Fallen Angels at 35 points

In my continued quest to play weird shit I have been testing out the Saeryn theme force at 35 points, there is a 35 point tournament coming up which I may end up being unable to attend due to work. Here is the list I have been mucking with:

Legion of Everblight
Fallen Angels (Saeryn, Omen of Everblight)
(Tier 4)
PCs: 35 / 35
10 models

[00] Saeryn, Omen of Everblight (0 / 5 WB)
[09]  >> Angelius
[09]  >> Angelius
[06]  >> Nephilim Bolt Thrower
[00]  >> Nephilim Bolt Thrower (Free (6 pc) & FA)
[05]  >> Nephilim Protector
[05]  >> Nephilim Soldier
[01] Blighted Nyss Shepherd
[01] Blighted Nyss Shepherd
[04] Blighted Nyss Sorceress & Hellion

A shredder, my kingdom for a shredder. Also I can't fit in any spell martyrs which means that Saeryn is playing way too far forwards for me to be happy. She does have a Protector to hide behind though. I've played this list a few times now against different opponents and I have no idea whether it is any good. None at all. It's winning games but a lot of that is Saeryn's massive scenario strength. 

Pros - Free bolt thrower, 6 points free in a 35 point list is not bad. Extended deployment and plus one to go first with the speed of this army make it an absolute scenario monster. Then add in repulsion, breathe stealer, the pushes from the bolt throwers.

Cons - no shredders, no spell martyrs really hurt. The list is also incredibly pillow fisted. You have to tag team a heavy with both angels to maybe kill it. The Soldier does little to nothing and will be replaced with a bloodseer should I continue to play this list. Best use I have found so far is throwing its animus on an Angelius so it can dig in further and get a better repulsion. Also fury management is a problem. Due to the pillow-fistedness of the list two two Angels almost always have to max out (if for example you want to kill a single heavy) and because it's Saeryn they don't die. The Sorceress helps as you can try to leave them on 3 fury each but you do risk leaving they heavy they went after still standing and glaring angrily at them. 

More Earthbreaker

I'm going to start with something I'm adding to my wishlist. An army builder that lets you build three lists in parallel and checks for character overlap as well as normal list validation. War Room is never going to be able to do it as long as Tinkerhouse Games is running the show (they still haven't updated War Room with the new NQ theme forces or the earthbreaker either). Must be because they are spending all their time trying to bring the same list validation every single other army builder has had since day 1. God they suck. Anyway:

After listening to the latest Muse on Minis I am considering pairing the Durgen/Pirates with Damiano/Four Star. My thought process is that I would rather not have two lists with colossals and Damiano is the only Merc caster I think is better without a colossal. So right now one of these two casters is going into Four Star and one is going into Highborn with pirates but I'm not sure which. My list (different from the muse one) is:

Mercenaries

Four Star Syndicate

PCs: 50 / 50

50 models

[00] Captain Damiano (0 / 6 WJ remaining)

[02]  >> Sylys Wyshnalyrr, the Seeker

[09]  >> Rocinante

[02] Gorman Di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist

[03] Eiryss, Angel of Retribution

[05] Alexia Ciannor & the Risen (9)

[10] Croe's Cutthroats (9 grunts)

[08] Kayazy Assassins (9 grunts)

[02]  >> Kayazy Assassin Underboss

[03] Kayazy Eliminators

[03] Kayazy Eliminators

[09] Steelhead Riflemen (9 grunts)

Possibly dropping the Riflemen down to min with Kell Bailoch and Rhupert. Both lists really want him. 

Damiano

Highborn - Gun Mages with Deadeye are probably better than Croes with Deadeye. Pirates also really enjoy deadeye. 

Four Star - Kayazy with sure foot are pretty ridiculous. Everything is better with primed than Death March but Kayazy need the speed increase more than the pirates and the pirates have more attacks to abuse primed with. Kayazy also hit a lot harder with the feat. 

Durgen

Highborn - Pirates have an absolute crapton of attacks with primed, don't care about the ARM debuff and also add to his ability to shoot really well. Taryn really improves his assassination

Four Star - Kayazy murder things with primed like no ones business. They kill high DEF and they kill heavies or multi wound infantry (although ARM stacking is an issue for them). Their higher POW means he has more ability to kill heavies than the pirates (but the extra attack with the pirates might even it out). 

Now that I've gone through it I think I'll at least start with Durgen pirates. I think Durgen is weaker in four star. Damiano might be as well but if he is I doubt the difference will be as big. 

Merc Dojo

Two things I've been working on at the moment (well 3 things if you count Morvahna1) are 35 point Merc lists for MOAB and Earthbreaker dojo.

