Judicator Trial Run

[Gavriel]

It so happens that my weekly gaming night happens tomorrow evening, so I thought I'd give Judicator a proxy spin after the rest of his stats get spoiled tonight.

Here's the list I came up with:

pSevvy
-BoV
-Judicator
-Heirophant
10 x KEE
-UA
Rhupert
4x Choir
Covenant
2x KE Senny
Vassal
eEiryss
Mechanik
Wracks

I'll report back about how it goes tomorrow night!

[Puffgama]

Yeah I am very interested in how he works with pSevvy. I also want to see how he works with reznik and Amon.

[JArrow]

I would definedly first try Judicator whit eFeora. Something like Judicator (bonded), 2 vanguishers, choir, full tfg, hiero, wracks, 2 vassal, reclaimer and gorman or covenant. But I think pSeve runs it second best. Whit pow 10 blast damage you can't go wrong. I would like to add Reckoner to your list, cos then it has some real potential to casterkills. (Even Judicator can hit to flared caster on average of 15)

[SnakeEyes]

Good 'ol pSevvy. Always the go to guy for our new stuff. Artificially making stuff better with DW and EoM. I do look forward to hearing how playtesting works out.

[Razhem]

I have the same intention of Trying the judicator tonight with pSeverius. My list is a lot like yours, only that I use Rhoven and friends, and gorman instead of the hierophant and second seneschal. Also, I think you are missing 2 points in your list

[jandrese]

I'm thinking:

eFeora +6
Judicator 18 (Bonded)
Templar 8
Reckoner 8

Daughters of the Flame 5
4x Choir of Menoth 2
Rhupert 2
Covenant 2
Rhoven 4
6x TFG 4
3x Wracks 1

[Razhem]

Si it's confirmed that we can bond the big bastard?

[jandrese]

NQ 22 didn't say you couldn't, so I'm running with that until someone tells me differently.

[Snipafist]

Yeah, I'd think eFeora (bond), pSev (eye and death sentence allows you to threaten folks with surprisingly accurate pow17 rockets), eSev (Awareness), and pKreoss (a heavier version of the Redeemer for pop n drop) would all be able to run Judge Judy pretty well. I'd be interested in seeing how it works with some of our less obvious casters.

[darisus]

Man, i don't even own pSevy (way to overated). I would much rather use eSevy to test judicator range potential, combined with a reckoner and some vassal & choir love. I want him to be good with reznik but the fact that colossal's can't move outside of there activations really bones witchound, making people just freely dump spells at it for debuffing arm or whatnot (probably mostly cryx casters).

To tell the truth i am way more pumped for Kreoss3 then the judicator. His spell list is really solid and he should play really fast up the field, with alot of alphastrike potential (something we don't normally get to do)! The Judicator is what PP thinks Protectorate always gets, solid but no frills... It does get rather boring sometimes being the "no frills" faction, every once in awhile it would be nice to just get a token rule. I will say or BE was definitely not "no frills" so that was nice, the Judicator is really just like the Templar, solid, no frills, will get the job done, and the extras as always must come from our support pieces. It sometimes makes my list building harder when i don't want to add support and go without choir or vassals for a change of pace, and i think with Kreoss3 as with my current Reznik list i can do without either and still be great.

Dang, i really want a preview of his model so he doesn't get fuglized like Kreoss2 did compared to his art. It is almost painful to put Kreoss2 on the table if i want to use him. I really need to just convert a new one, and turn the old one into a pile of bits.

[darisus]

pKreoss (a heavier version of the Redeemer for pop n drop) would all be able to run Judge Judy pretty well.

I can see it now.... with so many boxes even if i do roll bonkers i can still charge my own Judicator to get the extra threat range on the feat, then get it all buffed up and blow some stuff away. Either that or and please correct me on this but colassals basically have virtuoso? I can just do a colassal superslam then blast stuff with my rockets and sprays once it is KD?

[Vinsklortho]

I can see it now.... with so many boxes even if i do roll bonkers i can still charge my own Judicator to get the extra threat range on the feat, then get it all buffed up and blow some stuff away. Either that or and please correct me on this but colassals basically have virtuoso? I can just do a colassal superslam then blast stuff with my rockets and sprays once it is KD?

