Colossal, Death of High Def Infantry?

[Blythy]

Hi guys, Im thinking of switching factions due to the introduction of Colossals.

Would love some thoughs on this.


Cryx

I find Cryx to be a Heavy Infantry Faction that really relies on them to get the job done. Our jacks average Pow is only 16. With the Colossals really putting the focus on infantry killing power so far im finding Cryx lacking.

The ability for the Stormwall to throw out Lighting Pods and bouce Electro Leaps around ignores our high defence and then combine that with our low arm and i find im losing most my infantry before i get to my opponent. 3 Points for 3x Stormsmiths mean that each time the Stormwall puts down a Lighting Pod each Stormsmith can hit 3 models each for a total of 9 models with power 10s.

To deal with the Colossal i think you need to focus on killing it in one strike as most people will run a Mech with them. With Cryx im finding it very hard to do this, My infantry are normaly down before i get to the thing.

So to my Jacks, If i average out 2x Heavys with one being the Nightmare/Deathjack ( Pow 18 ) and another being power 16. Stormwall is Arm 20. I know we have debuffs but they have buffs so lets take them out for now.

Deathjack = 35 Damage ( If all hit ) Nightmare = 25 Damage ( If all hit ) Slayer = 15 Damage ( If all hit )
Other than a Deathjack/Nightmare combo no other 2x Heavys will take thing down.

So i then start thinking about range options to plink away at this thing. Leviathan is sitting at 5 down so i was finding
that most the time the Mechs would heal through the damage.

Khador,

Winterguard, and Kayazy are all boned by this things as well but i dont normaly run them. The ability to run lists like E Irusk with Cav, Man O War and some range 20 mortars under Fire for Effect means you can out range most Colossals. I know thats just one caster but i thing we can all agree khador ability to hit hard is not lacking. I think the High Arm is better than Def with the ammount of blast these things are putting out i mean POW 18 AOE 5 from the Ret one. Pow 10 Blasts from the Cryx one. Hitting is not going to matter neally as much. Im finding that at least as Khador your still sitting 9 down on my units. Pow 10 Electro leaps dont even matter.

Then with the Hitting power of Khador in combat 2 heavys can take one of this boys down.
Also with Khador you dont lack the range fire power to hit back while advancing up the field.
___________________________

Is just seems like Colossals have been made to deal with High Def and this really see the death of Cryx.

[Bronze]

Well a friend just bought one but i havent been able to go against it yet. Do I think it will take adjustments and frustration, sure! But do I think its the end of Cryx, no. The only reason we dont hit as hard i feel is cause we normally debuff armor signoficantly. If we started with lots of high power jacks it would get out of hand too quickly.

Im glad to see shifts in the introduction of colossals. PP keeps shaking things up with changes and thats always good for competition and normal gameplay. It wont be game breaking. Just like battle engines werent.

[BigK42]

You're going to have to adapt your lists. Cygnar's lightning ate our infantry even before colossals came out, so it's not like it's anything new. Don't get me wrong, being able to POW 10 whatever the heck you want is pretty nasty, but we can deal. IMO Spider jacks just picked up a lot of cache in Cryx lists because they have some of the highest armor out of all our units and can lay the pain from a distance. I do wish that they would update the leviathan rules so that we're not POW 13'ing the huge bases. It's just silly.

At the end of the day we're still looking to assassinate. Having a big base model that eats infantry for breakfast does a little bit to hinder that, but we still have options. I definitely don't think it's something to switch factions over. Just paint a rainbow on your kraken's giant head and say "corpse tokens are magic!"

[theHman]

Well if you're having trouble with enemy colossals, you can take this combo to help you drop that pesky colossal with a few hits in 1 turn.

pDenny
Bane Thralls
Tartarus
Gorman

Pop Denny's feat & cast parasite on colossal (-5 ARM)
Gorman rust bombs for an additional -2 arm
Tartarus curses Colossal (giving banes +2 dmg & +2 to hit)
Bane thralls charge in (Dark Shroud further reduces ARM by 2)

That precious 19-20 pts colossal is now at -11 ARM! *cue maniacal evil laughter*
Should only take about 5-7 banes to do it with average rolls (aprox) on the charge.

At that point, if you can't kill that colossal with mcThralls, well, the Dragonfather should turn you into a scrap thrall or something equally low on the sacrificial totem poll...

Or, if you can, throw a blind bomb on it from Gorman. That effectively takes it out of the game for a turn.
Which you can use to just run past it and really pressure your enemy's caster.

I've also found that destroying the pods to be a good thing as it reduces the angles they can use for triangulations.
Are you still gonna lose guys on the way in? You betcha, but you gotta ignore the casualties and get to grips with the enemy as quickly as possible and kill key pieces.

You might also try fielding a leviathan to shoot those stormsmiths from 13" away.
Load it up with 3 focus and you can reliably kill 2 stormsmiths a turn by boosting the first shot and then buying a 2nd and boosting that one as well.
And if he's in b2b with Morty, well, you can probably kill all your opponents stormsmiths in a single turn if you don't mind using most of her focus that turn.

Don't sell your army or give up simply because of the intro to colossals.
It just requires a shift in your tactics and strategy along with list building if you know you're going to be fighting against one.

Remember, even at 50pts, a colossal represents nearly 50% of ones points spent on 1 model.
If you can take it out early on, you've really given yourself a huge edge - not just on the tabletop, but also psychologically.

People are emotionally invested in their colossals and cool minis.
If you can kill their beloved mini quickly, I've found that you've won half the battle as they'll be shaken up and on the defensive - right where we want 'em.

