Circle vs Colossals?

[Bakemono]

Purebloods have always been popular with me, albeit for more traditional targets.

[Bradigus]

I've only played a few games against Stormwall, but what I've found is that he takes up the space on the field and the same point cost as 2 'jacks. So you just have to dedicate 2 warbeasts to killing it. I've never failed to take it out when I dedicated myself to killing it.

I can see Conquest being an issue due to higher base ARM. But like a Khador 'jack, you just need to throw in some extra help or do some damage before you engage.

[Lighten]

I ran into the pHaley/Stormwall combo for the first time yesterday (at 25, so no dual stormwalls, just gorman and b13th + a lancer). Was playing eKaya, and got the win in a tight game. It reinforced my belief that the weakness of the Stormwall is that it's not worth its points when forced into melee, and it can't handle multiple targets well if, again, it has to use melee. Never did get to charge the thing, of course, or anything else except Gorman after he black oiled me. However, I split my forces and came after it from both sides once we had traded down to basically eKaya + stalker/pureblood vs. pHaley + Stormwall. It had to go into melee with the Forced Evo stalker, got lucky enough to kill it, but couldn't stop the pureblood and Kaya from taking down Haley.

The Stormwall doesn't have very good mat/rat (for a 19 pt model)... if it's hitting high value targets, it's having to boost a lot, or rely on rolling 8+ on 2 dice. And even with reach and a 5" base, it can't be in two places at once. A stalker without any buffs (or forced evo + temporal barrier) is actually only about a 50/50 chance for a fully loaded stormwall. And they're the premiere example in the game of a easily killed heavy On the opposite extreme, Ghetorix + wall + Roots is expecting to take about 8 damage from a fully loaded stormwall. Lock them up in melee.

[Phatheadaf]

@ OP...

I personally don't understand why everyone feels our faction is pillow fisted. Our Feral can get up to MAT 9 and POW 19 w 7 attacks, and has 4 warlocks that can buff him up to POW 21 w/o a problem. That's the same damage out put as a Bronzeback, who is widely considered one of the biggest beatsticks in the game.

Ive been play testing versus a lot of Collosal and Mountain Trolls since they were leaked as the players at my LGS want to play them. All 50's and I've been playing Kromac. In back to back games I took out a MT, Eartborn, and Mulg in one turn; in another took out a Kracken and DJ in one turn. That's not even great dice. That's my opponent assuming that its too much damage to be put out in a turn, and that Circle is pillow fisted., especially without a damage buff on my Warlocks spell list. They have all learned they are wrong, multiple times, and I'm using my standard Kromac build not a build just for the Colossal.

Don't out think the room friends, you have plenty of tools, and I argue more than most others...

A.

[Bollster]

@ OP...

I personally don't understand why everyone feels our faction is pillow fisted. Our Feral can get up to MAT 9 and POW 19 w 7 attacks, and has 4 warlocks that can buff him up to POW 21 w/o a problem. That's the same damage out put as a Bronzeback, who is widely considered one of the biggest beatsticks in the game.

Ive been play testing versus a lot of Collosal and Mountain Trolls since they were leaked as the players at my LGS want to play them. All 50's and I've been playing Kromac. In back to back games I took out a MT, Eartborn, and Mulg in one turn; in another took out a Kracken and DJ in one turn. That's not even great dice. That's my opponent assuming that its too much damage to be put out in a turn, and that Circle is pillow fisted., especially without a damage buff on my Warlocks spell list. They have all learned they are wrong, multiple times, and I'm using my standard Kromac build not a build just for the Colossal.

Don't out think the room friends, you have plenty of tools, and I argue more than most others...

A.

If you don't mind, what models were you using to get that much damage output on two or three heavy targets in one turn? Presumable warpwolves of some variant?

[Phatheadaf]

@ Bollstar...

Sorry for the delayed response, to answer your question, I almost always run two heavy hitting heavies (Feral, Stalker, or Ghetorix) plus a Gorax at a minimum at 50 points. In my Kromac list I'm running two Stalkers and Ghetorix plus a Gorax. That list is pretty much my best list overall, and really tears heavies apart, despite Kromac not having a dmg buff himself; while still retaining the ability to deal with infantry.

