Warmahordes general

Are any of you guys worried that Jack spam is gonna be a problem? Like armor spam in the last edition

Yes

Butcher 1
--Jugger
--Jugger
--Jugger
--Zerker
--Zerker
--Zerker
--Kodiak
--Ruin
...and 3 min units of mechanics.

Yep. If anything, it's going to be worse.

Amon
Crusader x8
Max Choir
2x Sunburst
2x Vassal Mechanik
2x Vassal of Menoth

Not sure until I play. There's a very low quantity of attacks in jack spam and it'll be interesting to see how that works out. Enough charging infantry, even non-weaponmaster, can crack armor.

I also think terrain is the big unknown in MK3. Just look at the 3 battlereports in NQ. Way more terrain and it's in places that can gum things up.

I also question the focus allocation. Even under new Amon there's only so much focus available for allocation. Synergy is nice but the total output suffers some diminishing returns. So I'm not sure that 8+ jacks is actually all that much better then 6 jacks. Power Up makes jacks about as effective as MK2 JM'd melee jacks and that isn't really enough to kill another heavy on it's own.

Allocation is an interesting quandary when we get into power attacks. Locks are the only power attack that clearly favors numbers and that's out. A slam or a throw can KD several enemy jacks and you don't need to match numbers to do that vs the jack spam list. Sure everything can shake off without allocation but it can't shake off and charge.

This list is nasty mostly because of the sunburst shoring up weakness but even that may be possible to be dealt with by flankers. And possibly terrain.

My own prediction is we'll see more balanced lists coming to the fore as they find ways of dealing with spam lists of both types.

In the first 5-6 months >50% of WM pairings will have one jack spam list. Absolutely guaranteed. After that, we'll see.

I'm totally going to try Venethrax or Mortenebra with 90% of points in Deathrippers and win any zone contest scenario on Slams alone.

In that Butcher list I posted:

Every jack has boosted Melee attack rolls + free charges + 1 focus to play with
You can feed 2 more focus to a Jack to top it off
Berserkers can kill up to 6 models a turn for 1 focus

You will most certainly loose some models, but it only takes but a few banes to fuck up your day. Combine them with knights and riders and you have the speed to tie up anything in cc while your warriors advance up the battle.

Before you got through with like 10-12, now its probably going to be like 4-8 that makes it through, depending on the rest of the game.
And as we all know, anything good in shooting, is vulnerable in cc. And pure cc jacks are dead before it can swing.

And with the de-buff abilities of Cryx, I'm not worried one bit that the banes will be equally deadly as before.

hmm let me look this over...
hmmm x3 jugg, x3 zerk, x1 kodiak, x1 ruin. 8 Large bases. Juggs, Kodiak are MAT 7, Zerkers are MAT 5 and have berserker. Ruin is MAT 8 and the only RNG 2 weapon platform.

So accuracy is definitely there but the area of the board you can threaten at once...idk. it's 7 bases with 1" range. How many things are they getting into melee?

Also they all need to share 12" control area? I feel like you'll wind up having to send them in waves.

Full Throttle is nice but it uses up 3/6 focus. If you upkeep Fury or Vengeful that leaves 1/6 left. Which I feel like you'd want to keep even if Butcher is high arm and boxes.

Certainly true that the free charge mixes well with the 1 focus and when you throw in Butchers feat things get good and dead. However, his feat's great with everything so having lots of models helps it too.

It's definitly a new thing to deal with but part of me won't find it scary until I have a proper playtest against it. Off the cuff I feel like dropping 3 jacks from the list and grabbing some infantry makes a scarier list with plenty of jacks to work with full throttle.

Gunbunnies with boosted shots
Gunbunnies everywhere

15/30 models reached combat, 10 dying as clogging. 10 mcthralls, knights and satyxis, 15 would hit stuff. All could live more than thralls and are significantly faster.
New Thralls are garbage for the same reason Cygnar 12/15 Menoth slow 12/15 rarely saw the light of day.

It's not unstoppable, but currently I can't think of a better general-purpose list for a 2-list pairing. A *lot* of lists are just going to have no answer to it.

Amon has Mobility so the terrain is going to have less impact on his jackspam.

I think it's an answer to Khador jackspam, but I don't see how you crack Amon jackspam so easily.

