How does Khador win?

So, I made a post over at the muse on minis forum about Khador casters to help me kind of quantify what their win conditions are and how they play and OrsusSmash had a FANTASTIC write up.  It pretty much killed the thread by winning it so decisively that it reminded me of that scene in Old School where they are doing the debate.  Anyway, I asked him for permission to reprint his post here in its entirety and he agreed so, enjoy, and feel free to comment.  In honor of his namesake, here’s a sweet pic of the Butcher of Khardov, Orsus Zoktavir and the article begins in earnest right below it.

Thanks again to OrsusSmash for this write up - 

Khador as a faction is slanted towards attrition, typically via inequitable trades. Example: a handful of Battle Lusted Iron Fang Pikemen can kill just about any heavy in the game, and if you can leverage the whole unit they’ll do a number on a colossal. That’s a comparatively small investment, for a large gain on your part. “Trading up” is usually something Khador does well.

The flip side of the coin is demanding your opponent spend resources well above and beyond what they “should” need to in order to remove some of your models. One of the neo-classic examples is Kayazy Assassins: even without Iron Flesh, your opponent is probably going to have to throw more attacks at the unit to kill it than they’d like (with Iron Flesh it skews even harder.) That allows your unit to trade at a rate that other units normally wouldn’t be capable of, or deal with things way outside of their weight class (even buffed infantry typically need 7-8′s to hit, and again it gets much worse with Iron Flesh.)

Typically, “attrition” based Khador warcasters aren’t “tanks” like some of the Trollblood ‘locks are. They achieve attrition through tilting their infantry one way or the other (ultra killy or ultra hard to remove) or sometimes both at the same time (hello Irusk1!) and letting those parts of the army grind your opponent down to a position they can’t maintain.

Enough preamble, lets talk ‘casters!

Sorscha1: Attrition/Assassination. Renaissance girl right now. She herself is relatively easy to kill (usually DEF 18+, but usually zero focus camping,) but she enables her army to either tilt the numbers in your favor via mass Stationary/KD (through her spells and her feat) or sneak an assassination (via her feat and typically long ranged shooting that doesn’t care about DEF 5.)

Vlad1: Aggression/Attrition. Vlad1 is one of the few ‘casters that can run a decent size battlegroup in Khador, thanks to his feat giving you an alpha strike or at least matched threat with most enemy heavies. This allows him to play much more aggressively with the warjacks he brings, which is something most people don’t see in Khador. The shining stars for him are his two big spells: Signs & Portents, and Blood of Kings. The former tilts the math of your entire army, putting you into a really good position offensively, and Blood of Kings gives him an endgame/survival tool that can be hard to deal with after attrition has taken it’s toll. Vlad1 is one of our ‘casters that is more likely to end games himself, but he’s not really assassination; it’s usually a situation where your opponent has to try to Hail Mary you off the table and fails, or it’s a ‘caster duel and Blood of Kings Vlad1 wins.

Butcher1: Attrition. Iron Flesh to tilt your army defensively, Fury and his feat to tilt your army hard offensively. Butcher1 makes a promise: I will kill anything you put in front of me. If your opponent can’t deal with that (either via out threating you, or surviving your offense,) they’re gonna have a bad time. Butcher1 is probably our best “tank” ‘caster, because he hits like a ton of bricks, and can camp/buff himself up to very hard to kill levels. His threat range is really easy to understand and mitigate, but he still needs to be respected.

Irusk1: Attrition. Vying for our “best ‘caster” spot, because he does his job extremely well. Every aspect of Irusk1′s kit is tuned to give you the tools you need to grind your opponent’s army into dust. He makes his infantry into unholy killing machines, turns their survivability on high with his feat and Iron Flesh (though there are counters to both, so don’t get cocky!) and even has our best warjack support spell to slap on a Conquest backing all that up. 

Sorscha2: Attrition. Also vying for “best ‘caster,” she does a lot of what Irusk1 does, but does it differently. She doesn’t hit the peaks of damage that Irusk1 does, but her feat is still a huge damage multiplier (especially considering how hard Khador can hit at base.) She also supports our best infantry unit….the best (Winter Guard Infantry) which allows you to establish infantry dominance in a lot of matches very quickly. Sorscha2 also supports a Conquest well, between her bond’s freezing effect, the extra focus, and Boundless Charge for threat. Also worth noting that Shatterstorm gives her RFP that she can dole out as necessary, which can be very valuable in some match ups.

