Post 100 - Acknowledging our "special" cousins

Yay.

To celebrate this monumentous occassion, I thought I should do an utterly biased/brutally honest review of our sister sub-faction, the Thornfall, in the style of this grading article. Please don't expect anything of serious value :)

Overview

Pigs have been pretty terrible thus far. I would argue they are the worst "faction" in Warmahordes. This is mostly because Pigs (like Gators) are super restricted, but unlike Gators don't have access to Posse. You can take Rhulic/Pirates casters and jacks in Highborn/4-Star with good troops/solos.
Pigs beasts are really bad for their cost, their infantry options are limited and in no way compare to Gatorman Posse as a faction backbone, they lack a strong sense of in-game faction identity and they are pretty much worse or equal to Gators in 95% of matchups.

Recently however, they got a few good releases that could improve to their viability as a faction: the Arkadius theme, Maximus, the Efaarit and the Meat Thresher. If things keep going like this, they might catch up to Gators within 2 releases cycles (circa 2017!)

Pigs' greatest strength at the moment is that nobody expects them. And Carver's massive balls.

Casters

Lord Carver - 9
Potentially one of the best warlocks in the game. Incredible spell list, very solid feat (damage boost + infantry shred in one package?), very survivable and good personal damage output.  He brings much destruction - one could argue the most destruction, in very large quantities. His biggest weakness, is of course being in Pigs, which keeps him chained down at a solid 9.
He is one of the best Who's the Boss casters out there, where he gets bumped up to a hard, highly overpowered 10 with almost any balanced Hordes list. At my last Who's the Boss tournament, I managed to get a free pick and chose Karchev because everyone always thinks Unearthly Rage with beasts is totally insane. It is indeed nuts, however the downside is you have Karchev as your caster (who sucks more than ever in a meta where lists have to deal with Colossals). Next time, I will not hesitate to take Carver, a man's pigman.
He even has his own tax, applied to Pig heavies and lights - the Carver tax. Ruthless imperialism has its downsides.

Arkadius - 8
A really good beast spamming warlock who finally got his time in the sun with a tier list that makes up for his garbage warbeasts by reducing their PC by 2 across the board AND giving him access to an even better version of one of the game's best light warbeasts.

PP: Pls buy plastic War Hogs, we will be nice from now on :(

Arkadius makes warbeasts grind hard and often. He also happens to have one of the most overpowered spells in the game (Crippling Grasp), which has made people believe he sucks because he doesn't have an arc node, rather than because his beasts are garbage.
Solution? The Ark's Ark, the best thing Pigs have received since Carver. The good thing about the list is that it specifically names out the 3 current Pig beasts for the discount (allowing for new, less garbage pig beasts in the future) and still takes a lot of practice to use effectively due to his very chaotic, frenzy-heavy playstyle.

Midas - 6
Midas does some cool stuff and has very solid spells. His tier is also sweet in that it gives you good Boneswarms and most of a heavy warbeast for basically nothing (at least pre-Efaarit and Meat Thresher).
His downfall (other than being in Pigs) is that he is skewed towards Hordes matchups due to his anti-beast abilities, and has no defensive tech to speak of yet needs to get up in the fray to have an impact (ie. mostly casting Calamity, Curse and using his feat). Not to mention that he wants to spend a lot of fury to cast his sweet spells in order to carry his army.
If the Bone Tokens gave him some defensive tech (ie. Ancient Shroud effect per Bone Token), he might be Carver-levels of legit since his spell list really is that good and he can grind pretty effectively (mass RFP not withstanding).

Sturm & Drang - 3
I love the design on this guy. He looks so fun. But.... he  actually kinda sucks to play and feels incredibly limped dick - again mostly because of his crappy beasts.
Sturm can do cool stuff with TK (one of the best spells in the game), his neat spray and his defensive spells. Drang brings really good bonuses to melee warbeasts.
But they are both polishing turds - badly. Sturm has lots of defensive tech, but none of it really stands out as serious playmakers with his current model pool. Drang only has access to craptacular heavies that are not even a quarter as good as Mulg. Not to mention they are on a medium base in a primarily small-based faction with no worthwhile anti-shooting tech and are SPD 5. WHY SPD 5? If they had SPD 7 with Ride-By, they could do a lot more stuff and not need to worry about constant death.


Helga - 7?
I haven't seen Helga played much yet. I think she seems at least as good as Midas and her feat can be really devastating, especially against medium-base spam like Gators. Like most Pig casters, her spell list is incredibly solid. Dash, Defender's Ward, Distraction are easily top tier spells, and Cyclone + Muzzle are pretty close too. Her passive beast bonus is also really legit (especially since she also benefits).
The main issue I see is not being able to speed up beasts, or buff the damage of her troops. Again, another story of a good caster with a good feat and excellent spells, but is probably carrying too much.

Beasts

War Hog - 3
The War Hog is across the board a crappy heavy. Its one redeeming feature is being able to hit somewhat hard, and a crit KD initial attack. Apart from that it is slow, costly, not that survivable, has a bad animus and is not generally fury efficient. Pigs make do with what they have, and this subpar beast is it. You take it because you have to.

Bebop also does not understand why War Hogs are so bad.

Road Hog - 5
The Road Hog is also pretty lame. It is expensive, has bad base stats, and hits like a wet noodle. However it does have a somewhat useful animus, a speed buff, a pretty decent ranged weapon with auto-fire, and can offer an element of surprise - none of which the War Hog has. I think at a point less, it would be solid, but 9pts for a heavy with no real damage output is hard to stomach.

Gun Boar - 5
Useless animus, bad stats... the pig story. However it gets at least mediocre because it can two-handed throw and it has quite good defensive stats for a light. Also, has a gun.

Razor Boar -7
Pigs' best beast IMO. The animus costing 2 makes it basically blank which frustrates some people, but if you think of it as a really tanky 2pt solo that benefits from battlegroup buffs and doesn't really care about frenzying, then it's pretty legit.

Midas Boneswarms - 7
Boneswarms how they should be - starting with 3 tokens! Makes it a very tanky light, well worth the cost. The animus is also somewhat useful to Midas in cornercase situations since he doesn't have unrestricted access to Spiny Growth like the Gator Master Race.

Arkadius' Goraxes - 10
Holy shit, these are totally insane. Goraxes by themselves are probably 8s, and these have Shield Guard as well (big deal for Arkadius), and the animus does HUGE amounts of work since the downside (auto frenzy) is really an upside in Pigs. Also you can autoplink them in the ass with Arkadius for a free charge before buffing them up to the gills and sending them to one-round a heavy twice their cost.
And the best part is these Goraxes alone were not considered enough to make up for the pig heavies and light, you also have to include them in a tier with -2PC on your other warbeasts and some aggro deployment bonuses.

Troops

Brigands - 4
Mediocre in a nutshell. Have a lot of potential and Hog Wild is a pretty good rule, but bad base stats, pretty high cost, and no really defined role in Farrow (are they tarpits? counter-chargers? how do they trade?, etc) makes them not so great. They are quite a bit better with Carver due to CRA increasing their flexibility a lot.

Slaughterhousers - 6
I quite like these. Bring anti-tough/RFP and a good counter charging toolset. However they don't have access to a great tarpit in Pigs, so don't get to shine as much as they would behind a row of Gators in Skorne.... other most other factions for that matter.