AFAIK colossals don't have a version of virtuoso. Its one of the reasons why the Mercs love theirs due to how Drag works.

[Hashmal]

I'm thinking:

eFeora +6
Judicator 18 (Bonded)
Templar 8
Reckoner 8

Daughters of the Flame 5
4x Choir of Menoth 2
Rhupert 2
Covenant 2
Rhoven 4
6x TFG 4
3x Wracks 1

This is eerily similar to my list, except I dropped Rhoven for a vassal and max tfg.

[jandrese]

Good point, I forgot the Vassal. I'm not sure I want to drop Rhoven though, just because he's my anti-smoke and anti-stealth tool. I might even do something sacrilegious like drop Rhupert for him. The Flameguard and Daughters are basically just to run interference in this list anyway.

[darisus]

AFAIK colossals don't have a version of virtuoso. Its one of the reasons why the Mercs love theirs due to how Drag works.

Are you sure? in the Newest NQ wher they go over colossal rules under, Ranged attacks while in Melee it reads:

A colossal can make range Attacks while in Melee. A colossal never suffers the firing into melee penalty when targeting a model it is in melee with.

maybe i am just wishful thinking but, after really looking at the rule it could be either way: Either i can just shoot stuff if i am engaged... or i can shoot and still make melee atttacks. If the later it doesn't say i have to do them in a specific order...

Not 100% sure which way this falls out?

[jandrese]

It doesn't say it can make both ranged and melee attacks. It just says you can fire your guns even if you are engaged. When I noticed that in NQ I mentioned that they're going to need something like Weapons Platform or Virtuoso to make both kinds of attacks. Everybody agreed that they should all come with something, but then Stormwall was spoiled and it became clear that even the darling baby of Cygnar couldn't do it, so there was basically no chance that the Judicator was.

[SnakeEyes]

Well, took the mofo out for a run today with a 50 point pSev list.

Severius
Judicator
Reckoner
Vanquisher
Choir of Menoth (min)
Flameguard Cleansers (min)
Flameguard Cleansers (min)
Aiyana and Holt
Gorman di Wulfe
The Wrack (3 wracks)
Vassal of Menoth
Vassal of Menoth

versus

Morhvana
Ghetorix
Stalker
Megalith
Gorax
Bloodtrackers + UA
Shifting stones, solos, blah, blah

Played the SR Demolition scenario. My ranged game allowed me to destroy one objective turn two and force his hand to engage me. And engage he did! Alpha struck both the Reck and Vanq into wrecks.

But then the Judicator destroyed BOTH furry beasts in one turn. Was glorious. P+S 23 with pSev is nasty.

Didn't actually get to finish the game but I was feeling good with an ARM 21 collosal walking around and nothing left to really threaten it.

So I've got one good experience with it.

[Gavriel]

My experience was similar to Snake eyes. Ranged attacks tore the crap out of the Winter Guard Death star. Putting down 6 pow 10 blast templates a turn was magical (Still haven't seen anything to suggest that secondary blast is activation only.)

His list
pSorscha
-Beast 09
-Spriggan
-Dog
Full Deathstar
Widdowmakers
Yuri
Manhunter x 2


Beast 09 got bogged down killing errants and was subsequently destroyed by charging seneschals, and the Spriggan never did much of anything all game because of eiryss and some rough terrain. Sorcha never got a good turn to feat because severius was always behind Judicator's massive base. Once Beast and the deathstar were dealt with I swapped DW to Judicator and was pretty much unkillable. You really have to take a measured approach to dealing with a colossal just because it can be pretty easy to destroy all of the opposing enemies heavy hitters and just leave them with no way of dealing with the big guy. Mechanik is definitely worth fielding with him as you will very rarely find something that can take more than one system out in a single turn.

Hoping to try him against some of my more troublesome opponents on Monday.

[Raff]

I'm wanting to try one next week with Reznik, where am I able to find the stats for one in order to play it?

