Gatornomnomnomicon: A 2012 guide to Gatormen armies

[ChristopherY]

Three questions for gator players:
- Would you run Carnabas out of Tier and if so why?
- At 25pts, what would you rather have, a second heavy, a second Posse, or Wrongeye and Snapjaw?
- At 35pts, assuming you take one of the 3 options before, which would you go for next?

I would not run Calaban out of tier. Cheap AD Spitters, Bone Grinders for increased range on spells... too good to pass up.
I usually go with a second heavy (Spitter, usually) at 25... you need the fury.
At 35 pts, I think it's caster dependent, but I love the sculpts on Wrongeye and Snapjaw so much I usually bring them... but I could see an extra posse for Barnabas or Maelok.

But don't trust me, I'm a total Hordes newbie.

[McNs]

Apologies for the lack of updates; I've been looking at prospective grad schools and dealing with all the "fun" involved there. That said, I should start with updates tomorrow (e.g. - finally finishing Maelok and starting on Barnabas).

Three questions for gator players:
- Would you run Carnabas out of Tier and if so why?
- At 25pts, what would you rather have, a second heavy, a second Posse, or Wrongeye and Snapjaw?
- At 35pts, assuming you take one of the 3 options before, which would you go for next?

1. Barnabas yes, Calaban - probably not for the reasons cited by Christopher Y. Especially now that Wrong Eye can get cheap Swamp Horrors.

2. I'd prefer a second Posse, but I like to run Fury light. If you're playing Calaban, go for the beast. If not, go for the Posse.

3. I'd probably go for either the beast or the Posse here, depending on what you took above. That is unless you're going for Calaban's tier benefits.

[McNs]

Maelok Playstyle and Strategies (continued from above):

Maelok's playstyle is a combination of attrition and melee assassination. While its possible to catch a medium-to-low DEF warcaster with multiple Posse members, it rare you're going to catch either a high DEF warcaster or a warlock with multiple transfers. That said, thanks to Revive and the feat, you should be able to acheive multiple charges against any models using Maelok. While that may sound either glaring obvious or an extremely obtuse point, I'd like to go into a bit more detail about that.

Gatorman armies are frequently called "pillow fisted" due to the low number of attacks available to them above POW 13. And admittedly, as any Barnabas player will tell you, dealing with ARM 18+ with Posse members stuck in combat is a losing proposition. With Maelok, you're able to both recycle Gatorman Posse members who are destroyed into missles that can charge right back into combat. With the feat, you're able to ensure a large number of charges against most opponents.

The feat also let's you very effectively run in waves. One of the biggest things to learn with Maelok is to keep your heavy warbeasts back. I know that's counter-intuitive, but running your Wrastler on the front line without knowing you'll be keeping Spiny Growth+Death Pact on it is a reciple for disaster. Keep your Posses on the front line to absorb punishment, then use your feat to project the Posses forward and counter charge with your heaveis.

To give an example, let's say as a Maelok player, you went first. Your opponent and you both ran your forces towards each other. During your second turn, you advance with multiple models under Spiny Growth and your unit with Death Pact charges the opponent's front line (keeping one Posse member in saefty). During your opponent's second turn, he charges you en masse, dealing large amounts of damage to your line, killing several Posse members from the Death Pact unit and a few other pieces of your army (let's say some solos and a beast you baited forward). During your turn, you feat and charge deep into his lines with several Posses and revive key members of the Death Pact unit to ensure you catch key support pieces (or his warcaster/warlock). Now, your heavy warbeasts counter charge the heavy portions of the opponent's army (usually in conjunction with 1-2 Posse members, as needed).

While the above may not instantly win you the game, it does gain you a lot of momentum. Unless you're also facing an attrition player, you now have the ability to revive casualties and hit the opponent again. At this point, put pressure on the scenario (with Revive, you've got very good projection abilities) and then look for an assassination angle.

In terms of "regular" early turns, Turn 1 usually involves putting Death Pact on a Posse and running everything forwards (obviously charging in the case of Maelok). As described above, Posses go in front, then beasts/3rd Posse if playing with them/Thrullgs, then Maelok and a Snapper in the back. Turn 2 is so match-up/table/deployment dependent that its hard to give general advice. All I can say is don't get too eager with the feat, but don't be afraid to use it for the armor buff. Learning when to feat with Maelok is probably the hardest part of playing him.

Hope this helps, and happy Incorporeal Gator hunting!

[McNs]

Finished Maelok and started the lights. The character restriction per post means I need to do the warlocks in Word and then copy/paste to see what fits. Unfortunately, this means their threads will be in 2 parts. On the plus side, this should (hopefully) reduce grammar/spelling errors.

[Siphoned Core]

Great Update.Thanks for the advice. I'm now eager to buy Maelok

[Sellsword]

great stuff, look forward to more!

[GlassJaw]

Continues to be great stuff McNs.