Bone Grinders -7
Sweet unit. Very cheap way to get an accurate magical missile, save animi after beasts die (would be excellent in Gators), boost caster spell range - solid, no real downside other than horrible stats, but for that cost, who cares. They make Calaban less terrible too :)

Razorback Crew - 5
Phew, I almost forgot about these. I graded them very average because it kinda depends on the terrain and the rest of your list. It is a RNG 14, POW 15 AoE3 gun which more than likely gets to AD due to the Thornfall Pact. That's not too terrible for 3pts if you get to make at least 2 shots with it, which you are likely to do if terrain is in your favour. If you don't, then it's not really worth it. Still one of the better artillery models when it gets to AD. Without AD, forget about it.

Solos

Gudrun - 5
This guy would be really sweet if he had Perfect Balance or some other ability that lets him stand up for free so he could deliver himself effectively after getting shot or whatever. I am guessing he will also be pretty legit with Helga + Defender's Ward as a Turn 1/2 tarpit. Aside from that, I have never seen him really pull his weight despite his pretty solid base stats - when he dies, he just gets killed again.

Maximus - 7
I like this guy a lot, and it mostly revolves around him being like Gudrun, but better, for a point less. Basically just the unmounted version of Fenris, but trading a little bit of damage output for survivability and Pathfinder charge (excellent way to protect himself on the advance). Great raw combat solo.

Efaarit - 8
I am really tempted to give these a 9 because they are so good - basically a free, accurate, no consequence ARM piercing every turn on a really fast pathfinder solo. However, I will stick with an 8 because Pigs don't really have much good ranged support to really push them over the top.

Saxon - 8
Saxon would be worth his 2pts without the ability to give something pathfinder. Great stats, good survivability, and some good combat potential. But on top of that, he can also douche warbeasts and give pathfinder to your Slaughterhousers (one of their biggest drawbacks as counter chargers). I am probably slightly biased about how sweet he is, because he is the manliest man on Immoren. Also, his book art makes him look a lot like our favourite Slovenian Press Ganger :)

Alten - 6
It's hard to say really bad things about a RAT 8 RNG 14 hand cannon shot with AD, Camouflage and Swift Hunter. And he gets some free damage against beasts on top of it. Basically a better Widowmaker Marksman (the archetypal mediocre ranged 2pt solo in my book), minus the Stealth.

Pendrake - 5
Ha, I didn't even grade this guy in Gators (would be a 6). Usually Pigs will want Saxon over this guy (as they are mutually exclusive), but Beast Lore can do some cool stuff for your Slaughterhousers, which means they can shred high DEF warbeasts. Aside from that, meh. In Gators he is a bit more valuable because guns are so rare, which isn't really a Pig problem.

Targ - 4
 The only Farrow solo, and he wears their trademark crappiness with pride. He can heal, he can Anxilliary Attack. Wow. Again, polishing turds. Herding does help with control area, but that isn't a problem I've seen Pigs have. Since his special abilities only work on Pig beasts, I assume he was supposed to be a tag-along for Brine in other factions, while also giving those other factions Herding?

Rorsh & Brine-5?
You only hear about them in super janky theorymachine because they are hypothetically able to go super fast. Can do cool stuff but I literally cannot remember a time I have seen them played in Mk2 :(

Raluk Moorclaw also goes here, but I will continue to pretend he doesn't exist. Hypothetically best in a Sturm&Drang list with a marshalled Vanguard so he can repair your BE and Shield Guard for your caster.

Battle Engine

Meat Thresher - 7
I like it. It's not the Gator BE but it's still one of the better battle engines in the game. Again, a good counter charging model in Pigs with no good tar pit in front of it. It is DEADLY in melee with Trash and auto-KD - it basically one-shots Gatormans reliably, which is scary. Not to mention boosted hit rolls against small bases. Bulldoze is also one of the best abilities in the game, and having it on a huge base is really good. It doesn't quite make up for the lack of reach, but it comes close in a lot of situations. The gun is also pretty decent, despite the targeting restrictions and low RAT.

Conclusion & Discussion:

Can you win games with Pigs? Absolutely. I'd go so far as to say that if you are a player with sound fundamentals, you can even win the majority of your games with Pigs in a casual setting. However, if you were put in a situation where there was big money on the outcome of a game (ie. a serious competitive situation), Pigs are very likely the very last lists you would reach for, regardless of familiarity.

As you can see, Pigs do have access to some good models, especially in the warcaster and solo department. Where they fall down is crappy warbeasts, lack of consistent engagers and lack of an effective tarpit. The best tarpit they have at present is a swarm of Razor Boars, which is just a tad expensive, and small bases without reach don't take up enough of the board to really jam up. It seems to me that if the beasts were cheaper on the whole, they could be used as good frontline models..... and lo and behold, the Ark tier (one of the two good Pig lists). I guess this is also part of what makes Carver so good (the other good Pig list) - making heavies fast and high ARM allows them to take the initial hit and/or engage.

There are many perspectives on what Pigs as a "faction" are supposed to be, since PP has certainly not made it obvious over the years. Many believe they are a combined arms factions - if that is the case, they are a really bad one as Cygnar and Khador both do that significantly more effectively even at only their Prime release level. By this reasoning, Pigs are then purely aesthetics.

Others, like myself, believe the primary design of Pigs is supposed to be chaos, frenzy and gambling: their warlocks are built heavily around improving warbeasts (two of which have random, self-damaging mechanics); they have no fury management to speak of (one warlock actively encourages frenzy); and their beasts are mostly crap and work best when thrown away to frenzy and hope to get lucky.
The latest wave of releases confirms this approach between:

• Maximus (literally: a Pig Doom Reaver, just because) 
• Meat Thresher (a crazy Mad Max contraption) 
• Helga (slams everywhere, fat Valkyrian lady singing)
• Arkadius tier 

Let's see if the design keeps going this way. If Pigs get a few more releases in this style, they will develop enough of an identity and tactical niche to make them a viable competitive choice over Gators in the realm of Miniondom. Right now, they still suck and are mostly just things for Carver to carry on his manly back and look neat. Sorry, Bacon lovers :)

Also, gator meat tastes better than pig meat. Sjakk matt, griser.

Extending an olive branch

In the meantime, if anyone wishes to contribute Minion-themed quality guest articles, please get in touch. I'd be happy to discuss it! I made this blog primarily as an easily accessible, semi-permanent (1) depository of Gator information for players interested in playing the faction, and I have more or less kept it up to date these past years despite lulls of interest and long periods of no gaming activity. Especially with my tournament attendance about to take a massive nose dive for the next year, and only getting one release in the next ~18 months, there won't be too much to write about.

However it'd be really nice to have a foreign and/or Farrow element to the website: either stand-alone tactics articles, fluff articles, hobby articles, you name it. So if you know your stuff and can write nicely, leave a comment or send me a PM on the PP boards (Yertle4 - the guy who only posts in sarcasm).

Article on the Sacral Vault will be posted when the model comes out (late 2015 is likely!).

Also thanks to anyone who takes the time to comment or let me know they value this site, your comments and opinions are appreciated.

