Listbuilding for 2013

As with the previous Troll blog my aims have not dramatically changed.  I have always been very clear that the reasons I enjoy warmahordes is that it is a competitive game that has probably the clearest and best supported rules set I have ever found.  After 14 years of tournament gaming I make no apology for being a 'power gamer' and enjoy designing and playing lists that are extensively tested and designed to operated at the limits of the games system.

There is often a received wisdom in Cygnar discussions that a 'power 4' exists within our caster roster.  EHaley, Seige, ECaine and EStryker are commonly considered to be our 'top tier' casters.  One of the things I have come to realise, especially when following the exploits of players such as Jamie P, Kieth Christianson, Jake Van Meter and Jason Flanzer is that these guys are building lists based on what works for them.  'Teh interweb' did not rate The Old Witch, PDoomy's runeshaper tier, PCaine/longunners or EVayl yet these guys made them work, made them their own because their lists did what they wanted them to do.  For this new adventure, rule number one must be to build lists that work for me, do what I want them to do, not what the internet tells me they should do.

A little background...

It is now November. Over the past 2 months I have indulged in a whittling system, playing Cygnar casters I have never used before, experimenting with lists and trying to find 3 casters I am happy to persevere with.  This has involved some incredibly bad lists and some quite embarrassing losses....

The Siege Conundrum

Every 6 months or so I end up reading through the Cygnar casters and pause, staring longingly at Siege's entry (all double entendres fully intended).  On paper he seems great, great stats, great gun, great spell list, great feat.  Problem is, I just can't make him work.  He always ends up being too static, stuck in a limited region of the battlefield, clogged up behind Precursor Knights (who I really don't rate...) not doing enough damage.  It was a Canadian gentleman who really opened my eyes to Siege, pointing out that one way to look at his feat was that it was between 10 - 15 average damage on each of your opponents heavies and death to heavy infantry. I am not sniffing at this but it does pose some problems; most veteran players simply remove Siege's assassination run by staying more than 19" away from him, not that hard to achieve.  This then means that you are then left with a puzzle.  You know you will get one good round of shooting off and may remove one heavy with the feat but more often than not I end up spreading around the damage, taking hefty chunks out of, but not removing, opposing battlegroups.

I realise some of this is very much down to my inability to learn decent targeting priorities. However, if we run the numbers against a standard armour 20 heavy it would take a boosted Siege rocket with Breach (14.5 dmg) a second rocket with boosted damage (4.5 dmg) a boosted damage Defender shot (5 dmg) and a boosted damage Hunter shot (6 dmg) to get to the magic 29/30 boxes required to lift it off.  I know I am making some assumptions here but the current meta has shifted towards decent arm and it is rare to find a faction that cannot field armour 19/20 heavies.  The problem becomes worse as we start to see Colossals enter the fray in greater numbers, this feat has poor scalability and does not possess the raw power of a Menoth 'Reckoner' gunline that really can come close to one rounding a Colossal at range.

I think most importantly this comes down to that strange variable that is often termed 'play style'.  I struggle with Siege because I cannot find a way to build and operate a list that I feel 'comfortable' behind.  It is this more than anything that has made me discard him from my caster choices.

Finding Nemo and the difficult third list..

Jumping ahead slightly I was starting to lean toward a fairly predicable ECaine/EHaley pairing as my primary lists (more on this later) and so had hit the 'third list' problem.  All the stuff I wanted duplicates of was being gobbled up by my primary lists and I was really struggling to find something effective that would I could confidently wield at a Masters Level event.