[Burninated]

Do we know if the secondary blast happens automatically, or if it needs a direct hit to trigger? Someone at my store thought that maybe it needed a direct hit. Since I haven't seen anywhere that has posted the card or the actual reading of the rule on the card, I wasn't sure.

[Matthaeus]

the fact that colossal's can't move outside of there activations really bones witchound, making people just freely dump spells at it for debuffing arm or whatnot (probably mostly cryx casters).

Not quite sure what you were trying to say, but once activated Witch Hound allows anything in Reznik's battlegroup to move, so they don't get away with it just like that by targetting the Judicator.

[jandrese]

Do we know if the secondary blast happens automatically, or if it needs a direct hit to trigger? Someone at my store thought that maybe it needed a direct hit. Since I haven't seen anywhere that has posted the card or the actual reading of the rule on the card, I wasn't sure.

It happens automatically, you don't have to hit. The second blast deviates from wherever the original shot lands.

[SnakeEyes]

BTW, Reach on a Huge based model seems WAY less impressive than on our size models. Both my opponent and I kept commenting on how we expected models to be within Reach distance of it but they'd be way out. The Huge base really throws off the distance estimation. Reach feels like the "0.5" melee range of a collosal, when taken to scale. The Kraken's 4" rule will probably feel much more like a collosals version of Reach.

[Charming]

Yup, having played quite a lot with the Vessel of Judgement it never siezes to amaze me how few models you can get into that 2" area of eruption of faith! Swipe will probably best be used if you're swamped by some infantry but I don't think that it will be very popular to go infantry on the colossals. Otherwise I'd guess we'll be better off just going to town on them with the Juds aoes and sprays.

[jandrese]

Finally got a test game in with the Judicator today. Because we only had an hour to play, we kept the game small. The lists:

pSeverius +6
Judicator 18
Blessing of Vengeance 7
4x Choir 2
Rhoven and Crew 4

My opponent rolled with this list:

pButcher +6
Behemoth 13
5xMoWST 9
5xMoWDC 9

In retrospect, I should have run a Vassal and a 2 point solo (or a pair of Menofixers) instead of Rhoven, but I wanted something to screen the Judicator.

Anyway, it was a short battle. First turn everything ran, with Sevvy putting up Eye of Menoth, Defenders Ward on the Judicator, and Vision on Rhoven. The Butcher's army ran, lobbed a couple of templates to no effect, and put Iron Flesh on the MoWST and Fury on the MoWDC (who were hiding behind the MoWST). On the following turn the Choir sang Hymn of Battle and Severius put Death Sentence on the MoWST. The Judicator parked and blew away one MoWST with a direct hit and damaged several others. The additional blasts did surprising damage to the MoWDC too. The second shot took out a MoWDC and spread some more damage around. All in all it was pretty impressive, but since it was POW 10 blast damage maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. The Judicator was sitting at RAT 6 between Hymn of Battle, the Aiming Bonus, and Eye of Menoth. The Butcher retaliated by having the MoWST amble up and use their shield cannons against Rhoven's boys, killing both. One MoWDC charged the Blessing of Vengeance, but rolled poorly and didn't take any systems out. The Behemoth put a couple of Bombards into the Judicator, but failed to do significant damage (just two points of hull). The following turn was basically the end. The Judicator charged the MoWST, before I remembered that Sweep is a power attack and I can't use it on a charge, oops. That's alright though because with P+S 21 fists against already damaged MoWST, he had no trouble clearing his melee arcs with the four melee attacks. The BoV added insult to injury by killing two MoWDC, and Rhoven charged a third but failed to kill him (but lit him on fire with but a few health left). Sevvy then popped feat and the Butcher conceded.

It felt pretty one sided honestly. I thought those MoWDC were going to trash the Judicatior on the Butcher's feat turn, but POW 17 rockets were just too dangerous for them. He lost too many troops too quickly.

We did run a quick scenario afterward to see what it would have been like had Sevvy not popped his feat. Turns out the Butcher can utterly wreck a Judicator even with Defenders Ward if he pops his feat. The only surprising thing is that it took 4 of his focus (and assuming a free upkept Fury on the Butcher) to get the job done. The Behemoth would likewise struggle to scrap it in one turn if you have Defenders Ward up, even with the Butcher's feat helping.