(1) Unlike the PP forums, I have control of what gets posted here and can be as critical or expressive as I want :)

Drafting in Warmahordes

I love drafting. Doesn't really matter what shape or form it is in, I just think drafting is a great meta-game. Perhaps the greatest metagame. It adds a huge dimension to any complex game.

When I followed NHL hockey, I was a big fan of the pre-reason draft, and the totally heartless denial strategies employed by these equally heartless mega sports franchise organizations, which no longer in any way represent the regions in their name, like they did in the times when the Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup every 3rd year.

I also love watching pro DotA, listening to draft analysis and seeing teams organize their skill + items builds to match their team draft and their opponents' team draft. What is also great in DotA drafts is the ban-draft cycle. It greatly increases competitive game balance to allow each team to progressively ban out 5 heroes which they do not want to be involved in the game at all, and how bans play into the draft strategy:

Here is an explanation video of a DotA Captain's Draft from a team captain's perspective (the drafting process has changed slightly since then, for the better):

If you're not familiar with DotA (or its MOBA progeny), the details might be a little confusing, but suffice to say the draft format requires pro DotA players to be quite flexible in playstyle and have a large pool of heroes they can play well, and also requires team captains to be very flexible in terms of overall strategy since the opposing team can always draft hard counters or ban necessary support heroes before you get to pick them. You also have to be really up to date on the current metagame strategies and combinations. A good draft can greatly increase your chances of winning, and a bad one can make life very difficult for you - much like listbuilding in Warmachine or deckbuilding in card games.

The biggest difference of course, is that in games like DotA everyone has access to all the heroes all the time, whereas in Warmachine you are restricted to your faction and your finite wallet (or rather the function of money/time for most gamers). The one exception is the Iron Gauntlet, where you can have lists from different factions, but because of no other restrictions it basically ends up being a dickslapping match between the 10 or so strongest casters in the game and their toughest lists. I am of the opinion that the intention behind the Iron Gauntlet format was to have list construction have as small an impact on the outcome of the game as possible, thereby leaving dice and player skill to be the biggest factors in the game. The reality however, is quite different given the balance issues in the game (1).

DotA has like 105 unique heroes available, but even within the game there is a limited Captains Draft mode where the hero pool is limited to a third of the total, an even more limited individual Single Draft mode where each player only gets 3 randomized heroes to choose from, and even a completely unbalanced but mechanically interesting mode called Ability Draft mode where you get given a hero + their core stats but have to draft your skills alongside the 9 other players! It is basically a draft heaven game.

Drafting is possibly the only part of Magic: the Gathering I find interesting, since deckbuilding Magic is only balanced at the highest levels (which is stupid expensive), or the pre-made starter decks, on account of the rarity/collectible system leading to a huge gap in the power level of individual cards. Drafting leads to some really interesting deck builds, highly unpredictable deck designs and in my opinion a game experience that puts more emphasis on a player's understanding of the game mechanics and play skill than on "deck piloting". My favourite deck building card game, Android:Netrunner as also just introduced a draft format, so looking forward to trying that someday.

What makes draft formats sweet

1) Zero sum game

If you get something, someone else doesn't get it. You not only have to worry about the options you are taking, but the options you are giving to your opponents.

2) Uncertainty

You can't prepare ahead of time as well as you could with a constructed format, because the specific framework and pieces of the game aren't fully determined until the draft is over. However, this uncertainty is still somewhat in the player's control, since decisions during the draft stage affect the final format.

3) Invisible Hand of Balance

It's a bit like cutting a cake. How do you get a cake cut into completely equal pieces? Assuming self interest, you ask someone to cut the cake and tell them they are getting the last piece.

Drafting works a little bit like Adam Smith's free market theory in that way. Assuming every player is trying to win the game, they are trying to get the strongest draft they can, meaning they will take the strongest hand they can, or at least try to make their opponents' hand weaker than theirs. Individual actors following their self interest eventually leads to an equilibrium, which will lead to a state more balanced than if you randomly gave players a bunch of cards/heroes/models/whatever, and assuming balanced inputs, will lead to a pretty balanced outcome (at least relative to the 'core' constructed format).
Due to the ultimately limited pool, there is more potential for abusive combos since certain counters may be absent, leaving OP options unrestrained, but overall the balance issues are not as steep as you'd expect and things run pretty efficiently.

Drafting in Warmahordes

How do you apply this to Warmachine?  

First of all, you have the Spell Draft format that Privateer Press cooked up. That seems about as balanced and fair as the Ability Draft in DotA, which is to say not in the least bit. But it's fun and allows you to look underneath the hood for a bit. Apart from that, a highly limited and very gimmicky mode, good for a laugh and to break your usual thinking patterns for a while.

The last small Who's The Boss/Beermachine event we ran locally in early April had a really cool limited-drafting mechanic which I enjoyed greatly. Here is how it works:

•  All the available caster cards are shuffled together. The two matched-up players sit down at a table opposite each other, and the TO puts down a caster card in front of each player. 
• This is repeated three times, so each player has the option of three different casters to take with his list that round.
• Each player then 'bans' out one caster from his opponent's pool, leaving the choice of two casters. Each player then chooses one of the two for their next game against each other, then you repeat the draft process each round.

That's it. It was a ton of fun and the drafting rounds where probably even more fun that the actual games as everyone trips over themselves trying to give advice to the players and thinking about list combos and all that (2). I found this even better than the standard Who's the Boss wheel, because it has a level of player interaction and choice in it that the spinning wheel doesn't have, not to mention it is WAY easier to implement.

Next time, I'll see how a full-blown army draft goes - including warjacks, warbeasts, units, UA/WAs and solos. I think the best way to do it would be to have all the available cards laid out on a table by category and then use a snake draft system until all players have drawn all cards. You'd probably have to limit the pool in some way so that it doesn't take forever if your playgroup has an asston of models available like mine does.
Each player then puts together a 50 point army list using their selections. After that, you do the warcaster limited draft as mentioned above and go nuts with some really mental lists. 

I don't think competitive WM really lends itself to drafting due to the rather strict army design rules and synergies. Drafting/banning doesn't really make sense, and is pretty unexciting, when you have a only a tiny number of permutations (ie. a handful of fixed list matchups) to work with. Also it's not a zero-sum game. So basically, this post has doesn't really have much to do with SR Warmachine :P

Framtiden

I have a tournament at end of June where I am subbing in for someone else who wisely decided to leave this country for the experience of a lifetime. I will probably play really badly and rage about it/the state of the game, so tune in then to hear more whining and complaining (see footnotes below for an appetizer).


(1) There's an oft-repeated line about Warmachine that says the 'game is balanced'. It isn't. If it were, we would see a much greater diversity in army builds than we currently see. There is a decent amount of diversity, but relatively speaking it is very small. If we want an interesting metagame, someone will always have an advantage in matchups, but that advantage shouldn't be as great within factions as we currently see.
What we should be saying is that out of all the competitive miniature wargames, Warmachine is the most balanced, and is in my opinion the best one. That doesn't mean it can't be better, and there is always room for improvement.

