Friday, September 26, 2014

Highly Limited Jaga Jaga play experiences

It seems my playgroup has pretty much died in terms of Warmahordes, given the really slow pace of change in the game/meta and the many entertainment alternatives available in geekdom, but regardless here are some play experiences and thoughts I have managed to get together with Jaga-Jaga before doing my "proper" write-up:


Game 1 vs Helga
2 Slaughterhouser units, 1 War Hog, 1 Road Hog, few Razorboards, some support stuff and manly solos
  • My Wrastler charged (could have walked - I was thinking SPD 6 rather than 7) a Death Shrouded Road Hog and only brought it to half health. Sad face. My damage rolls against beasts were pretty atrocious the whole game.
  • Dash is a pretty hard counter to Jaga's feat, but nevertheless the jamming aspect of it caused some minor issues.
  • SPD 6 turtles are nice but still suck horribly in melee. SPD 7 Wrastlers being able to walk and Death Roll however - serious business.
  • I would have lost on scenario over turns 3/4/5 if he'd just jammed me out of my zone after I had a series of mediocre rolls and an underwhelming feat turn (thanks Dash). But we kept playing as if that wasn't an option. As a result, I tried to get a Deadweight on Helga by killing a nearby Bonegrinder and rolled snake eyes on the damage (boo) and then decided to use my last 2 fury for Grave Wind. Jaga was left alive on 2 boxes, cut to 1, managed to make her way to Helga using transfers and killed her on my last attack. Poison + reach snake = MVP. 
  • DEATH SNAKE.

Lessons learned - Basically no reason I'd drop Jaga Jaga vs the current Pig meta. Jaga Jaga not as good as Rask against Pigs. Getting the alpha + hitting really hard wins... a lot.
I hope to be able to test her against Circle (especially Kromac), Cryx and likely also Khador/Legion, as those are matchups were Rask isn't the bee's knees.


Game 2 vs Scaverous
Full Bane Thralls + UA, Full Croes, Deathjack, Min Biles, Tartarus, arc node, Gorman, Withershadow
  • New opponent for me, I unfortunately forgot his name (Peter?) but he agreed that DotA was a sweet game so he's cool in my book. The scenario was Supply and Demand.
  • Feat did ok - held up the Bane countercharge for a turn so I traded evenly on that flank and got Dark Shroud on the Deathjack on the other flank, allowing me to finish him off with a charging Gatorman (he had been brought low previously by a charging Wrastler and almost killed due to Spiny Growth - good trade for me).
  •  Really wish I had Witch Doctors vs Cryx. It would have helped significantly vs Deathjack's healing and Croe's poison weapons. Will probably always take at least 1 with her from now on, even though the benefits aren't as steep as with Maelok.
  • Scenario win in the end, thanks largely to the forest in the dead middle of the zone I just hid behind the whole game and dominated twice over 3 rounds after killing his objective. Ghost Walk came in handy to get a charging Spitter through to the relevant models to clear the zone.
Lessons learned - take Witch Doctors whenever you have 3 Posse. The Undead is extremely useful vs Cryx, and having another ranged nuke is pretty useful in general to take out the support and crutch solos. Plus Tough is potentially neat.


Game 3 vs Constance Blaize (Highborn Covenant)
Gallant, Nomad, Gastone + Vanguard, Full Precursors + UA, Max Steelhead Cav, Min Halberdiers, Gun Mages + UA, Harlan Versh

This time I brought my "Cryx" list, with 3 Posse and 2 Witch Doctors. Also had the Spitter, Wrastler and Snapper, together with Pendrake.

  • Scenario was Incursion - there was a house between my deployment and the right flag, and a forest roughly midway between the center and the left flag slightly on his side of the table. He deployed heavily to the left flag where I deployed more centrally with a Posse dedicated to each flag, a Wrastler to the left flag and the rest pretty central. Only the Gun Mages were within reach of the right flag.
  • The left flag disappeared, which means I ended up in a highly favourable position, and won by rushing the right flag, just killing whatever gun mages I needed to score each turn. Basically, he deployed poorly and luck didn't reward him.
  • Jaga-Jaga did two useful things in the game -
    1) Cast Ghost Walk on the central Posse unit so get 2 more into combat by ignoring freestrikes and walking through impassable terrain.
    2) Use her feat, which against an infantry swarm like the one I was facing was as sweet, as you'd expect. It was a very effective jamfest and the Dark Shroud helped Posse make short work of the Steelhead Cav with their second attacks. The one major downside is that it is annoying and takes a long time to administer.
    After the feat turn, she healed a beast and ran over to the right flag to win me the game.... so I guess that was useful too (SPD 6 = sweet).
  • Witch Doctors did functionally nothing, but Pendrake did manage to KD Gallant so that my Wrastler with a missing Mind could walk 7" up to it and 2-hand throw it away from the flag to get a CP.
Lessons learned - Jaga-Jaga is a super passive caster. It's almost like I'm playing Warmachine instead of the dynamic system that is Hordes. I guess Maelok plays the same if you're a sissy and never use Malediction (the optimal but definitely most boring way to play).
Also SPD 6 Spitters are really neat, but we knew that with Barnabas/Warpath anyway. I keep considering bring a Swamp Horror instead of a Wrastler, but the SPD 7 Wrastler with Grave Wind/Spiny Growth keeps doing so much work that I never follow through on it.



1 comment:

  1. I find her very passive as well. I find she works well behind a wall of spitters with swarm/escort on her. I am also using Raluk with a Mariner to get some extra range with shots and 3 croaks. Unfortunately, this list doesn't allow any room for wrestlars so it sucks having to sack melee but it is great having shooty gators with her feat.

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