Hello all, I am back again with another Cryx Warcaster review.
As mentioned in the previous one, there isn't going to be any order to these, I am just going to do them as get the motivation to do them, usually triggered by a fleeting appreciation of whichever caster tickles my fancy.
This time around it was Mr Banes himself, Goreshade the Cursed. The more and more I read his cards, the more and more I appreciate what he can bring to the party. Never going to dazzle at the top of the pile or rule the tournament scene like some Cryx casters before him, but he does offer some fantastic control and attrition play that we can certainly build around to exploit.
Lets take a look at his card
Shade2 has a decent focus stat of 7, decent enough melee stats with a very good melee weapon should he need it in a pinch (more on that later), a pretty handy immunity to cold and sports DEF and ARM of 15 and 16 respectively - decent enough but never going to stave off any serious assassination attempts.
Goreshade packs a fantastic melee weapon, Voass. It is a RNG 2, Pow 15 sword that inflicts Stationary on a hit so long as the target is not immune to cold. If he needs to, Shade can certainly get stuck in to finish things off himself. Though, if you plough him into the fold, you better make sure it is to finish things off as he wont survive much of a retaliation.
Arcane Consumption is a cute ability more than anything due to his fairly short CMD range, what it does is inflict d3 damage points to a spellcaster casting a spell within his CMD, and then Shade gets to heal d3 damage points. Never going to change a game but can potentially catch out 1 box spell slingers that stray too close. Goreshade also has Tactician [Bane], another fairly decent ability, great for its synergy with Bane Riders as you can hang them back and then charge straight through a front line screen of Warriors or Knights. Again, cute more than game changing.
Spells
This is where, in my opinion, Goreshade the Cursed really shines, he has a fantastic list of spells and could be a contender for best in faction. They all synergise well with his overall game plan and offer a good balance of Damage, Debuff and Support.
Abyssal Gate - At first glace it is a fairly uninspiring damage spell, short range and POW 12 isn't much to get excited about. However, when a model is damaged by this spell you can place it completely within 3" of its current location. Fantastic tool for kicking tough to kill models out of a zone or to run an Arc Node up, hit a target and pull them in. Great utility spell that offers control and threat extension.
Curse of Shadows - Another great utility spell. It inflicts a -2 ARM penalty to the target and prevents them from making free strikes. It also allows friendly models to pass through enemy models so long as they can completely clear their base. Multi use spell, lets you debuff ARM on a key target as well as let you completely ignore any jams that could cause potential headaches.
Hex Blast - Doesn't need much of an explanation, good damage spells that immediately strips any active Upkeeps or Animi on the target.
Mirage - I like this spell. Gives the target Apparition which lets you place the target model/unit completely within 2" during your control phase. Stick this on a unit like Bane Knights and assuming Vengeance has been triggered they know threat 13". Tie this in with the movement from Abyssal Gate and Goreshade has some real ability to extend threat ranges, something the soft Cryx units are desperate for.
Occultation - Best spell Cryx has, even in a world where Stealth ignoring abilities are ever increasing. Any unit in faction loves them a bit of Stealth. Great spell.
Feat
On a first look, Goreshade the Cursed's feat isn't very good at all. But when you start thinking about ways to apply it, you can really generate a fantastic attrition scenario. Shade's feat lets you remove from play any number of friendly faction trooper models and replace them with the same number of destroyed friendly faction trooper models. There is no restrictions on what you bring back, so you can sac McThralls for example and bring back Bane Riders or RFP some Scrap Thralls to replenish your Bane units. Great mid game feat for when the lines have met to bring back all the models that have been killed by shooting. Bare in mind though, they have to sacrifice their Combat Action on the turn they come back. My personal recommendation is to max out the allowance of Scrap Thralls as they are the cheapest unit he can sac, 6pts of Scrap Thralls that can become 9 models worth of anything else, thats a full Bane unit nearly, or 2 max units of Bane Riders...trading 6pts of models for 40pts of models is a decent feat indeed.