PP Judge Document

As a forum attachment: http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?177332-Privateer-Press-tournament-policies

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8ZXkeGw8GbOaWhQQVdrcFU4djQ/edit

Lets start with the good things about that document. It is mostly pretty good. It's what I would expect from a document that is- you can't sort these things out between yourselves so you've called a judge over this is what we are going to rule. Things like what judges will rewind and what they will not. How they will handle illegal charges (declaring a charge that will not bring your target into melee range with infinite movement and ignoring all other models and terrain), not declaring a weapon, proxy bases (you put down a proxy base and that is where you are going) etc. It's harsh in a lot of areas, for example if you deploy any amount of extra models then a judge will rule the game a loss, however that is only if a judge is called over. If you notice for example you have deployed a full unit when you only payed for a min and your opponent agrees to just let you take off the extra models then the judges will stand by that as well.

And the bad thing.

Indirect or abstract questions about models or model capabilities should be answered by showing the inquiring player all stat cards of the army...

Example:

“What’s the threat range on that warjack?”

“Here are the stat cards for my army. I have a variety of abilities that could affect your models, and mine, as well as basic power attacks that make this question difficult to answer. I don’t want to tell you 12 inches but then remember that I could power attack push it and get 13.”

I hate this. At the least the example should involve the player helping their opponent to understand their army. If I ask if you have any continuous effects in your army I'd want you to at least point out the models with continuous effects and I can ask to see their cards if I want. Same if I ask if you have any AOEs or any of the other indirect questions. If you hand me all the cards in your army you can go fuck yourself. I got embroiled in lets call them two discussions about this in separate forums, I got two different types of answers: 1. No one is actually going to do that, it's just the base line minimum. 2. I am going to do exactly that because it's the best thing to do.

I'm left with a few thoughts about this.

1. Any time you write guidelines, especially guidelines your judges are going to abide by people are going to follow the directions. The judge document endorses poor sportsmanship and will result in some players doing exactly what the document tells them to do and no more.
2. This is a social game and there are social penalties for acting like a jackass, I can only hope these will stop people from following the guidelines to the letter.
3. It would have been incredibly easy to write the example interaction so that the player involved wasn't acting like a jackass. All you would have needed to say was that handing over your cards is the absolute minimum but that you should help your opponent sort through your army to find the answer to their question.

New Theme Forces

There are two new theme forces in the new No Quarter and for once it's actually easy for me to talk about them in a timely manner without having to rely on the accuracy of Internet threads (thankyou PP digital). Lets start with Siege:

(you can click to embiggenate it)

This one will require some additional thought. There are two clear stopping points in this theme force, you are either going to go for tier 2 or tier 4. The questionable inclusion is Triumph (a tier 3 requirement), he's not as bad as people will claim he is but I don't believe Siege has the focus to fuel him and a Stormwall and still be effective by himself so it's really a question of whether you want Siege to have a Stormwall or not. One of the great things about this theme force is it contains Allison Jakes so you can put the Stormwall on her if you don't want Siege to have it but that does limit the effectiveness of Side Kick.

The big positive here is that you can take two or more arcane shields in the list. Even if you just start off with Siege and a Stormwall which is pretty standard now both of them can have arcane shield. You can take Double Stormwall (one on Jakes), the first things I threw together (with little to no thought) were Siege, Jakes, double Stormwall, double Journeyman, Squire and that's 44 points (probably a sentinal and Strangeways to finish off the list). I'm not sure Double Stormwall is the way to go, it might be single stormwall or even just general jack spam. If you are taking no Stormwalls then you want to take Triumph and go for tier 4. Cygnar has some excellent lights, 3 point Sentinals are no joke. Triumph goes to ARM 23, 8 point Centurions. It's an interesting list because you really need to put effort into protecting your journeymen but I think 3 point Sentinals can do a lot of that for you.

The big negatives are no Reinholdt (Siege can't shoot twice), no rangers (Siege is limited to RAT 6) and no Eiryss2 and that adds up to really hurts Sieges ability to assassinate. That said having a spare Arcane Shield for Siege to allow him to get aggressive and a lot of boostable defender cannons (including the one on Triumph) still give him something fairly decent. 3 point Sentinals probably gives him cover as well. You can take ranged units but the only things you have to screen them with are jacks and if you are taking double Stormwall (or even single Stormwall) you can't take the Black 13th to shoot the pod (and again to help with the assassination).

In conclusion I just wrote a lot for someone who still doesn't have a firm opinion on this theme force. Maybe.

Thagrosh1:

This one I have a firmer opinion on. I don't like it.