I have to say that my first outing with it has made me think that the Judicator is pretty legit. One thing I like is that you put Defenders Ward on it, and you're protecting 18 points of your army. You don't have to choose anymore which jack gets the buff. The DEF portion of the Defenders Ward buff doesn't really help though, but it's still better than Inviolable Resolve. SPD 4 didn't feel too slow either thanks to Reach.

My opponent worried that Colossals might break the game because he built a list that he thought would be pretty good at blowing away single heavy targets, but it got utterly trashed by the Colossal. I'm not sure if that's true though or if the terrain and his tactics (bunching up completely against an AoE heavy model) might have played a bigger role. He was being rather shy with the Behemoth too, which seems pretty weird and probably plays into the psychological elements of having such a large model on the table. People were offput by the Battle Engines too, even though they're pretty squishy when you get down to it.

[Errant_knight]

Well that makes 3 +'s for the Judicator. Hopefully this will help end the Doom cycle. Also proves that non-flashy and plain still gets the job done.

[darisus]

I keep thinking that having pow 16 aoe's really is quite good, especialy with the fact that since we are getting the extra deviations on each it is alot of blasts going around to take out high def targets, or put a few boxes into some jacks before they get to close.

I really want to get in a couple games against some opposing colassals to test my thought that Cinerators are going to be my Colassal killers, just need some people to come back from L&L with some so i can get killing them. Idrians are my other thoughts for this job, but i worry that with all the infantry hate colassals bring, there crap def stats may not let them live long enough to get there, where the CInerators laugh off coverfire and creeping barrage templates as they charge through to smack things...

Will have to see how this will play out, maybe if it does well a few people will come around to my thinking that Cinerators are a good unit and much preferable to bastions... but probably not, i am well regarded as Crazy for my love of the Cinnies!

[Gavriel]

Played another game with him against pVlad. While he performed well in this game it was really my opponents mistake on the scenario that won me the game.

We were playing the Bunkers scenario. I had DW on errants which swarmed the center of the board while the two Senneschals kept just outside of his scoring zone and a visioned judicator moved towards my scoring zone with his support team. On turn two my opponent was so overly concerned with shooting down errants and firing bombards into Judicator (Which did little damage as vision prevented one shot) that he forgot to put a model in my zone. So when my reinforcements (Gravus and a unit of KE) came on the board they were easily able to run into the zone and claim it. I specifically placed gravus just within charge range of drago under vlad's feat while the knights moved into a countercharge formation opposite his two destroyers.

On his turn he predictably feated and charged gravus with drago, dismounting him, and killed three knights with bombards. Greylords ended up shotgunning down gravus' dismount, and the Great bears ran up in front of the destroyers to keep the knights from wrecking them.

On my turn Judicator charged and killed drago, then used an ancillary attack to put some damage on one of the destroyers and kill one of the great bears (Never underestimate pow 10 blasts it turns out). The mechanik repaired him to full and the knights charged in to kill the other two great bears and put more damage on the destroyer.

On the next go around he killed the knights and ran greylords into base with Judicator to reduce it's combat effectiveness, expecting that if it trampled it couldn't kill both jacks. I surprised him again by shooting Judicator with A2A, which promptly killed all of the greylords, then charged to just barely destroy one damaged destroyer and one full health one and take the second point to win the game.

This game was very different from my first. At first I thought the jack heavy army would give me some problems, but pow 23 and shrugging off one bombard a turn with vision were both as good as gold. In the future I'd probably use DW on Judicator more often then Vision, but his widdowmakers were on the far opposite side of the board and I figured def 14 knights on a hill would be more troublesome for him than an arm 21 Judicator. Turns out I was right.

[itchmonkey]

Nice one guys. Thanks for the battle reports.

Initially I thought the Judicator is a bit meh. But you've proven me wrong by showing that it can shine under the correct conditions.

