Circle vs. Skorne

[Aavery]

Hi everyone, my friend and I started playing Hordes about 2months ago. He has the Skorne box set, Molik Karn, a unit of pain givers, an aganizer, and a brute. I am having a really hard time getting wins against his army. Can anyone give me some advice on what list i should take or any tactics that have worked for you against Skorne.

[Theripontigonus]

Well, the first order of business is to find out what you have. Write us up a list, and which casters you are most comfortable with. From there we should be able to help you out much more.

[Aavery]

I am most comfortable with Morv and eBauldar. as for heavies and units I have Warpwolf stalker, feral warpwolf, megalith, woldwarden, gorax, argis *2, shifting stones *2, stonekeeper, druids and UA, druid stoneward and woldstakers, and lord of the feast. I bought the battle box to start and have been adding pieces to my army when ever I can.

[Bishop84]

Well, I can tell you that you don't have the units to run Morvahna. Druids are a decent unit with her, but lack the punch you want. Bloodtrackers are practically a must with her.

And while not entirely necessary, I love a Woldwatcher with eBaldur. 24 armor, can't be moved or knocked down, and shield guard is just so wrong it's right.

[Snowmelter]

The best thing vs the Molik Karn Missle is Mohsar. Put pillars in front of your whole army. They are no models= no charge, no side step = no reason to be afraid of Karn. Bring some Bloodweaver. They rip Beasts apart.
Skorne should be one of the factions with enough damage output to ignore eBaldurs ARM-buff. And he will be faster than you. With Bloodtrackers, Morvahna should be an option.

[ShoX]

The way I see it Skorne have more raw power and less mobility, so exploiting your strengths when your opponent is exploiting his should put you on equal or better footing and in turn give your opponent a riddle to solve, starting a cycle which will go on until you both have explored a few game styles and armies.
Bloodweavers are amazing versus beasts. They can go up to 11+ 4D6 on the charge and _IF_ you get a beast down to 3 or less HP with 2 weavers left, you can try to blood burst it for the best 5" AoE in the game, if he has the paingivers too close. They also own any sort of living infantry and casters relying on upkeeps for their stuff.
Wolf riders are a nice unit to have when your opponent is slower. You can get turn after turn of decimating flanks without you opponent getting into range of them and forcing your opponent to either rush a unit out there to deal with them or pack his formations tighter. Tighter formations mean The weavers can do more with the 5" template, so the units synergise well.
Beastwise, I would suggest any combination of warpwolves.
Pureblood gets to spray low DEF units, which he likes, Ghetorix And Feral have the armor to survive betting charged sometimes and you'll need a Stalker sooner or later when your opponent starts experimenting.
Also with the high POW of their attacks, Skorne beasts really don't want to boost to hit and rather buy more attacks. DEF14 means they will miss a noticeable amount of swings without boosting.

[Aavery]

Thanks a lot for all the help guys.

[PG_cheddercaveman]

This might be a bit premature, but rumors have it that the Tiberion kits might be at Lock and Load. I'm going to guess that in tournaments, the Skorne player is likely to pull out whatever list they have with him in there when they're across the table from Circle. Mohsar is still probably a good idea with Curse of Shadows and a Gorax providing Primal. Mohsar's feat can also be pretty bad news for Skorne.

Cassius is also not going to be bad against them, but be VERY careful to keep the tree away from anywhere Molik can get to. Honestly, I don't think we have a bad game against Skorne in many of its incarnations if we play it correctly. Their biggest problem that we have might be a Defender's Ward Tiberion.

[SillySod]

Well, I can tell you that you don't have the units to run Morvahna. Druids are a decent unit with her, but lack the punch you want. Bloodtrackers are practically a must with her.

Incorrect. Druids are a fine unit to use with Morvahna. There are some good reasons to use them over trackers too - vortexes, countermagic, and fishing.

IMO you want to use Morvahana with druids to screen her and the beasts. A rolling wall of vortexes ought to be able to gum up Molik and catch him before he assassinates or kills all your beasts in one go. This will get easier in larger games but in smaller games the druids should be just about sufficient. Once Molik commits then you can regrow the druids and control the skorne player out of the game, hopefully counterkilling Molik with a heavy... even if the initial impact catches one of your heavies you ought to be able to use force bolts to keep any remaining skorne forces out of the fight while you total Molik and then deal with the remaining heavy piecemeal.

What size games are you playing? You dont need any new models to start winning against your opponent but I guess you can always improve your chances with a better selection of options.