(2) Also because I was feeling pretty low in Warmachine at the time and decided to make a Blindwater list with no Posse. That list sucks cloacas dry btw, never do that to yourself. That and I spent most of my first 1.5 rounds drinking gin&tonics and imported beer, and most of my last 1.5 rounds drinking water, so either way spent more time thinking about my bladder than I did thinking about how utterly shit my lists were.
I still went 2-1 over the 3 rounds since I managed to pick up Kreoss3 in Round 2 (total boss) and Goreshade1 in Round 3 (amazing caster that nobody gives credit to because he is so boring). My first round was Naaresh, who sucks incredibly badly outside Skorne, and sucks normally within Skorne. The design is cute but it's tuned way too loose, making him all limp in the nether regions.

Fury Management in Minions

So the holiday period is over and I am back, about as neutral about the game of Warmachine as one can be. I think I managed to get in one game over the holidays, Barnabas vs an Arkadius list that resulted in a reasonably close game in which I manage to come out the victor thanks to favourable dice and no thanks to a Slaughterhouser making 5 tough saves in a row to deny me control points and making things hard for me (I never did manage to kill him and he lived to the end).

 This game, specifically effective use of Arkadius' feat, brought to mind a frequent "request" I hear on behalf of Minion players to fill a serious design gap in the Pacts: fury management. I don't really agree that this is a design gap. I argue that this would make little difference to our competitive power, because our warbeasts are pretty crappy so being able to manage fury better wouldn't really change things all that much - Gators would take the same amount

WHAT IS FURY MANAGEMENT

Fury management is a term used to refer to models, abilities or spells that can directly or indirectly add or remove fury from friendly warbeasts.
Examples of this include Paingiver Beast Handlers' Condition ability, Kaya1's Soothing Song spell, or the Comfort Food ability on Troll Whelps.

All Hordes armies have fury management built into their warlock's fury leeching ability and fury stat. Warlocks with a low fury stat of 5 can "manage" fury on warbeasts less effectively than warlocks with a higher fury stat of 7 or 8. Looking at that stat alone, one can conclude that warlocks with a higher fury stat can run more warbeasts safely (where safely means less chance of frenzy) because they can leech off more fury than those with a lower stat, thereby leaving less fury on your warbeasts.

Nasum fits everywhere.

WHAT FURY MANAGEMENT ACTUALLY DOES

What fury management does is allow you to run more warbeasts safely, where "safely" is used to mean "lower chance of frenzy".
That's about it. If you have good fury management, you can run more beasts, and beasts can run hotter than they would otherwise, either by generating more attacks, running more models first turn, casting support animi, etc. It provides a higher artificial fury cap for your list.

It's a bit like a reverse of 'focus multiplication', a term used for spells in Warmachine like Terminal Velocity, Guided Fire or Full Throttle where the effect is relatively greater the more models make use of them. For example, spending 3 focus to cast Full Throttle in Khador is efficient if you intend to charge with a jack and make at least 3 attacks with either jacks or warcaster. However, if you have 3 Juggernauts in your list with one focus each for additional attacks, then you are getting 3 charges and 9 to-hit boosts (effectively 9 focus), making that 3 focus expenditure very efficient.

Fury management is like focus multiplication in the sense that it allows you to get more out of your points investment in warnouns by making better use of the resource, in the Hordes case that means being able to do more things with more beasts (go to your fury cap) without the downside (frenzy risk).

WHY FURY MANAGEMENT WOULDN'T REALLY CHANGE ANYTHING FOR GATORMANS

The short answer is beasts in Blindwater are only taken to generate fury, provide animi, and provide high P+S numbers. If Gatorman Posse could do those things, then you probably wouldn't see beasts at all, because Gatormans are freaking sweet. So unless the meta changes to a ridiculous number of 20+ ARM targets in each list, you will only want a moderate number of Gator warbeasts in any given list.

The long answer is that our beasts aren't really that good. We don't have beasts that we actually want to take many of, except perhaps the Bull Snapper - which, while quite capable for a 3pt beast, doesn't really deliver the volume or quality of attacks required to kill things and doesn't have a lot of health. Coincidentally, this is also the only Minion warbeast with any fury management via the Torpor rule that removes a fury from it and ends its activation immediately after destroying a living model, a.k.a. "free boost". Bull Snapper - one of the best designed models in the game.

Spitters are the only heavy of which you might want three in a specific type of list, but even then you're probably only boosting hit rolls and a few direct damage hits. Since the AoE causes Corrosion, you don't usually end up boosting the blast damage rolls when fury is a concern. Fury management would basically allow you to boost all the blast damage rolls in exchange for a couple of points. Worth it? I wouldn't say so in the majority of situations.

Wrastlers can have a good and unpredictable threat with their animus but don't hit hard enough to be a super serious threat in themselves, and also lack reach or movement shtick (you can give them reach with Elasticity, but then you lose a lot of flexibility in making a Rise Missile happen). Dual Wrastler lists can do some cool stuff, but again I think this is something that gets taken due to lack of options, not because it's really THAT sweet.

Swamp Horrors could also be taken in multiples as they hit hard-ish and have lots of reach initials so can deal with multiple targets and heavy targets. Unfortunately they are squishy as shit in melee and die to charging mechaniks.

Boneswarms are just crap at everything.

In terms of specific battlegroup-wide buffs, we have Warpath. And Admonition and Flesh Eater at a stretch, I guess. Everything else probably gets more out of it when used in conjunction with Gatorman Posse. That isn't much of an incentive to bring warbeasts, let me tell you.

Let's have a look at other factions for comparison's sake:

Legion and Skorne have the best fury management in the game in Paingivers, Sheperds and Forsaken. This allows them to run lots of beasts, specifically heavies. This is fine by them because they have access to amazing heavies that they want to take a lot of by choice, rather than by necessity.

On the Legion side of things, you have Archangels, Ravagores, Scytheans, and Typhon. These beasts are quite versatile in that they can not only do sizable melee damage, but are also versatile enough to handle infantry well with abilities like Overtake, Bloodbath, Slaughterhouse (takedown), Scather/AoEs and sprays. Sweet animi, sweet stats, sweet abilities, sweet weapons.
Skorne has the likes of Gladiators, Bronzebacks, Tiberion and Molik Karn, along with excellent lights like Brutes, Drakes and Kreas. Similar to Legion, these beasts have great secondary use and sweet animi (or are just really tanky as shit). The Holy Skorne Trinity of Molik, Gladiator and Bronzeback can deal with almost anything, from troop masses to high ARM to rough terrain to Crippling Grasp (ok, maybe not that last one).

Not only are the beasts really sweet, but a good number of their casters support the beast heavy playstyle through feats, abilities and spells, making beasts even more attractive. Have a look at Vayls, Makedas, Saeryn, Lylyth2, Hexeris2, Morghoul1, Rasheth, Naaresh, Xerxis, etc..
Lylyth2 is a great example - Fury 5, no real fury management to speak of and all about increasing attacks. With a few Shepards and Forsaken however, those 3 Ravagore/2 Angel lists are destroying everything on feat turn and then acting totally cool the next rather than flipping out and killing each other. Morghoul1 is in the same boat - with 5 fury and a tendency to die, without Paingivers he would really really suck.

