25 pts. pGoreshade

[maxvonlaibach]

New to the game, the faction, relatively new to the forums. The chicken spam from the battle box seemed obsolescent for Mk. II, and Denny doesn't really appeal to me, so here's what I came up with for my first list:

That bloody bastard! (-6)

Deathripper (4)
Cankerworm (5)
Seether (9)
min. knights (6)
min. mechanithralls (3)
Tartarus (4)

I've already got the caster and the worm, but the rest of this stuff is open to discussion. Some ideas include:

-exchanging the knights for the thralls, or even the satyxis with ua. Bane thralls have stealth and dark shroud, which makes them hit harder and more resilient vs. ranged attacks, but vengeance and reach sound like great abilities. Satyxis would be there as soul gate fodder, while still doing considerable damage on their mini-feat turn.

-exchanging the deathripper for a defiler, that would turn an arc node with legs into an arc node with a decent spray attack (and legs) for only one point.

-turning the seether into a reaper, the idea being for it to team up with the Cankerworm and form a 'jack- killing team. It also costs two points less than the Seether, thereby enabling me to field a full unit of mechanithralls. My main concern with this idea is that it'd require much more focus investment from Goreshade, whose spells seem too good to miss on.

Comments more than welcome.

[Fernadon]

perhaps

-Mechanis
-Bane Knights
-Deathripper

+max Bane Thralls
+Defiler

With only one arc node I would choose the Defiler. With its range attack it can give you much more opportunities. And Tartarus with Banes is allways a good idea with pgore, because of its feat. Seether+Soul Gate is classic!
But I dont think a min Mechanitroop with pgore can give you much. Will only die.

[maxvonlaibach]

It does have a truckload of appeal, and I wasn't too sure about the mechanithralls to begin with, they just look nice and seem to be able to take care of themselves pretty well. How does:

Goreshade

Defiler
Canker
Reaper

Full knights
Tartarus

sound?
Granted, 10 pts. for the knights does sound pretty rough considering the format, but I get an effective +5 points via feat, right?

[Fernadon]

So you like Bane Knight? ;)
They are very good. With Tartarus to assist them and Goreshade to give you an extra Unit of Bane Thralls, you will have the Troops to clear the field, so your new list sounds solid to me.

Dont get me wrong. Mechanithralls are amazing, but only if they come in swarms of 10-20 and perhaps with a Necrosurgeon, who can assist them.
They are so sweet cheap and with their fists they can even hurt Jacks!
But 6 Mechanithralls cant survive very long in most cases - trust me, I learned it painfully.

[maxvonlaibach]

Well, I wasn't going to count on them surviving for too long under fire, rather on the opponent seeing more immediate and serious threats running at him to worry about a 3pts (that's less than Tartarus!) unit skulking somewhere on a flank.

Still, I do make that mistake I make all the time when planning stuff before actually playing a game: assuming that every unit will do what I want it to, with the opponent being obliging enough not to blow them all to pieces before they get anywhere. Despite many, many games in various systems, this assumption still creeps into my mind whenever I'm thinking about a new list, so thanks for reminding me that it's baseless.

[maxvonlaibach]

After a few vassal games with the list above, I started thinking about changinq some stuff, thereby coming up with the following:

Goreshade

Seether
Cankerworm
Stalker

Bane Thralls x 10
Tartarus
Necrotech + 1 scrap thrall

The few discoveries I've made:
- Reaper + Cankerworm duo doesn't really work as well as I thought. The reaper almost never hits, and when it does, it fails to wound, so the drag thing is nothing you can rely on. I was thinking about black ogrun, but they can't drag heavies, and the main reason I love the worm is that it's so easy for it to deal with ARM 18+. I've returned to a Seether in a more straightforward beatstick role, see how that turns out.
- My Defiler's story was almost always the same: spray once, arc once, get killed. Goreshade really doesn't need a node that much imo, and the Stalker looks great, is more resilient than his low boxes and abysmal ARM imply, and the P+S is just enough to seriously threaten the enemy 'caster.
- I liked the knights very much, but they did have the tendency to get stuck against anything with a good DEF or ARM, so I thought, since it would save me two points, why not go for the thralls instead? They are more difficult to kill and they destroy stuff more easily.
- The Necrotech is really only there because I was left with 1 point and no idea what to do with it. He might be a screen for Goreshade, and I've got quite a few 'jacks to repair, so potentially he can be quite useful for the meager point he costs. Still, he's the only model in my army without stealth, and that can hurt...

What do you think about that list? Is it better or worse than the previous one, and is there anything that just stands out as bad?

[ErsatzGnomes]

Personally, I love the Seether

Even in games that I've lost, I've had nothing but good luck with Cryx happiest jack (he really just has his arms out because he wants to hug you), like the other day I had a Seether hug a retribution Phoenix so hard that it exploded. In the past I've had them hug a few Khador heavy jacks so hard that they just fell to pieces.

At 25 points with Goreshade, here's what I'm running in a local league:

pGoreshade (+6)
Bloat Thrall (-2)
Bloat Thrall (-2)
10x Mechanithrall (-5)
Brute Thrall (-1)
Necrosurgeon (-2)
Seether (-9)
Seether (-9)

That comes out to like 24 points (we're doing a league where you can carry over up to 3 points per round that is escalation). For the final point you could toss in a 2nd Brute Thrall for beats.

[maxvonlaibach]

No banes? How's that working out for you?

[ErsatzGnomes]

Works out pretty good really, and I do have banes- goreshade feats them in =)

It's like playing with 30 points when they say you can only have 25

[maxvonlaibach]

I was seriously considering giving either satyxis or mechanis a go, but having 20 banes on the table and counting with Goreshade and Tartarus when you only brought 10 initially is just too much fun.

Maybe someday, when I'm a rich veteran, I'll be able to afford to have more than one list.

[Grey Hunter]

Sorry posted this in the wrong area, can someone please delete it?