[jandrese]

The Judicator is plain, but it's a whole package. If you only want one jack it can do everything, it has staying power, tremendous anti-infantry, and good solid anti-armor capabilities. While I would say it is weighted a little heavily towards anti-infantry (the fists are strong, but you still only have 3 focus backing them up so it's hard to wreck more than 1 heavy jack a turn unless you've got some buffs on it) it can do everything. It's certainly loads better in melee than a Vanquisher.

I'm thinking it might work well as your only jack in an eKreoss list. You've got a ton of weaponmasters to deal with armor, and the anti-infantry slant is something the list needs.

A question for everybody who has playtested it: How much do you use the Flamethrowers? I had thought I would be burning past stuff and killing it, but once I got into flamethrower range I really wanted to use the melee instead. That was just one game though, have they been more useful to other people?

[Gavriel]

My only problem with him thus far has been that I don't see reason to use him with more than a few of our casters. Unlike Stormwall who brings something to the table for all but a couple of Cygnar casters, Judicator only seems to really shine with 5 or 6 of ours. I think most of the time I'll probably stick with double Reckoners and two vassals for the same points as Judicator and one vassal.

I fired the flame throwers once in my first game with him, but only as an incidental as I noticed I had one winterguard in range after firing off my rockets. Once in melee I've not been in a situation yet where firing the flame throwers was better than just making melee attacks. I guess it's really all about positioning, if infantry gets within 12" of it you might find two sprays and a rocket volley is better than charging, but you'll probably never use it on a Jack, which people seem to like to send towards it.

[Marzuki]

Still not sold on the Judicator. When people start getting used to colossals they will just tie him up with a heavy and ignore him as long as possible. I want to be proven wrong here, but I feel like very little planning went into the Judicator outside of its design. No special abilities (besides the reliquary, which is incredibly laughable) is truly mind boggling for our faction. We currently have plenty of options to deal with infantry. In fact, we have a heavy and a couple lights that excel at the task, not to mention a couple of units that do an amazing job as well. I haven't proxied the Judicator yet so please just take this as mostly theorycraft but it seems like we got the short end of the stick. /rant

[Ivellis]

Still not sold on the Judicator. When people start getting used to colossals they will just tie him up with a heavy and ignore him as long as possible. I want to be proven wrong here, but I feel like very little planning went into the Judicator outside of its design. No special abilities (besides the reliquary, which is incredibly laughable) is truly mind boggling for our faction. We currently have plenty of options to deal with infantry. In fact, we have a heavy and a couple lights that excel at the task, not to mention a couple of units that do an amazing job as well. I haven't proxied the Judicator yet so please just take this as mostly theorycraft but it seems like we got the short end of the stick. /rant

How do you expect a heavy to tie it up?....

[Vinsklortho]

How do you expect a heavy to tie it up?....

Thats what I was thinking. I can't think of any heavy jack/warbeast that could tie up a Judicator buffed by Choir barring maybe some movement shenanigans like Enliven on the enemy heavy(and even that of course is blockable). Also insert obligatory shield your jacks with infantry comment here.

[LordGrimlok]

Still not sold on the Judicator. When people start getting used to colossals they will just tie him up with a heavy and ignore him as long as possible. I want to be proven wrong here, but I feel like very little planning went into the Judicator outside of its design. No special abilities (besides the reliquary, which is incredibly laughable) is truly mind boggling for our faction. We currently have plenty of options to deal with infantry. In fact, we have a heavy and a couple lights that excel at the task, not to mention a couple of units that do an amazing job as well. I haven't proxied the Judicator yet so please just take this as mostly theorycraft but it seems like we got the short end of the stick. /rant

So... when you put this theory machine to practice, care to come back to this thread and confirm/deny your assumptions? Don't get me wrong, but I think the whole purpose of this thread is to test him out. There's plenty of other threads with rants.

As far as my intention to proxy, I'm going to go with trying him with eFeora and a bunch of jacks as my heavy hitters. The Judicator for anti infantry, support solos as norm.

[Runewyse]

As far as my intention to proxy, I'm going to go with trying him with eFeora and a bunch of jacks as my heavy hitters. The Judicator for anti infantry, support solos as norm.

