eHaley's NQ tier - how would you deal with it?

[Gobos]

Hi All,

Last weekend I played in a quite large tournament with players from all over Poland. I played a final game on table 1 against eHaley's new theme, list as follows:
eHaley
Stormwall (bonded)
Thorn
2x Storm strider
B13
3 Stormsmiths
Storm tower
Mechanics

I have played a slightly altered version of skillt's Kromac list:
Kromac
Ghetorix
Stalker
Feral
Gorax
Druid Wilder
Woldstalkers
6 Reeves
Stones + UA
Stones
Swamp Gobbers
Gallows Grove

My other list was pKrueger, I figured that as his models were mostly high ARM and/or immune to electricity Kromac would be better choice.

I got stomped hard... It has been a long time since I felt so helpless during a game. In short, it went on like this:
Scenario was Incoming.
He started, advance-moving Strider got temporal acceleration, and shot a Stone from non-stealth unit, Gallows grove, and a Stone keeper. The rest advanced. My turn, I put on all upkeeps (IR on Ghetorix, WA on Stalker) and kept Kromac far backfield, rest run spread out as much as possible.

Second turn - more shooting, Striders destroy objective, a stone from another unit, he also made a mistake of shooting Ghetorix, which used hyper aggressive to walk in melee with a Strider. Haley feated, cast Deceleration and kept 3 focus. I check Kromac's control, and he's 1" short from trying spell assassination - I drop all upkeeps as they won't do any good. Ghetorix destroys Strider, Feral walks in melee with second one. Stones shift forward trying to block lanes for Stormwall. 2 Reeves take a shot at Haley but miss. Kromac casts IR on himself, Bestial, walks forward and feats to beast out and get more fury for transfers in case Haley tries to go for CK.

Turn 3. Strider and Thorn finish off Ghetorix with shooting (Strider takes a free strike from Feral, I realized too late that I was giving him a power token...), Stormwall tramples through Stones and kills a Stalker at full health in two lucky hits. B13 kill some reeves. Without a Stalker I have no way of dealing with a Stormwall. Feral destroys second Strider, Gorax tries to charge Stormwall but is 0.5" short. As the game is already lost, I decide I'd at least try to kill Haley's personal toy, Kromac jumps and wrecks Thorn.

Stormwall kills Kromac.

During the game I was painfully aware that none of my lists were ready to handle this, and I kept thinking what would be a good tournament Circle list that could fight this army?
I have no problems facing 'regular' eHaley lists. The problem with this one is that it has much more heavy shooting (7 RNG 14 POW 15 easily boostable shots - that's enough to kill a heavy each turn), the models are hard to kill, and Haley's feat gives them another turn of shooting which is all the time they need to destroy enough of ARM-cracking threats.
I can see that this list would struggle if heavy warbeasts had stealth, which made me think of eKaya... but with all her bad matchups I can only see her as a liability in a 2-list format.

Thoughts?

[zlygobbo]

Take second stalker instead of feral... and maybe woldguardian instead of Ghetorix (option) then you have with gobbers stealt on Stalkers and guardian have animus... So your beast are imune against non Eyeless sight enemies...

[Po the Barbarian]

I'm not great at the 2 list match up math yet and generally play outside of tournaments, so eKaya has been my go to while my LGS meta has shifted towards having similar (though not as nasty) lists played frequently. Is there a complimentary list to eKaya that could support her in a two list environment? She seems to fill the same role as Kromak's lists, but again I don't have a lot of experience here.

[Lighten]

I had a tourney where I fought two of those in a row a few months ago. Three list/three games, so I was playing eKaya/eBaldur. Both seemed to work fine; eBaldur can weather the storm and eKaya limits his ability to shoot up her heavy beasts. It's probably made me less worried about the theme than I should be.

[Lighten]

And my (relatively limited) experience against Stormwalls is that you don't really have to kill them. Two threats is usually enough to pull them in different directions, and they don't actually kill that well in melee. A Feral and Kromac might've been able to go around the stormwall in opposite directions and try for the eHaley kill. I've won vs. pHaley stormwall at 25 by swamping it with threats and killing pHaley.

