Mercs

So the plan was to concentrate of Gators after the super series but I've been having some ideas about Mercenaries that I want to give a crack.

Madhammer, I love this guy. He's a crazy nutcase and his spells and abilities lean him towards that kind of playstyle as well.

This list is still in the development stages (i.e. I haven't played it yet, so it might change drastically once I get it on to the table. All I can guarantee will stay is the Kayazy):

Mercenaries
Four Star Syndicate
PCs: 50 / 50
35 models

[00] Durgen Madhammer (0 / 6 WJ remaining)
[02]  >> Sylys Wyshnalyrr, the Seeker
[06]  >> Ghordson Driller
[08]  >> Wroughthammer Rockram
[03]  >> Grundback Blaster
[02] Kell Bailoch
[02] Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord
[02] Gorman Di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist
[03] Eiryss, Angel of Retribution
[01] Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator
[02] Thor Steinhammer
[02] Master Gunner Dougal Macnaile
[08] Kayazy Assassins (9 grunts)
[02]  >> Kayazy Assassin Underboss
[10] Cylena Raefyll & Nyss Hunters (9 grunts)
[03] Herne & Jonne

Kayazy are ludicrous with primed and they and the Nyss can scrap a jack with primed. Redline and Thor means that his jacks can crack armour pretty easily too or handle high DEF without difficulty (primed does the same thing again). There are a lot of AOEs that will go down on feat turn, all with an additional dice damage. It's not a control list, it's got solid shooting and solid melee but it doesn't really force your opponent into any difficult situations (other than by killing his models) expect for the Kayazy who with Eiryss will kill any caster that gets within 9" dead without difficulty. A little note on the Kayazy because they are the base of this list - they are MAT 7 P+S 10, they have gang which takes them to MAT 9 P+S 12, you can cast primed on them which takes them to MAT 11 P+S 14. They have stealth and they have DEF 14 which goes up to 16 when they are engaged and once per game they can move and charge straight through enemy and friendly models. Primed also drops their ARM by 2 but it's so low that their isn't an attack in the game that will not reliably kill them anyway so -2 on that makes no difference. Lastly primed makes them explode with 3" AOEs when disabled (not boxed or destroyed so it's pretty difficult to prevent), they don't have reach so if you are engaged by them you either cop a very deadly free strike or a POW 14 explosion to the face. I desperately wanted to fit the risen into this list (just because I think it's funny to put primed on them) but I can't find 5 points (Kell can go but everyone else has an important job).

Mercenaries

Highborn Covenant

PCs: 50 / 50

54 models

[00] Fiona the Black (0 / 6 WJ remaining)

[09]  >> Rocinante

[02] Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord

[02] Bosun Grogspar

[02] First Mate Hawk

[02] Doc Killingsworth

[02] Master Gunner Dougal Macnaile

[02] Lord Rockbottom, Expedition Financier

[05] Alexia Ciannor & the Risen (9)

[10] Long Gunner Infantry (9 grunts)

[08] Sea Dog Crew (9 grunts)

[02]  >> Mr. Walls, the Quartermaster

[02]  >> Sea Dog Crew Rifleman (2 Riflemen)

[02] Sea Dog Deck Gun

[06] Press Gangers (9 grunts)

Believe it or not this list is based around long gunners. Nonokrion Brand on long gunners is silly and I can switch it back and forth between the long gunners and Rocinante (or the pirates). I've tried to keep the cross over with characters to a minimum (so I could use them in a character restricted event without major changes) but Rhupert and Dougal are in both. So whats idea here? First off Fiona is ARM 18 and cannot be knocked down. She gets pretty survivable at that point. This list is about primarily shooting but the privateer package also makes it a pain to deal with (it's a lot of work to chew through all that 4+ tough) and gives the list the ability to fight in melee (and on feat turn you only roll 1 dice to hit them). The risen also mean that any privateers you do manage to kill will come back as zombies. The deck gun is her cultist unit (if it is within 1" of her she gets an extra focus, I expect the deck gun to never fire a single shot). The long gunners though shoot 14" (16 on dougals mini feat) through all models regardless of line of sight and can combined ranged attack and shoot twice if they do not move. It's a nasty combination. It's about the only thing in the army that can crack ARM too. Rocinante can do it too if he gets into melee but I'm looking to keep him back shooting switching Nonokrion brand between him and the long gunners (upkeep, activate the unit it's on, activate your caster and cast it on the other model/unit then upkeep it again next turn and switch it back, for 3 focus a turn both the long gunners and Rocinante get it.) The big thing I'm not sure about is that I don't have Aiyana and Holt. They would help significantly with the ability of this list to crack ARM. It would have to be Alexia who was dropped, and I could then take a third rifleman. I'll have to try the list both ways at least. 

