Sunday, February 11, 2018

On Even Footing

Hey! Remember me? I post nothing of real value sometimes, in exchange for meaningless validation in the form of page views!

I haven't done that in awhile, though, for a few reasons. I took a step back from participation on forums, Facebook, and posting here when themes finally came out. I was pretty overwhelmed with new options and things I wanted to play, and have been jumping from list to list over and over.  I really didn't want to post a bunch of hot takes on our themes, so I took a few months to play around with them and figure out what I thought. Months later and I'm still not sure where everything stands, overall. The breadth of competitive options is pretty astounding, with really only Mordikaar and Xekaar standing out as duds in our current stable.


Themes!

Winds of Death

Our first theme, and honestly one I view as probably the strongest one in Skorne. I'm a big believer in YMMV, though, so what I view as the strongest is simply from my playstyle and preference. There are a couple of huge points in favor of Winds of Death, though, that are hard to overlook:

Extoller Solos- Show up in 3 themes, are invaluable for any ranged list in Skorne

Guns- It's our ranged theme, and with how Warmachine is going right now Ranged is king. I think fairly definitively that Winds of Death is the best answer we have to a lot of the scarier lists out there - I find it's fairly trivial to shoot a few Storm Striders off the board with Winds, for example.

Turtles- Seriously, turtles. We have two themes with turtles, and while both give benefits for taking them Winds of Death has the ever important Extoller Soulwards to make them magical and grant eyeless sight.  I have trouble list building without one (though trust me, I've been trying).

There really isn't too much that I view as a strong counter to Winds, particularly if you bring a turtle with you. I think in general it's clear that Rasheth is probably the best caster for this theme, though he answers so much and is so powerful overall that I don't find that surprising (note: authors opinions. Your style, preferences, meta, and experiences may vary). That said I think Hexy2 can do great things with it using Blackspot, and Hexy1 can enable some great plays via Parasite. Morghoul2 also looks solid here, and I'm sure there are other things people can make work.


Imperial Warhost

I was lukewarm on this theme when it came out, and continued to be so up until the change to Guidance happened. As is, it is the best way to run a beast and or turtle brick in Skorne. It does have some weaknesses, particularly our absurdly abysmal defense, but it feels very Skorne Classic, to me, and has some really solid benefits. Hyper Aggressive is actually weirdly useful in this list if you run it as a brick, though the biggest issue I've had is actually needing to be damaged for it to go off, and it pairs incredibly well with the extended deployment zone. Both of these allow you to run some pretty aggressive lists, and I particularly like the use of Aradus to start even further up the board. Turtles, likewise, work great in this playstyle with their high mobility and crazy speed.

Shout outs to Zaadesh2, Xerxis2, Naaresh, and Morghoul1 for being the obvious picks for this theme. I actually think there's probably something to running Jalaam in here, as well, and Makeda3 really doesn't need anything besides beasts and paingivers.

Overall, this is a great theme that works great with a lot of our casters. I'd say the only real point of failure is, honestly, the Bronzeback. Just a bit too expensive and brings just a bit too little to the table to really make it worth running a herd of titans - especially given the power of turtles. As someone who ran a lot of titan herds in MK2, it's a little disappointing. 

Masters Of War

This list shocked me when it came out by just the shear amount of stuff it allowed. Cataphracts and Praetorians, Extoller solos, free TyComms... Not having access to shooting beasts is a decent point against it, but with the +1 to starting roll and anti-Tough RFP on melee it more than makes up for it. I'll be honest, I do keep thinking of this as being a theme without guns, because I have yet to use any Incindiarii or Arcuarii in it, which is a shame but also... I think understandable?

I've really probably gotten more reps in with this theme than any of the others at this point, and it has solidly become my go-to for the first part of any list pairing. Swordsmen provide fantastic target flexibility, Ferox maintain their status as the answer to everything, and turns out free Vorkesh actually makes Cetratii pretty neat. Add on the Legends of Halaak and you have a list that can tank, crack armor, slice through infantry, and alpha with the best of them. 

My go to for this theme has been Morghoul3, as I was playing him with Swordsmen fairly heavily before MoW came out, but I feel like we have quite a few great options on top of him. Makeda1 has been a favorite of mine, and Xerxis1 can really work with whatever infantry you give him. Some day I'll finish painting my Swordsmen and actually try out Makeda2 with 40 of them. Rasheth, meanwhile, polishes any turd offensively and can really make use of catnodes. I think this theme is really fantastic in it's flexibility and power, and you'd almost have to try to make a really bad list out of it.