Kromac clearly doesnt need the dmg buff w that battlegroup. Also, I have Bloodweavers in his list, so i have the ability to remove ARM buffs if needed. Not only do I have the ability to scrap anything in a turn, but also will very likely out threat everything thanks to Warpath.

Feel free to shoot me questions via PM as well...

A.

[Bollster]

Cheers Phatheadaf, I'm starting up a small Circle army as a side project and so I've been pretty voraciously reading all the threads round here especially this one with the dominance of Skorne, Trolls and Khador heavy armour builds in my meta. Thanks for the info

[Phatheadaf]

@Bollstar...

Awesome! Welcome to Circle, best of luck and let us know how your progress goes.

A.

[WarpedWolf]

Our local tournament last week had one player fielding a Stormwall. While I didn't end up facing it personally, I did get a chance to watch it in action. My impression was that while it was tough, it wasn't unstoppable.* It is, however, the biggest damn 800-lb gorilla imaginable. Facing something like that, I'd just Alpha Strike on it and hit as hard as I can.

My biggest irritation with Colossals/Gargantuans is the Woldwrath. Since it's a construct, that means to field one, I have to build an army around a construct-friendly warlock. And since I'm currently running eKaya, that means a whole new army list. Probably Krueger-based/

*Sadly, the model was only assembled from the waist down, which I found amusing.

[Bishop84]

Went up against the Stormwall with Grayle last night. Wind Blast was so awesome against it. Such a huge base has a really hard time avoiding two 5" AOEs in the places that it wants to be to shoot. Turns out RAT 3 is pretty laughable. I lost a LOT of Wolves to Lightning Pods and Stormcaller Triangulation, but there's not much I could have done to stop that.

My beasts were Stalker, Pureblood, and Wyrd, so my goal was to go around it to get to eHaley, but she popped her feat and caught pretty much my whole army and I had to spend a turn retreating/repositioning. That gave her enough breathing room that I couldn't really get much to her, so I decided to go for the Stormwall. Grayle put Wraithbane on the Stalker and the Pureblood to negate Junior's Arcane Shield, and they went at it. I then proceeded to roll TERRIBLE. Pureblood did an average of 1-2 damage per attack (at dice -3), and even missed one entirely. The Stalker did an average of 2-3 damage per sword attack (at dice -1), but finally rolled box cars for his last damage roll. Storm Rager'd flanking Morraig charged it and put another 10 points into it. The Wyrd managed another point to it, which left it with only one movement box, and he conceded as he'd already lost his other hitters and just had a few support pieces left, all engaged and/or too far from the Stormwall to aid it.

This left me feeling much better about Colossals in general. I've fought the Stormwall with specifically designed hate lists and done well before, but this was much more of an all comer list. The fact that I could still go to town on the Stormwall and bring it down, even with terrible rolls, was pretty nice. Woe be the day he actually learns to protect that thing from charges though...

[Bakemono]

My biggest irritation with Colossals/Gargantuans is the Woldwrath. Since it's a construct, that means to field one, I have to build an army around a construct-friendly warlock. And since I'm currently running eKaya, that means a whole new army list. Probably Krueger-based/

Yep. They kind of shot themselves in the foot by selecting a Construct for our big fella. At least half (probably more) of their potential buyers will simply say, "pass." At the very least they should have given him something special so that Warlocks other than Baldur could try to heal it. Stupidity.

[Bishop84]

The choice of beast was spot on. There was already a gargantuan size wold in the RPG and stuff, and using that is much better than just creating some big beast. The lack of an ability to be healed was where they went wrong. Fortunately, I love Baldur.

[raizieldragon]

Might be glad that it's not a living beast. Being a living beast may have made it end up closer to the Mountain King o.o

As to the OPs question: I have yet to actually play a CoO army, but as mobile as they are, I don't see why they can't outflank any of the gargantuan/colossals and go for a caster kill. None of them have much speed on them that I know of. True they cover a nice chunk of the field, but with Kaya's speed and teleport/feat shenanigans and Stones teleport shenanigans enabling a variety of attack vectors, it seems like it would be easy to get in there; but I'm just theorycrafting. Some of the accounts people have already posted made it seem like they still had trouble getting past.

As has been pointed out, there are a couple beasts that aren't so bad and are the go-tos for high-ARM targets, and it's already been reported by a few people that they 1-rounded the Stormwall, even with Arcane Shield up.