.
Game 3 - Grayle vs Old Witch 1 In a strange turn of events, one guy has to leave, and the guy who was undefeated alongside me decided he might as well drop too and get back to his family, so i get to play the TO instead for the last game so no one had to take a bye. The fun thing is that Niklas (who i would have played in the finals) had Cruicible Guard and i think that Krueger would have been the drop against him. Against Khador though, i go with Grayle. Why change a winning concept?
He has 5 heavies, a unit of Kayazy and some support. Before the game i explained to him how LotF works, and that he can most likely kill his caster if he is not camping a lot. I get to go first and run up the board. I respect the shooting from Behemoth, because boosted blasts are dangerous to my tharn.
I forgot to take a pic after his turn, but what he does is to move up with Behemoth (red arrow) and shoot towards my stalker. He scatters and kills Nuala and the champion and damages the Stalker a bit. Then he moves up the Kayazy to screen (yellow arrows) and his heavies run up (green arrows). Old Witch then moves next to behemoth and casts her spells and feats.
The feat is quite nasty for me, but... LotF is ARM 21 at the moment. I also have the Pureblood in assault range so... i get puppet strings on LotF and walk up. He needs to roll an unboosted 8 on the damage to knock me down, but he doesnt. I shoot behemoth and LotF then kills old witch with two swings... So.. i guess i win?
Post game thoughts First off, Grayle is legit. I will keep playing him after im done with the A-Z play through. His Lord of the Feats is more like KING of the Feast, and remember that the blood shaman was not released yet. With that out he will eat casters for breakfast. The ravagers also seem to over preform every time i play them. Trackers are good, but less reliable i feel as some luckey blasts can ruin their day (enter Baldur 1!). Over all, Tharn feel almost broken and im not even playing the best casters with them. The theme sort of plays itself. There are multiple builds, and not all lists have to be the double ragavers with the corpse eating package, but tbh, pretty much every caster becomes scary with that list. Winning is fun and all, but this feels over the curve for sure.
I guess things will become more fair when ppl are more used to playing against LotF, but even if you do not make obvious positioning mistakes, his mobility is just insane. It is pretty hard for him not to kill way more than he is worth, and you can always go for the important stuff the opponent cant afford to lose.
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Post by paradox on Dec 30, 2018 21:18:20 GMT
So next time also do bottom barrel themes, and get votes on the two worst themes so that you have to have at least 1 list in each theme, on too of bad warlocks.
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Post by Trollock on Dec 31, 2018 1:13:25 GMT
So next time also do bottom barrel themes, and get votes on the two worst themes so that you have to have at least 1 list in each theme, on too of bad warlocks. so... Kaya 1 in wild hunt and kaya 2 in SM? *Barf*
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