Vlad2: Assassination/Attrition. One of my favorite ‘casters. Vlad2 is still all about supporting his army, but in this form it’s much more about turning a handful of models into relative stat gods and having them either cripple your opponent’s army, or pick the enemy ‘caster off. High risk, high reward, because his feat is random and sometimes you’ll come up short on a big play, but a lot of fun because you can build your army for both possibilities at 50 points, and have flexibility for when you pop your feat. Doom Reavers are way too much fun with +3 to all stats. 

Karchev: Attrition/Assassination. Karchev is all about making his battlegroup extremely mobile. I played him a lot in Mk. 1 with Iron Curtain abuse, but he’s been harder to use in Mk. 2 so far. He has a strong assassination/attrition play that works precisely once on everyone (Karchev Tows warjacks up 10″, drops them off, they kill your ‘caster or your heavies.) Once your opponents become more familiar with him, you need to be a lot more cagey. Difficult ‘caster to use, since everyone is gunning to take down exactly what he is (low DEF, high ARM heavy) but fun when you get his game to “click.” Don’t use him against Cryx. 

Old Witch: Attrition/Control. One of our precious few “control” ‘casters. Old Witch is looking to control the board using her feat (one of the stronger control feats out there,) Murder of Crows (to block LoS/movement,) and existing terrain (Augury shenanigans or Weald Secret’ing our infantry.) She can tilt defense using the always popular Iron Flesh, and she can be pretty hard to pick off thanks to distance and Prowl (watch out for things that ignore Stealth!) Also threatens infantry with Scrapjack-Avatar of Slaugher sprees, though like Karchev’s Tow move that’s something that most people will walk into once. One thing to note about Old Witch: she’s one of our ‘casters that does zero to the army’s damage output, so you need to build for enemy ARM in mind.

Butcher2: Attrition. Butcher2′s theme list is what he’s best known for. Can you kill all these Doom Reavers before I erase you? If not, I win. If so, I may still win because there’s Conquest and Butcher2 behind all of them. That aside, Butcher2 is a very interesting ‘caster. He still has the stats for a decent endgame run, but it’s not as reliable because he doesn’t have Iron Flesh or steady focus. He does have some very good offensive spells (i.e. he still has Fury, and he picked up Boundless Charge,) he supports a few warjacks well with his Conferred Rage, and his feat can be a huge attrition tool (allows you basically a second turn immediately after the first) or a sneaky assassination tool (cavalry solos have a 26″ non-linear threat under his feat, warjacks have 18″ if you can get Butcher2 to kill something.)

Zerkova: Attrition/Control/Pity. Zerkova is an oddball. Her feat is actually a strong control feat, and she has a few good spells on her card – Icy Grip is an okay debuff, Banishing Ward is situationally nice, Watcher is actually a pretty fun spell (though something your opponent can mitigate,) and she can snipe solos/UA leaders pretty well using Razor Wind – but her overall kit doesn’t come together into anything particularly great. In theory, she’s another “control” ‘caster for Khador, but I’ve never felt particularly in control when using her. Winning with her does help your nerd peen though. 

Epic Irusk: Attrition. Like most epics, he’s a revision of his old style, with a new approach. Irusk2 retains the glory that is Battle Lust, picks up a good shooting buff in Fire For Effect, grabs two movement spells (Energizer and Tactical Supremacy,) and picks up an odd control-ish spell with Artifice of Deviation. His feat is also a huge “tempo” feat, as it hobbles most of your opponent’s chances at offense, while allowing your army to recover and press the attack. Irusk1 tends to be safer and more consistent, but I find Irusk2′s “lead from the front” style more fun to play.

Strakov: Attrition/Assassination. Strakov is another odd duck, but thankfully he turned out better than Zerkova. I’ve played a good bit of Strakov, and he’s at least more active and effective than her. Strakov has “one good trick” similar to Karchev, in that you can catch a lot of people with Feat + Overrun + warjack to the face if they aren’t ready for it. Once they’ve seen it, they’ll take the necessary precautions. Unlike Karchev though, I think Strakov has more depth to fall back on. He has a very interesting spell in Sentry, Occultation to help with shooting match ups (not all of them, but better than nothing,) and Overrun can be used to give warjacks a turn-by-turn effective double speed bonus or movement shenanigans. Strakov’s feat feels more designed for the mid-game, when the first lines have murdered each other and you’re both struggling to get as much of your second line into action as possible, and when I’ve played the army with an eye on crushing on turn 3-4 (instead of fishing for a hard alpha) he’s worked pretty well. 