The spawning vessel is one of the most broken models in the game but when you can't take any units you can't abuse it as much as I prefer to do. That said it still has a place you just need to get super aggressive with it and collect enemy corpses. That said I think the intention of the theme forces is to collect lesser warbeast corpses but I don't think lesser warbeast spam is a real option with Thagrosh1 so I don't think this is a good option. Here is the crux of why I don't like this list - Thagrosh wants to spam out Spiny Growths on his battle group and the list is letting you bring as many tenacity bots as you want. It'd be fine if you could take Warspears and just tenacity two whole units but you are stuck with Legion heavies and with Thagrosh they almost all want Spiny Growth. The hope I see for the list (and why I bothered discussing it) is in Angelius spam. 3-4 Angels, 2-4 Beast Mistresses with a shredder or two each (or shredder, harrier), Sorceress and Hellion and I think you have a decent scenario list. I still think he's better outside of his theme force and anyone going to tier 4 and bringing Stingers and/or Teraphs should be slapped. Always go to tier 3 or don't bother with this theme force.

Morvahna2 Update

Bobliness (Colin Hill) won recruits with Morvahna2 His list:

eMorvhana -5
Warpwolf Stalker 10
Gorax 4
Tharn Bloodpack 10
Tharn Bloodtrackers 8
Warpborn Skinwalkers 8
Warpborn Alpha 3
Gatorman Witchdoctor 3
Shifting stones + UA 3
Viktor Pendrake 2
Blackclad Wayfarer 2
Gallows Grove x 2 2

Is very similar to my list, especially with the most recent change I made dropping the wilder for Pendrake (holy crap Pendrake is a boss with Morvahna2). The only difference between our lists is that I have Ravagers instead of Bloodtrackers and a Witch Doc Croc (something I have considered) and a Blackclad Wayfarer instead of a second unit of stones. The Bloodtrackers are advanced deploy just like the ravagers and would fulfil the same roll except being SPD 7 instead of 6 get way up the table. The witch doc croc ensures that you keep the entire army fearless and gives you tough rolls which screw even more with your survivability. Pendrake is amazing with just blood pack, with Bloodtrackers as well he would be even more amazing. I still think I like Ravagers more, I like being able to bring back more 8 wound models with the feat but I will definitely try the bloodtrackers though. Not the blackclad though. If the stones do nothing but heal Morvahna a bit more they are still worth their weight in gold.

He also had a Kruger2 list which was the actual list he played in the final

eKrueger -5
Ghetorix 11
Megalith 11
Warpwolf Stalker 10
Gorax 4
Tharn Bloodtrackers 8
Nuala the Huntress 2
Shifting stones + UA 3
Shifting stones 2
Gallows Grove 1
Swamp Gobbers 1
Druid Wilder 2

Looks fine. I'm having too much fun with Happy Tree Friends. If I wrote a competitive Kruger2 list is would probably look something like this. No desire to do so at the moment though.

High Command pt 2 Cryx and Khador

Cryx:

The deck that stands out for Cryx is the orange deck. It is by far the worst deck resource wise in the game, averaging at less that 1 resource per card. However I still don't think it is terrible. If you take Orange and Blue you get all the combo strike cards and discarding a Mechthrall for +2P is not at all terrible. Taking Yellow also lets you max out your Necromancy cards so you can bring back a necrosurgeon from your discard pile.

Red/Blue/Purple is another interesting combination. It gives you a high resource, high victory point deck as well as all the bane thralls. However you lose a lot of synergy when deploying stuff. I found playing this that you were often itching for a second combo strike card that never came. For more combat synergy you can start with Red and Yellow to give you all the Necotechs and Scrap thralls. You still have a good resource count, and a decent number of victory points. I would combo that with Purple for all the corrosion cards and to up the victory points in your deck. Red/Yellow/Purple is currently my favourite Cryx deck.

Not mentioned so far is the Green deck. What it lacks in synergy with the other decks it makes up for in awesomeness. It's possibly the best stand alone deck. Pistol Wraiths are incredible and the green deck as a whole rushes incredibly well and deals a good amount of damage. Red/Yellow/Green is great as is Green/Purple/Red.

Khador:

Khador red is incredible. Much like Cygnar blue I am going to recommend never building a Khador deck without it. Khador red might be even better than Cygnar Blue but it's a close run thing. It has the most resources and the most victory points in the game. The cards may be expensive but once you start buying Khador red cards the massive resources they give you will help you buy the rest of the cards in the deck. The deck averages over 2.4 resources per card (counting only the highest resource on each card). From there you can go a lot of different directions. Red is a warjack heavy deck so you can take other decks heavy in war resources. That would be orange and yellow. That also gives you all the winterguard which is a superb rush option for Khador. That combination also gives you the most victory points. Blue is also a decent stand alone deck although it tends towards warriors. If you want a balanced deck Red/Blue is a great start.