Suggested Units
As we can see, Goreshade can dip his toe into many different roles and push different win conditions. He supports an attrition game with his feat and his spell list is great for a control or scenario game. Taking models and units to emphasise this is a good way to. Think models like Malice and the Machine Wraiths for their ability to move models, a great trick is drag a heavy with Malice, then posses it with a Machine Wraith to move it potentially over 20" from where it started your turn, to be subsequently eaten by Banes. Speaking of Banes, he is about the only Cryx caster than can actively support Banes and actually wants to take them in multiples. Warriors, Riders or Knights, it doesn't matter, a couple of units fit like a glove for Shade2. To prop up the feat, as mentioned before, max out on Scrap Thralls, cheapest unit we have and can become whatever flavour of Banes you have brought that have been killed. After these key ingredients, fill to taste. I like Raiders for their Speed and self buffing through Gang. The only thing you will want to avoid is a big battlegroup, Shade doesn't really do anything to support 'Jacks and his spell list makes him pretty focus hungry. Speaking of, take the Withershadow Combine, not a great deal of spells they can cast from Shade, but the free upkeep can be a godsend and someone like Malice will always appreciate the Puppet Master reroll.
Summary
I like Goreshade, he offers a fairly unique style of play for Cryx in that he actively supports our main poster unit, the Banes. He is also very flexible and should have game into most lists but probably plays a little better in Warmachine factions. This is probably down to the fact that he handles armour fairly easily, between supporting Banes and having an ARM debuff in his arsenal and being able to trivially manipulate the positioning and movements of enemy heavies playing against an ARM skew shouldn't really be that much of a problem. Given that he is very flexible, it can be a blessing and a curse. You will rarely start a turn with nothing to do or no way to better your position but because he 'can' do so many things, it can be easy to lose sight of the overall win condition. Just something to bare in mind, have an overall plan and stick to it. In a Staemroller environment, you will need to pair him with a list that handles gunlines and plays well into Hordes, someone like Venethrax for a specialist or pDenny for that allcomers 'game into anything' list.
My score overall? I'd say 7/10 which could go higher depending on the match up.
Thanks for reading and I'll catch you on the next one.
Steve.
Wednesday 24 August 2016
Tuesday 9 August 2016
Cryx Warcaster Review: Captain Aiakos
Hello everyone,
One of the things I want to cover on this blog are my thoughts and analysis on all of the Cryxian warcasters. I was going to go through them in the order they are in War Room, but seeing as we have confirmation of the Journeyman promotion for Aiakos to full blown Warcaster, it seems fitting to start with him.
CaptainJack Sparrow Aiakos
Overall, I love our new captain. He is one of the first casters I have looked at for Cryx and instantly thought 'wow'. Let's be clear though, he is by no means a powerhouse caster, that is not why I like him. I look at his rules, abilities and spells which for me seem like a whole load of fun, and furthermore they seem to embody the 'feel' of Cryx really well. Aiakos is quick, tricky and can hit with a hard alpha given the right tools. He isn't the best caster we have but he certainly has enough about him to cause some major problems for the opponent.
Stats
He is only FOC 6 which is an issue and no way to gather souls to increase though so resources are going to be at a premium with him. He does have good SPD though and a decent enough MAT of 7. His RAT 5 is a little low considering one of his main gimmicks is using his Harpoon to reel the catch in. He has the same DEF and ARM as Aggy which buts him in the 'distinctly average' section of things. CMD is 9 which is fine and he also has Tough which is interesting, but also a very poor trade considering he lost Stealth from his Journeyman incarnation. Overall he is a very average caster in terms of stats, his main strength is SPD which we will get on to in the next section.
Abilities
Jump - after he has done his normal movement but before his combat action it lets him be placed completely within 5", this is great to extend his melee threat to 12" or 15" on feat turn (17" & 20" if you count the Harpoon drag). The best thing about this is that it is non linear threat, so he can move up his 6", jump 5", Harpoon 5" all in different directions, this gives him some janky threat angles.
Spells
His spell list is both very good and full of traps, lets look at them in a bit more detail:
Assail - Target friendly faction warjack and give them +2" to charge and Slam distance, when you consider that the alpha is so important to Cryx given how fragile they are, an extra 2" can make all the difference - or so I'm told. Good spell, great on feat turn.
