Wow, didn't realise it had been so long since I last posted...
I have taken a short hiatus from playing Cryx to pick up Cygnar which I played at the ETC recently. I have thoroughly rinsed the swan filth off me in the acid baths and ready to get back to Cryx'ing.
It just so happens that my recursion to Cryx coincides with the official release of the new shiny(?) Dark Host theme. Boy oh boy, this could be a game changer. I have played a few games with Dark Host now, each and every game has resulted in a 5-0 scenario win for the #BaneTrain. It has some serious power, something I will attempt to assess in this post.
First up, lets take a look at the theme itself;
Dark Host
Permitted models
-Cryx Warcasters
-non-character warjacks
-Bane models/units
-Darragh Wrathe
-Machine Wraith solos
-Necrotech solos
-Scrap Thrall solos
-Skarlock Thrall solos
-Soul Trapper solos
-Wraith Engine battle engines
Benefits
-Every 20 points of units and battle engines you can add one command attachment or medium or smaller based solo to the army for free
-Banes gain Prowl
-Place 2 4" AOE dense fog terrain features before deployment within 20" of your own table edge
Now, if you had given me this theme at the start of Mk3, I would have been very disappointed, and i think most Cryx players would have been too. Banes were bad. They were the ultimate bogeyman of Mk2 but became more like court jesters in Mk3. To properly assess why Dark Host has the Cryx juices flowing again we also need to look at the recent changes to Banes as a result of their CID cycle.
Banes
Bane Knights dropped by a couple of points and gained Set Defence and Wall of Steel, 2 very strong abilities to solidify their position as the anvil to the Bane Warrior anvil. However, Cryx players are still looking at Knights as the worst of the 3 flavours. After running 20 Knights in 3 games under 3 different casters (including Sturgis2!) I have to say they may well be the true dark horse of Dark Host. Ha.
Bane Warriors saw an effective 2 point decrease as the UA lost a point as well and the max unit. They also tweaked the UA to make it not suck massive balls so the unit is now how it should of been from day 1. Moving Tough to the standard was a common sense move and making the mini feat not tied to forcing them to kill infantry (which is totally opposed to their battlefield role) was a welcome change.
Bane Riders saw a real shift upwards in terms of power level. A contender for worst cav unit in the game when they had a puny threat of 11" with low damage output, relatively speaking. They were put back to 2" melee range, something they should never have lost in the first place, and also gained Vengeance. Given that I believe the rules for Vengeance changed from boxed to damaged (so even if they don't die they get a Vengeance move) lets Bane Riders get some serious threat ranges and their high natural ARM keep them 'alive' longer than they should.
Tartarus was a mess at 8pts, losing curse is disappointing but picking up Veteran Leader [Banes] and gaining +1 MAT is a nice compromise. He is actually worth his new price tag of 6pts but being free in theme is just gravy.
Wraith Engine. Whilst not a Bane model, the Wraith Engine is a key component to Dark Host and also recently underwent a pretty big change in the Battle Engine CID cycle. Also receiving a reduction in points as well as some rules tweaks to buff it's support presence make it a very strong piece in the Cryx arsenal. Increasing ARM of all undead models rather than just Incorporeal models was a HUGE change for the faction and really helps the Banes ability to play into ranged lists and make it across the table with sufficient numbers.
So, the new theme is also propped up by a buff to all of the core units and solos of the theme. All good news for Cryx players. But why has Dark Host taken everybody by surprise so quickly? After all it won the Lock & Load Masters and was on the final table of the Iron Gauntlet. Everyone I have spoken to that has played the new theme is reporting back nothing but extreme success with it. Surely Banes weren't buffed that much? Let's take a look.
The Meta
The meta at big events has been pretty rigid as of late. Factions that can bring decent heavy spam are bringing it and the factions that can't are bringing their best answers for it. This ended up with a huge hole in the meta for infantry to slide right into. Ghost Fleet was probably the first real highlight of this but Strakhov2 with mass Pikemen and Thexus + Drudges were 2 other examples of successful lists (amongst a few others) that focused on an infantry swarm. The meta being focused on dealing with jacks struggled to deal with the numbers. Then came Ghost Fleet and players had to adjust. Ghost Feet hit the meta like a sucker punch from Mike Tyson, solutions have since been developed but it just rolled people at first play when they didn't understand it.