Circle and Trolls don't have as much in terms of general fury management. Shifting Stones can remove fury from friendly warbeasts within 1" during your control phase (an ability that was not present in Mk1 but was thrown in last minute in the field test to appease Circle players who felt heavily crippled by the lack of fury management - lolz). This fury management is not that great for Circle because of its highly limited range, and as we all know Circle likes mobility, especially on their Warpwolf Stalkers which you see in every list. Besides, these Stalkers are usually going to be Primaled so will frenzy next turn anyway, resulting in effective fury management. They do however have a few warlocks that do very well running warbeast heavy (Kromac, Kaya, Baldur2 tier) due to great support buffs, built-in fury control, construct warbeasts that don't frenzy and models like the Druid Wilder that get animi out.

Trolls have Whelps, who I don't usually see on the table very often despite what I consider to be pretty strong rules (2pts for 5 solos, who can either be a MAT/RAT debuff, alternate source of beast healing or fury management - seems good). I attribute this to Troll beasts being a heavily synergistic faction, and as a result their beasts are bad to average for their high costs (outside of Mulg), so they always try to max on troops and the beasts are primarily taken for animi/support and to be a "cog in the fleshy blue machine", besides Bombers and maybe Earthborns.
They also have a couple of fury and frenzy management abilities on some casters, like Calandra and Hoarluks.

The main point is that fury management is only a really useful tool IF you have really good warbeasts of which you want to take more than your warlock can handle by itself. Minions do not have this issue because our warbeasts are good at best and mediocre at other times.



WHY IT COULD CHANGE THINGS FOR PIGS, BUT PROBABLY WON'T

On the flipside of BG buffs, you have Farrow, whose casters are shitting out amazing battlegroup buffs with alarming consistency:

• Carver: Mobility, Batten Down the Hatches, [Hog Heaven feat is arguably just as useful for melee heavies as it is for troops]
• Arkadius: Aggravator, Forced Evolution, Primal Shock, Psycho Surgery, Maltreatment, Monster Mayhem feat
• S&D: Watcher, Killing Ground, Goad, Pack Hunters, [Vision is also best for battlegroup]
• Midas: Butchery, Pet Cemetary feat

To make up for these super sweet buffs however, they have some terrible beasts. Like, really bad beasts that only manage to do anything sweet because their casters are so baller.

War Hogs, Road Hogs and Gun Boars all share pretty crappy stats (the Gun Boar is quite tanky for a light though) and relatively high points costs, and only become respectable in any degree when they combine their "pain activated" abilities with their warlocks' super sweet BG buffs.

The only beast that is actually pretty sweet for its cost is the 2pt Razor Boar, perspectives of which will forever be cursed by its unexplainedly 100% overcosted Friendly Faction animus*. However a respectable tanky 2pt solo with boosts that you can spam and benefits from your sweet BG buffs is hard to overlook.

Pigs have access to 4 infantry units (all FA:2, 3 in Thornfall):

• Brigands - good with Carver due to fearless + CRA (a big deal), not good with anyone else.
• Slaughterhousers - all around excellent melee unit. Their special rules (Take Down, Finisher, Reach, Powerful Charge, Fearless, Tough) make up for their mediocre victim stats in spades. If Minions were one faction rather than two, I would definitely take a unit of these in many lists.
• Bone Grinders - good support unit and very cheap. Craptacular damage output though, despite having a nice RNG 12 POW 11 nuke.
• Razorback Crew - one of the better light artillery pieces in the game, but still light artillery.

The average 50pts Pig list will contain 1 unit of Bone Grinders and 1-2 units of Slaughterhousers. The rest will be filled with beasts, usually 2-3 War Hogs, 0-2 Road Hogs, 4-6 Razorboars and 0-2 Gun Boars, along with Saxon Orrik and other solos not as good as Saxon Orrik.
This is partially out of necessity (not too many options available), and partially because of the aforementioned amazing battlegroup buffs. War Hogs tend to be the most common in my experience (I almost always see 2 at 50pts) and it is pretty bad as far as melee heavies go.

With that in mind, would fury management make a big difference to Pigs? I sure as hell don't know. Probably. They are taking list made up primarily of beasts anyway, so I can't see how being able to manage fury better would be a negative. It would make spamming the Razor Boar animus easier for one, which could be neat.

I'm not convinced the lack of fury management in Pigs is a design gap though. I always thought the best approach to fury management in Pigs should be frenzy. Give Pig players every incentive to just go crazy all the time. It would be both fun and unique, require pretty good decision making skills and familiarity with the frenzy rules to maximize efficiency and not get stuck in the regimented "order of activation uber alles" playstyle of Skorne and PoM.

HOW TO MANAGE FURY WITHOUT SPENDING POINTS

One of the nice things, in my opinion, about Gators is the lack of fury management forces you to get good at the fundamentals of the game. You can't go balls out with fury on any given turn, and then cover your ass by spending points on fury control models. I also feel in building lists that the balance between infantry and warnouns is exactly where I would like it to be for Warmachine and other Hordes factions - I need to take a certain number of warbeasts in order to generate fury for my warlock AND also provide a decent number of transfer for safety. That usually ends up being 2 heavies and a light at all points levels, a proposition that makes Khador soil itself with envy.

If I take less, I make my caster more vulnerable by having lower fury generation (meaning I might have to cut for fury regularly) and by reducing the number of potential transfer targets (not only will there be less on the table, but the ones that are there are more likely to be fill up on fury).
If I take more, I use my points less efficiently than I could otherwise (on infantry or solos) and will probably have more fury than I can handle if I want my beasts to function effectively.


Here are some pro-tips (or at least, "tips"):

• The fundamentals of fury management are planning and estimating.
• The most important factor in planning is to know what your caster will be doing that turn, specifically how much fury you want to spend and how much you want to hold onto. The difference between there two is ideally how much you want to have on the table at the end of your opponent's next turn.
• If you expect a beast do die next turn, such as a beast used in a Rask Missile or Rise Missile, then max it out on fury and don't reave it if it'll bring you over cap. Better to cut for 1 or 2 damage to get the missing fury (if needed) than have a warbeast frenzy and do nothing on top of killing your own stuff. If it somehow lives, then you're likely to get a free fully boosted attack out of it when it frenzies.
• Very rarely will I aim to have more fury on that table than what my caster can handle. However, if I am able to go completely overboard and put your opponent in a really really bad position by maxing out your beasts, then it's probably worth the risk. Better to risk frenzy to kill an enemy heavy than to have it kill you next turn.
• Fury management also takes place during your turn, since that's when transfers are likely to take place. You can think of a transfer as costing you one point of life, since that's what it cost to make up a lost fury. If you reasonably expect your caster to take a few hits, having an extra fury or two on your beasts can save you cutting yourself next turn. In my experience however, if you do a good job at protecting your caster, most experienced players won't even try to kill it without some top-level assassination tech.
  

The wonders of nature

ACTUAL DESIGN GAPS

Fury management is a non-issue in my opinion. I think the actual design gaps for Gators are:

• Lack of anti-tough - the increasing prominence of tough (no thanks to the Witch Doctor!) is one of the bigger contemporary design issues in the game in my opinion. There has also been quite a bit of discussion about it on the forums in the last few months, with a lot of arguments thrown both ways.
  My stance on the matter is that Tough as a rule, namely a single 5+ unmodifiable dice roll to survive (almost) any attack, is fine in itself. It adds a lot of character and a bit of depth into the game strategy. The issue I have with it is that it is everywhere, with the Piper, Kovnik Joe, huge FU caster auras like Terminus and Irusk and Tough is no longer a special unique rule with character but is turning things into 40k Roll to Hit -> Roll to Damage -> Roll to Save.
  
