Old Witch Tactics

[ToAzT]

I played my first game with the Old Witch of Khador today, and it was a trainwreck. I'm used to my eSorscha and Butcher so I didn't know how to get tricksy. I'm hoping that there's a general consensus on what's good with her, or how to use her properly, so I'm asking you guys. I tried searching but didn't come up with anything super good.

Also, managed to break Scrapjack halfway through the game by accidentially bumping him causing him to fall, and pop! off with his legs. Hate that model. ~_~

[Tossy]

Quick rundown because I am at work

1. Keep her in cover (Gorman is good for this)
2. Keep Scrappy in Cover (see above)
3. Cast Avatars of slaughter at the beginning of the game. Scrappy is a beast against infantry with this.
4. Use her feat turn 2-3.
5. Use her against infantry armies
6. She likes to use infantry, but also remember her battlegroup can see though forest, clouds etc etc.
7. Gallows brings things closer to you jacks
8. Murder of crows is an awesome pie plate that can force people to move the way you want them too
9. Boomerang Scrappy when he id done playing with infantry
10. keep her as far back as possible or she will die/catch fire. She has an arc node, use it.

She takes practice... don't be discouraged, she is my favorite caster and I would never leave home without her

[shakedown47]

Remember that, outside of pre-set tournament tables, you account for 50% of the terrain decision-making. Your contribution to the table will be forest templates, always. Once there, use them and Murder of Crows to wreak havoc with your opponents' line of sight; you can see and shoot through them, he probably cannot. This means that you can decide what charges happen, and when, a very large percentage of the time.

Lately I've been experimenting with Wyshanllyr to pretty good success. Not only can you upkeep a 2ND spell for free each turn, but he really helps you get more mileage out of Gallows. Basically taking Wyshnallyr = being able to take another heavy, and that's not bad.


She wants to be a front-line 'caster, except she isn't. She has exceptionally high Def, until she gets knocked down and Def goes out the window. She has two fairly killy melee attacks, but she isn't going to chew through medium bases very easily. She'll have stealth (via prowl) and Def 18 (via Iron Flesh) whenever you need her to, so there's no reason to keep her at the back of your forces. At the same time, it's silly to let even a moderately melee-oriented 'caster get his sites on her or to leave her vulnerable to being slammed into. You can keep her up the board as long as you're looking a turn ahead, and unfortunately making a mistake about this with a 'caster this squishy is lethally unforgiveable.

People love Avatar of Slaughter on Scrappy, and of course that makes him awesome, but it's even better on Old Witch. As above, it's safe enough to run her at the fore as long as you're cautious of the things you need to be cautious of. She only has a 8 1/2" melee threat range, and Unseen Path does not allow you to use the 1" of movement from Avatar of Slaughter, so you need to charge her into combat with small-based infantry as opposed to porting her in. Charge in, wipe out an entire unit, and save a couple focus to warp back to Scrappy. Next turn, savor the multitude of focus you'll have built up. With three or four extra focus, she'll tear apart almost any model in the game in one turn.

She's not one of the Sorschas, and she's not one of the Butchers. She's not even a Vlad. You can't count on her to do the heavy lifting for you. She loves IFPs, and Kayazy as much as any other IF 'caster does. Behemoth is her best pal, at least (probably) until Conquest drops. You've got a lot of forests down, so play to that strength and brings some manhunters and widowmakers, and anything else that likes forests and concealment. I even run a Kodiak with her once in a while.

The hardest thing with the Old Witch is that you're often going to find yourself in a quandary about what to do with focus, moreso than a lot of casters. She likes Iron Flesh, but she likes Avatar of Slaughter too. Almost any other unit you take is also going to like Iron Flesh, and they can't both have it. Same with Avatar of Slaughter, you've got two ideal targets for the same spell and you've got to pick one. You're often going to want to upkeep Murder of Crows, but then you can't upkeep anything else and still have enough focus to let your 'jacks do anything worthwhile AND cast Gallows (this is where Wyshnallyr really comes in handy.) Against small bases she's the best beatstick in the game, even moreso than EButcher, but she's next to useless against anything with a medium or large base unless it's been hurt badly already. You've got to pick you battles with her, and be hyper aware of the placement of units on the board, but if you can do that then your win/loss ratio is going to be exceptionally high.

