Need help against Cryx swarm armies

[jeg127]

I play at my LGS where there is a few Cryx players that all play swarm armies. As soon as I set up across from them and see 20 Mechthalls, 12 Bane Thalls and Terminus I immediately shake my head and ask myself what can I do against that? Please help guys! I hear that Zaal might be an answer with some slingers and etc..

Let me know what you guys think.

Jeg

[syanide]

If face m.thralls alway take out the stick thralls nd necroserguon as this is how they keep bringin them bak
You will want lots of sprays nd aoe as they cant sac porn aoe damage

[Martez]

i think a max unit of slingers would do the job just fine with any caster, i have used my slingers agsinst a few armies now and they have never let me down always making my oppoent cringe with all the corrision about

Drakes are another good one, as well as Swordsman with the UA on their Mini-feat

[hamsandwich50]

your right that Zaal could be a good choice since his innate ability means that terminus doesn't get a feat really, plus he likes to infantry swarm too and he also wants the enemy to kill his army for his feat.

[LeiferAxe]

Just recently faced a similar list of hordes of Cryx infantry (under PDenny).
At 35 points I used:

E-Hexy

Cannoneer
Titan Sentry
Cyclops Savage
Cyclops Raider.
Full Swordsman + UA
Max Paingivers
Extoller

Used the three ranged options to get rid of the nasty support solos and UA's and abused "Ashes to Ashes" and "Black spot" to grind down the infantry.
Worked fairly well.

[patisarat]

We now have more tools than we used to (eHexeris, Slingers, Breath of Corruption cast on our own warbeasts, etc.), but don't forget our tried and true answer to infantry: pHexeris. His feat makes that army implode on itself.

Yes, it's much harder with Terminus granting Tough to undead within 10", but by putting out enough attacks of our own (Praetorians with UA, Flayer Cannon, Slingers, Drakes, Obliteration from Hexeris, whatever) the army will pop. Just makes sure Hexeris is not too far upfield (and thus too close to Terminus) when his feat is over. Molik's animus is great for this.

[jettzypher]

given supposed details of the mammoth, just stick one of those in a list to play against swarms. 3 high power, aoe 4 shots would do wonders. *thumbs up*

[LeiferAxe]

given supposed details of the mammoth, just stick one of those in a list to play against swarms. 3 high power, aoe 4 shots would do wonders. *thumbs up*

Being a long term Skorne player....I find myself waiting for the big "BUT" after reading the Mommoth's cannon stats.
Hate that feeling....

[various]

Kill the Necrosurgeon ASAP and then trample the crap out of the Mechthralls . Cryx is my other Faction and it ruins my day when someone does that. Sacrificial Pawn only helps the Necrosugeon with ranged attacks not magic or melee. They aren't very hard to kill once you manage to hit them.

[computertrucker]

Rhinodons work wonders against hordes especially when ran in pairs.

[jettzypher]

i finally took p.hexeris out of the box yesterday and played a game with him for the first time in months. since i have a much higher understanding of the game, mechanics, and what everything in skorne does i was much more successful with him than in previous attempts. but i learned really quick that his feat is great to deal with cryx swarms (as well as other swarms too). combine that feat with berserking nihilators for a really strong way to clear out a whole unit of mechanithralls and the necrosurgeon.

[PG_petegrrrr]

Is it in casual play?

Then pHexeris is awesome. You have one very long round of the other person's army basically killing itself, although terminus can provide a lot of tough annoyance.

However, we have a new unit to answer that problem: SLINGERS!

pHexeris feats, kills a good chunk of stuff, but a lot of stuff may be knocked down from toughs....well...that means slingers need not double 1's to start exploding 3 inch corrosion AOE's all over the board for even more carnage and single wound destruction, while packing enough bunch thanks to additional dice vs non living to take down brute or bloat thralls that may still be hanging around.

[jettzypher]

thats kind of a bleak outlook on it. theres also a "what if" scenario that makes your gameplay fail or at least not perform to expectations.

[BakerGaspy]

Just out of curiosity, against large amounts of Khador infantry spam I was going to take eHex(A2A) and a Rhinodon. But how well would this work against Cryx? Presumably the same.