Carnage - The old Gaspy3 spell back from the grave, except on a much more fragile model with a smaller CTRL range. Carnage is a great spell that adds +2 to melee attack rolls against enemy models in Aiakos' CTRL area. The trap in this spell is having to move Aiakos up to within 12" of the fight, given how far he threats, you never need to do this. Can be great in a bind to clear a zone or certainly worthwhile if facing down a high DEF Starcrossed brick, as seems fairly norm these days. Okay spell but only cast it if you can get very high reward for doing so.
Scything touch - A Cryx staple, helps with his ARM cracking game and can upkeep it on himself to do some real damage with his absurd personal threat range. Solid 7/10 all the time.
Stranglehold - The Wurmwood classic. This is a great spell and really adds to the alpha threat Aiakos can offer, hit the frontlines then Arc Strangleholds onto the retaliatory pieces and you start getting very favourable piece trades. Only downside is POW 11 and it needs to damage the models to take effect so tougher targets will require a boost and even then it might fail. You could end up sinking a lot of focus into a plan that fails. Fantastic potential but choose targets carefully.
White Squall - Aiakos' unique spell, you basically hit the target and throw them d6" - what a fucking brilliant spell. So many options, from throwing tough models out of zones, to throwing jack screens over their caster to knock them down to throwing Scrap Thralls at the enemy to make them blow up. A very versatile spell which always needs to be planned for. Watch out for the casters that like to hide directly behind a jack or beast that isn't immune to throws. You can throw the larger base over the smaller base and knock them down leaving them very. very vulnerable to assassination with the crazy threat ranges Aiakos can hand out on feat turn. The Kraken for example melee threats 17" and can drop an assault shot from 29" away. Boosted POW 14 (minimum) is enough to seriously threaten soft casters that find themselves without a camp.
Feat
Aiakos has a bit of a wonky feat. but it is good. His battlegroup (himself included) get +3SPD and Assault. The +3SPD bit is superb and really lets us threaten a huge alpha with our already quick jacks and really supplements one of the main issues with have with the character jacks, delivery. The Assault bit, isn't so great. We don't really have any stand out shooty jacks and the jacks that would really benefit, Reaper and Malice, don't really get full benefit as you can't Drag then buy more attacks if you didn't end your move already in melee (before you drag). The main use for the feat is cranking up the SPD of his jacks and being able to slingshot a crazy Assault shot from the Kraken. Overall it is pretty good but not great, 5 or 6/10.
Summary
When you breakdown what we have seen, it is clear that Aiakos has a little bit of everything to his game, he can play a control/scenario game quite well between Stranglehold and White Squall and he can facilitate a quite ridiculous assassination game. The trouble is, he is a little bit of a jack of all trades, master of none. He isn't going to punch through a tough caster on full camp and he isn't going to match the control play of a Krueger or Haley.
Overall, he looks like a heap of fun and I am really looking forward to getting him on the table. He will work really well with a Kraken as the threat range he gives it is pretty insane, he also wants infantry that can operate well without support like the Satyxis variants as other than Carnage, (which we discussed earlier as being a bit of a trap spell) he doesn't support infantry at all really. War Witch Sirens and the Withershadow Combine are almost auto includes with him as he is very focus hungry, the latter also offer another cast of Stranglehold (at an increased Magic Ability level) and a Puppet Master reroll for his Harpoon on any given assassination run. Deathjack can also work well, he will always appreciate the extra 5" of threat Aiakos can give him and can also offer another Stranglehold which really ups the control game when taken with the Withershadow Combine.
His main game is to play an 'aggressive control' game, playing fairly forward and using his throw spell and Stranglehold to put the brakes on key pieces, whilst simultaneously threatening with his 20" assassination threat. This is key to his success really, the psychological impact of knowing that Aiakos can get you from 20" will really cause issues for opponents and might force them into a much more defensive strategy, the trick is going to be to master the fine line between pushing hard enough to make it a problem for the opponent and not over extending to expose Aiakos too soon.
I am really looking forward to solving this little puzzle.
If you get him on the table, let me know how it goes.
As always, thanks for reading and I'll catch you on the next one.
Steve
One of the things I want to cover on this blog are my thoughts and analysis on all of the Cryxian warcasters. I was going to go through them in the order they are in War Room, but seeing as we have confirmation of the Journeyman promotion for Aiakos to full blown Warcaster, it seems fitting to start with him.