[ringsnake]

Your best bet against Skorne is anything that can control movement and LOS. Especially if he's using the tired old movement boosts from warlock + paingivers + Molik + Gladiator animus combo. It's difficult and not entirely fun to play against. If your opponent gets even the slightest opportunity to get Karn within 17" of models that are within a few inches of your warlock you've lost.

pBaldur and eKrueger have the best feats for this. Their feats let you control the field and suppress Karn's movement enough to let you be the charger rather than the chargee. Stay away from warlocks that need to be up in the enemy army's grill to make their powers work; like Morvahna and eBaldur for example. The forests and rock walls will not stop his heavies when they can get pathfinder from the Gladiator's animus.

[Aavery]

That is the combo that he is using. We are both really new to hordes, so its a new trick for us.

[Bishop84]

Incorrect. Druids are a fine unit to use with Morvahna. There are some good reasons to use them over trackers too - vortexes, countermagic, and fishing.

I said Druids were a decent unit with her but lacked punch, which they do. I never said they lacked tricks. I occasionally use Druids and Bloodtrackers with Morvahna, so I know their uses.

Putting Regrowth on Bloodtrackers lets you play very aggressive with them, and aggressive Bloodtrackers can be very dangerous for your opponent and forces him/her to make choices that they'd rather not make.

[ringsnake]

That is the combo that he is using. We are both really new to hordes, so its a new trick for us.

Just remember that Side Step only works with initial attacks, so Karn can only do it twice. That's a common newbie mistake.

[SillySod]

I said Druids were a decent unit with her but lacked punch, which they do. I never said they lacked tricks.

You also said that "you don't have the units to run Morvahna" and "bloodtrackers are practically a must with her". Which is false :P

I can kind of feel the forum building up to a big discussion about Morvahna. She is a decent tournament warlock who will become extremely powerful once the gatorman witchdoctor is released. However, when you try to build an army you will notice that there is a pretty big range of options - obviously there is the druids vs trackers debate but you could also make a good case for almost any beast loadout and she has plenty of choices of both secondary units and solos.

[PG_cheddercaveman]

You also said that "you don't have the units to run Morvahna" and "bloodtrackers are practically a must with her". Which is false :P

I can kind of feel the forum building up to a big discussion about Morvahna. She is a decent tournament warlock who will become extremely powerful once the gatorman witchdoctor is released. However, when you try to build an army you will notice that there is a pretty big range of options - obviously there is the druids vs trackers debate but you could also make a good case for almost any beast loadout and she has plenty of choices of both secondary units and solos.

The Druids aren't bad with her, and there is certainly a lot of different ways to play her. That said, Bloodtrackers are VERY, VERY powerful with her, almost to the point where they're as close to necessary as I'm ok claiming. The biggest reason that they're better than Druids is that you can only have a 7-model unit, where as with Bloodtrackers you get 11 models. Personally, I'd advocate trying both in the same list.

[FoolishSpriggan]

Your setup is extremely similar to what I run, and my regular opponent is a Skorne player as well. First, I'd recommend checking out my blog if you need some general advice -- http://tormentedequilibrium.blogspot.com/.

As to how to counter it - pBaldur, eKrueger and Mohsar are great against Skorne. Their feats (especially pBaldur and eKrueger) will slow them down and prevent them from getting the charge, which is the biggest thing. Mohsar's Pillar of Salt spell is a pretty hard counter to Molik Karn, as the Pillars are structures and can't be charged directly.

The biggest thing about Skorne is that you cannot win with attrition or by taking the first hit. Their beasts are tougher, hit harder, and have more dependable tricks (Abuse, Rush, Gnawing Pain from the Agonizer). Instead, you need to get tricky back at them - use your feat to prevent them from charging you while you move up for the strike on the next turn. Put pillars around their heavy hitters, forcing them to use resources getting rid of them. Use Druids to pull a heavy into the open and gang up on it.

Whatever you do, don't stand toe-to-toe with him - unfortunately, that's pretty much exactly what Morvahna and eBaldur are geared for. From experience, I'd say they are two of the worst warlocks to take against Skorne, and that may be why you've had so much trouble (that and Molik Karn is as close to 'broken' as Privateer Press gets).

[Aavery]

I found that I was trying to hard to match his heavies. Last night we played a game and I came away with a pretty convincing win. My list was Morv, druids and UA shifting stones *2, feral, a stalker, gorax and lord of the feast. I used the druids and one set of stones to block charge lanes. once he moved up to kill some druids I used regrowth to bring them back. I ended up picking off most of the warbeasts before sending in Lord of the Feast in to kill all the beast handlers and the aginizor. At that point I hadn't lost a model so he gave me the win. Thank you to everyone for the help.