As far as the Bull Snapper goes, I've had great luck using it as a late-game slam generator. Since it's usually a Spiny Growth/fury battery, opponents tend to forget about it. But if you keep it behind your front-line troops, you can easily setup slams, especially with Warpath or by slamming your own models into enemies. I've found that people usually don't see a slam coming from a Medium-base model.

[theHman]

Negative about gators??? I'm confounded by that. They're such an awesome faction. I love my gators and I just got them not even a month ago - I can easily field 50pts at this time.

I was originally attracted to gators well over a year ago but my buddy who got me into the game had chosen them, so I took cryx since the minis were so cool looking. 8 months of cryx and I bought some skorne (which has turned into a vast conquering army of it's own) because domination was coming out and I wanted to participate in my LGS's domination release event which didn't happen. =(

Long story short, when Maelok was released I had a buddy buy it for me at GenCon.
Let me tell you, Maelok with 3 max gator squads is freakin' beastly and your opponent will be hard pressed to make any headway into your lines. Not only can they take a charge, if a guy dies, you just rez him near his unit so he can walk/charge into the opponents back lines.It's a super-rific way to get assasinations.

As all experienced gator players know, it's pretty darn hard to kill off an entire unit of gatormen at max size especially if you keep one of them a bit back from the main line just in case.

[theHman]

We should also talk about those sneaky fish headed bog trog guys.
So far I'm not impressed with Ambush. I can see where it would be handy, but so far in the 3 games I've played with them, I got better results deploying them as normal.

I do love their mat 6 + combined melee. Plus natural pathfinder, such a great unit.

And the spitter, oooh boy do I love me that spitter bugger!
As a skorne player who actually loves the canonneer, I can tell you that the spitter is WAY better!
Our turtle hero not only has better rat, but his shot is better too even though it's 1 pow less b/c of the continuous corrosion.
Take two with barny, move up pop feat knocking everything down then just spit on the enemy caster.
It's like pouring water on the wicked witch of the west.


As for Caliban, I've only played him twice so far. He's definitely tricky and has the highest learning curve of all the gator casters.
His feat turn is absolutely awesome for assassination runs. It's even better if the enemy has lots of infantry for you to kill because you can activate Caliban first, move up, pop feat, shoot enemy caster with your current fury then activate one unit after another, kill his infantry thereby giving Caliban more fury which, when he has 3 or more, can sling another spell at the enemy caster. There aren't many casters that can take multiple hits from his spells in a single turn - especially when dmg is boosted.

In short, gators rule and pigs drool!

[theHman]

Continues to be great stuff McNs.

As far as the Bull Snapper goes, I've had great luck using it as a late-game slam generator. Since it's usually a Spiny Growth/fury battery, opponents tend to forget about it. But if you keep it behind your front-line troops, you can easily setup slams, especially with Warpath or by slamming your own models into enemies. I've found that people usually don't see a slam coming from a Medium-base model.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought light warbeasts couldn't slam.

[TheLoki]

Lesser warbeasts cannot slam. Light beasts can slam just fine.

[theHman]

Thanks Loki.
I have the warmachine rulebook, not the hordes, so all my hordes/beast rules knowledge is second hand.
Would be great if PP consolidated the two rulebooks...

[Arlaharen]

I've been dual-wielding a pair of Thrullgs in my last handful of games with Barnabas and Maelok and I must say I'm really warming up to them. They still have a bad tendency to get targetted and taken out early (I always keep them in the back on the way up but they're like ****-magnets), but disruption and upkeep removal has won me the game a few times now, and their GOTCHA!-aura against spellcasters is surprisingly useful. Having two decently punchy solos with reach are really helpful for clearing stuff engaging the Posse before they activate. Will playtest plenty more but I can really see why taking two of them is a good idea. Just wanted to share, thanks Gatornomnomnomicon!

[Duskern]

Seems to be some time since this thread got updated. As a new gator player I was really happy to see this sticky, so I'm hoping to see some more soon.

[gaminguy]

Some of us who actually enjoy writing (I'm surprised at how much I miss constructing essays now that I'm out of college) are just waiting until we have enough games in to feel comfortable holding forth on the gators.

By "some of us" I mean me. I have a Barnabas write-up rolling around in my head, I just have to find some hobby time that isn't reserved for painting or Vassal to get it done.

[Hoyled]

I did an Ironback Spitter right up not to long ago. Been thinking of doing a thrullg and a totem hunter right up as well.

http://privateerpressforums.com/show...-a-pretty-face

[Anjagro]

Thanks everyone for this sticky - as a new Gator player it's GOLD

[the smiling bandit]

Been lookin' at the gators for a while now. And I agree with Anjagro, these posts are GOLDEN. For whatever sheer pieces of brilliant genius lead to the naming of this thread, Bravo. I'll have some of what you ate right before you started this thread. Again, Bravo!