Captain
Overall, I love our new captain. He is one of the first casters I have looked at for Cryx and instantly thought 'wow'. Let's be clear though, he is by no means a powerhouse caster, that is not why I like him. I look at his rules, abilities and spells which for me seem like a whole load of fun, and furthermore they seem to embody the 'feel' of Cryx really well. Aiakos is quick, tricky and can hit with a hard alpha given the right tools. He isn't the best caster we have but he certainly has enough about him to cause some major problems for the opponent.
Stats
He is only FOC 6 which is an issue and no way to gather souls to increase though so resources are going to be at a premium with him. He does have good SPD though and a decent enough MAT of 7. His RAT 5 is a little low considering one of his main gimmicks is using his Harpoon to reel the catch in. He has the same DEF and ARM as Aggy which buts him in the 'distinctly average' section of things. CMD is 9 which is fine and he also has Tough which is interesting, but also a very poor trade considering he lost Stealth from his Journeyman incarnation. Overall he is a very average caster in terms of stats, his main strength is SPD which we will get on to in the next section.
Abilities
Jump - after he has done his normal movement but before his combat action it lets him be placed completely within 5", this is great to extend his melee threat to 12" or 15" on feat turn (17" & 20" if you count the Harpoon drag). The best thing about this is that it is non linear threat, so he can move up his 6", jump 5", Harpoon 5" all in different directions, this gives him some janky threat angles.
Spells
His spell list is both very good and full of traps, lets look at them in a bit more detail:
Assail - Target friendly faction warjack and give them +2" to charge and Slam distance, when you consider that the alpha is so important to Cryx given how fragile they are, an extra 2" can make all the difference - or so I'm told. Good spell, great on feat turn.
Carnage - The old Gaspy3 spell back from the grave, except on a much more fragile model with a smaller CTRL range. Carnage is a great spell that adds +2 to melee attack rolls against enemy models in Aiakos' CTRL area. The trap in this spell is having to move Aiakos up to within 12" of the fight, given how far he threats, you never need to do this. Can be great in a bind to clear a zone or certainly worthwhile if facing down a high DEF Starcrossed brick, as seems fairly norm these days. Okay spell but only cast it if you can get very high reward for doing so.
Scything touch - A Cryx staple, helps with his ARM cracking game and can upkeep it on himself to do some real damage with his absurd personal threat range. Solid 7/10 all the time.
Stranglehold - The Wurmwood classic. This is a great spell and really adds to the alpha threat Aiakos can offer, hit the frontlines then Arc Strangleholds onto the retaliatory pieces and you start getting very favourable piece trades. Only downside is POW 11 and it needs to damage the models to take effect so tougher targets will require a boost and even then it might fail. You could end up sinking a lot of focus into a plan that fails. Fantastic potential but choose targets carefully.
White Squall - Aiakos' unique spell, you basically hit the target and throw them d6" - what a fucking brilliant spell. So many options, from throwing tough models out of zones, to throwing jack screens over their caster to knock them down to throwing Scrap Thralls at the enemy to make them blow up. A very versatile spell which always needs to be planned for. Watch out for the casters that like to hide directly behind a jack or beast that isn't immune to throws. You can throw the larger base over the smaller base and knock them down leaving them very. very vulnerable to assassination with the crazy threat ranges Aiakos can hand out on feat turn. The Kraken for example melee threats 17" and can drop an assault shot from 29" away. Boosted POW 14 (minimum) is enough to seriously threaten soft casters that find themselves without a camp.
Feat
Aiakos has a bit of a wonky feat. but it is good. His battlegroup (himself included) get +3SPD and Assault. The +3SPD bit is superb and really lets us threaten a huge alpha with our already quick jacks and really supplements one of the main issues with have with the character jacks, delivery. The Assault bit, isn't so great. We don't really have any stand out shooty jacks and the jacks that would really benefit, Reaper and Malice, don't really get full benefit as you can't Drag then buy more attacks if you didn't end your move already in melee (before you drag). The main use for the feat is cranking up the SPD of his jacks and being able to slingshot a crazy Assault shot from the Kraken. Overall it is pretty good but not great, 5 or 6/10.
