Difference between revisions of "Theme - Scourge of the Broken Coast"
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If you want to try this theme but are still stuck for ideas, try this. It's relatively newbie friendly. | If you want to try this theme but are still stuck for ideas, try this. It's relatively newbie friendly. | ||
− | * [[Asphyxious1] [+28] | + | * [[Asphyxious1]] [+28] |
** [[Deathripper]] [6] | ** [[Deathripper]] [6] | ||
** [[Reaper]] [13] | ** [[Reaper]] [13] |
Revision as of 23:33, 17 February 2019
Theme - Scourge of the Broken Coast Cryx Theme Force |
Borne on a black tide to bring death and suffering to the mainland, the pirates of Cryx instill terror in the hearts of those who live on the Broken Coast. Comprised of swift Satyxis and merciless Black Ogrun, raiding parties join Cryx's warcasters and their battlegroups in executing their bloody assaults.
Theme Rules
Theme Restrictions |
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An army made use the Scourge of the Broken Coast theme force can include only the following Cryx models:
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Full model list |
The models allowed in Scourge of the Broken Coast are: [Show/Hide]
This list was last updated: 2021.02 (Edit) Warcasters
Warjacks
Units
Solos
Mercenaries
(★) Because these models are specifically allowed in this theme, they don't use up your "Up to one Mercenary" slot. |
Theme Bonuses |
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Recent Changes |
No changes since 2017.11 |
Thoughts on this Theme Force
Scourge in a nutshell
Satyxis are the vicious lady pirates of Cryx, with a dollop of blood sacrifice magic thrown in. Satyxis troops are high speed, high accuracy, low power, high defense, and low armor. Altogether, Satyxis are a light skirmishing army, able to close the gap and engage very well, but lack the hitting power or staying power to win a slugfest.
The core of a Scourge army are the Satyxis Raiders (normally 2 units) and the Satyxis Blood Witches (normally 1 unit in ambush). The Satyxis Gunslingers are a quasi-core unit; they have a small unit size, but provide quite a few attacks. In a good matchup they'll pump out attacks and be MVP, in other matchups they'll be stuck using Black Penny to free up your main units, or taking near-hopeless potshots at enemy solos that are too high DEF and/or ARM.
Satyxis have great "board presence", since one of the two main combat units, the Raiders, have SPD 7 and 2" reach; and the other main combat unit, the Witches, have Ambush. This is amplified against warmachine armies, where opposing jacks will hang back to avoid Feedback damage. This can translate to serious power in a scenario game or even an assasination.
Theme Weaknesses
Low Power
The majority of your attacks sit in the P+S 10 to 12 range, which means you'll struggle vs ARM 18+ targets.
You'll want to bring a caster with ARM debuffs and/or Ragman.
You may also want to put some heavy hitters in your battlegroup, as opposed to utility 'jacks. However, Scourge forces normally have small battlegroups, only spending the caster's WJP.
Low Resilience
While the army is resistant to shooting through good defense, stealth, and some immunity to blast, anything that can hit them will shred them.
Watch out for auto-hitting attacks such as Electro-Leap and Eruption of Spines. Also, Satyxis can be bullied by hazard templates such as Covering Fire and Scather.
- Just because you are immune to blast damage do not get lazy about your troop formation if your opponent has access to weapons like these.
Terrain Mitigation
While the Raiders have access to pathfinder whenever they want it, they're the only ones. And even the Raiders will nearly always want Force Barrier up instead.
You'll want to bring a caster with Ghost Walk and/or Saxon.
Creativity Stagnation
There is relatively few units to choose from within the theme, and common wisdom (see list-building section below) is to always take two units of Raiders and one of Witches. That takes up a big chunk of points and leaves little room for creativity.
So, unless you're willing to break the 2 Raider 1 Witch mold, your army design is going to be a little ... boring.