In any case, we'll find out in a couple of weeks as we start getting games in. I'm hyped as fuck for Amon.

That's a fair analysis.

What do you think about dropping a Jugger + Zerker and getting a full MOW package.

ARM 23 MOW in a zone that you can cycle Fury on seems like it might be a thing.

What do you suppose Gunnbjorn lists will look like now?

I figure I might as well give this a try in the actual general:
With the new edition looming, I want to give this game another try as last time, about two years ago, didn't really work out due to some bad experiences in my first couple of games.
I own the Khador stuff from the 2 player box, a Decimator and a War Dog. However, I cannot find the warcaster; I assume I lost her when moving.
So, which warcaster should I get to start with? Is this even a reasonable starting point now? I like Men-o-War and 'jacks, both of which I was told would be better this edition.

Janissa, 3x Bomber, assassinate on feat turn. He's the new Lylyth2.

against anything except menoth.
because fire.

madhammer.
and 1 earthshaker.
a variety of bunnies. mostly gunners but some blasters to set up tasty sprays.
give a bunny to:
thor, so he can tune up the earthshaker.
and maybe even herne and jonne for artillerist.

but then you're missing out on more bunny napalm fun.

Get the new battlebox. Kozlov is an alright caster and having 2 juggs is never a bad thing

did they touch you in naughty places?
>can i?

I think hark would do well running a decimator herd though. His pseudo-assault happens after you declare a charge, so the shot should be part of your combat action. So it triggers beat back.

But a full MoW package costs 25 points. Unless you're leaving the kovnik at home so they can crawl up the board?

Kovnik is a must for manowars.
Melee jacks will like caster that can speed them up.
Shooty jacks don't care.

Buy the new starter or something.

I don't see how tournament-viable jack spam in a game about jacks is a problem.
Hordes have their beast lists already, let warmachine have theirs.

>I don't see how tournament-viable jack spam in a game about jacks is a problem.
A list being viable is one thing. It dominating the meta is another.Let's see where jack spam ends up.

I'd actually look to stuff like widowmakers. I feel like you need to snipe out your counters and spot removal things that try to jam your charge lanes. Not entirely sure what works best for this role but that seems clearly to be part of the playtesting experience.

Grabbing MoW is just doubling up on more of what you have. So it doesn't feel like it changes much other then maybe be able to be more independent.

Having played jack spam in Mk2, I don't think it's going to be nearly as big of a problem as one thinks.

Convergence is arguably best at jack spam, and not simply because of Induction. It has several jacks capable of outputting a huge amount of attacks to offset it's small numbers, but scernario and attrition were still a major issue to be contended with.

A lof of jack spam lists I see people theorizing seem like they'd be great against other jack spam lists, but simply lack the quantity of attacks to deal with decent infantry swarms.

And remember that weaponmaster spam is still a thing, if not quite so much. FA:U Doom Reavers means that sustained armor cracking is more than possible for Khador, and Cryx's debuffs can see them deal with the armor without major issue.

Butcher1 has iron flesh, though. Manowar become arm 23 which is pretty goddamn nuts. I would always take manowar or pikemen if my caster has iron flesh.

I can't see it dominating.

All a Khador player has to do is put Mad Dogs Mk3 edition on the table and most of the jack spam lists people are talking about are just done.

Especially now that any caster can do it and Doom Reavers can get buffed.

Wait, why Mad Dogs?

Mad dogs of war theme list stand in

Oh wait, the theme list and not the Khador jack.

Doom reavers are still spell ward. And doom reavers both got more expensive and you have way less points to spend on them.

75 army points in mk3 means 37.5 in mk2. So in mk3 you can get at most 30 doom reavers on the table. You could get something like 48 in mk2.

It's just not near as viable anymore.

Ooh there's an artillerist kaptin. I'd say x2 Mortars + that guy sounds like a good base to start with. That's 15 PC. That should help deal with jam. May trick the opponent into leaving spaces to trample into.

If Eiyriss winds up being an issue then something that can kill her or chase her down would be nice. Mortar deviations are scary for her. Manhunters or Kossites just to run/engage may work for that?

I expect I'll use him with behemoth more than I will with a mortar

Thought they got sacred.

