Templecon Masters Winning Lists

From endgamgegaming. Mike Puryear was the winner (came second at warmachine weekend). My comments after the lists.

The Harbinger of Menoth
    * Devout
    * Reckoner
    * Redeemer
    * Repenter
Choir of Menoth Min
Exemplar Errants Max
    * Exemplar Errant Officer and Standard
Visigoth Juviah Rhoven and Honor Guard
Vessel of Judgement
The Covenant of Menoth
Vassal of Menoth
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord
Wracks

The devout is something I think Menoth will see more of in 2013. It brings shield gaurd, spell ward and defensive strike to protect its warcaster. With Harbinger in particular it can't be slammed through her or knock otherwise be use to knock her down so that removes its biggest drawback. Errents, Covenant, Rhupert with Harbinger I have talked about before. Vessel also helps with that and it brings some boosted shooting that doesn't use Harbinger's focus. Rhoven brings some help against stealth/clouds.

Feora, Protector of the Flame
    * Reckoner
    * Reckoner
    * Judicator
Choir of Menoth Min
Holy Zealots Max
    * Monolith Bearer
Temple Flameguard Max
Vassal Mechanik
Vassal of Menoth
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution

Epic Feora with a Judicator. All the Judicators AOEs cause fire, and it can be allocated 4 focus and she speeds it up and she can ignite it. Reckoners help it hit (if you need direct hits with the AOE guns). Reckoners are also just awesome. Temple Flameguard can hopefully set more things on fire before she feats.

Intercessor Kreoss
    * Fires of Salvation
    * Crusader
    * Redeemer
Exemplar Errants Max
    * Exemplar Errant Officer and Standard
Exemplar Vengers Max
Exemplar Vengers Max
Choir of Menoth Min
Vassal of Menoth

This one is interesting. Double Vengers will scrap any colossal. It's also incredibly fast and has shenanigans. It's also very magic resistant. The thing I especially like about this list in the current meta is fast, blessed, weaponmasters. They even get a 5th dice and drop the lowest. They do not care about ARM stacking.

Comments in general - At Warmachine Weekend both of Mike Puryear's lists were Menoth gunlines. Now only the Harbinger list is a true gunline. I think SR2013 has gone part of the way to beating the gunline out of the Meta and I think people are starting to expect it as well. Hopefully this year will be different than last year and won't see the total gunline domination that last year brought.

Playing Against Mercenaries

Bartolo Montador

What does he do - his feat knocks down anything that moves and stays in his control area (and also gives -3 on attack rolls). He adds ARM to all his warjacks, hot shots one (boosts all ranged damage rolls), and can make everything in his battlegroup shoot again outside of activation. 

What does he bring - Galleon

How do you play against him - Armlock your heavies, get the behind walls or bring a shield guard and hide it behind your heavies (so it shield guards and gets pushed to B2B with your heavies). Spread out your infantry, have a plan, if you can't kill an ARM 24 Galleon set up the assassination or do something else to take it out of the game. 

Phinneas Shae

What does he do - Makes his pirates stupid fast, pulls assassinations out of nowhere, Storm Rager (a warrior model becomes awesome) and Phantasm (reduces the RNG of some ranged attacks when you shoot at one unit).

What does he bring - Pirates and all the solos, Nomads

How do you play against him - You are going to eat the alpha strike. Shae has one of the longest in the game. Set yourself up to survive it. You won't be able to pick match ups either the pirates are too fast and have advance deploy. Take out the solos, make use of things that stop tough. Watch for the assasination there is the commodore cannon (keep your caster away from your jacks) Blow the Man Down (stay clear of Shae) Storm Rager can make a warrior model awesome and Veil Of Mists (which will let Shae's stuff move through your stuff). 

Gorten Grundback

What does he do - Slides a chunk of stuff 8". Reduces their SPD, RAT and DEF. No blast damage, no knock downs, puts up a rock wall and his jacks hit stupid hard.

What does he bring - Dwarves and/or gun mages or Kayazy. There are a number of different builds with him that work.

How do you play against him - Same advice as for Galleon when it comes to avoiding being pushed by Gorten's feat (armlock your heavies, block of models with terrain). Watch the scenario, he has no problem dominating and will push all your stuff out of the zone with his feat. Use the advantage you have with threat range (particularly over his jacks) and be careful he can't slide half your army forward and kill it with his feat as that's really the only way he's going to alpha strike you.

Durgen Madhammer

What does he do - Blows up all the things. He makes his infantry awesome but also explody (if I can make up an adjective). He personally will kill all your infantry. 

