Smogcon from a Minions Perspective

The dust has settled, sleep has been caught up with and the Rot has dissipated... its time to talk Minions, and how they survived Smogcon!

With selling my Legion it left me with Pigs and Gators, both in hefty bags so i only wanted to take one force which had to be Pigs hehe.

I hadn't signed up to any tourneys and just wanted to play in the Iron Arena all wkend, lots of games and very little sleep meant i had ton plan on playing our Lord Carver most games irrespective of the opposition as he is the most straight forward and forgiving of the line up:

Carver is the boss, pretty hard, survivable and brings a stack of buffs to polish the turd that is the farrow army. My list for the wkend was as follows:

Lord Carver +6

- War Hog 8

- Road Hog 9

- Gun Boar 5

Max Brigands w/Warlord 11

Max Brigands w/Warlord 11

Slaughterhousers 6

Effarit Scouts 3

Effarit Scouts 3

I came away with 2 wins and a loss with this list and its probably my preferred way to play Carver until May. In my last game of the wkend i swapped out a Brigands w/Warlord for a Meat Thresher and Maximus to face eGrimm. I had great success with that version which is now 5-0 in all events haha.

I wanted to get some games in with Dr Arkadius and his Nature of the Beast list which is on paper, the strongest list in the Alliance (Till May!) and i managed a win against Lylyth2 and a loss vs Rask. I also played the old Mad science Tier against Ossyan borrowing a few of Sherwins War Hogs to live the dream of 7 big Hogs at tier 4 mwhahahahahahahahahahahaha 

All in all it was a great wkend and its made me even more dedicated to my true love of the Farrow and im looking forward to the challanges ahead and how the Battle Boar and Splatter Boar will be mixing up my lists in the coming year.

Pigs... Life, Love and Errata

Well its been an interesting 12 months in my world of Warmachine and Hordes, 2014 ended with me quite dispondant with pigs, nothing was working or going my way... I started a Troll force in early 2015 but didnt really get on with them and my love for the game was at an all time low!

A few months later i convinced myself a new force was the way forward, enter Legion as was seen earlier in the blog... i really liked painting them (Very important to me) and enjoyed the play style of Vayl1 greatly. I played a number of games with them, including at a few tournies and started to win again and rekindle my love affair with the game.

Flash forwards to late 2015 and the release of Devastation; The Warlord, Splatter Boar, Battle Boar and Lynus & Edora are coming, the Meat Thresher and Effarit scouts are released and the low burning embers of pigdom begin to be stoked again...

The Warlord

 I love this guy! I really do, i have two of them in my current double Max Brigands Carver list and its doing very well at the moment. he is very much a model that needs playing rather than just looking at his card. If you can keep him safe long enough to get work out of gang then combined with the quagmire spell you create a credible answer to high def in pigs with mat10/11 brigands with PS12.

The Effarit Scouts

Unlike the Warlord, the value of these guys is immediately obvious by looking at the cards; High speed, high RAT and a great gun combined with light cavalry to run away gives them a myriad of uses... setting up finisher for rampaging Slaughterhousers for one, thinning out a flank of medium base guys like trolls and putting a dent into heavies is always handy.

The Meat Thresher

The Meat Thresher is a firm favourite of mine (I have and have used three haha), its not as good as the Sacral Vault thats a given but for pigs it provides another reasonable answer to high def infantry with its auto boosted attack rolls and knockdown. The gun can then get to work on what ever survives that! Admittedly it has to get there but brings a great target for Helga's Defenders Ward spell!

The praises of the Battle Boar and Splatter Boar have been sung enough on the various forums and by the fantastic Matter of Pact podcast team so i wont go into them... i do have a standing pre-order with the local shop for 8 Battle Boars and 4 Splatter Boars hehe.

A final note on the errata and the Splatter Boar; Now tagging a beast with the gas forces a threshold test which if they fail the beast will frenzy in the controllers next turn! This is a great turn out as it lets you ignore aspects of your opponents army knowing full well that they will be doing nothing for them haha

   

Everyone has that special someone...