Anyways, it's not viable in the same way it was in Mk2, no.

But it's still absolutely viable against jack spam, especially the jack spam lists people are talking about. Most of these lists don't have the attacks needed to kill enough Reavers to not lose their army to it.

It's not about combos. The list concept is investing heavy into jack spam. The idea in dropping a couple of jacks is to get options in the list that help support the jack spam. In this case by helping deal with things that counter jackspam.

ManOWar in general may work well with Butcher1 but in this specific list the list stays very one dimensional with them. You're suggestion of ironflesh also means that having to upkeep that instead of putting that focus elsewhere when I pointed out that jackspam means stretched resources already.

I think you need stuff that can start attritioning an opponent early and can potentially snipe out key solos/support pieces the opponent may be using to deal with your jacks. Stuff like Gorman, Ragman, and Eyriss. Remember this is also ALL MELEE jack spam.

So basically it doesn't matter whether or not man o war are nuts. What matters is if it keeps the list one-dimensional.

This is what I plan to play at the first post-MK III Journeyman League:

Week 1 0
Kozlov -28
- Juggernaut 12
- Decimator 16

Week 2 10
Kozlov -28
- Juggernaut 12
- Decimator 16
Man-o-war Shocktrooper 10

Week 3 25
Kozlov -28
- Juggernaut 12
- Decimator 16
Man-o-war Shocktrooper 16
Great Bears 9

Week 4 33
Kozlov -28
- Juggernaut 12
- Decimator 16
Man-o-war Shocktrooper 16
Great Bears 9
Man-o-war Kovnik 5
War Dog 3

Week 5 45
Kozlov -28
- Juggernaut 12
- Decimator 16
- War Dog 3
Man-o-war Shocktrooper 10
Great Bears 9
Man-o-war Kovnik 5
- Grolar 18


Week 6 75
Kozlov -28
- Juggernaut 12
- Decimator 16
- Behemoth 24
- War Dog 3
Great Bears 9
Man-o-war Shocktrooper 16
Man-o-war Kovnik 5
- Grolar 18

Well, what about widowmakers, marksman, mortar, and a war dog or min unit of mechaniks for those 20 points? Or sylys instead of the marksman.

That's more what I was going for yeah.

Have Kayazy been dropped from Khador? They aren't in the Khador deck.

They're in Mercs, but can still be taken as FF by Khador.

They are in the mercenary deck, and become Friendly Faction when in a Khadorian army.

Bane thralls may be the mkii boogy man, but they arent as common as people think. I personally only use them in 2 lists, and one of them -lich2, only takes the minimum unit with no ua.

With the proliferation of Dark Shroud, I expect them to see even less play time.

Bane knights I think remain as potent as ever. They have reach, vengence and hit as hard on the charge. They lost some power with free strikes and vengance moves, but that is a negligable change.

I think pure Jack spam will be stupid. But combined arms Jack spam is a solid idea.

Decimators I think would run the best as they are able to pop off 2 shots naturally and that extra from broadside sees them suddenly being able to get a lot of decent pow shots down field.

You are the first person to notice this. The whole being able to spam doom reavers is a lie until they release a tier list for it.

I was able to get 7 units and a war dog on the rabble with a conquest in mk2, but now I can only get 5 units and a conquest in mk3.

Again, in the context I'm talking about, you only need 5 units.

You're not trying to recreate Mk2's Mad Dogs of scenario pressure combined with sheer number of WM attacks to kill most armies, you're just creating a list capable of putting a lot of high quality attacks into a very small number of hard to kill targets, which 5 units of Doom Reavers absolutely do.

With a couple of cheap jacks yourself behind all of this to close the game, I think you'll rip most jack spam lists to pieces.

>clear

But that won't stop a mortar AOE from annihilating your winter guard. Guess it helps a cannon shooting into melee?

Anyway now Slamming Devastators is an easy tactic.

A slam, even with boosted damage because of contact, can't really harm the Closed Devastator.

Devastators can't fall down. And so benefit from the extra speed boost. They can charge and splode the next turn.

I have no idea why Khador wants that. It's for sprays. I guess for WG themselves?

Only with a few casters per faction, everyone else will want decent combined arms. You'll see at least two heavies in every list though

Iron Flesh stops that from happening.