Harkevich: Attrition. Harkevich is a battlegroup support warcaster, and boasts (currently) the only ARM buff we can put on our warjacks. His feat plus Escort plus Field Marshal allows him to run his battlegroup very aggressively, and use it to get stuck in and start a scenario grind. Under no circumstances should you build for Broadsides, but it also isn’t too hard to build an effective battlegroup that can happen to make use of that spell if you end up in a good situation for it. With Harkevich, start with a battlegroup that’s going to push for melee, and build your army to support it (screening/anti-infantry infantry, some support solos, Mechaniks, etc.) He ends up having a very unique playstyle in Khador, and he’s been very fun to use.

Vlad3: Aggression/Attrition?/Assassination. The NKoTB. Vlad3′s deal is speed, and a different style of infantry buffing than previous versions. Dash is a huge enabler for your army, and it allows you to get to scenario zones/objectives very quickly. From there…I’m still figuring that out. Right now I’ve got a build that is more cavalry heavy, and it actually works decently well: you can use his feat to hit-and-fade, or hit and dig deeper into enemy lines. You also have the ever present threat of Vlad3 lawnmowering down enemy infantry (bonus if they’re living so he can beast out on blood) and/or Side Stepping his way around/through their army to get the ‘caster kill. Very fun, but also high risk/high reward.

Thoughts On… Lord Carver, BMMD esq. III

One of the really great benefits of the journeyman league from Privateer Press is that it forces the basics. I am fairly new to the Mark 2 version of the game but I did play for a while way back in Mark 1 so it isn’t something that I felt compelled to do to learn the game. That being said, I really wanted to chance to slow grow this army and learn how to play it well.

One of the things I learned back in another life as a corporate trainer was how much more one learned when writing about a subject. I thought this would be a fun way to start putting down my in-game observations to share what I have learned and, hopefully, in writing them out learn a bit more. I was also curious how many times I could write “learn” in a sentence.  And obviously, if any readers have anything to share that would be great

Since this is my first analysis it might be a bit rough and disjointed but hopefully later on it will be a bit better.

Lord Carver, The Bringer of Most Massive Destruction (esquire the third) is the warlock in the officially recommended battle box for the Thornfall Alliance.

Carver’s stats are pretty decent but nothing great. His defense is a bit on the low side for a warlock but his armor is a tiny bit higher. He is faster than most of his army and with the reach on his weapon his threat range is shy of his control area which means you should never fail a charge unwillingly even with mobility (more on that later).

His weapons are both pretty impressive, however. His melee weapon, Hand of God (or HoG if you want to have fun with pork flavored puns), has a hefty power+strength of 15 and reach in addition to the standard magic that all casters have. This combined p+s is enough that he can reliably kill pretty much any warriors and most cavalry in the game without breaking a sweat. He’ll hit a def. 14 on an average roll. The downside to his melee attack is that it is only a single attack. This combined with his mediocre fury stat of 6 means that he won’t be able to go on a rampage and decimate units of warriors or even a heavy warjack/beast once you figure in the necessity of boosting to hit. If only he had thresher!

If he is in danger of being swamped it is probably better for him to shoot with his sawed-off scattergun. This gun is a non-magic 6″ spray. The power on it is a decent, but not amazing, 12 which means you should be able to deal with lighter warrior models as long as their def isn’t too high. His rat is just okay. Where the gun gets really good is when you notice it has a rate of fire of 2. That is right, he can do 2 str 12 sprays per turn which can really clear out infantry that are trying to jam him. Additionally, if you need a bit extra stopping power, you can fire both barrels and trade that rate of fire for +4 to the damage result as a *attack.

Next up let’s take a look at his spell list. He has 4 spells on his list and as a warlock can also use the animi of the war beasts in his battle group – I might mention the use of an animus, but they will be discussed in greater detail in my Thoughts On… that model.