What does he bring - low ARM infantry (Nyss, Steelheads, Kayazy), Dougal and Reinholdt

How do you play against him - Spread out your infantry. You'll still lose a bunch but don't make it easy for him. Durgen tends to get assassinated so keep on the look out for that. 

Hardcore

That's right, I'm making another post. No I don't think I have a problem, I can quit posting about Warmachine whenever I want.

I just wanted point out that there is a different scenario in the hardcore rules packet which looks very interesting. It has killbox and a 12" by 12" square in the centre. Instead of scenario points though your warcasters take 5 damage if you killbox yourself and you take 5 damage if your opponent Dominates the zone (domination only that means they have their warcaster in the zone and you have no models). Warcaster/warlocks taking that damage also lose tough and can't or have damage removed for one round. I'm including this scenario in the possible league scenarios but since it's not on the random table it'll be something that people pick to do instead of the rolled up scenario.

Also my ear hurts so everyone has to go easy on me.

(For those who don't know Hardcore is a particularly nuts kind of tournament, the time limits are shortened making it very difficult to play a normal list, all armies must be fully painted (normally they allow unpainted models so that they don't scare off any players), one list only and if they game goes to time everyone loses, you don't check tie-breakers. Hardcore has 4 awards and they are all about equally valued. There is Vanquisher (the winner), Mage Hunter (fastest caster kill, now changed to caster kill while destroying the least other models), Executioner (most army points destroyed) and Master Craftsman (best painted).)

Spoilers Greylord Cav

Since I haven't posted enough today I'm pointing you all to this from end game gaming:


Greylord Outriders: Khador Light Cavalry Unit
SPD 9
STR 5
MAT 5
RAT 4
DEF 13
ARM 15
CMD 9
FA:1
Point Cost: Leader & 2 Grunts: 6
Leader & 4 Grunts: 9
Base Size: Large
Damage: 5 each
Immunity: Cold
Pathfinder
Magic Ability [6]

• Frostbite (Star Attack) – Frostbite is a RNG SP 8 magic attack. Models hit suffer a POW 12 cold damage roll
• Winter’s Wind (Star Action) – RNG 5. Target friendly Faction model with Immunity: Cold. When an enemy model without Immunity: Cold ends its activation within 2” of the target model, the enemy model becomes stationary for one round. Winter’s Wind lasts for one round.

Snow-Wreathed – This model always has concealment.
Weapons
Rune Axe [1x] (None) POW: 5 P+S: 10
Magical Weapon
Mount [1x] (None) POW: 10

Thoughts - Holy crap they kept the sprays. Magic Ability 6 spray 8 and you can move 5" afterwards. And SPD 9 to get right alongside a unit for the best spray vector. I thought Winter's Wind looked really good too but then I checked and Beast 09 does not have immunity cold. Pretty sure the only models that do are Sorscha, the Greylord Cav and Zerkova. Ha, Zerkova (there's a bet going on at templecon today, If Flanzer can beat Michael "Chilly" Winters with Zerkova then he has to get some kind of Flanzer tattoo). So yeah DEF 15 against shooting, light cav move and magical RAT 6 sprays an it's 9 points. I was right, this unit is awesome with Strakhov, give them stealth and laugh at your puny opponents attempts to kill them. The Old witch can give them Weald Secrets, they always have concealment so they are always DEF 17 against shooting. Iron flesh takes them to DEF 18 against shooting 16 in melee. Signs and Portents and Hand of Fate will let them kill all the infantry as will Fortune. With Vlad3 you can give them hand of fate (additional dice to hit and damage drop the lowest dice) and Dash (+1 SPD to SPD 10) and on feat turn they get sprint (so they can charge, side step 2", then they move 10" from sprint and then 5" from the light Cav move). You can also use your light cav move to stay out of charge range (by killing guys or moving into back arcs) and put Winters Chill on the closest two cav so running to engage doesn't do anything since your guys become stationary.

You could also put Winter's Wind on Zerkova and charge her forward camping all her focus so when your opponent charges at her and fails to kill her you make as much stuff stationary as possible (Note: not trolling at all with that last bit of advice).

Edit - Just to be clear because I've already seen a couple of people get it wrong on the forums - The Vlad3 trick mentioned requires you to charge. In order to get sprint (and put your cav way round the back of your opponents army) you need to kill something with a melee attack. I've changed the word attack to charge above just to make sure I don't add to the confusion, should not assume everyone knows all the rules. Also I forgot that Vald's feat also grants side step so it's even worse than I originally thought.