[Tyr852]

I like pairing her with shooty jacks , Behemoth is probably my go to one to make use of Augury since she has such low WJ points. I haven't played her as much as I'd like but I think she's one of our better casters to most match ups as she has some awesome tricks and Field of Talons is just brutal to most armies. Obviously any unit that likes IF is solid to run with her , Nyss are really solid since they can ignore MoC for LoS .

Gun carriage is also good times with MoC.

[ToAzT]

I think I need to get used to the idea that scrappy is an arc node, and I don't have to have the Old Witch as close as other casters.

[Bully Bully Mahu]

Old Witch is by far my favorite caster in Khador, and the one I have had the most success with in my measily 2 months of playing the faction.

Here are my thoughts:

1. Her weakness is damage output, so she generally hogs all the damage abilities she can get. Great Bears, Drakhan, Aianna and Holt, potentially Ragman, so any way you can fill that hole, the better.

2. Her primary strength is in board control and anti-infantry. The feat is fantastic at locking an army down for a turn if they have a lot of infantry. Even beast heavy fear it, because if you can catch the beasts they can't charge. POW 14 adds up to. So knowing when to pop the feat is key with her, in my experience. It is great for setting up a real good next turn.

3. Always take Gorman, as you need that cloud to protect her. She is squishy and wants to play forward. Also try and recognize what is better, stealth or hiding behind the cloud. If your opponent has little stealth ignoring abilities, hanging out in the cloud is best, as you can still get the prowl bonus in melee. If they do, IE Cygnar, place behind the cloud as they have a harder time with that. If they ignore both, IE Legion, take some screening models. I have become a big fan of a minimum unit of Demo corps doing blocking, as it allows Old Witch with Iron Flesh on herself to potentially avoid eLilith assassination runs. Plus Demo Corps help with that whole damage output issue, but that has just been my experience.

4. Dirty tricks are your friend. Murder of Crows and WGRC Suppressing Fire on her feat turn can just be dumb. Bane Thralls? Pop feat and lay a suppressing fire template where it touches most of them. If they move they take a POW 14, if they don't they take a POW 10. You can drop murder of crows on light armored infantry and cause the same effect. Don't forget that Murder of Crows is a cloud effect. So you can block off charges from a lot of things just on the LOS denial alone.

5. She only needs one jack, common wisdom points to the Behemoth, but I have been successful with just a Destroyer. Been thinking of Torch with her as Augury, dropping smoke, and relentless charge seems to go well with each other. No decent ranged is sadness. A Spriggan is awesome as well. She can run two jacks fine, so you just have to find what you are most comfortable with. I find myself points starved a little after I take all the infantry and damage output I need.


Keeping her alive is the hardest part about her, but you can still win many many games with her.

[Col_Festus]

http://www.chain-attack.com/2012/03/...-vs-old-witch/

Give that a listen.

[thrasymacus]

I really like this podcast. They give a well articulated break down of each caster after each game and I seldom disagree with their reasoning. I prefer their battle reports to the ones in NQ which quite often runs zany off the wall uncompetitive lists that fail very predictably. Remember Strakov's debut in NQ? So sad.

[ToAzT]

Yeah, I like that podcast too. I've never heard of them before. Thanks for the link!

[ScottEBJJ]

Remember that, outside of pre-set tournament tables, you account for 50% of the terrain decision-making. Your contribution to the table will be forest templates, always. Once there, use them and Murder of Crows to wreak havoc with your opponents' line of sight; you can see and shoot through them, he probably cannot. This means that you can decide what charges happen, and when, a very large percentage of the time.

Lately I've been experimenting with Wyshanllyr to pretty good success. Not only can you upkeep a 2ND spell for free each turn, but he really helps you get more mileage out of Gallows. Basically taking Wyshnallyr = being able to take another heavy, and that's not bad.


She wants to be a front-line 'caster, except she isn't. She has exceptionally high Def, until she gets knocked down and Def goes out the window. She has two fairly killy melee attacks, but she isn't going to chew through medium bases very easily. She'll have stealth (via prowl) and Def 18 (via Iron Flesh) whenever you need her to, so there's no reason to keep her at the back of your forces. At the same time, it's silly to let even a moderately melee-oriented 'caster get his sites on her or to leave her vulnerable to being slammed into. You can keep her up the board as long as you're looking a turn ahead, and unfortunately making a mistake about this with a 'caster this squishy is lethally unforgiveable.