[Kyuss]

Yeah, I have the Guardian in my (quite different admittedly) Kromac list, and body of clay has kept my butt out of harms way on so many occasions. I think now I would like to add Swamp Gobbers just to get that extra layer really.

[rpavers]

Krueger2 nq tier go!

[Brandubh]

Krueger2 nq tier go!

I've actually become quite cool to the NQ Krueger list. I ran it at a tournament and it did very poorly. It's a good niche list but lacks the toolbox needed to complete strongly and lacks the overwhelming punch needed to overcome not having a toolbox.

I think that Cygnar's lightning is going to quickly become a meta changer. Between their Storm-noun units / solos, their Battle Engine, their Colossal, and e2Nemo, well, things get pretty silly. Even if you just want to run super solos like eCaine or eStryker with the Storm stuff and take out all the infantry before assassinating - you can do it.

That said, I think that is going to be more important than ever. Imagine running pKrueger with Druids, Tharn Bloodtrackers (new prey ruling) and some other stuff. You could pretty easily end up with a mostly immune list to Cygnar stuff without giving up too much of our punch.

[ringsnake]

The inclusion of Reeves in your list is a bit puzzling to me. You'd have been better off taking a second unit of Woldstalkers for a point less. Every time I've used a single unit of Woldstalkers they've been average to good. When I use the full FA:2 they've been amazing. I try not to make my advice 'change your list', but Reeves suck out loud, and you'd get the second Gallows Grove in the list that way.

I don't see anything else that's overtly wrong with your list. I happen to like Ferals for the extra point of MAT and additional durability on turn one when they're ARM:18.

It sounds like you got intimidated by the three massive models. You might just have to get in some practice games against that list if you've got any players in your area that can help you with that.

[rpavers]

That said, I think that is going to be more important than ever. Imagine running pKrueger with Druids, Tharn Bloodtrackers (new prey ruling) and some other stuff. You could pretty easily end up with a mostly immune list to Cygnar stuff without giving up too much of our punch.

That's why I think krueger2 will stack up nicely. It can run 2 units of lightning immune guys, blackclads immune, and warcaster. It also is a good anti range list with Storm wall spell/Druids and guardians pre wold wrath, doesn't have any good targets to shoot. Post woldwrath it'll have something to get up in the Stormwall face at least.

[eliassmith27]

eKaya tier would do wonders against all that shooting. Or break tier and upgrade a feral to ghetorix for the extra hitting power.

Also eBaldur with ghetorix
ie

eBaldur
Mega
Gheto
Warden
Druids +UA
Fulcrum
shifting stones +Ua
Shifting Stones
Swamp gobbers or Gallows Grove

[Walter]

3 huge bases is certainly tough. eHaley makes it tougher. I can't really give any advice till I take it on for myself.

[theaY]

That haley list is something I want to play, but it's a lot of investment for something ill rarely use.

Honestly, like ringsnake, I'm confused about the Reeves. There are so many other choices. Even just swapping those out will probably change your game a lot. Even bloodtrackers base unit with weapon master are cheaper and will do more to kill their striders.

[Brandubh]

Actually, Reeves aren't so bad against huge based models. IIRC, you can CRA into them even in melee. Being able to smack a Colossal or Battle Engine from 12" away with a potential POW21 attack isn't awful - it's at least our best ranged option against Colossals. But it's completely in conflict with everything else Reeves do.

[Gobos]

Just a note on Reeves - I take them because of two abilities: Hunter and CRA. This helps against some targets Wolstalkers sometimes can't deal with, and I like having this as an option.

On the main topic, how about going another way - instead of bringing a lot of stealthed/durable heaves, maybe try to swarm them with lots of infantry (Morvahna's regrowthed BT's are awesome, and since Stormwall does not have arcane shield in this list they can do some damage to it until it's ready to get charged by a primaled warpwolf. Also, how about Cassius keeping CoS on colossal and casting Stranglehold on it each turn to limit it's usefulness?
I'm therorizing here, if anyone actually tested these tactics against colossals, please share your experience.