  And the worse part of it is that Gators cannot do ANYTHING about it at all, except getting that crit consume on Barnabas' bite (I will almost always roll to hit on KD tough models to get that crit).
  So either fix the game (lots of work), or give me easily accessible anti-tough tech. Shit, I'd take Slaughterhousers. Thanks.

• Lack of magical attacks - outside caster melee and ranged weapons, and some magical nukes we have the following things: Thrullg's 3 melee weapons, Pendrake's sword, Croctor's Sacral Blade and Sacrificial Strike. Not to best to deal with those rogue incorporeal zone contest solos, or Cryx ghost infantry BS.
• Low number of ranged attacks - less of an issue for me than in the past, but I've fortunately managed to avoid hard control casters like Haley, Denny, Old Witch, etc. If I played those more often I would most likely rage about not being able to play a lot of the time. Obviously Gators, like Cryx or Skorne, are supposed to be heavily melee oriented, but even Cryx has some of the offensive spell toolboxes in the game, and Skorne has a decent number of ranged options and/or magical attacks for those bad matchups too so they aren't 100% boned (just 85%).
• Dealing with armor without Rask - not a huge deal, but having +1 POW on Barnabas' cleaver and Maelok's Bite would be a big help. Having to cup my balls and hold my breath when I charge into a slightly damaged heavy might be exciting if I succeed, but it'd be nice to push the odds a little bit in my favour and maybe leave me with 1 fury at the end of my attacks.

The middle two issues could be fixed by making Specialists more baseline. If I see a shitload of magic users and Blackbanes on the other side, I can sub in a Thrullg. If I come up against some hardcore control BS, I can put in 2 Croak Hunters and some Bog Trogs to have something to do on enemy feat turns. It's probably still not enough to patch up those weaknesses, but at least we have something there.
On the flipside, I can't do anything about tough, and will always have to play Rask against heavy armor unless there is an errata on Barnabas/Maelok/Calaban, or some stuff gets released that specifically does not work for Rask (like a warbeast affinity).

Well, that was ranty. Maybe I'll have another equally ranty post in the near future, probably also about how tough spam is retarded. Or whatever the flavour of the month is. Until then, relish being the underdog!


* Seriously, wtf. It can ONLY work on Pig warbeasts and it's not that strong an ability in itself. I'd understand if it could work on things that weren't warbeasts since Rorsch could cast it on almost anything in the game. The only explanations I can come up with are 'DC hates Pigs' or 'future fury management incoming'.

The Mk2.5 Balancing drama

There have been a lot of threads recently (last couple of months) about the desire for Mk 3 or Mk 2.5 or some kind of balancing errata so that the meta game can get shaken up a bit and we can maybe play without the absolute certainty that your Cryx opponent will be packing a list with Tartarus and a shitload of Banes, and your Cygnar opponent won't have a Haley list with Stormwall or whatever for a couple of months before the new superpowers settle on their thrones high above and the cycle beings anew. All we know is that Minions will remain the worst faction in the game.

So I decided to think out loud (in written form) and put together a little article about what changes I would put forward for Blindwater under such an update patch. Hopefully this at worst will give people a perspective of how I play Gators and what the meta around here is like. Here are the fruits of my mental labour.

A little theory to kick things off....

There are a few ways to balance things in games.

• Numbers change - you can make something relatively better or worse in some specific regard by increasing or decreasing a particular stat.

This is the most common type of change in a game 'patch'. Numbers (or stats) represent relative things in an absolute way so that we can compare to other similar things in the system. The more stats you have, the more there is to tweak (and also more complicated and detailed gameplay).
For example, there is a sizable degree of difference between MAT 5 (Titan Sentry), MAT 6 (Assault Kommando), MAT 7 (Doom Reaver) and MAT 9 (Vilmon). In relative/descriptive terms, we can say the Sentry is 'competent' in melee combat, the AK is 'trained', the Doom Reaver is 'highly skilled' and Vilmon is 'one of the best in the entire world'. We can encapsulate these differences by assigning those numbers to their MAT, and this will play out in the game via the exciting realm of dice and probability. Thus changing a number makes something better or worse in that regard.

Points Cost is probably the single most important stat because it determines the relative total value of any given model to another potential option. Points are one of the most important resources in Warmachine, and changing the PC of a model (especially in the lower 1-5pt bracket) can make a huge difference to the power of a model.

• Mechanics change - changing one mechanic on a model can change its effectiveness.

Take for example the change to Side Step so that the 2" move no longer triggered upon hitting a friendly model. This reduced the effectiveness of the eMakeda Molik Karn Bullet list slightly so that it became easier for the opponent to not get killed bottom of two.
Another example of this would be the multiple changes to Lich2's feat, from changing the returned models from 'Incorporeal' to 'Ghostly', or changing valid feat targets from 'warrior models' to 'grunts'. The feat does essentially the same thing as it did before - bringing back a bunch of ethereal banes to kill half your army - but certain mechanics of the ability were changed to reduce its power.

• Redesign - some models do not work on the table as intended, or have a role or purpose already fulfilled by a competitive option.

For example, nobody plays Drudges in a competitive setting because Mechanithralls do a very similar thing (potentially hard hitting tarpit) at a much lower cost, greater efficiency and without the weakness of being tied to its Officer to function. Therefore Drudges would need more than just a mechanics change (they don't have many to begin with) or a simple stats change (McThralls are still better at 3/5 PC) but something a bit more involved.
I'd also put Calaban as a candidate for redesign, as anyone who has read pretty much any article on here knows how I feel about playing him, as well as his validity in a competitive setting post-Rask.


Finally, a disclaimer - balance is in the eye of the beholder, much like power. Everything takes place within a complicated interconnected system where changing one small thing can have trigger a chain of events further down the line. Some people have a good sense for this type of thing, while the average player in a game does not. This is why balance decisions are best when they occur as the result of careful statistical analysis and systemic thinking combined with consensus-based discussions of subjective perspectives and values.

In my opinion, Privateer Press has a mixed record on game balancing in Mk2. I like how they have approached Lich2 nerfs with gradual tweaking rather than huge sweeping nerfs (as game companies like Blizzard are wont to do) and have done a pretty good job of quickly fixing core mechanic issues that have popped up like the Shield Guard, headlocks from behind, Cover LoS, Sloan's feat, Backswing, etc. but have been almost entirely non-committal on rebalancing the game in terms of power levels or fixing units that are just plain unattractive (with occasional exceptions like Asphyxious, the Blood Hag or more recently Taryn).

I think there is a lot to gain if a large balance errata were released. It would stimulate the metagame for the better part of 6 months to a year (far more than a handful of new releases), thus getting current players more excited about the game and buying new stuff. There is always the issue that your netdecked list won't be playable anymore exactly as is, or that your beloved OP models won't be as broken anymore, but as long as they don't nerf anything into the ground or make really dramatic changes to models that people currently use regularly, then everyone wins.


On the Gatormans!

---------------------------------------------

Warlocks

Our warlocks are pretty strong on the whole. Rask is probably a little on the powerful side, and Calaban is a little on the never-gets-played-because-he-is-annoying-to-use-and-pretty-much-inferior-to-Rask-in-every-way side.