Good luck and remember, it's a game. Just have fun with it.
If you feel you can win the game, change your win factor from killing the enemy caster to taking out his colossal and go after it with a vengeance.

Hope that helps!

[theHman]

Another great unit is Blackbanes Ghost raiders at max since they're incorporeal, they ignore that lightning junk.

Also, using double pistol wraiths for the death chill can really put things in your favor - just expect to lose them after they DC the colossal.

[Demeritus]

As a heads up, Curse does not give bonus damage it gives bonuses to attack rolls and movement against the Cursed model/unit.

[SpiderBite]

Colossals the death of Cryx?
being an undead faction, I'll say bring it on! There's only one specific combo I'd be 'anxious' about.
Hell, I'll even deal with the insta-triangulation the favorite faction gets by popping two pods.

If you could apply the same answer all the time, the game would become stagnant and boring.
keep mixing it up with new challenges/puzzles to solve!

(I will still want to nut-punch anyone who fields two colossals and pHaley)

[anewbre]

We seem to have plenty of tryx to deal with colassals. Bane thralls seem good except for their short threat range. Tartarus helps and so do pistol wraiths for death chill. We will lose them but how many turns do we need to freeze the colassal for the banes to do their work? Satyxis raiders may not be able to scrap a colassal but feedback (and backlash if you are running Skarre) will put the hurt on the caster. I don't have a book yet, but I was wondering if Ogrun Boarding harpoons can drag the electricity pods out of position (because if you destroy one the Cygnar player just replaces them. Spell assassinations may be easier because fewer models mean that fewer charge/run lanes will be blocked. At the worst we will have to try different models than we frequently use. Someone commented on another forum, "My colassal was killing everything and I would have won if I didn't get assassinated." Let's go with our strengths at assassination and thwart their colossals with our tryx.

[Lambstar]

Combined-arms approach. As you say, heavies probably won't take down a colossal on their own. However, they can easily knock out a side. A Stormwall, for example, only has 28 boxes on each half. If you can kill one half (or just knock out the guns on that half), bam: one less side and template you have to deal with, plus you lock the thing in. A Stormwall smacking the Deathjack will wreck the thing if it hits with all its attacks (assuming DJ is unbuffed or Stormwall is un-debuffed), but that's 2-3 focus spent and no templates to deal with the weakened thing. If there are no mechanics, it's even worse: the Colossal has to turn to face to attack with the other ungimped arm, which plays havoc with fire fields. Not that you can ignore the initiator-type model either. A POW 18 free strike hurts at best and takes out a freshly repaired system at worst.

Initiators: Deathjack, Terminus, Nightmare, Slayer x2, Kraken, or any combination of tough hard-hitting solo and armor piercing warjack (I prefer the Cankerworm).
Finishers: Any other hard-hitting aforementioned unit in the above paragraph. We have quite a few of them.

Also, just remember that if it's laying down covering fire with a 5-point support squad of a Journeyman and mechanics, it's only firing 2 big guns and a lightning pod. Definitely not 24 points worth of damage. Using its fields of fire to your advantage can help here. It only gets 1 template per fire field. Plus, templates are LoS only, which is something that eGaspy and the Witch Coven can both play to in a big way.

[Sheer_Falacy]

Random note: you say colossals are the death of high def infantry, but talk about nothing but Stormwall. The other colossals are drastically worse against high def infantry, except Judicator, and that one is bad against Satyxis raiders unless they take it with eFeora (or kill the Sea Witch). Kraken gets a single 4 inch aoe and is otherwise mat 6 or rat 5, Conquest gets a single 4 inch aoe and is otherwise rat 4 or 6 blast damage, Ret's has a great aoe but it's still rat 5, just one, and Satyxis don't care unless it crits. Mercs has a lot of shots but once again rat 5.

So in most cases, it's not colossals that kill high def infantry, it's boosting/Guided Fire/knockdown + colossals.

[SpiderBite]

Colossals arent any scarier than 19pts of heavies.

[AshenFang]

Satyxis units are our only 'high def' units, and it just started dropping from there, the larger portion being around Def 12, which is not high, even have lower when looking to Bile Thralls. Sure the Stormwall might be able to zap a few infantry, but it Disrupts jacks..would rather lose a few infantry a turn against it, then get my jacks nearly shut down.

No ending of anything here.

And the funny thing about WarmaHordes.. is that you don't have to kill every model on the table to win.. you actually only have to kill one typically.. (Coven, looking at you!) So afraid about all those mean POW 10s? ..instead of running your Pistol Wraiths at the Stormwall, perhaps you should push it to the guys that are making use of the Pods? Stormsmiths go down like nothing. Cryx as a faction excels at assassination runs, darting around the big scary jacks and killing their Warnoun.. a Colossal or two largely does not change that, the larger bases have been around for a while, and still we are doing just fine. I don't know when the last time I've bothered killing the Avatar that my local Menoth player runs.

[SjoerdH]

To deal with the Colossal i think you need to focus on killing it in one strike as most people will run a Mech with them.

Kill the mechs. In this setting it's worth a pistol wraith

[zyxx]

(I will still want to nut-punch anyone who fields two colossals and pHaley)

have you seen the Painting forums... guy in Chattanooga, TN bought 6 of the beat sticks... don't really know who to feel sorry for... him for spending that much $$$, or his opponent... lol

personally, I am not worried about the new collosals. Will they take new strategies to take down... probably... but since i own 40+ banes and 20+ satyxis...i'm not to worried... i'll either cut it to shreds or plink the caster to death...