[PG_petegrrrr]

eHex is a good match up vs Cryx, and although not quite as strong as pHex against them, he is much easier to use in a timed format. Just remember to bring an extoller to grant him eyeless sight so he can arc spells into units like bane knights or the coven that have stealth.

The Rhinodon is just going to be wasted points, as he will rush in, thresher, probably kill 4 -5 banes, and then get killed the following turn. The Cannoneer, while often maligned, is actually not a bad choice vs cryx infantry spam.

You can generally count on it killed 2-3 models a round while hanging back, and it's has one of the few strength bebuffs that will work vs undead. Just some food for thought.

[x3tsniper]

I vote eMakeda with Molik ball or the Archidon. Trample(molik) or charge(Archidon) over his pit of infantry. Terminus isn't going to be way back field I wouldn't think.

Rasheth is another good contender here in my opinion. Breathe of corruption will hose his one wound infantry if you hit his front line, which isn't hard at all and Carnivore will hose him bringing back infantry. It will be somewhat hard to determine a good place to be at when you drop your 2 BoCs since you can only arc one of them unfortunately. You may consider throwing a reach model/s up front, and casting BoC onto it. The BoC will eat all the non reach infantry targeting your model. A beast or AG seems like one of your best bets.

[Creid]

As a Cryx player who runs every warcaster Cryx has, no warlock in Skorne terrifies me more than Mordikaar. Seriously, you want an anti-Cryx list?

Mordikaar
Cataphract Certari + Vorkesh
Slingers
<insert remainder here>

Cryx loves its debuffs. It's infantry generally can't handle things by itself, it needs warcaster support in the way of debuffing the target. Mordikaar laughs at you for trying that and sprays you in the face for having the arrogance to try and use Stealth against him.


Against Terminus spam, I would also recommend a brick Xerxis list. Even Banes have a tough time cracking open the armor of Ceterai in shield wall with Defenders Ward. Don't give Terminus any place to land and go brick v. brick against him - the Terminus swarm has survivability, but no offensive power, especially if you're spamming McThralls. Inhospitable Ground is also excellent in this situation.

If it's infantry spam with pSkarre, that's a different story - a Xerxis brick will crumble to her feat turn, nothing out there really takes POW 20 McThralls and POW 16 Bane Thralls all that well. In this case, I'd probably recommend just spamming right back at them - eMakeda with Road to War will give Swordsmen a larger threat range, and they already have the volume of attacks necessary to drop these guys. Play aggressive with your beasts; honestly, when playing against Skorne, it seems like most of the time I'm using my infantry to screen my caster instead of go offensive just because I'm worried about a Molik Karn ICBM or a Bronzeback from downtown. Cryx is the glass cannon, so break them first.

Edit: I completely forgot about Nihilators. Take a unit of them with the aforementioned Mordikaar, have them berserk all over his cloud, and then use them for spray fodder. Should make the Cryx player cry.

[Ikazuyr]

played a game against pDenny with mcthralls, surgeon, bane thralls and the sauce (50 point game). I wiped out the entire unit of mcthralls in one turn between a well placed gladiator slam, one casting of ashes to ashes and a side stepping MK picking off the remainders. don't know that it's a useful sample, as his army was majorly bunched up (gladiator slammed a bone jack, which killed 5 mcthralls, one bane and only stopped because of tartarsauce's medium base. Was the first time i've ever used a slam power attack, and if you can find the right angle for it, it's devastating. Also, ehexy ashes to ashes, feat, repeat. assuming you don't roll a one.

[viperidae99]

As a Cryx player who runs every warcaster Cryx has, no warlock in Skorne terrifies me more than Mordikaar.

I have to say, playing a game where my troops hacked up a million mechanithralls/scrap thralls, and then Mordikaar turned my guys into sprays, to remove a Necrosurgeon with a massive pile of corpse tokens, was so much fun. My opponent was chortling about what he was going to do with all the corpse tokens and then completely lost the grin when he had to pick them all up.

Almost as good as PMorghoul using Torment, to kill one of those 1pt Spell Slave arc node Legion thingos, and my opponent goes "Since when does he have a magic attack?!" grabbing the card. But I digress...

Taking pleasure in an opponent's suffering reminds me why I chose Skorne all those years ago