-B

[BoneHeart]

mmm, what happened to this nice little topic?

[Yertle4]

Hello,

Here is a compendium of a crapload of Blindwater model reviews/tacticas I've written : http://rot-n-roll.blogspot.co.nz/201...ica-index.html

[Carbomb]

Should be interesting.

IMO, the best things about Gators are Barnabas and the Posse. Everything else tends to fall somewhere between "meh" and "bleh". IMO, the main weaknesses are:

Barnabas: No answer for high ARM.
Calaban: A squishy offensive/debuff caster with no arc node = death wish.
Maelok: His best feature is a spell that he doesn't really have enough Fury to use much. (Oh, and Malediction on this guy is such a trap spell.)

Things Gators need to be a "big boy" faction:
1) A warbeast that can crack high ARM.
2) An arc-node/channeling model.
3) A fury management model.

I think one simple rule that would help Gators a lot would be arcane assassin (see Cryx Stalker). If we had maybe a light that could give that out as an animus it would help alot without making things terribley unbalanced. Or maybe even armor piercing on a model?

[Trollz]

I think I'll blow the dust off and run Calaban for 30 or so games and get back to everyone.

[under]

wrong post

[McNs]

Hey all:

Thanks for the many kind words; I've been working towards getting my PhD so time's been a little crunched. On the plus side, I have spring break next week and thus won't have to teach. I'm going to make it my mission to get this thing updated for all you prospective Gator players (and because we just got a new book).

- McNs (I don't know why I sign these things; my freakin' name's on the post...)

[Jestor]

Hey all:

Thanks for the many kind words; I've been working towards getting my PhD so time's been a little crunched. On the plus side, I have spring break next week and thus won't have to teach. I'm going to make it my mission to get this thing updated for all you prospective Gator players (and because we just got a new book).

- McNs (I don't know why I sign these things; my freakin' name's on the post...)

I bet you sign them because you love seeing your name in lights!

[Yertle4]

I think I'll blow the dust off and run Calaban for 30 or so games and get back to everyone.

Bet this guy is now crying in a closet somewhere.

[Jestor]

Bet this guy is now crying in a closet somewhere.

I am running the heck out of Calaban. He is so good! Carnivore is so good and Hex Blast is definitely a thing! Occultation has delivered many a Wrastler in it's time

[ChristopherY]

Bet this guy is now crying in a closet somewhere.

I don't think you have really played Calaban properly, Yertle, as you state in your own blog that you've never taken him in his theme list where he really shines. He's not the easiest caster to play but once you get a nice cascading Death Harvest going it's hard to not fall in love with the scheming gator. And easily the best fluff out of Blindwater. While I haven't had the same amount of success with him as Barnabus, he fares far better than Maelok(at least in my meta). Rask in many way makes him obsolete(much in the same way Maelok was already obsolete because he does a similar thing to Barney... delivers Posses), but he is still very fun to play. Don't be a Gator hater.

[McNs]

I don't think you have really played Calaban properly, Yertle, as you state in your own blog that you've never taken him in his theme list where he really shines. He's not the easiest caster to play but once you get a nice cascading Death Harvest going it's hard to not fall in love with the scheming gator. And easily the best fluff out of Blindwater. While I haven't had the same amount of success with him as Barnabus, he fares far better than Maelok(at least in my meta). Rask in many way makes him obsolete(much in the same way Maelok was already obsolete because he does a similar thing to Barney... delivers Posses), but he is still very fun to play. Don't be a Gator hater.

I'd argue that Maelok occupies less of the same space that Barnabus does compared to the overlap of Calaban/Rask. Maelok's got a solid melee assassination run and damage buff; where Barnabus tends to be more of a "Warpath surprise!"/attrition 'caster.

I don't think Calaban's obsolete; but he's the least powerful of the 4 Blindwater warlocks at this moment. He's got some great tools (Hex Blast stripping upkeeps in a way that can't be Shield Guarded; you can theoretically cycle Parasite on the feat turn), but his predilection for his tier list cuts out some of our better tools (Totem Hunter, Thrullgs, Pendrake). If Blindwater ever gets a competent ranged unit or a model with Channeler, I could see him being much more interesting (as it would up the probability of getting multiple Fury during his feat/keep him off the front line, respectively).

[Kolat]

I recently finished my Thornfall Alliance army collection (150 points worth!), and just added 150 points of Blindwater to have a full compliment of all Minions models. I started with Bacon, and now will try the Gator side, thus playing all available Minions armies/models...

Minions for life!

[Trollz]

Bet this guy is now crying in a closet somewhere.

Got around 15 games in with his theme force and it rocks. Still trying to get more games in without his theme force, which is a little more difficult but still a blast to play. He's all about the finesse.

Though I should mention that my time is currently being consumed by needing to get my thesis finished by May 10.