Thoughts on the Convergence of Cyriss

So my brain is stuck here for the moment (if you don't know what I'm talking about look at the post I wrote this morning).

Warjacks using the MAT and RAT of the caster has some consequences. It's going to result in having a very specialised army, even more so than usual. For example if you are taking Axis the Harmonius Enforcer you are going to have RAT 2 warjacks which is going to sway you pretty heavily against ranged attacks but with MAT 7 all your melee warjacks will be awesome. As it stands now you often see for example ranged warjacks being taken with a melee warjack focussed caster (like Stryker2) because he can make them good in melee and they add ranged potential. That's not going to happen with Cyriss. 

Speaking of Stryker2 super-solos are also is not going to happen in Cyriss, because the caster's share their stats you are never going to get super solo casters like Caine2, the Butcher, even Ashlynn. Having all your warjacks MAT or RAT 9 is too broken. They won't go above MAT 8 RAT 7 and expect them to pay for that with their other stat. Though that fits the theme of the army, they are meant to be a clockwork faction, everything effects everything else, synergy over individual power. 

Passing focus between jacks is awesome, it takes a warcaster like the Iron Mother who is already Focus 8 and makes her closer to focus 10 or 11. Especially with ranged jacks who generally only need two focus (boost hit and damage) and are going to be the focus of her battlegroup anyway as she is MAT 5 (RAT 5 too but it's a lot easier to boost all your guns then to buy and boost melee attacks when you charge) and makes all her jacks arc nodes (you can't arc when engaged). 

What does the Servipod Mortar on the Cipher do? It has no POW. I want to know. I doubt it would be fire, that doesn't fit the theme of the army. Maybe it allows you to take control of jacks that it hits? An auto point of corrosion damage? Blind (holy crap that would be broken)? I bet those piston spikes has sustained attack too. 

Here is Father Lucant as he appears in the Witchfire Trillogy:

He's massive and he shoots lightning bolts (in the RPG) as well as having standard clerical spells. 

Keynote is Back On!

I believe in miracles! Woooo! (Edit - I've woken up and I'm adding in some more video links)

Going to live blog this.

They have started talking about a Level 7 Expansion (EDIT - from Q&A not an expansion, a stand alone game set after the initial Level 7 game) - you guys are jerks. GET TO THE ANNOUNCEMENT! Looks OK. None of their board games are bad.

2:15 - We're updating Journeyman rules - GET TO THE ANNOUNCEMENT!

Iron Gauntlet - Warmachine and Hordes world championships - 2014 lock and load qualification tournament. World wide qualifiers, fully painted. two lists, don't have to be from the same faction. (Keith from Muse on minis has just wet himself - Asphixious2 + Bart Galleon). Will be a qualifier in Austrlia (one at least)

Oh Announcement music and....
Deck building card game - High Command. GET TO THE ANNOUCNEMENT YOU JERKS! THAT WAS MEAN! Meant to represent a season of warfare, there are different locations you can capture , each faction has its own market so each faction retains its own unique feel. Don't start with Retribution, Mercs or Minions. Hordes is being released after warmachine (about a month or two).

More dramatic music. Better not be more bullshit. It's the runes from NQ!
NEW FACTION CONVERSION OF CYRIS. Humans inhabiting robots. Every warcaster has a different battegroup wide ability. When you spend a focus you can transfer it to a nearby warjack (called vectors) once per turn. Warjacks share MAT and RAT with their warcaster. Man this looks awesome. I'm blown away.

There is already a battle engine and a colossal, at least 5 units, one of the warcasters is Father Lucan from the Iron Kingdoms games (he gives his entire battle group shield guard).

There are plans for a rhulic battle engine or colossal but the guys aren't going to elaborate. Rhluic colossal comes out this year.

One of the warcasters (the iron mother) gives all her battlegroup arc node. The PP guys won't say whether that warcaster has telekinesis.

Convergence of Cyriss - transfinite emergence projector (name of battle engine). Prime Axiom (Colossal). They will get their own forces book and battle group launch set. No cav as yet.

There is a new hordes faction in the works. Won't come out this year (maybe next years big announcment?)

CC - 5 warcasters in the forces book. - not going to be compatible with mercenaries (they don't like fleshy creatures - humans inhabiting robots).

Video is up! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na_ehW6hm5A

Great, now how am I supposed to get back to sleep?

Live Stream Cancelled

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BOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

I know it's not their fault that their freight company seems to have misplaced all their AV equipment but still BOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!