Honorable mention to the fact that you can play Makeda2 cats without having to change much, and get a bunch of free points.


The Exalted

Play Zaal2 as you were, gain a bunch of free stuff.

...okay, I actually feel like that's a bit short-sighted. I see the appeal of Zaal2, though - its a damned amazing list. I keep intending to explore this one more, but honestly laziness re: packing up immortals and sealing my 3rd unit has kept me from bothering to bring them anywhere for months. I'm just going to throw out that I find it sad there isn't more buzz about Zaal1, and personally I think Zaadesh2, X1, and Morghoul3 all look interesting in here. Once the OTC is over I'm going to be looking to the SOO, and I'd be surprised if I can overlook Zaal1 in Champions with how powerful his kit is.


Disciples of Agony

Okay... this theme hit CID, and I hated it. Then it dropped and I...still kinda hated it, to be honest. That said, just because I hated it doesn't mean I don't think it's super powerful. I really view it as being two different lists, though, rather than being a complete theme. The super limited pool of casters also really limits you. Overall it has one incredible benefit, in giving us access to Minion beast animi, and then a benefit that doesn't interact at all with that in giving us free solos for taking infantry. Ambushing bloodrunners are awesome, but not nearly funny enough to make it into most of my lists.

So, first up, beast heavy. Of the 4 casters you can take really only Naaresh and Morghoul1 make sense here. Morghoul1 can make an incredibly fast hard-hitting list that turns even cheap lights into missiles, while Naaresh can definitely up the hitting power to 11 for a turn while also cranking damage for one turn as well. I think both work great, but Naaresh's feat is much harder to time - I never feel like I get it right, honestly - and Morghoul1 is just a favorite of mine. Running him with a handful of Archidons and turning them into P+S 22 rockets with a 13", or P+S 19 missiles that can hit 15" away is glorious. Road hogs, war hogs, savages- all work great with the extra speed and damage. Personally I'm falling more towards Archidons because long leash really helps when you're flinging heavies that far and are only fury 5. Major choices in building a beast-heavy list here will definitely be Rage vs Primal, and in my opinion whether or not you're going to bring a Hydra (do not primal a Hydra). After that, tack on an infantry unit or two and have fun!

Secondly, with the Minion updates I kept looking at this theme as a ranged/melee infantry list - under Morghoul2. He doesn't really do anything for infantry - or rather, he debuffs enemies - and Minions have some really great infantry that Skorne can crank to absurd. My first thought here was running him with 20 croak raiders and 2 units of Brigands + UA's. Having 40 tough infantry with No Sleeping on the Job is a hell of a swarm, and then cranking them to crazy heights with Mortality and Pain Driver makes them really damned scary. I feel like it's important to point out that you can have a unit of Brigands shoot at effective RAT 9 Pow 16, then charge at effective MAT 10 P+S 16 when the stars align (pain driver, prey, mortality).

I've taken Morghoul1 with a DoA beast brick to a handful of local tournaments, and as of writing this I brought Morghoul2 with the above 40 infantry to a local tournament yesterday. I don't have much to say about Morghoul1 games, but I'm planning on writing up batreps for Morghoul2 in my next post.



Afterthoughts...

Seriously, things are so up in the air I'm suffering from choice-paralysis. When I go to a coffee shop I always order coffee with nothing in it - every time except  one time I thought the barista offered to pour a shot of rum in my coffee. There's a metric ton of options right now, and I haven't quite landed on anything go to and simple. I do have a list pair that is in prep for OTC, but once that passes I'm expecting to be in free-fall for a bit longer. I think I'm going to try to play in the SOO Masters, which is a 3 list event, and I'm seriously thinking Morghoul1/2/3 might be what I take. But on top of that Jalaam looks super good, though with him I can't even figure out what theme I want to run him in! IWH? Winds of Death? Shit, Artifice of Deviation and extra-die-ranged spell thing might really kick ass on Arcuari. If you could run him in Disciples of Agony I'd probably be looking at how many road hogs he can take (and how many I could buy for cheap, cause fuck that's an expensive kit).

Anyway, I hope you're all having as much fun playing as I am. It's a great time to run Skorne, and apart from a few very niche pieces everything I've put on the table has felt fantastic.

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