Keeping your trousers up

I recently starting reading a blog from one of the guys on WargamerAU called Will Warcast for Cash. It is a very entertaining read and I encourage anyone to go have a read. In it the author makes an argument for why he does not like the pirates. Put simply, the argument is that there are too many points spent on solos to get the ship going and that invites easy and effective gameplay decisions from your opponent. I connected quite strongly with this flavour of argument since I had been thinking about the issues already. Really, you only need your support to keep your trousers up around your waist not your underarms. A drawstring, a button, a belt and braces are kind of excessive; you only need one.

Getting back to Warmachine and Khador, there comes a point where you have just spent too many points on support pieces. It is a really easy trap to walk into because a lot of the support pieces do some really cool things. For example, every Irusk1 list I build starts with a jack, Sylys, Reinholdt, Joe, Saxon and then I consider other things like Greylords or a Koldun Lord. If I put all these in then I have 13 points of support. It starts to pinch real quick. In list building it will usually mean I cannot get a second heavy or a second mainline unit of infantry. In game it leads to two bad situations. If you take a lot of support and rely on it and then you lose all your support then you don’t have enough stuff to compete. Worse is if your opponent manages to even just compete in a fight and grind out your mainline stuff then you have a caster and a bunch of support and support usually sucks at killing stuff.

The final point that I have been thinking about is that if I put too much support in then it stops my Warcaster doing his or her thing. Khador Warcasters are among the best in the game for supporting their army with spells such as Iron Flesh, Hand of Fate, Fury, Battle Lust, Superiority and so on. Maybe it does not stop them per se but it obscures their impact. I also want to put into this category those luxury items. Things like Winter Guard Rocketeers or even Eiryss or Gorman. I really should note before I go on that some factions (looking at you Trollbloods and Protectorate) have been designed to take a lot more support pieces. Part of it is that their support is just so good – Choir and Vassals would probably make it into every other faction’s lists with ease.

I’ve tweaked my lists that I hope to take to Wintercon to try and limit the amount of support and stuff that does not do a whole lot of work that I am running. Vlad2 has just the Koldun Lord and arguably the Dog and Eiryss2 (full list is now Vlad, Behemoth, Dog, Full Pikemen and UA, Doom Reavers and UA, Widowmakers, Koldun Lord running a Marauder, Yuri and 2x Manhunters and Eiryss2). For Vlad3 I have dropped Rocketeers and the Koldun Lord (full list is now Vlad, Beast, Spriggan, dog, full Winter Guard with UA, Joe, Doom Reavers with UA, Fenris, Saxon, the bears and Eiryss1). In both lists I have toyed with dropping the Doom Reaver UA for Gorman and a Koldun Lord respectively but I think I’ll stick it out because tough is irritating and making 2-3 tough rolls on a Doom Reaver is pretty awesome.

Painting update: I am about half way through my Pikemen so it is looking unlikely that I will be able to paint even one entire list in time. Sad times.