Summary
When you breakdown what we have seen, it is clear that Aiakos has a little bit of everything to his game, he can play a control/scenario game quite well between Stranglehold and White Squall and he can facilitate a quite ridiculous assassination game. The trouble is, he is a little bit of a jack of all trades, master of none. He isn't going to punch through a tough caster on full camp and he isn't going to match the control play of a Krueger or Haley.
Overall, he looks like a heap of fun and I am really looking forward to getting him on the table. He will work really well with a Kraken as the threat range he gives it is pretty insane, he also wants infantry that can operate well without support like the Satyxis variants as other than Carnage, (which we discussed earlier as being a bit of a trap spell) he doesn't support infantry at all really. War Witch Sirens and the Withershadow Combine are almost auto includes with him as he is very focus hungry, the latter also offer another cast of Stranglehold (at an increased Magic Ability level) and a Puppet Master reroll for his Harpoon on any given assassination run. Deathjack can also work well, he will always appreciate the extra 5" of threat Aiakos can give him and can also offer another Stranglehold which really ups the control game when taken with the Withershadow Combine.
His main game is to play an 'aggressive control' game, playing fairly forward and using his throw spell and Stranglehold to put the brakes on key pieces, whilst simultaneously threatening with his 20" assassination threat. This is key to his success really, the psychological impact of knowing that Aiakos can get you from 20" will really cause issues for opponents and might force them into a much more defensive strategy, the trick is going to be to master the fine line between pushing hard enough to make it a problem for the opponent and not over extending to expose Aiakos too soon.
I am really looking forward to solving this little puzzle.
If you get him on the table, let me know how it goes.
As always, thanks for reading and I'll catch you on the next one.
Steve
Thursday 4 August 2016
Cryx in Mk3
Oh how the mighty have fallen...
Cryx were undoubtedly the bogeyman of the Mk2 meta, so much so that pretty much every steamroller pairing at the time had a dedicated 'Cryx drop'. And even then, Cryx still managed to place very, very respectfully at large events.
A large part of this was down to this man...
That's right, our man Gaspy in his epic incarnation was the grand daddy of them all. Clouds, bile bombs, immune to charges and a game ending feat - and this was after he was nerfed, twice. Add to this the Stealthed, Tough, Bane Thralls, Bane Knights, Satyxis Raiders with about 20" of threat and the Bile Thralls it was truly a fearsome package. Poor Lich, we will miss you.
It was Gaspy2 that led the way for Cryx to be top dog, backed up by the pSkarre 30 Banes list (MOAR BANEZ!!!!) and the pDenny 'you have no fun' list, it basically gave Cryx an almost perfect pairing.
Enter Mk3, and PP really went to town with the nerf bat, a brief run down of pieces that are now noticeably worse off than their Mk2 variant:
-Bane Warriors
-Bile Thralls
-Skarlock Thrall / Withershadow Combine (kind of)
-Gaspy2
-pSkarre
-eDenny
-Denny3
-Terminus
-Helldivers
-Deathjack
-Satyxis Raiders
-Bane Lord Tartarus
-Bane Riders
-Mechanithralls
-Necrosurgeon & Stitch Thralls
To name a few, there are probably more.
Now, a bunch of those nerfs were needed and some even justified. But that is a huge core of the faction that was gutted, and a lot of it went too far the other way, especially considering many of those units are still paying the undead tax when being undead offers very little benefit these days, leaving them wanting on the table and a handful of points too expensive.
In my previous post I said I was fine with this, and truth be told I am. I play Cryx because I love the theme and feel of the faction, not for power gamer reasons. I am however, primarily a competitive gamer, always have been, always will be; this means I look for cost effectiveness and efficiency in units, Cryx units don't have that in abundance - a few exceptions aside. Also, to make it clear, the above list is not to say that those units are now terrible or unplayable or under powered, simply that they are worse than the previous iterations.
Where are we now?
Cryx is in an awkward spot, Mk3 has 'forced' the early meta down 2 routes, ARM skew brick lists and powerful ranged 'gun lines' (I hate that term), with the odd 'quirky' list thrown in there, usually because it counters either of the aforementioned lists well. Cryx does neither of these well. This leaves Cryx, as one of the premier melee factions, trying to squeeze into shoes that don't fit. Whilst at the same time fighting a faction like Cygnar with very few of the same drawbacks holding Cryx back.
