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