Some people prefer her without the pirates (except Grogspar who gives her no knock down) in which case you'd take some more jacks, probably Boomhowler, some other excellent Merc solos, maybe the steelheads (the cav and the halberdiers are an expensive package too but no where near as expensive as the pirates but you do get a lot less out of them too). She work well without the pirates too but I want to play pirates. 

Super Series Wrap

my lists:

Legion of Everblight

Standard Army

PCs: 50 / 50

Reinforcements: 10 / 10

18 models

[00] Saeryn, Omen of Everblight (0 / 5 WB)

[09]  >> Scythean

[09]  >> Scythean

[09]  >> Angelius

[09]  >> Angelius

[08]  >> Seraph

[02]  >> Shredder

[02]  >> Shredder

[02] The Forsaken

[02] The Forsaken

[01] Blighted Nyss Shepherd

[01] Blighted Nyss Shepherd

[01] Spell Martyr (1 Martyr)

[10] (R) Blighted Nyss Raptors (4 grunts)

Legion of Everblight

Standard Army

PCs: 50 / 50

Reinforcements: 10 / 10

27 models

[00] Lylyth, Shadow of Everblight (0 / 5 WB)

[10]  >> Ravagore

[10]  >> Ravagore

[06]  >> Nephilim Bolt Thrower

[02]  >> Shredder

[02]  >> Shredder

[04] Annyssa Ryvaal, Talon of Everblight

[02] Strider Deathstalker

[02] The Forsaken

[02] The Forsaken

[01] Blighted Nyss Shepherd

[05] Blackfrost Shard

[06] Blighted Nyss Striders

[03]  >> Blighted Nyss Strider Officer & Musician

[10] (R) Blighted Nyss Raptors (4 grunts)

Game 1 - v Skorne (epic Hexeres)

Flanking scenario with reinforcements. Took Saeryn (Skorne has a lot of trouble with her). Scenario was bunkers and I put my two Angelius towards the circle I had to control. Always going to be an issue as I can double repulse and move anything you put in the zone 6" as it's an 8" circle that's almost always going to be outside of the zone. In the end though I didn't have to, I managed to respawn an Angel into melee with his shooting unit and then he couldn't hit it with any more shooting or magic on feat turn. Meant I had more than enough alive to clear the zone and win on scenario. 

Game 2 v Cryx (epic Deneghra)

Destruction. I took epic Lylyth as she wins destruction pretty easily. My opponent (the eventual winner of the super series) (spoiler alert) actually gave me line of sight to his caster. A very narrow line of sight but I could get two ravagores into it on feat turn. 4 shots and setting her on fire... I went for it. I failed (frowny face). She lived, the fire went out and because I went for the assassination I didn't have the shooting to crack the objective (and I was much further forward than I wanted to be). From there I was never going to win. I tried to score at least one scenario point but failed. My opponent had deliberately left the line of sight open to distract me from the objective but hadn't realised I'd be able to get two ravagores into it. Still it was 50-50. 

Game 3 v Cygnar (epic Haley)

So the scenario was incoming and it's a shit scenario. It's way too easy to score scenario points. It ended 3-2 to my opponent when his sneaky bid to run something into my zone had him 1/4 of an inch in and my attempt to do the same left me 1/4 of an inch out. What I do want to talk about though is that he had two lists, epic Haley with infantry and shooting and a jack heavy epic Nemo list. Lylyth cannot deal with armour very well and Nemo isn't just armour he's fast armour. Saeryn though struggles against shooting and Haley has a lot of shooting, in fact Lylyth is designed specifically to deal with Haley2. I ended up picking Saeryn because she was the least bad match up. She would not autolose to Haley2 like Lylyth2 would to Nemo2. I think it's important to have that variation in your lists. It can really put your opponent on the back foot and give you a good match up as it did in this case. 