Cryx 'jacks can hit fast and hard, but they are fragile so in a world of power ranged attacks they will rarely get there fully functional. The balance to this is to spam them, Slayers are 10pts and pretty decent value for 10pts. The problem here is only 1 or 2 casters really support large numbers of jacks well, on top of our casters still being built around support infantry in a meta where infantry are very low down the pecking order.
This brings me to another point, there isn't much in the way of synergy in Cryx, in fact there is quite a bit of 'anti-synergy' such as BANE Witch Agathia offering almost nothing to support Bane units. I watch a Cygnar game the other night, Stryker2 I think it was, with all the Stormlances. With the simple application of a spell or 2 and a *Action or 2 both Cav units were ARM 20+ with very good DEF, how Cryx would dream for that kind of synergy for our key units.
Warmachine is a game of Questions and Answers, factions pose questions that need to be answered. Can you survive a Cygnar feat turn of shooting? Can you get up and over crazy high ARM from Baldur lists? Can you avoid a 28" assassination run from Lylth3? Can you break through a Troll brick on Ragnor's feat turn? Can you...Can you...Can you.... I look at questions like these, and bearing in mind that I am still new to Warmachine, I can see that Cryx can answer these questions but with a fair amount of difficulty and specific army builds. When I have been writing lists in War Room I constantly end up sitting there and thinking "What question does this pose?" and the answer is that it doesn't really pose a difficult question at all. Perhaps it is my lack of experience showing through but everything Cryx puts on the table can be dealt with trivially.
I am going to end it here as the post is starting to sound ranty and I don't want it to, I am just outlining my personal experiences so far. Cryx in Mk3 is a puzzle that I am looking forward to unlocking, myself and a few Cryx players i know have ideas that we want to try but it will be a while before we see where Cryx falls once the meta settles.
Lets see how it goes.
As usual, any comments and feedback welcome and thanks for reading.
Steve
Cryx were undoubtedly the bogeyman of the Mk2 meta, so much so that pretty much every steamroller pairing at the time had a dedicated 'Cryx drop'. And even then, Cryx still managed to place very, very respectfully at large events.
A large part of this was down to this man...
That's right, our man Gaspy in his epic incarnation was the grand daddy of them all. Clouds, bile bombs, immune to charges and a game ending feat - and this was after he was nerfed, twice. Add to this the Stealthed, Tough, Bane Thralls, Bane Knights, Satyxis Raiders with about 20" of threat and the Bile Thralls it was truly a fearsome package. Poor Lich, we will miss you.
It was Gaspy2 that led the way for Cryx to be top dog, backed up by the pSkarre 30 Banes list (MOAR BANEZ!!!!) and the pDenny 'you have no fun' list, it basically gave Cryx an almost perfect pairing.
Enter Mk3, and PP really went to town with the nerf bat, a brief run down of pieces that are now noticeably worse off than their Mk2 variant:
-Bane Warriors
-Bile Thralls
-Skarlock Thrall / Withershadow Combine (kind of)
-Gaspy2
-pSkarre
-eDenny
-Denny3
-Terminus
-Helldivers
-Deathjack
-Satyxis Raiders
-Bane Lord Tartarus
-Bane Riders
-Mechanithralls
-Necrosurgeon & Stitch Thralls
To name a few, there are probably more.
Now, a bunch of those nerfs were needed and some even justified. But that is a huge core of the faction that was gutted, and a lot of it went too far the other way, especially considering many of those units are still paying the undead tax when being undead offers very little benefit these days, leaving them wanting on the table and a handful of points too expensive.
In my previous post I said I was fine with this, and truth be told I am. I play Cryx because I love the theme and feel of the faction, not for power gamer reasons. I am however, primarily a competitive gamer, always have been, always will be; this means I look for cost effectiveness and efficiency in units, Cryx units don't have that in abundance - a few exceptions aside. Also, to make it clear, the above list is not to say that those units are now terrible or unplayable or under powered, simply that they are worse than the previous iterations.