Bloody Barnabas

+ 1 POW on Bone Cleaver
This just adds a little more warjack/warbeast killing power to Barnabas himself. Too often I charge an average heavy like an Ironclad, Harrower, Banshee, Scythean etc. and fall short of killing it by a few boxes despite charging and spending all my fury. It's a bit of a downer for a Gatorman tank, and I think this change will make a noticeable difference in smoothing out his crippling difficulty with ARM 20+.
I think Blood-Quenched would be an amazing rule on eBarnabas :)
 

Maelok, the Dreadbound

No change. 
I would perhaps make Malediction 'target model in this model's battlegroup' rather than 'RNG: Self', but that would probably make him a bit too strong since it's like giving Gators +2 MAT and POW vs any given large target, thereby almost removing the need to take heavy warbeasts and giving a lot more power to the Maelok + 3 Snappers list (it'd be like Dark Shroud on crack).

I love this artwork.

Rask

-1 WB point.  
He is obviously better than the other Gator warlocks. 1 less WB points usually means you don't get those Swamp Gobbers to give him concealment or a Feralgeist to annoyingly contest zones. I considered also removing his Energy Siphon attack since it's just icing on the cake that can potentially win games for no real reason, but it's not really a huge deal. As long as Gators remain super weak in ranged combat, Rask will refrain from being broken as balls and just remain really strong.
 

Calaban, the Grave Walker

Heavy redesign. 
Rask has taken this guy's previous niche of ARM cracking and just does it way more efficiently and safely. I would like a redesign to emphasize his manipulative voodoo asshole persona, focusing on denial, spell assassination and debuffs. Think of spells like Bad Blood, Breath Stealer and Shadowmancer, or douchy abilities like Harrow (pMorv) and Talion (pVayl). I like the idea of Shadowmancer a lot more than Parasite + Occultation since it gives you an incentive to NOT take 3 full Posse at 50pts, as they will get shot up. Gameplay wise, he could also be designed to do well vs hard-hitting infantry swarms so that Gators can have a 50/50 against it.

Either way he goes, his arc node mechanic (if kept) needs to be less clunky, like straight-up making Spell Martyr equivalent models that can activate that turn (which will only be really strong on his feat turn), or anything I've written on at length previously.

Warbeasts

Blindwater warbeasts are very average. They don't have great stats, are a little pricey, but do come with some neato abilities make all the difference in using them.

Blackhide Wrastler

Change Snacking so that the RFP effect is not conditional upon the heal effect.
I just think it's really annoying and janky to try and get a point of damage on your beast so that you can RFP if you want to. Just have it RFP all the time as the thing gets eaten or ripped up good. This would be a 'buff' to Dire Trolls too... and Shredders (although Shredders should probably lose Snacking altogether).
+1 POW on the claws would be nice but not necessary. The Wrastler isn't great in the scheme of things but does his job well enough if you know how to use him.

Ironback Spitter

New animus.
The Spitter sucks pretty bad in melee, is slow and not particularly hard to kill for something covered almost entirely in a hard shell. Fine, because it has a sweet AoE gun and RAT 5 with 4 fury. That alone is almost worth the admission. However, in well over 100 games with Blindwater, I have never cast the Ornery animus. It is, for all intents and purposes, a total waste of card space for the Spitter.
I assume Ornery is supposed to symbolize the tendency of snapper turtles to ferociously bite down on things in self-defense (since they are too big to fully retreat into their shell), but in gameplay it fails.

I think Locker (from the Titan Sentry) would be an adequate replacement.  Counterblast is the next most logical option since it is Ornery but better, however that animus is also pretty crap.
Or allow it to Stoneform as an animus. That would be sweet and probably not too strong on any caster all things considered (since it doesn't stack with Spiny Growth). Maelok could be ARM 23 for a turn at worse.

Swamp Horror

No change.
They are neat because they have lots of attack and don't die to shooting (but die to everything else). I wish this had been the Gargantuan though, basically the same thing with bigger numbers and an automatic crit.

Bull Snapper

No change. 
They are squishy support beasts that can missile out and kill a thing sometimes. Basically the same deal as a Shredder or Gorax, just more Gatory.

Boneswarm

Redesign.
This thing sucks. I have seen it be decent in Midas' tier list when it starts with 3 bone tokens because it is then quite tanky at DEF 13 ARM 18 (just like a dirged Gator! For twice the cost!), so you park it on a flag somewhere and it kills 1-2 models a turn, healing itself and such. Or it does some decent damage to an enemy heavy at POW 15 and then lives long enough to be annoying. Decent - not great. Basically it needs a sense of purpose which it does not currently have.

Units

We have three units, one of which won't be released until 2017. Gatormans are one of the best units in the Hordes (almost said 'the game'... then remembered Warmachine units) and are the backbone of Blindwater and will probably remain so for as long as the Pact exists.

Gatorman Posse

No change.
Prior to the release of the Warspear and Skinwalker UAs, I'd have said that they needed something to make them less attractive to other factions, but now I don't see Legion or Circle players use Gatormans all that much... or at all. They are still super good but still die rather handily if you know how to do it and have the tools (weapon masters, smart use of heavies, control, etc.).

Bog Trog Ambushers

No change. 
They are kind of costly for their poor base stats really but are a finesse unit with quite a few special rules.

Gatorman Bokor and Swamp Shamblers

Change their status to 'released'. 
Amazing game-changing buff. I still think they will relatively be much better outside Blindwater than within it, unlike the two above units.

Swamp Gobbers

No change. 
1pt for a cloud seems ok, especially considering they do nothing else and die to incidental blast damage.

Solos

We have two distinct Gatorman solos, the Croaks and Croctor, and then have a couple of more general Minion solos to go with the legendary Wrong Eye.

Gatorman Witch Doctor

No change.
I am a little bummed that these guys cost 3pts in general but only 2pts in Maelok's tier list, where they are precisely at their most powerful for Gators, which signifies a Minion tax. However I can suck it up since they are pretty good anyways.

Totem Hunter

No change. 
No surprise.

Croak Hunter

Gain + 1 DEF, lose Vitriol
Ah Croaks.... I have never even seen them played outside Blindwater since they are so mediocre. I have barely seen them played within Blindwater since they are so mediocre. They have done ok for me purely because they allow me to clear single-models here and there without activating a whole unit of Gators or a beast.
My first thought was that Jump will allow them to do this even better. Plus it is incredily froggy. The only issue is that they basically become crappy Totem Hunters for 1pt less, and we don't really want that... or do we.....?
Secondary thought was to make them blow up when they die like Bloat Thralls, because that'd be hilarious. But then they would just run/jam and kill heaps of infantry for nothing and then I realized this would be way too faceroll / Cryxian.
Tertiary thought was to just buff their DEF by 1 so they are less prone to death after they fail to hit something with their spears, and just went with that.
I just took Vitriol off the card because it does nothing and it's just some fluffy ability for fluffers.

Viktor Pendrake

Bow becomes Magical.
This is the most minor change ever and is only a real deal for Blindwater since we are starved for magic attacks. Makes sense though, no? That bow has to be lucky for a reason (and that reason is MAGIC).

