Greetings from the front friends!

It’s been a busy week on Overload Online with lots of new articles. I personally got some free Warmachine therapy for my Faction ADD! In case you are not also beleaguered with limited attention, don’t forget to be familiar with what Haley is up to!



Iron Lich Insights

You knew it was coming right? You knew what I was going to say in the Cryx section! It’s always been Asphyxious!

References for 0.0001% of people are great!

The recent nerf didn’t hurt his game against Haley nearly as much as it did against Harbinger or Vayl. It’s true that he’s much less good at killing her from down town the turn she feats, but he’s still very good at killing a stormwall with his feat. So now you just have to look at killing the other one. You’ve got a lot of bodies, and the clouds are still very relevant unless lynch gets the perfect shot off. If you can protect your arc node and biles, you can keep threatening his gunmages which might keep them back. Realistically though, you kill a 2nd node in a zone or on a hill, or both. Then you keep up a cloud barrier which hopefully also protects a unit or some important stuff.

The real trick is to envelop her. Going front on you will hit off 5 no-go templates with your models. If you run hard and fast up the flanks though, Haley starts to get very worried. It’s a harder game, and all about trying to get a stormwall to expose itself. You also have a fair chance of keeping them pushed up and starting to score early. In any of the score on your own side scenarios you have a huge advantage. If you can score a point or two, then you only really need to kill one wall to focus on dominating the now safe side to win.

Enveloping is a skill that involves knowing how wide you need to go so that you get back into the relevant center field faster, knowing what you will lose on the way, what you can afford to lose and how to keep scenario live while much of your army runs away from the central area. Lich2 has all the tools for this, as usual! If you can strip AS with the blood hag or Admonia, and apply parasite, not to mention dark shroud, well… let’s just say that ARM 14 Stormwalls aren’t very scary.

Give me your tears!

So what else can you do? Any form of jamming and scenario play can be hugely effective, but they need a way to remove a stormwall from a zone if it extends into it. This is part of where Lich’s huge scenario advantage comes from. He can nuetralise one side for free, and dominate safely. There are a lot of Deneghra lists with jacks flying about, but I remain sceptical of two stormwalls not just shooting too many Cryx jacks off the table too fast. Raiders are unlikely to get to attack stormwalls, but every now and then you can run around the covering fire and just slow him down. You’ll die to pods, etc, but buy a turn of less stormwall in zones. This is especially effective in dice down settings. Haley1 is more of a problem, especially with all the ponies, but she’s a very different sort of problem.

Druid’s Dilemma

Circle actually have a few options in this matchup, but no clear winners like Xerxis, etc. I don’t think that Circle players like to see any stormwalls when they don’t have a plan, but these days it’s foolish not to have a stormwall plan. Speaking of stormwall…

I like Kreuger2 against Cygnar a lot. The blazers are quite scary as they can walk into stormwall, and shoot him with 5 boosted to hit brutal damage shots. It’s terrifying if he’s on 2 transfers. So they need to be prioritized. I’ve played with with a pureblood, stalker and ghetorix against Cygnar plenty, and it’s pretty effective. You out-threat all but Kraye, and have a denial feat to counter Haley with. You can lose some steam if they have both stormwalls very close together, but the ability to wraithbane and not lose wolf activations after killing one ‘wall is vital. This and you’re pressing scenario power forces Haley to make a lot of uncomfortable choices. There are some problems though, and Krueger2 likes one stormwall much more than two.

I had a conversation with SillySod on Vassal after the UK masters however, about Kreuger1 against Cygnar. At first I was sceptical, but the more I thought about it the better it seemed. It begins with lightning tendrils on bloodtrackers. The walls are awful at dealing with high Def, Stealth models with immunity to the pods. They are great at jamming the big guys, and a wall finds them very difficult to clear from a zone allowing you to leave some staying power that Krueger2 doesn’t have against Haley.

Zappity!

Haley brings gunmages though, which are the ultimate bane of Tharn ladies however. This is where Kreugers feat comes in. Feating to remove gunmages is an example of not aiming for huge point swings, but gaining enormous safety and leverage. It’s like expending effort to kill shifting stones, rarely worth it in sheer points, always worth it in table position. This is all well and good, but how do we kill a stormwall? Well we need to deliver wolves. So how about a cloud wall again, some spell denial so that this can be an effective Cryx matchup, and make that unit also lightning immune and Def 14 for further stormwall annoyance. Druids! I do think they are over-costed, but can help deliver Kreuger1’s heavies.

Now things get tight for points, but it’s been my own personal obsession to experiment with less shifting stones and gorax, so I’m going to finish the list in a way that will make many circle players uncomfortable. No gorax does also lessen the camping Cryx caster killing power, but I’ve decided to be highly experimental, and go back to stand-bys after testing.

Kreuger1, 5 warbeast points

-Ghetorix, 11 points

-Warpwolf Stalker, 10 points

-Pureblood Warpwolf, 9 points

Tharn bloodtrackers, full unit, 8 points

-Nuala the Huntress, bloodtracker UA, 2 points

Druids of Orboros, 7 points

-Druid Overseer, druid UA, 2 points

Shifting Stones, 2 points

-Stone Keeper, shifting stones UA, 1 point

Blackclad Wayfarer, 2 points

Gallows Grove, 1 point

Next week we’ll talk about Swans and Dragons!

Stay Classy!

-Eoin/VP

P.S. I’d love to hear about anyone trying out or honing that Kreuger1 list, as I feel it has interesting possibilities.