Let me know if you find if Feora2 with Judi, Choir (meybe a Vassal), and either a The Wrack or a Mechanik is a viable 15 pointer.

[PG_Steampunk Jim]

Let me know if you find if Feora2 with Judi, Choir (meybe a Vassal), and either a The Wrack or a Mechanik is a viable 15 pointer.

Hows about you try it yourself and let us​ know how it goes?

[Hrimfaxi]

Had a match today using Reznik, a Reckoner, Choir, Errants, a one of each Vassal. Went up against eMagnus with a Galleon, two Renegades, Boomhowlers, and Gorman. Rolled Close Quarters and had a basic table with a few linear obstacles and some forests. eMagnus won initiative and took the first turn running up toward his zone. I went, ran up to my zone and hid mostly behind a linear obstacle and shot some rockets at Boomy and Gorman. Killed 1 howler and damaged Gorman, living the dream. His turn he runs Boomy up in my grill and positions the Renegades on either side of my forces to try to get a shot at Servath, and proceeds to cannon the hell out of my choir and a few errants. My turn I take some howlers, charge over the obstacle and rip the arms off a Renegade with errants and hit a few howlers. Judicator comes up and blows Gorman off the map (go double deviations!) and takes a howler or two. Position choir/vassals in front of the Judicator to prevent drag. eMagnus tries to Obliterator everything from in front of the Judicator but misjudged distance and got a bad deviation. Decides to cannon my chaff out of the way to open up the drag, but Sacrifice on the errants keeps my standard bearer in the way. eMags puts me in the Kill Box, but my gigantic Colossal is actually out of the way. Use my Vasal to pop my Mechanic in the back (he was in the Kill Box and couldn't move around my own Judicator), errants work on boomy a bit, and then the Judicator made the charge on the Galleon and just beat the thing into the ground. Took its right side and half its left, after which my opponent conceded despite scoring a point the turn before.

Notes - Sheer AoE was pretty good. Flamethrowers never were considered (except as a possible assassination against the pants down eMagnus, but I couldn't get the proper line through Galleon), and the melee is pretty brutal. Ancillary Attack was pretty much Best in Show, so standard 'jack support really works with it. Choir keeping me shooting while being untargettable was magnificent. I think I'll be seeing Aiyana even more than before after this thing is out.

Overall I'd say he's solid. Grade him a solid B in this match. Definitely needs more playtesting, though. His movement really seemed glacial with such a huge base and 4" move.

[Demeritus]

Do keep in mind that Drag will not move a Colossal as they can only move during their normal movement. Drag states that it pushes a model and Colossals having the "massive" rule means they cannot be pushed. Anyway sounds like you had fun, I look forward to getting a chance to proxy Judicator soon.

[spelljammer]

Tried my first game with the Judicator. pSevy vs pBaldur, 50 point game.

Pluses:
* Generating 1 focus is more useful than I was expecting.
* With Vassal 3 shots + scatters is a lot of firepower
* Large base really gives your caster something to hide behind
* When the enemy is close enough the flamers are quite useful

Minuses
* Base RAT 1 on the rockets (3 if choir chants battle) sucks. Aiming + battle + eye of menoth only gets it to a 6. The Judicator was struggling to reliably hit anything.
* Armies that can ignore blast damage nerf a lot of the potential of the Judicactor
* 3" AOE just don't cover that much area
* Because the Judicator is so inaccurate you are relying on scatters. I found this to be extremely unreliable (first 2 rounds (total of 12 AOEs) killed nothing)
* Range 14 is decent but not great
* SPEED 4 sucks
* Rolling deviations really eat up time

I'm going to need to do more play testing. Some of the problems I was running into were bad deviations. But having to rely on the deviations hurts. I was expecting that Judicator to real tear up my opponents infantry, but between extremely poor rat, bad deviation rolls, and a large portion of his army immune to blast damage the rockets just didn't do much.

I realize that a lot of armies don't ignore blast damage, but that played a small roll in this game.

For 18 points, and $135 I was expecting more. I think the Judicator really suffers from inaccurate. If they had made that -2, rather than -4 it would have made a huge difference.