Wrong Eye + Snapjaw

No change. 
These guys are great and don't really bust anything in the game outside putting Spiny Growth on Galleon. You could make them 2-3pts more and that wouldn't change though - a hard skew is a hard skew and I am 99% sure this is just something that wasn't picked up in playtesting. Would need a subtype change perhaps, or a change with how lesser warlocks work.

Total changes:

• Barnabas - Increase POW of melee weapon 'Bone Cleaver' from '5' to '6'. (or just give him Dark Shroud, that's probably better :P )
• Rask - Reduce WB points from '+6' to '+5'.
• Calaban - redesign.
• Wrastler - replace the text of Snacking with: 'When this model boxes a living model with a melee attack, the boxed model is removed from play and this model can heal d3 damage points'.
• Spitter - replace 'Ornery' animus with something I will cast at least once in 100 games. Or not.
• Boneswarm - redesign.
• Pendrake - add weapon quality: 'magical weapon' to ranged weapon 'Lucky Bow'.
• Croak Hunter - Increase DEF stat from '13' to '14'. Remove rule 'Vitriol'.

All in all, very small balance changes since I feel Blindwater is in a good place other than the lack of options leading to really bad matchups vs things like weapon master swarms (need some guns/scathers/A2A-type infantry clear) and incorporeal spam (magical weapons).
I would have like to have more nerfs to give the impression that I can have a balanced mindset about things, but to be honest I only view Rask and Gatormans on the really high part of the curve.... this is still Minions we're talking about!

The redesign are for two models I never use because other models within the same faction do similar things in much more effective and well-designed ways. For a thought exercise, Boneswarms at 3pts are still much less appealing than Snappers, and Calaban at +7WB points is still as irritating as groin chaffing and worse than Rask at everything except throwing out POW 12 nukes (mostly because Rask has no offensive spells). This indicates to me that the models just don't really work so need some deeper changes. Some may disagree of course.


In the greater scheme of the game, I think that several models could use small-tweaks in cost or ability use in order to level out power inequalities or obstacles to player engagement. Little changes like:

• Making eMorvahna's rerolls in her CMD rather than CTRL to force her to play a bit more forward, or at least consider order of activations a bit more.
• Smoothing out uber-crippling feats that literally stop you playing the game, like pDenny (ie. remove the -2 FOC and 'no running') or eHaley's.
• Making Assault Kommandos cheaper so they might have a place as meat shields with Strakhov and Vlads.
• Reducing the amount of tough rolls in an average game, or changing the mechanic if they want to keep it at that scale so it doesn't feel like I'm playing 40k.
• Changing Excarnate to basically be Revive attached to a POW 13 nuke - place the model within 3" of its unit rather than the caster and in this model's CTRL (nerf Lich, buff Scaverous = everyone wins).

Others, like Drudges, need some serious redesign. I think they have the data and expertise to do such a 'patch' justice (much more than I ever could anyway), and besides it'd probably only impact 5-10% of the models currently out.

Alas, we will wait and see what happens. I know it's way cheaper for me to play Minions when I know Pigs are really bad and don't bring anything better to the table so there's no reason to buy a Pig list other than lolz :) I will keep playing the same lists for another year or three if need be.

Boneswarm - steaming pile of crap, or hidden gem?

Thought I'd start my Gatorman write-ups on the wrong foot by exploring one of our more controversial (read: bad) models, the very pretty Boneswarm:

 

First of all, the model is stunning, and understandably very easy to paint. It comes from the original IK RPG range of PP miniatures, and was given a set of WM/H rules with the release of Domination. A Maelok tier army featuring three to four of these things looks amazing!

Overview

 

The Boneswarm is a light Gatorman warbeast with no scales, teeth or death-rolling abilities. It in fact appears to be made up entirely of human bones, and is much more man than gator. 

It has 2 abilities of note:

• Bone Picker allows it to gain a corpse token for every living/undead model it kills, to a max of 3. It gets +1 STR and ARM for each token on it.
• Gross Anatomy allows it to spend corpse tokens to heal itself d3 per token.

It is also Undead. True story.

Survivability

 

DEF 13, ARM 15, 20 boxes. Pretty crap, until you start considering corpse tokens giving +1 ARM per token and external ARM buffs.

Damage

 

A single P+S 12 attack, Fury 3. No reach, slow, average MAT. Unremarkable in this department, even with corpse tokens.

Utility

 

Has Swarm for an animus (taken from the Swamp Troll, which is noticeably better than the Boneswarm), which gives it concealment and makes living enemy things within 2" -2 on attack rolls. That sounds ok, right?

The Boneswarm - as pretty as it is useless

Tactica 

 

In theorymachine, the way you use this thing is to charge into a cluster of low DEF, mid ARM models like Stormblades, kill a couple of them, and not die on account of the ARM buff from tokens and possibly Spiny Growth. Then you just repeat the cycle, healing yourself up as required, grinding slowly through a unit and jamming it up.

In real games however, that just does not happen. It is far too fragile to survive any somewhat organized retaliation, and the lack of reach, slow SPD, average P+S and MAT are deal-breakers in getting any legit damage out of it. The 2" range on the animus is also a ballbuster when it comes to protecting anything else in an army of large bases.

The fact is, the Boneswarm is a late-game model which does not do much at all until the late game:

• It is pretty good at picking up loose trooper and solo models after the front lines have engaged. However, the Snapper is much better at doing this due to its ridiculous threat range against living models, sustained attack, and better fury control. The one advantage here is that the Boneswarm gets stronger the more it kills.
• The animus is useful mid-late game when stuff starts getting jammed up, and you can squeeze a Boneswarm in your front line to get the -2 debuff on enemy models. However, it is practically useless until that time, since you are unlikely to get too many melee attacks against your backline early on, and bringing your Boneswarm forward will just get it killed.

In my (limited) experience, the Boneswarm does best in larger points games (>50pts), where you have enough stuff to do the work early on in the game and the Swarm can do its part later on, or have a better chance at picking off loose troopers and solos early on without getting itself killed. In smaller points games (=/<50), you are putting yourself at a disadvantage early game by essentially playing 4pts down (which could get you more Gators, Bog Troggs, solos, another Snapper...) which sets you back in the attrition game.


Understandably, the Boneswarm does best with Maelok, given his focus on attrition and strength in the late-game. It benefits from both parts of his feat: allowing a Boneswarm to position itself in a clump of enemy models to maximize Swarm, as well as getting the +2 ARM for the round.
It does ok with Barnabas in that you can just park him next to an Iron Flesh Barnabas, making your warlock effectively DEF 18, ARM 19 vs melee attacks (not that Barnabas has trouble surviving otherwise). Warpath can also help it set up a good slam or charge and can mitigate its low SPD.

I haven't tried it yet with Elasticity, but I have a feeling I'd pretty much rather but Elasticity on ANYTHING else in my army than a Boneswarm. But who knows, it seems good in theory.


Overall though, the problem with the Boneswarm is that it is worse than everything else you could be taking for the points, and 4pts is not much.  If the animus was RNG:6, it would be a great support piece early on (possibly overpowered in many factions while attached to Wrong Eye?), and a quite decent late game attrition piece. As it stands, it just makes me cry in my cornflakes.

Conclusion

Steaming Pile of Crap  |-------X---------------------------------------| Gorman
                                        

Boneswarm - slightly better than Assault Kommandos!