As the title says, every Warmachine player has that one Warcaster or Warlock that they just click with... they suit their play style to a tee, they enable you to get the most out of your army and are a really cool model to boot!


Mine is this chap:

Lord Carver Esq III, Bringer of Most Massive Destruction

 

 

Lord Carver is the warnoun I have used in more games than all the others combined, from every faction I have played by a long shot. He is the real deal Evander Holyfield style, Mohamed i'm hard Bruce Lee to the face... He takes the Thornfall Alliance by the short n curlys and drags them up to a playable state all on his own.

Carvers combination of raw stats, abilities and spells turns your sorry bunch of chumps into a mean baconating fighting machine:

• He makes your stuff more accurate with Quagmire and CRA on the Brigands
• He makes your stuff hit harder with the feat
• He makes your boys not scared of the monsters with Inspiration
• He makes your beasts faster with Mobility
• He makes your beasts tougher with Batten down the Hatches
• He hits hard enough to take out the enemy caster and heavies by himself
• He is Genghis Khan Piggy, only Rorsh is cooler!

You get the idea from this epitaph that he's pretty good, some including myself believe that if he were in a proper faction he would break the game because he is so good... Imagine what your real army beasts could do with those spells haha.



Carver I have played for years and his dominance as my favorite 'lock has never been threatened until now... 5 games with this lady has brought some contest for my heart:

Vayl, Disciple of Everblight

 

What I have found is that Vayl plays quite similar to lord Carver, just she has a much much better army available to make use of her abilities!

• She makes your stuff more accurate with Chiller, Incite and Rampager (Turn around)
• She makes your stuff hit harder with Incite
• She protects her army with the feat, distance is a form of armour too!
• She makes your beasts faster with Leash
• She is an evil ice witch with a magic ball of justice

She cant take down casters reliably, Malice and Hoarfrost are ok spells but she wont be mixing it up in melee. Legion has a far better selection of beasts and Animi to draw from and they quite frankly put the pigs in the shade; the Scythean is a new level of badass with Incite, Chiller, Leash and Slipstream, and the Seraph is possibly the finest utility beast in the game (Gorax and Bull Snapper coming close)

I have had great fun so far using her T4 Winter Storm force, I will be main listing it at the Tier Tourney tomorrow at 4TKgaming and probably for the immediate future as well, its a enabled me to compete on an even keel with some of the other great Warmachine players that contribute to this blog.

      



First Legion List!

Now that I have all the minis for my first Legion list done I can get down to some serious practice for upcoming events:

 

 

 

So there we have pVayl Winter Storm Tier 4 which points up like this:

pVayl +6
- Ravagore 10
- Ravagore 10
- Scythean 9
- Seraph 8
- Shredder 2
- Succubus 2

Min Hex Hunters 5
Min Hex Hunters 5
-Bayal 0
Max Spawning Vessel 3

2 Shepherds 2


So far I have played one game with the list against Sherwin's experimental Morghoul2 Hit Squad list, it was a bit of a learning curve for both of us but was enjoyable in that I could get a feel for what Legion beasts could do (Scythean without incite killed a Rhinodon and a Archidon and nearly another Archidon in one activation!), and also trying out some theorymachine tricks I had thought of.

Im certainly impressed thus far with how Vayl plays, turbo charging beasties is certainly my favourite aspect of the game and Vayl could rival Lord Carver as my favourite warlock in the game in that respect... Legion beasts are certainly better than Pigs so there is no need to turd polish haha.

I am looking forward to trying it out against a force that the T4 benefit will hamper more than Hit Squad, they lacked the shooting or massed AD for me to hamper or shoot with my leased/Slipstreamed Ravagores so that is still ahead of me.

I plan to main list this force and have an eVayl Machinations of Shadow Tier 4 list as the back up to cover any weak match ups. This force is nearly finished too, just an Angelius to complete then im tourney bound!

 



Croak Raiders and Me... a love story!

Welcome to my first article! This sacred text is some thoughts of mine on the latest minion unit to be released by PP, the Croak Raiders:

Now being primarily a Minion player I shall be focusing most of the article of their uses for the Blindwater Congregation but will offer some speculation at the end to using them with Legion as that is my latest project.