Game 4 v Retribution (Ravyn)

So as soon as I saw retribution I knew my caster would be Lylyth2. She auto wins against retribution. They are a shooting army that has nothing that ignores stealth. Lylyth out shoots them and out ranges them without stealth, when you take into account that everything in her list has stealth requiring the Ret shooting units to advance through a hail of fire to within 5" before they can shoot me (while I move back) and it's a really really bad match up for ret. I lost a shredder and picked up 48 army points off my opponent before killing his caster. 

I'm expecting something to come out in the Colossals book that either has the ability to ignore stealth or allows you to give it to something in the army. They really need it. It'll still be an uphill battle for ret against lylyth2 but a less nutso one. All in all I think I did pretty good considering I spent most of last night throwing my guts up, 2-2 is what I was aiming for.

Vociferon?

New release slated for august:
Cryx: Asphyxious the Hellbringer & Vociferon Epic Warcaster & Solo
No picture up yet.
I was going to update this page with the latest spoilers but instead I've updated the battle college page and I'll link there:
http://battlecollege.wikispaces.com/Asphyxious+the+Hellbringer

Deneghra - Pirates

Was reading back through my Deneghra stuff as I was just talking about her. I noticed two things. I said Dougal could buff cryx jacks with AOEs he can't, it's friendly faction only and I didn't talk about pirates. I know this won't be particularly helpful to Ed but the Deneghra pirate army is starting to see a bit of game time. The core of the army is:

Dougal
Gorman
Sea Dogs with Walls
Press Gangers
Necro Surgeon
McThralls
Bosun Grogspar
Doc Killingsworth
First Mate Hawk
Lord Rockbottom

The idea is simple. The sea dogs and press gangers are advance deployed so they let you get up the table pretty quickly and take over scoring zones. You've got shooting to make sure you take advantage of the feat with the debuffing Deneghra can do the pirates can take down heavies. It's a troop spam list, with 50 models it's hard enough for your opponent to fight their way through it but in this list the front line (10 press gangers, 14 sea dogs, and the privateer solos) are all 4+ tough with no knockdown and the first 3 you kill become mechanithralls. The Press Gangers will add to the sea dog unit too, not a lot but add that to the 3 mechanithralls a turn and Deneghras debuffs allowing you to take down key models and units and your opponent really just struggles to make it through all your infantry to clear out a control zone. When you add in the fact that they will generally have to deal with crippling grasp, black oil and death chill the problem compounds.

The army does fall apart if the key solos are killed. In particular Doc Killingsworth and Lord Rockbottom. Grogspar is pretty important too. Often people take two bokurs to protect their solos. If you spread them out then your opponent can't avoid shield guard or you can use the two medium bases to screen Grogspar from shooting. Gorman can black oil or can throw smoke to block LOS.

It's another list with minimum jacks. Usually you don't see a heavy jack at all and there are two deathchicken arcnodes running around.

Karchev

Khador
Standard Army
PCs: 35
20 models

[00] Karchev the Terrible (0 / 5 WJ remaining)
[01]  >> War Dog
[11]  >> Beast-09
[08]  >> Drago
[02] Kovnik Jozef Grigorovich
[05] Great Bears of Gallowswood
[04] Winter Guard Infantry (5 grunts)
[02]  >> Winter Guard Infantry Officer & Standard
[02]  >> Winter Guard Infantry Rocketeer (2 Rocketeers)
[03] Eiryss, Angel of Retribution
[02] Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor

This was Flanzer's masters winning (2010) Karchev list. Here is a more recent Flanzer Karchev list:

Karchev the Terrible (*5pts)
* Devastator (9pts)
* Juggernaut (7pts)
* Juggernaut (7pts)
* Kodiak (8pts)
* Kodiak (8pts)
Gun Carriage (9pts)
Battle Mechaniks (Leader and 5 Grunts) (3pts)
Gorman di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist (2pts)
Koldun Lord (2pts)

Second one is 50 points.

Both lists contain a decent ranged threat. The gun carriage or the winterguard. The second list comes after the introduction of character restrictions so that may have a big bearing on it. The gun carriage is there to clear infantry, you have the koldun lord to give a free focus to something the kodiaks run without focus and the mechanics are there to repair your jacks.

