Of Gilded Pork ~ Thoughts on Midas

Starting to get more games in again... and managing to stick with minions for a bit in spite of my faction ADD. Thought I would put down some of my initial thoughts on Midas.

First thought: OMG his tier is AMAZING for who he is and what he wants to do. I love having bonegrinders hand out free charges from the get go every game (sprint could be awesome as well, but seems to defeat some of my further thoughts on how he works, more on this later). You lose some AD and access to pathfinder, but Roadhogs have pathfinder built in and his tier grants advanced move to his beasts. All and all a wash.

Onto the meat and potatoes of Midas. As far as I can tell, he is meant to be played in waves. Start by sending in your beasts to die, take their bodies to fuel the spells that make your infantry better, when the infantry start running out, feat and bring back the beasts again. Target things that want to drop heavies and problem characters, and try to ride out the storm a second time.

I think that getting the most out of him will involve mastering the timing of these waves and in the knowledge of getting the most out of each group. In general I am coming round to min units of bonegrinders (more magical zots, more advanced move; drawback being if they are benefiting from Battle Lust, you get slightly less out of the spell). I don't think I would ever take brigands with him either, as they don't do all that much for him. End of day, a couple of units of Slaughterhousers and a million bonegrinders should probably meet all your infantry needs with him.

Beasts I have been running something along the line of 4 razor boars, 2 road hogs, and 2 warhogs (one living, one dead in theme force). This seems to give me a pretty good mix of things, although I may try to work in a gun boar at some point just to see what is up.

Perfect game with him I see trading razor boars for position and any solo they can get their tusks on, Roadhogs try to hit infantry as hard as they can with flaming sprays. In general, you want things to die so you can fuel your later turns. I also tend to not respect fury at all in the early stages. I run everything really hot and let things frenzy or die... is a weird place to be in for me as I am used to trying to preserve at all costs.

If the 2 games I have played so far with him are anything to judge by, I need to work on getting the most out of my slaughterhousers... I am just not there yet in the rhythm of the game yet. Also the fact that bonegrinders have the potential to be late game melee beaters is pretty hot (given they cost the same as McThralls and have an accurate ranged attack).

I will also say that by default his feat seems to feel defensive to me... at least on the turn you use it, but putting a bunch of beasts back down on the table feels really powerful. Don't know if it is true or not, but seems like a good attrition thing.

Faction ADD is fun

Unless something weird happens, I am officially done with new armies in warmachine and hordes. I would like to slow down and think for a minute about the odd and winding road that got me here.

Way back when, one of my friends discovered stomps elephants in samurai armor and was sold right off the bat. He came to me (as he is oft to do) and quickly talked me into playing the game. As I dug through the books figuring out what I wanted to play a couple of things stood out.

About the only guys I liked in protectorate of menoth fluff wise were the Paladins of the Wall... Religious douche bags really didn't tickle my fancy at all. I tend to also shy away from undead, so cryx was out. Mercs still weren't really a faction yet (although they were tempting). That left Khador and Cygnar, with trenchers and winter guard being a tie in my book (for some reason I tend to love jobbers), Cygnar pulled ahead on the strength of a teleporting gunslinger.

Hordes seemed cool, and if I was going to play it was going to be trollbloods, but the swan had stolen my heart.

Then my car blew its head gasket and things went on hold for a while.

I moved up to Portland, and went from a meta that had no Cygnar to one that seemed to have it everywhere. What's a good general to do? I branched into mercs. I ran with them for a while and bounced between them and Cygnar.

Some part of me wanted to see how the other half lived, and so I decided to play minions because: 1) there weren't many models to buy 2) war hogs are fucking bad assed. This of course led to gators...

Fast forward a bit, and some locals were getting out of trolls... I got into them at rock bottom prices and wheeled and sealed a bit to help them pay for themselves. Work was also picking up at this point and I had far more money than time so things kept getting fleshed out.

Now we enter the omg twins part of the conversation... I now have 2 amazing babies but realized that would put a damper on playing some of the other systems I had gotten into over the years... Some how that process ended up with me getting a boat load of Skorne.  

For those of you following along... That puts me at: Cygnar, Mercs, Minions, Trollbloods, and Skorne.

Holy crap what is going on.

This beings me to what should be the end of the road and in many way full circle. Due to other circumstances and ebay gods smiling, I am starting Khador. Trying to figure out how to get stuff painted and all of that is interesting, but 3 hordes 3 warmachine. Balance to the force. Now to focus...

Are you Skorney baby?

So Flames of War is out, long live the Skorne. Long story short, I now have twins, and have thus limited myself to one game system (or two but who's counting). My British forces are now in the hands of a capable commander down in California, and I now must look to expand the Skorne Empire. This is my 5th faction (Hello, my name is Byron and I am an addict), but a lot of it is painted already, so that is a first (I can actually play it painted in 2013... weird).

That being said, I have spent some time in the dojo with Skorne already, but there are some lists I really want to mess around with, and some troops that may have gained some in the evolving meta.

First off, the sudden rise of AoE's everywhere means I will probably be picking up Karax once they have their own box set (or run out of things higher up the purchase list). Their ability to passively shield against blast damage may make the fact they are a shield wall unit (something I tend to avoid). At 4/6 they seem to be a highly expendable delivery platform to get other squishy things past say... galleon.

Next up are the immortals, who have always looked awesome to me, but have never been very far up the list of awesome due to their slow speed. I am going to bank a bit on the fact they have a natural armor of 17, which again gets you through most blast damage and pow 10 shooting. I may be wrong, but such is life.

I am pretty excited about the following list idea:

Lord Assassin Morghoul (*6pts)
* Cyclops Shaman (5pts)
* Cyclops Brute (5pts)
* Archidon (7pts)
* Archidon (7pts)
* Titan Gladiator (8pts)
* Aptimus Marketh (3pts)
Gatormen Posse (Leader and 4 Grunts) (9pts)
Paingiver Beast Handlers (Leader and 5 Grunts) (3pts)
Gatorman Witch Doctor (3pts)
Paingiver Task Master (2pts)
Mortitheurge Willbreaker (2pts)
Mortitheurge Willbreaker (2pts)

This list is pretty much all about just getting in peoples faces... At this point I really want to abuse Morghoul's ability to:
1) Give others the ability to ignore free strikes.
2) Pow 15, undead, tough gators who don't fall down and have grevious wounds seems pretty hot as well.

It is also tweaked to try and work around his horribly low focus of 5. Marketh, the Gladiator, and the Shaman all spread around spells and animi for Morgoul.

The 2 Willbreakers are there to expand Morgouls limited control bubble and let the Archidons charge 12 and still be forced.

Went with a gator man module as it really doesn't need Morgoul to function, anything he gives out is just a bonus really (ignore terrain and free strikes or grievous wounds). They also block tramples/LoS in general.

I also want to look at Zaal and Mordikar, but haven't thought through those lists as much.