Where are we now?
Cryx is in an awkward spot, Mk3 has 'forced' the early meta down 2 routes, ARM skew brick lists and powerful ranged 'gun lines' (I hate that term), with the odd 'quirky' list thrown in there, usually because it counters either of the aforementioned lists well. Cryx does neither of these well. This leaves Cryx, as one of the premier melee factions, trying to squeeze into shoes that don't fit. Whilst at the same time fighting a faction like Cygnar with very few of the same drawbacks holding Cryx back.
Cryx 'jacks can hit fast and hard, but they are fragile so in a world of power ranged attacks they will rarely get there fully functional. The balance to this is to spam them, Slayers are 10pts and pretty decent value for 10pts. The problem here is only 1 or 2 casters really support large numbers of jacks well, on top of our casters still being built around support infantry in a meta where infantry are very low down the pecking order.
This brings me to another point, there isn't much in the way of synergy in Cryx, in fact there is quite a bit of 'anti-synergy' such as BANE Witch Agathia offering almost nothing to support Bane units. I watch a Cygnar game the other night, Stryker2 I think it was, with all the Stormlances. With the simple application of a spell or 2 and a *Action or 2 both Cav units were ARM 20+ with very good DEF, how Cryx would dream for that kind of synergy for our key units.
Warmachine is a game of Questions and Answers, factions pose questions that need to be answered. Can you survive a Cygnar feat turn of shooting? Can you get up and over crazy high ARM from Baldur lists? Can you avoid a 28" assassination run from Lylth3? Can you break through a Troll brick on Ragnor's feat turn? Can you...Can you...Can you.... I look at questions like these, and bearing in mind that I am still new to Warmachine, I can see that Cryx can answer these questions but with a fair amount of difficulty and specific army builds. When I have been writing lists in War Room I constantly end up sitting there and thinking "What question does this pose?" and the answer is that it doesn't really pose a difficult question at all. Perhaps it is my lack of experience showing through but everything Cryx puts on the table can be dealt with trivially.
I am going to end it here as the post is starting to sound ranty and I don't want it to, I am just outlining my personal experiences so far. Cryx in Mk3 is a puzzle that I am looking forward to unlocking, myself and a few Cryx players i know have ideas that we want to try but it will be a while before we see where Cryx falls once the meta settles.
Lets see how it goes.
As usual, any comments and feedback welcome and thanks for reading.
Steve
Wednesday 3 August 2016
A New Chapter Begins...
Hello everyone,
I have decided to start a new blog to concentrate all of my ramblings into one place, it is going to focus everything Warmachine and Hordes with a specific skew towards my beloved faction, Cryx.
A brief bit of background, I am 26 years old and based in Nottingham, UK. That puts my squarely 'behind enemy lines' as a handful of other WM&H players have told me in the past. I come from a background of wargaming with 'the other company' since I was about 13 or 14, I got quite good in that time and by the end of my 'career' I was attending regular GT's and doing fairly well consistently. I have 'officially' been playing Warmahordes for about 18 months now (since the drop of Age of Sigmar...but that's another story all together) but I have only 'realistically' got into the WM&H game properly within the last couple of months.
In total, I have probably played around 8 or 9 'max' sized games (50pts in Mk2 and 75pts in Mk3) and that includes 5 at a recent steamroller that I went to. So suffice to say, I am still very new to this. I went to the steamroller for 2 reasons; first, a bunch of friends were going and I wanted to tag along as a way to get myself more into the hobby and secondly, I have always liked to throw myself in at the deep end when learning new things. It is the same way I improved my skills at 40k and Fantasy back in the day, by getting my teeth kicked in by the best players around - you learn nothing from crushing newbs.
So that's me and my Warmahordes history so far.
Faction
When I picked up this hobby and started playing, I had to choose a faction. My friends that were already playing said "Go and read battle college" and "look on the PP website", so I did just that. None of the Hordes factions really struck me as interesting at first but a couple of the Warmachine ones did - Cryx and Khador. It was a close run contest but only for a short period as the more I read and the more models I looked at, Cryx just seemed so much more interesting and 'cooler'. Nothing against Khador, just personal preference.