I think the way to go with Karchev is to take a bunch of jacks and then take some ranged stuff that can deal with infantry. Give yourself some threat range, the jacks can kill jacks/beasts pretty easily but can get bogged down wading through a unit of infantry.

In our game even though I had a lot of stealth the winterguard sprays ignore stealth and Kovnic Joe can give them additional dice to hit or tough and AOE's don't ignore stealth but would still have killed the striders and my important support pieces with blast damage from the scatters. Plus the gun carriage is a cavalry model so it can do ride by attacks (this is move forward 4" shoot and then move back 3").

I think it might have been worth casting tow first turn to move up the warjacks, charging with Karchev and then running them both in front of Karchev. It would still have kept the caster safe and  had your warjacks up the table. 10" deploy Karchev moves 7 with charge jacks have to be in his back arc so lose about 1.5" so 10" + 5.5" + 8" run would have put your jacks 23.5" up the table turn 1 or pretty much on the half way line. I would have been in big trouble then. You could have run your Iron Fang Pikemen and spread out to avoid the AOEs and run the man o war to put them up near Karchev.

Kings of War

Since I'm updating anyway:
http://www.beastsofwar.com/kings-of-war/kings-war-hardback-edition/
They'll be coming out with rules for seige, magic items and ogres. I noticed the not so subtle shot at GW in there as well. I'll be interested to see their tournament system. Looking forward to this and it's coming out around the same time as Colossals so it's going to be a pretty good winter this year.

Deneghra1

So I've been reading a bit about Deneghra1 and there's something in common with most of the tournament lists that I've been seeing with her and that's mercenaries. The thinking is that Deneghra has nothing that requires faction models and with all her debuffs it's less about having super deadly units like Bane Thralls and more about having units that are fast enough or have ranged attacks to ensure that their attacks are hitting feat turn rather than being out of range or having to cop a first strike from your opponent and then feat with a severely depleted force. So here are some Mercs I've seen pop up in a lot of her lists:

Nyss Hunters - Fast, can pull some shenanigans with ghostly, great ranged attacks and they can fight in melee. Put Parasite on a jack or catch it in the feat and they'll wreck it on a charge, or they can shoot and devastate infantry. Plus they have high DEF so when your opponent tries to strike back there is no way they will be hitting.

Boomhowlers - 14" threat on the shooting. Normally they can't hit the broad side of a barn but under the feat they hit pretty reliably and their pow is up very high for a unit. They'll wreck average arm heavies (18) with shooting pretty reliably or again shred infantry. Plus you can be a real bastard and use rage howler so now your opponent has -2 MAT/RAT from the feat and an additional -2 to hit for jacks beasts 9" from boomhowlers. One model/unit is going to be hit with crippling grasp as well to round it out as -6 to hit. Like the Nyss these guys can then engage in close combat and with Deneghra's spells they can easily wreck a heavy.

Dougal MacNaile - once per game (say on your feat turn) he can give every model in his command range +2 RNG. Now that you have all those shooting units he helps them nicely. Cryx also has some jacks with nice AOE shots (friendly faction ability, I should probably read what I write more) that could also benefit from his artillerist ability but the model that's probably best on is:

Gorman Di Wulfe - the best two point solo in the game. Black oil is ridiculous and he has rust as well just in case you can't get enough utility out it. He can also drop smoke which you can hide your warcaster in or behind. Dougal gives him +2 range on the feat turn +2 to hit (ridiculous combined with the feat dropping DEF) and if you miss you can reroll the scatter and or the distance just to make sure that you still clip the model in the AOE because he just needs to hit, not a direct hit.

Other stuff that I've seen (but not necessarily in every single list):
Rorsch and Brine - Normally the problem is that they are very fast but hit like an old lady swinging an empty handbag. The problem is even under the feat they still only hit moderatly hard but with the feat hurting your opponent you'll be around to have a second crack at them. Pigpen and dig in can be a very annoying combination.
Steelhead riflemen - moar shooting.
Wrong eye + Snapjaw - Fast only against living models. Normally hits moderately hard, hits like a truck under the feat. It's a way to take a heavy without using up any of Deneghra's precious focus.

The Cryx stuff is still good with her. Pistol wraiths and warwitch sirens can be very mean under the feat. The Satyxis Raiders are pretty good too. The Black Ogrun boarding party can pull off some nice tricks with drag under her feat.

Shutting up now.