Preparing a Pairing: What's the trick!

Hey all, Aaron here! My posts have been few and far between recently, but I'm hoping with a lot of events coming up and it being the summer holidays in school (and me working in one) I'll have more time to write some thoughts on the blog.

Today's post is about list pairings, those fabled two lists (for the purpose of this post, I am referring to Masters and Steamroller events which run on a 2 list pairing system and not including Iron Gauntlet in the discussion) that will take you to ultimate victory, land you on bottom table or anything in between. The question is, how do you pick your two? I'll discuss a few methods that you can use to decide upon a two list pairing.

Method 1 : Scenario / Assassination

So one of the methods you could go down is building two lists designed to play the game depending on the scenario rolled. It may be Incursion, or Outflank where a kill box is missing and the table can be fully utilized in the spreading out of troops, using flanks and trying to pull armies apart rather than have you in the center as a brick (looking at you Runes, as discussed in the post below me). For this you may want to have a list in mind which can do the above, spread out and not require tight formations to be effective. This normally consists of more units and solos then it does warbeasts/jacks.


In this case, the second list may be more directed towards an assassination game in those scenarios in which the game is more centered, mainly the first 4 as they are kill box. In this list you would want some sort of assassination game plan, it may be a warlock/warcaster who is aimed at doing it or simply one who enables it via other means. Typically a list like this would be more focussed around a bricked force as you plan to play into those central missions in which you want to advance forward to maintain the pressure on the kill box / the kill on the opponents caster.

Looking at this sort of pairing for me, a Morv1/Braddigus pairing fits into it. Morv1 is very good at spreading as she plays to infantry's strength with Regrowth, and the feat is better with more things that can trigger it. She will typically not run beast heavy and enables the spreading out of your list with typically self sufficient units (Trackers, Druids, Skin Walkers spring to mind). On the flipside is Braddigus, who I think we all know plays an A+ assassination game, bricks in the center and does NOT like to be spread out in large area. This is for a few reasons, it means denying of LoS to the army is harder as it's less concentrated, you have few effective models to spread so contesting on things like Incursion could often be 2-3 models, as well as Braddigus's control area of 12" isn't huge in the grand scheme of things. All these reasons means he likes to play a centered game where he can always apply pressure for an assassination, which pairs with Morv1 very well.

Thinking hypercritically there are shortfalls to this pairing system in the sense your lists don't have much direction, they simple have to spread and stayed centered. This may lead to your lists suffering to extreme skews, for example in this case MMM can spread, and is an armor skew. Without direction my Morv1 list, which has a good chance of being paired into this, may suffer as my list was not prepared for the armor skew.


Method 2 : Faction Pairings

Another method which could be applied to creating a list pairing is having your lists directed towards playing specific factions as we all have a idea of the typical archetype for each faction. An example being, I would bet a pound or two that a Legion pairing may turn up with 3-4 Eyeless Sight warbeasts. I could guess that Cryx will turn up with 1-2 arcnodes, some tarpit units in the way of Satyxis and some hard hitters in the way of Banes. Using this knowledge you could gear two lists with a idea of which faction each list wants to play, trying to cover them all using the archetypes we know.

An example from myself, would be a Braddigus/Kreuger2 pairing. Braddigus, faction-wise has very few bad pairings. He doesn't want to see Vayl1 as Incited Scytheans are bad, he doesn't want to see some variations of Trolls and maybe some Cryx. With that in mind, creating a Kreuger2 list which does play into those things Braddigus does not want to see in a ideal world means you have the perfect pairing, doesn't it? Well sadly not. Why this pairing system may be the most safe way, it's not perfect, what happens when your opponent turns up with two lists that don't follow their normal faction archetype and you're caught unawares?

A long and tedious, though maybe most effective process in which you can test your pairing this way goes as follows: get your two lists ready, and then go through each faction, go through a few of their power pairings and ask yourself do you feel comfortable playing into those two?

An example being I have my Brad/Kreuger2, and I put my self against a Vayl1/Lylyth2 pairing, well Brad can handle Lylyth, and Kreuger2 Vayl1 (and who doesn't love list chicken). You can repeat these for each faction with a few pairings, if you're happy with 80-90% of the matchups you're golden!

Method 3 : Dude spam / armor 

The third and final method I will discuss in this post is designing two lists each to play a different sort of list. One to play a opponent who has lists with lots of infantry in and one designed to face armor of any sort. Personally, for me I don't like this method. I'll throw an example pairing of Kreuger1 and Kaya2. Kreuger1 designed to clear a lot of models, Kaya2 designed to crack armor.

Now, the weakness in this thought process is, my Kreuger1 will chew through a lot of single would, low armor models but what happens I play dude spam, but it's all high armor? Well you could say, ppfft easy play Kaya2 you fool! Very true, but my Kaya2 list does NOT want to spread, and sadly his dude spam drop does. This is where the weakness comes in this thought process, as playing against dude spam is great, but there is different archetypes of dude spam which you can't necessarily account for in one list as well as scenario.

So lots of way to design your own pairing, is any of it flawless? 

Well, we're in a great age of Warmachine, I myself have recently pondered my own two list pairings for my circle as I have a whole ton of events this year. I would happily take Kreuger2, Morv1, Morv2, Kromac1 ,Kromac2 ,Braddigus and Kaya2 to a event in a suitable pairing and feel confident. I have about 10 different pairing sheets which I could take to a Steamroller/Masters and still be undecided until I'm forced to choose one.

Is it because Circle have a hugely deep bench of warlocks to choose from and still compete? This does aid my quest for the Holy Grail of list pairings sadly, but that is not the reason. The reason is because you just simply CANNOT create a pairing which plays into every - single - possible - list you MAY see at a event. Each time I settle on a pair, I go "ehhhhh, but what if I bump into THIS list?" I've done this for the last 2 weeks, and it's become crystal clear that you just can't pair for everything any more.

This is fantastic for the game, it means the meta will never remain stagnant as tournament winners will always be different and different factions will rise and fall in the meta and power rankings with new release and erratas.

Ultimately, can you pair for everything? No. Take a pairing you enjoy, take a paring you're comfortable with, and take a pairing you have practice with.

Well thank you for reading, and I hope you liked the article. Please drop a comment and discuss how you designed your list pairing and maybe some new methods I haven't discussed here.