People love Avatar of Slaughter on Scrappy, and of course that makes him awesome, but it's even better on Old Witch. As above, it's safe enough to run her at the fore as long as you're cautious of the things you need to be cautious of. She only has a 8 1/2" melee threat range, and Unseen Path does not allow you to use the 1" of movement from Avatar of Slaughter, so you need to charge her into combat with small-based infantry as opposed to porting her in. Charge in, wipe out an entire unit, and save a couple focus to warp back to Scrappy. Next turn, savor the multitude of focus you'll have built up. With three or four extra focus, she'll tear apart almost any model in the game in one turn.

She's not one of the Sorschas, and she's not one of the Butchers. She's not even a Vlad. You can't count on her to do the heavy lifting for you. She loves IFPs, and Kayazy as much as any other IF 'caster does. Behemoth is her best pal, at least (probably) until Conquest drops. You've got a lot of forests down, so play to that strength and brings some manhunters and widowmakers, and anything else that likes forests and concealment. I even run a Kodiak with her once in a while.

The hardest thing with the Old Witch is that you're often going to find yourself in a quandary about what to do with focus, moreso than a lot of casters. She likes Iron Flesh, but she likes Avatar of Slaughter too. Almost any other unit you take is also going to like Iron Flesh, and they can't both have it. Same with Avatar of Slaughter, you've got two ideal targets for the same spell and you've got to pick one. You're often going to want to upkeep Murder of Crows, but then you can't upkeep anything else and still have enough focus to let your 'jacks do anything worthwhile AND cast Gallows (this is where Wyshnallyr really comes in handy.) Against small bases she's the best beatstick in the game, even moreso than EButcher, but she's next to useless against anything with a medium or large base unless it's been hurt badly already. You've got to pick you battles with her, and be hyper aware of the placement of units on the board, but if you can do that then your win/loss ratio is going to be exceptionally high.

This type of terrain set-up is not universal or even typical. The terrain rules do not allow players to place/pick terrain in a way to benefit their list/caster. This really isn't a valid tactica in that regard.

Secondly AoS is better on Scrapjack because there are very few situations where the OW, lacking reach, will have an infantry unit set up for her to mow through. It's just a misplay to space infantry so poorly. With Reach Scrapjack can eat through even correctly spaced infantry.

The biggest OW tip, is to always yank Scrapjack back. There are few cases where this is not the smart play.

[shakedown47]

This type of terrain set-up is not universal or even typical. The terrain rules do not allow players to place/pick terrain in a way to benefit their list/caster. This really isn't a valid tactica in that regard.

Well I guess the best I can do is, like you, give advice based on my personal experiences. In every pick-up game of Warmachine I've played, each player generally justs picks four or five pieces of terrain that suits him and they are mutually distributed around the board. The only exception to this that I can think of, and I've been playing this game nearly as long as anyone could claim to, is when one of the two players is busy doing something else and requests that the other set up the entire board for the sake of expediency or when showing the game to someone for the first time and setting up the board to ensure an interesting game.

To the OP: if my advice of decorating your tabletops with forests wasn't relevant in the area where you play, my suggestion would be to donate lots and lots of forest templates to your local game store's terrain shelves, then quietly gather up a majority of the less-friendly pieces of terrain and hide them in an inconspicuous corner, or place them all on a single shelf and label it with a sign that says "40k only."

[TarlSS]

Huh, I totally forgot that Scrapjack has reach. He doesn't look like it, certainly.

[Dark ninja]

I'm a new player. And I'm really like the Old Witch.
I'm in process of building my army and reading this topic I've got a question about WGI rifle corp.
Can I place more than one Suppressing Fire AOE? For example two in a line to make a "wall" from them? Or it must be only one?

[Thenmy]

I'm a new player. And I'm really like the Old Witch.
I'm in process of building my army and reading this topic I've got a question about WGI rifle corp.
Can I place more than one Suppressing Fire AOE? For example two in a line to make a "wall" from them? Or it must be only one?

You cannot split the unit into multiple smaller Suppressing Fire templates. Everyone must contribute to the same one.