Lists then changed to deal with the new bogeyman of Ghost Fleet, magic weapons proliferated and ranged RFP became the currency of the land. What this meant was an influx of multi attack models/units that sacrificed POW for an increase to RoF. Enter Dark Host. Dark Host falls into the space in between. Anti-heavy tech is massively overkill against Banes but the standard infantry clearing methods of massed POW 10s or 12s even just doesn't cut it when there is a wall of ARM 20 coming at you.
Attrition
The above point leads me into what I see as the main strength of the Dark Host theme, given the state of the meta as it stands. It attritions frighteningly well. A heavy may come in and kill somewhere between 3-6 Banes from a max unit. The rest of the unit then eats the heavy and mini feats to replenish most, if not all the casualties taken from the heavy. A net trade of a few Banes for a heavy, numbers a Cryx player will take all day. With the right caster, you can rinse and repeat this to remove heavy after heavy whilst barely taking any casualties.
The list has the benefit, if built as such as to have no real 'targets'. The list I am running pretty much has only the Wraith Engine and my caster as worthwhile targets. One is easy enough to protect and the other is immune to most of the weapons brought against it. This makes it tough for the opponent to make reasonable trades with the army.
The changes to Wraith Engine and Bane Knights also mean that you can all but immune to the increase in low POW shooting we saw trickle into the meta to combat an increase in warrior models (due to increase further with SR17 upon us). ARM 20 against ranged and magic attacks is certainly no joke.
Delivery
Previously, delivering Banes was a problem. They were expensive, fragile and as a faction Cryx had very few forms of effective delivery for them. Dark Host, in combination with the changes to Banes in general, certainly helped to combat this issue. First off, you get free clouds which can deploy far enough up the board that you can usually tag them onto a terrain piece for a huge line of LoS blocking terrain. Perfect for defending the approach and protecting your caster mid-late game. Banes also gain Prowl, which in combination with the above mentioned clouds is pretty much perma-Stealth and with Ghostly letting you laugh at forests it can be frustratingly hard for opponents to get work done at range. This plays into the Cryx players hands as it forces the lines to engage, and what do Banes love most? Getting stuck into juicy targets in melee.
Scenario
From the games I have played Dark Host pressures scenario really well, which is usually a byproduct of strong attrition armies anyway. Dark Host usually boasts a few throw away solos to score flags and with the other changes to scoring in SR17, infantry with staying power play a big part in scoring and contesting zones.
I have have also found that Dark Host can pressure scenario pieces very well with a very small part of the army, linking us back to its strength in Attrition. A couple of ARM 20 Bane Knights are not trivial to remove when ran to obnoxious places and in return opponents have to feed heavies to the Banes to contest.
Summary
Dark is exactly what Cryx needed to get some of our staple units back on the table. It was boring to see every pairing be Coven + Denny with Satyxis Raiders and then Ghost Fleet in every single list pairing. Most of us played Cryx because Banes were cool as fuck and couldn't play them even remotely competitively. Not only that I also think it is what the Meta needed to shake the dominance of heavy spam.
It has often been said there is a triangle of power in Warmachine. ARM > Guns > Infantry > ARM was the cycle that keeps the meta in check. Guns shred infantry, ARM nullifies guns and Infantry swarms ARM. For most of Mk3 there was almost no worthwhile infantry options, and the ones that crept through still got ravaged by guns. This let ARM and Box spam reign of the meta and their counters closely followed. With a serious WM Infantry theme back in play (also Exexplar theme could be as popular) it should force a rethink of how people approach the meta and build their pairs. Hopefully this will signal a move towards a more balanced and fluid meta where more options from all factions are viable.
I am loving playing Dark Host as it feels Cryxian, it's so good to have Banes back on the table. I think next time out I will look at some of the main casters to run with Dark Host and start looking at some of the ways other factions can counter it.
Until then, thanks for reading.