[Auracco]

During the game I was painfully aware that none of my lists were ready to handle this, and I kept thinking what would be a good tournament Circle list that could fight this army?
I have no problems facing 'regular' eHaley lists. The problem with this one is that it has much more heavy shooting (7 RNG 14 POW 15 easily boostable shots - that's enough to kill a heavy each turn), the models are hard to kill, and Haley's feat gives them another turn of shooting which is all the time they need to destroy enough of ARM-cracking threats.
I can see that this list would struggle if heavy warbeasts had stealth, which made me think of eKaya... but with all her bad matchups I can only see her as a liability in a 2-list format.

Thoughts?

I'm curious, I play just started circle as a second faction and EKaya's been my to go caster and she's performed very well for me. Granted I've only played about 10 games with my circle so I don't have a big knowledge of the faction. I had a problem with Absylonia's tier list, I won one game against her due sheer luck and I lost the second game because my list didn't have the tools to deal with a tenacitied forced evolutioned angelius standing in the middle of a blight field but I think it was my bad for not taking a stalker in the list. What are EKaya's other bad matchups?

At first glance it would seem to me that EKaya could perform well against EHaley stormbrigner tier list.

[Snowmelter]

Also, how about Cassius keeping CoS on colossal and casting Stranglehold on it each turn to limit it's usefulness?

This is something I have done. It works very well. Now imagine a wolf in Stormwalls back arc and/or a druid in BtB, putting up a vortex. Stormwall does not go anywhere, does not hit anything and does not see what is killing him.

The standard pKrueger with druids, bloodweaver, blackclad and two wolfs (I prefer feral+stalker) is my back up plan. Bloodweaver for the dispel (if needed). Set them up far apart. With the two templates he can protect about 7". Thanks to reach the bloodweaver can charge an area of about 9". The +2" from the Blackclad help reaching the edges as they are further away. Without AS, you will not even need primal on both of your wolfs.

[Dagowit]

Unfortunately, the only thing I have played against Colossals is an eBaldur T4 brick in a friendly game. While you are pretty resistant to all the shooting with a Woldguardian, cracking high ARM is a problem. He might actually work with a Pureblood and Ghetorix, though, as the DEF buff from Rockwall means lots of enemy focus spent on boosting attack rolls.

I like the Cassius idea. A Feral with Wraithbane should put about 45 damage on a Stormwall with Curse of Shadows - so Slaughterhousers (or a second heavy hitter) should easily be able to finish it off (or go for Snowmelter's Bloodweavers plan and take the Stormwall out with a single Primal'ed Feral). The feat turn makes you safe from shooting (so you can use it to counter-feat eHaley if caught in a bad position). If you add Druids as a sacrificial wall of smoke, you can normally annoy Cygnar players a lot.

The problem with Stranglehold is that the Colossal can still shoot, so I tend to use it more against Warbeasts than Warjacks (it is incredibly effective against Legion beast heavy lists, though). The second problem is that you are sure to roll below average damage at a critical moment and fail to wound the thing...

[ringsnake]

Just a note on Reeves - I take them because of two abilities: Hunter and CRA. This helps against some targets Wolstalkers sometimes can't deal with, and I like having this as an option.

On the main topic, how about going another way - instead of bringing a lot of stealthed/durable heaves, maybe try to swarm them with lots of infantry (Morvahna's regrowthed BT's are awesome, and since Stormwall does not have arcane shield in this list they can do some damage to it until it's ready to get charged by a primaled warpwolf. Also, how about Cassius keeping CoS on colossal and casting Stranglehold on it each turn to limit it's usefulness?
I'm therorizing here, if anyone actually tested these tactics against colossals, please share your experience.

If you want the CRA and Hunter, then drop the Grove and take Nyss Hunters. They won't trigger Warpath, but they're significantly better than Reeves. Seriously, Reeves are not good at all.

Also, for most purposes the Stalkers are RAT:8 and POW:12 with magical attacks thanks to Zephyr. That's the same as two Reeves doing CRAs, but you get two extra shots that can hit InCorporeal targets. Six points for the odd shot at the full RAT:11 CRA is not worth it.

If you feel the desperate need for something that snipes like that, take two full units of Bone Grinders instead. They have an arcane bolt that rolls 11+2d6 to hit.