PHaley was starting to make a run for this third slot but my god is she boring to play.  Three/four turns of casting temporal barrier and shooting, spiced up with a feat turn comprising of even more shooting and struggling to roll the buckets of dice in time.  I needed something more fun and it was Jamie P who stuck his oar in (read: I begged him for help) and suggested I looked at the Nemo's

Threemo looked exciting so I started here, Cygnar's latest caster flatters to deceive in my opinion.  At the outset his feat looks incredibly destructive, 'additional' is always the word I am looking for in any damage dealing ability.  The key problem is that (having had a very long trawl through the Cygnar book) all the electrical damage available is ranged and therefore lower pow than I wanted.  Only the Thunderhead and Stormclad offered a decent, boostable, electrical gun (anyone who mentions the Firefly here can officially fuck off) and of these only the Thunderhead had something a bit special.  There is no doubt he is the stand out tool for Threemo but one jack does not a list make.  The cavalry were a possibility but really Laddermore is essential if you want them to be able to hit anything.  Now I needed Junior to make sure the Cav lived past turn 2 without getting shot off the table and suddenly I had spent over 30 points of the list on one heavy, 5 Cav, a very squishy dragoon and a solo.  The Storm Strider seemed an excellent choice with two good pow electrical guns (rarely boostable though unless your opponent is very foolish) and suddenly there is 13 points left for some infantry to flavour.  It isn't a terrible list but I began to see the holes. 

Threemo really badly wants Reinholt, unfortunately he was off doing his proper job of reloading Caine's gun and had no time to moonlight with some Duracel powered OAP.  He has that age old Cygnar problem of terrible infantry options and more telling than all of these had a 'tricky' spell list.  You see, there was no points for the lancer that would turn Force Hammer into a useful tool.  At cost 4 though it more often than not can be a trap spell.  He could upkeep Failsafe for free but after allocating to the Thunderhead was left with 5 focus and no more jacks to feed (making poor use of Finch) and could only get off one Chain Lightning.  I could drop the Cavalry for more jacks/infantry but now the feat was dropping in power, I could indulge in some Stormblades/Stormguard but then I had to bend over backwards to find ways to mitigate their squishiness and low speed. 

Everywhere I turned the list lacked 'something'.  He couldn't speed anything up, he couldn't make best use of his feat, he couldn't protect his infantry, I tried the new band aid for every failing list - apply Stormwall and for a time was happy, Failsafe is beautiful on that beast and being able to boost the melee p+s to 22 was lots of fun but the central problems remained, solve one and the other two got worse, with a heavy heart I moved on.

ENemo - nothing here to see, move along

PNemo so nearly made the cut, he may still when I get bored of my current choices.  Much maligned on Cygnar forums, people are really missing out on how much fun it is to have 10/11 focus to throw around.

At this point I was still indulging in my new favourite pastime of how to abuse the Stormwall.  Supercharge has always been a wonderful ability and the chance to put 5 focus into to Stormwall was pretty irresistible.  Nemo is a sexy counter to most warmachine armies and thanks to the ability to spam out 2 - 3 Chain Lightnings per turn he can deal with infantry horde quite effectively.  The list I ran was:

PNemo

Stormwall

Thunderhead

Thorn

Squire

Full Swordknights

Arlan

Lanyssa

Junior

2 x storm callers

Whilst it is a seriously low model count it doesn't have many problems dealing with infantry, between DJHead's pulses, covering fire, triangulating storm calls and a bit of Chain Lightning goodnes, being outnumbered wasn't a major problem.  It also hits like a tonne of bricks, PNemo can buff the strength of both heavy hitters making the THead less pillowfisted and turning the Stormwall into a killing machine.  He can speed up the Thunderhead, (negating its main weakness) and it has a serious assassination threat, with a locomotioned move and then advance and put 3 pow 14's into a caster at good range with most boosted.  Thorn can pull ridiculous movement shenanigans if you combine an arced locomotion with his reaction drive and yo-yoing in and out arcing voltaic snare really messes with enemy jacks.

I really like this list; it is only really Nemo's squishiness and lacklustre feat that bugs me.  I also found that I really suffered against hordes when it wasn't possible to abuse voltaic snare or use the feat to disrupt.  This is probably back up caster number one, simply because he is so much fun to play.

So, PHaley is just too dull, Threemo flattered to deceive, Siege just don't love me and PNemo lacks a certain edge, especially against hordes.  In the next episode the mystery third caster is revealed.  Predictably, EHaley and ECaine have stayed firmly in spot 1 and 2 respectively for me, especially in the new Gargossal meta.