Batten Down the Hatches – This spell will take up fully half of his fury and in most cases you will be casting it without batten an eye. See what I did there? Seriously, this spell increases the armor of models in your battlegroup (including Carver himself) at the cost of a loss to defense. Additionally it makes you immune to knockdown so I guess you might say that it gives you a better defense than you would have if you were knocked down. It isn’t an auto-cast however. You need to be particularly aware of units in your opponents army that ignore these bonuses as in most cases they will only ignore the bonus but not the penalty. Also, bear in mind that war beasts have a decent defense and the farrow beasts have a decent armor to begin with. There might be times when the only threat to you is a bunch of infantry that are going to be doing dice -4 or -5 without the buff and only hitting on a 7. In that case, you might be better off taking a couple of minor hits and hopefully getting a couple of misses on you. I haven’t actually run the math on this, by the way. If you are good at it, I would be curious what your results are. Immune to knockdown is absolutely brutal against those models whose feat is a knockdown effect. This also helps out against things like headbutts and throws. If you felt like it you could put up batten down the hatches and then have Brine double handed throw the warhog at something to knock it down. The war hog would still have to forfeit his movement but could then pound on whatever was knocked down. It is pretty risky though because you could go out of Carver’s control area and lose the effect from Batten Down the Hatches. Overall it is a great spell though and one you will use a whole lot. It isn’t an upkeep spell so you need to plan on paying the full cost every turn for it. Conversely, since it isn’t an upkeep it can’t be dispelled.

Mobility – Another great spell. As the name implies this spell greatly improves your mobility. Like Batten Down the Hatches Carver casts this spell on himself and it is not an upkeep. This is huge because that means you can stack the effects giving you both more resilient and faster war beasts which are always a good thing. Mobility increases the speed of battlegroup models as well as giving them pathfinder. Since it is a speed bonus it means that your run doubles the bonus rather than adding it straight at the end. Pathfinder is a beautiful thing as well since having our slow war beasts get stuck in terrain is painful. It also allows you to charge over linear obstacles or through forests meaning you can use them for a defense bonus to help offset the penalty from Batten Down the Hatches or give you the option of not casting it for a turn and trusting on a higher defense to protect you. Also it combines well with Rift in giving you more options in activation order as you don’t have to worry about locking your own models down. It won’t leave you much fury left over but flexibility and options are good.

Quagmire – This is a really interesting upkeep spell. It gives enemy models in base to base contact with the unit/model a defense modifier of -2 while also preventing them from moving other than to change facing. The obvious use is to prevent things from trampling over a unit of brigands or locking models in place for a turn since you can’t usually move after doing your combat action. This can be very useful in scenario play for keeping a model out of a control zone. Also the -2 is what I call a “soft boost”. What I mean by that is that it isn’t quite as good on average as a normal boost but still helps break the curve. This soft boost also makes war beasts a good target. Anything that helps your war hog (or Carver himself in a pinch) get more hits can only be a good thing allowing you to save those forces for extra attacks. If Carver were a fury 7 caster I would advocate casting it on turn 1 and upkeeping it for the rest of the game. As it is, there are so many turns in which you will want to cast Batten Down the Hatches and Mobility you will probably be better off having that emergency transfer for whatever sneaky thing you missed that your opponent is about to do to you.

Rift – This is a decent power 8″ aoe spell. The aoe on it is 4″ which is pretty sweet on its own but it also remains in play through your opponents turn as rough terrain. If they are lacking on pathfinder this can be a huge inconvenience and go a long way to making sure that your hogs are the ones doing the charging. Bonegrinders give you an extra 2″ range helping to offset the short range of the spell. It is fairly expensive, but you can still use that and pathfinder and have that emergency fury I advocate which helps with some of the order of activation issues that could come up.

This brings us to his feat – “Hog Heaven”. This feat gives all farrow models in his control area an dice of damage and Overtake. It is important to remember that it is only farrow models meaning that those other support solos like Gudrun the Wanderer and Saxon Orrick will not benefit from his feat. Also it is only while in his control area so it is possible to overtake out of his control area and lose the overtake on future attacks and the extra dice worth of damage. It is a pretty straight forward feat which I like to use pretty early in order to give myself an advantage on big models by taking out opponent jacks/beasts.

I made a mistake in dismissing him as a boring caster when I first read him over. Lord Carver, BMMD esq III can be played in a straightforward manner as a beat-stick but he also has some tools which enable you to play him a bit more patiently and tricky than it would seem at first glance especially by blocking off movement with rift and quagmire. A great thing to keep in mind is that he is a bandit king and play him appropriately. He is not going to stand up in melee to the likes of the Butcher but he has the shenanigans to ensure that he doesn’t have to.