If you haven't seen them before, here are the cards for the Raiders as spoiled from LnL by Chain Attack (Missing is the cost at 5/8 and FA2):

Stat wise they are pretty quick and are decent shots but otherwise it's victim all the way. Gang and Vittriol are abilities taken from the Croak Hunter Solo, as is Advance Deployment and Immunity - Corrossion.

These are all nice but on one wound troops you are going to need a Witch Doctor to zombify them for tough to get use out of Vitriol... This is a sound plan but will then run counter to using them as a source of souls and corpses for your Sacral Vault or Swamp Shamblers as Undead denies these tokens. PP giveth and PP taketh haha so make your choice dependent on the lay of the land so to speak!

Advanced Deployment though is money on a ranged unit, it gives them 30 inches of threat at T1 with the Gourds and 32 with the Darts if you go second so you're threatening enemy AD troops or if you go first your crazy frogs are running over the halfway line ready for a strike next turn yeah.

Each frog gets to throw a single weapon; either a Gourd or a Dart due to the cumbersome rule. The trick is to lob those Gourds first to cover quite a few enemy with the oil then light them on fire with a couple of darts, then lob another Gourd at more of the enemy unit rinsing and repeating till they are either dead or on fire. Now the Gourds do no damage by themselves but will auto boost the damage rolls of the darts or any other fire based attacks that effect the oiled models... Nice! The real touch on this is that the oil lasts a ROUND so the roll for continuous fire is also boosted, this is big, this can end warcasters right there or murder shield wall troops hahaha.

In the Congregation each of the warlocks can get some use of the Raiders, most notably Barnabus and Calaban:

Barny offers swamp pits to make them immune to return shooting, Iron Flesh to bump their DEF up to a usable 16 and his feat knocks down enemy non-amphibious models making them far more likely to connect with the flames. Setting Barny up with a proper gunline is now a realistic proposition and not just a couple of Spitters.

Calaban is a surprise choice but I feel they buff his game so much! Calaban is best in tier which means no Vault so his only real source of guns to maximize his feat was Ironback Spitters... Now he has a cheap source of multiple ranged attacks that also AD and if he can land a parasite on their target it's POW15 flames and continuous fire ftw. Calaban also brings occultation which will grant stealth, great for a shooty skirmisher unit like the Croaks and when combined with tough from a Witch Doctor gives them a fighting chance. You can be doubly sure and have them wrap around an Ironback to grant them girded and immunity to blast damage as a fallback but it's often not going to happen.

Yes they provide similar benefits to the other 'locks but these in my eyes are the biggest and and most game changing... Barny gets a game plan to create a new cryx or doomreaver drop and Calaban gets a game fullstop!

There has been some talk of taking these in Legion with the new Saeryn/Rhyas unit to abuse marked for death which definitely has game, but most armies featuring a lot of fire based attacks such as Ravagores, Seraphs or Typhon will enjoy the extra layer of fury management provided by not having to boost on blast damage shots. 

So for a summary, in my eyes these little frogs could possibly be the best unit in Minions, a tough order given the already excellent Posse but time will tell whether this is true or not!

Thanks for reading,

Rid

Welcome!

Welcome to Imperishable Dominion, our new blog site for Warmachine and Hordes!

We have quite a few members on the blog so will be covering a wide range of topics and areas of the games and the wider related hobby. In will let the guys introduce themselves further down this post but first a little about me...

Im Rid, ive been in the game since 2007 but only really started properly with the advent of MK2 with Khador but quickly found my true love with the Thornfall Alliance... Yes I am the primary Minion player for the blog having sizable forces of both the lunch and luggage pacts haha. I am represented in Warmachine with the Searforge Commission, but I am known as a bit of a flitter so have had smallish forces of most of the other factions at some point with the current project being Legion.

Im not the greatest player but enjoy the game, especially the tourney days to hang out with my mates and trash talk. Expect to see mostly painting articles and subfaction highlights from me.