Clear I think is for having your Field Guns shoot into melee to knock enemy models down.

It can only target a weapon crew though and it's only their guns

also just realized I did the math wrong. 13 PC. Mortars are 5 and the solo is 3.

Are Privateers busted? They can't do anything against warjacks. Mercenary armies in general are gonna consist of nothing but warjacks from now on.

Yeah, I've run against serious doomie spam in mk2. Unless there's a theme list that supports it, it's not going to be nearly as good in mk3.

And I think Amon is going to eat non-Irusk2 doomie spam alive, anyway, unless they can get to Mk2 numbers. Without Tactician, they're not going to be able to do enough damage per turn to make up for the horde that gets trampled to death in return.

They can bring the Commadore Cannon, or the Galleon.

But there's no such thing as pirates anymore, it's mercs in general. So they can just bring shit like forgeguard to deal with it.

>worried about Jack heavy lists
>with the three casters that all have a rat 8 pow 16 range 20 slam
>also have galleon (which is privateer now)

Bart runs Jack heavy fine/better. Fiona makes the commodore ignore intervening models, the galleon is a privateer model now so is effected by Shaes shenanigans

Overall pirates are in a better place than they were in Mk2 but probably still only a fun list

Theme lists exist still and Pirate players who are only interested in pirates won't be buying other units.

Bane Knights and Satyxis units are as things stand the only well balanced units that will see play. Thralls, McThralls, Biles and everything else is for the most part quite awful.

So all my expensive units and solos are useless in mk3? Nice to know, ebaying them right now. PP can keep their shitty dead game.

>Thralls
>Worse

Are you shitting me? They picked up half an inch of melee range, traded stealth for ignoring all terrain, and went unchanged otherwise.

They're still quite good.

How are your units and solos worthless?

Also, this feels like bait.

But no Tough via UA. Considering that Tough itself was nerfed, they might as well have kept it. Or go down in price a little bit.

Welcome to Cryx players.

Bane Warriors, effective PS 13 weapon masters with ghostly and a minifeat that makes more of them are useless because they don't have stealth.

They lost 1.5" of range.
Ignoring terrain was easy to give through Skarlock or Saxon.
They lost all defensive tech, have 12/15 and getting them in combat will be very hard. They can also no longer hold zones.

>Had a bad experience

What happened? You loose a game?

12/15 with mat 6 and a role in killing vehicles and not warrior models, 9" threat range and hard to get across the board.

What? I can't hear you over the baseless whining.

I can't hear you from no play on any slow melee unit with no defensive tech
See Cygnar units in the entire mkii

Given the beating that Bastions took, think the High Reclaimer should look elsewhere for his resurrection targets? Cinerators? More cavalry?

Because infantry is useless in mk3.

Dude, thats EVERY faction, and Khador did OK. Speed 5 is NORMAL. Whats with this pathetic baby whining.

Def 12 is avarage, Arm 15 protects against most blasts. The damage is still high as pie.

If your so rabidly paranoid about the lack of stealth, take them with casters who could grant it.

See, for a Cryx player, you cannot loose any models while reaching the enemy. Anything beyond this is horrid, and therefore classified as trash units.
If it doesn't have stealth or absurd def, great speed bonuses, mk2 Though with get up, and at the same time hits like a truck once it hits cc, its not worth taking.

So while the other teams looks at the new Bane Warriors and goes like "Well.. thats not so bad, they are still a great unit" Cryx players goes "WHAAAAAH!! They ruined my pain train! These models wont leave the shelves now! Fuck you Privateer for making these über warriors more in like with the rest of the game! Now Ill have to actually git gud when playing".

Which expensive no reach melee saw play? It being standard hardly makes it something people will play.
Also, why the fuck would you use occulation on them and not something useful like Bane Knights? They now cost the same and Knights outperform in most cases. Heck, it's 23 points with the UA versus Knights that still dish out damage and are significantly faster. Why in the world would anyone take Thralls? Especially with far more common Dark Shroud?

>Speed 5 is NORMAL
Speed 5 is still above what we have in Khador, and you don't hear us whinning.
Some factions lost their Easy mode, that's a good thing for the game.