So I went with Cryx, which immediately got me tarnished with the 'power gamer' brush. I knew nothing of the game, the meta, tournaments, power levels or anything, I picked Cryx because to me, they were the coolest looking faction. I managed to pick the 'best' and most infamous faction...great.
This was to be duly rectified though as cometh Mk3 and Cryx were toned right the way down. There can be no arguments here, Cryx went from so far ahead of the curve to falling of the back end of it. But I like that, it creates a new puzzle to unlock, no longer is it filled with negative connatations to play Cryx, no longer can a victory be hand waved as being "well you play Cryx so..." and no longer do we have to deal with dedicated Cryx drops at Steamrollers.
As this blog develops, we will talk a lot more about this and my thoughts on the faction as a whole and it's place in the meta so I won't go into it here.
Future
This blog is going to be my hobby outlet, I am going to discuss lists, analyse units and caster, talk about potential synergies, discuss any news or rumours that pop up within the hobby, feedback from Steamrollers, get some guest interviews on, run through battle reports and generally ramble on.
I will always be happy to answer questions, discuss topics and post about suggested ideas so feel free to comment and post suggestions or anything really.
I will cut this one off here, this is just my welcome post, whatever happens next...who knows.
Thanks for reading all and I will see you on the next one.
Steve
I have decided to start a new blog to concentrate all of my ramblings into one place, it is going to focus everything Warmachine and Hordes with a specific skew towards my beloved faction, Cryx.
A brief bit of background, I am 26 years old and based in Nottingham, UK. That puts my squarely 'behind enemy lines' as a handful of other WM&H players have told me in the past. I come from a background of wargaming with 'the other company' since I was about 13 or 14, I got quite good in that time and by the end of my 'career' I was attending regular GT's and doing fairly well consistently. I have 'officially' been playing Warmahordes for about 18 months now (since the drop of Age of Sigmar...but that's another story all together) but I have only 'realistically' got into the WM&H game properly within the last couple of months.
In total, I have probably played around 8 or 9 'max' sized games (50pts in Mk2 and 75pts in Mk3) and that includes 5 at a recent steamroller that I went to. So suffice to say, I am still very new to this. I went to the steamroller for 2 reasons; first, a bunch of friends were going and I wanted to tag along as a way to get myself more into the hobby and secondly, I have always liked to throw myself in at the deep end when learning new things. It is the same way I improved my skills at 40k and Fantasy back in the day, by getting my teeth kicked in by the best players around - you learn nothing from crushing newbs.
So that's me and my Warmahordes history so far.
Faction
When I picked up this hobby and started playing, I had to choose a faction. My friends that were already playing said "Go and read battle college" and "look on the PP website", so I did just that. None of the Hordes factions really struck me as interesting at first but a couple of the Warmachine ones did - Cryx and Khador. It was a close run contest but only for a short period as the more I read and the more models I looked at, Cryx just seemed so much more interesting and 'cooler'. Nothing against Khador, just personal preference.
So I went with Cryx, which immediately got me tarnished with the 'power gamer' brush. I knew nothing of the game, the meta, tournaments, power levels or anything, I picked Cryx because to me, they were the coolest looking faction. I managed to pick the 'best' and most infamous faction...great.
This was to be duly rectified though as cometh Mk3 and Cryx were toned right the way down. There can be no arguments here, Cryx went from so far ahead of the curve to falling of the back end of it. But I like that, it creates a new puzzle to unlock, no longer is it filled with negative connatations to play Cryx, no longer can a victory be hand waved as being "well you play Cryx so..." and no longer do we have to deal with dedicated Cryx drops at Steamrollers.
As this blog develops, we will talk a lot more about this and my thoughts on the faction as a whole and it's place in the meta so I won't go into it here.
Future
This blog is going to be my hobby outlet, I am going to discuss lists, analyse units and caster, talk about potential synergies, discuss any news or rumours that pop up within the hobby, feedback from Steamrollers, get some guest interviews on, run through battle reports and generally ramble on.
I will always be happy to answer questions, discuss topics and post about suggested ideas so feel free to comment and post suggestions or anything really.
I will cut this one off here, this is just my welcome post, whatever happens next...who knows.
Thanks for reading all and I will see you on the next one.
Steve
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