That's not baseless whining, its just a fact really. Getting pathfinder wasn't an issue in Cryx when in MKII many of our casters had Ghost Walk or took Saxon. Stealth and tough is what delivered them. Mostly tough because sprays and many things ignore stealth. Plus they lost the movement speed from Curse making them terminally slow.

I don't think anyone is really crying their eyes out about our most expensive unit being toned down. Some might think it was taken a bit far since they remain our most expensive unit, but were not 'priced accordingly' and will probably scarcely see the table

So is it just me or shocktroopers the only good MoW now? Demo Corps have almost nothing to them and bambardiers are still... Mediocre....

>Demo Corps
I don't know what PP was thinking. They are absolute shite compared to shock troopers.

Through your whine I can actually hear a very important point your making here. According to PP, there is no Skonrnergy, but this is exactly what they gave the new Bane Warriors.
A unit that supposedly hits like a truck (and we all know this to be true!), they are aimed to take down Jacks, heavy fucking Jacks! At the most engage some HI, but thats wasting potential damage! So why did they give this "hit you like a truck" unit, thats obviously no masters of close combat (I agree, mat 6 is nothing to brag about on your elite infantry), the ability to regenerate more models when killing infantry?
This to me is typical Skornergy, something they told us would go away (or even existed in the first time, but thats just "cranky baby talk" from privateer for realizing they have a community that makes fun of them when they write horrid rules).

With the nerfed though Id much rather see them actually sticking with Though. Hell, they could have kept them as they where, even adding a "immunity to knockdown" on them. Trolls have it on each and every elite infantry they got, so why not Cryx?

But I get it, the Cryx needed a well deserved smack on the bottom for being so good, and they got it. But that doesn't excuse badly written rules.

That's not Skornergy. Banes happen to be good at hacking apart *anything*, and can replenish their numbers lost on the way in by ganking some infantry.

>I don't think anyone is really crying their eyes out about our most expensive unit being toned down.

How about this, Khador and cryx can exchange their elite costing infantry.

You get Assault Kommandoes, and we get your Bane Thralls. Good?

Yup. Can't wait for the 20$ UA....I mean design space.

Yeeeaaaahhh.

Demo Corps don't feel distinct enough from Shocktroopers anymore, and they come out worse because of it. The difference in point cost is negligible to the point of meaninglessness, so what you end up with is trading +1 ARM, Shieldwall, CMA, the shield cannon, and access to the UA for +2 POW and a shitty critical effect.

Don't get me wrong. It's really nice that we'll be seeing MoWs on the table now. I just can't figure out why I'd ever use Demo Corps.

Fuck off. Which melee units did Khador use? Doom Reavers, Iron fangs, Great Bears and Kayazy. All of them have SPD 6 and all but Kayazy have reach to boot, Kayazy have DEF 14 and Stealth.

mmm salt

Now Ghost Walk is cheaper, can be cast by Withershadow, and more casters have it.
Thralls either needed Stealth or Tough.
Now they are weaker, cost more than they used to and are completely outperformed by Knights, who are actually one of the three (never used calvary so from that Soul Hunters still appear to be decent with Bane Cav being heavy nerfed) well balanced units. They are weaker, but still do the job you wanted them to do, which is being mobile, independent and reasonably strong versus multiple unit types while not being amazing against any.
Mat 6 makes them quite bad at hacking up anything. Unless you pay 8 more points to get it up more which is half your points which if the enemy knows what to shoot will not reach combat will more than 3 models which may or may not do anything useful.
Didn't you know they used to run MoW because speed 4 is actually really really decent?

Correction, def 14-19 depending on the situation. But who needs defensive tech on units! Just those whiny babies!

I know. I kept hearing that MoW would be "the new big thing" for Khador. Maybe there is some warcaster synergy we haven't seen yet but thats just me being wishful.

Il Gladly Switch Bane Thralls with Doomers. At the cost of 3 points less, we get only 6 of them in a unit. And on top of that we can't even buff em. Feh.

Great Bears are a character Unit, and Kyazy can deal with infantry but not with Jacks (Also Kyazy are vulnerable to blasts very muchso). I will say I see Kyazy as the new secret stars though.

Demo Corps are kind of crap. I think Bombardiers are definitely improved by the significant point discount and may have their place.

I say look on the bright side. We finally have a good MoW unit now.