List Building Tips
The core of most lists starts with double Raiders, then one of pretty much everything else:
- 20 points - Max unit of Satyxis Raiders, with CA
- 20 points - Same again
- 17 points - Max unit of Satyxis Blood Witches, with CA
- 4 points - Satyxis Raider Captain
- 2 points - Misery Cage
- Free - Satyxis Blood Priestess
- Free - Severa
- Free - Axiara
- 63 Total
- USD $228 (RRP)
Leaving you 12 points plus your WJP to play with. Variations you can entertain are:
- Cutting out the Misery Cage. It's a great support piece, but it doesn't count towards free points.
- Dropping the Witches down to a minimum unit.
- Adding 1 or 2 units of Gunslingers
- Adding a 2nd Raider Captain.
Other notes:
- Axiara and Severa are the best solos to spend your free cards on.
- Severa is excellent, and should be included even if you don't have any other Gunslingers.
Starting a 25 point list
If you want to try this theme but are still stuck for ideas, try this. It's relatively newbie friendly.
- Asphyxious1 [+28]
- Deathripper [6]
- Reaper [13]
- Slayer [10]
- Axiara Wraithblade [Free]
- Satyxis Raider Captain [4]
- Max unit of Satyxis Raiders plus their CA [20]
Merc Options
Generally the Merc you pick will be to cover some weakness that isn't already covered by your caster.
- Ogrun Bokur because you'll have quite a number of vital solos and Attachments around, so you might want to give them a bodyguard.
- Axiara has some decent combat potential and wants to stay close to the frontlines to apply her Tactician bubble. The Bokur can go in right with her to entertain his client bonus and apply Shield Guard if the enemy tries to hit her with magic attacks while she is incorporeal.
- Orin Midwinter provides protection from enemy spells.
- Ragman as stated above, helps your pirate gals hit harder.
- Saxon Orrik is Pathfinder on a stick.
- Wrong Eye & Snapjaw. They cost so many points that you sacrifice a free card to get them, but stacking Star Crossed on high DEF models works wonderfully. Snapjaw is also a good, hard hitting heavy.
Caster thoughts
- Most of the content in this section was originally posted by Deller on Lormahordes. Deller graciously gave me permission to incorporate it into this article.
The best Scourge Casters are IMO Asphyxious1 (or arguably Deneghra1), Coven, a large gap of empty space, Agathia, and Scaverous in that order.
Asphyxious1
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Asphyxious1 is probably the best Scourge caster. He doesn't fix resilience or terrain mitigation, but he fixes the Girl's damage output in spades with a -5 ARM debuff he can put out every turn, meaning the Girls can threaten just about anything.
He is great at clearing infantry by himself with his Breath of Corruption (BoC) spell and/or using the POW 5 damage from his feat to clear particularly low-ARM troops from the board. This can free up more of the Girls to focus on taking down the more important targets.
Lastly he brings a terrifying spell assassination, especially if he hasn't feated yet, that synergises with all the Feedback damage in the list. You could be playing for attrition, and halfway through your turn realize you've dropped the enemy caster to a third of his health with Feedback damage alone. Instead of continuing for attrition, just run some Girls near their caster and BoC the Girls in the butt to kill the caster.
Thoughts on his Army Build
Raider Captains are your Scything Touch (ST) vectors. They're solos which gives you freedom with order-of-activation, they're fast to get where you want the debuff, they have 2" reach to apply it to multiple targets, and they have auto-knockdown on their attacks. Once the target is knocked down Asphyxious can easily Parasite it (if he hasn't already) and more importantly the Gunslingers can shoot it without needing Black Penny, they can stick to Heart Seeker.
For battlegroup:
- Asphyxious wants two arc nodes. In this case, we're using Nightwretches.
- The Corruptor is a great utility 'jack. With the debuffs in play it can be an effective POW 19 gun, or clear out living infantry with a pie-plate (freeing up the Girls to do other stuff), or even create an arc node if your Nightwretches got toasted.
- I tried Cankerworm & Barathrum, I just didn’t feel like I ever needed them. Barathrum is great and all, but I don’t really need a dedicated heavy hitter when I can get Satyxis Raiders swinging at effective P+S 16, and Cankerworm is kinda the same.
For Mercenaries:
- Saxon - I never found I needed him. Yes it sucks having to pray for Pathfinder and not Force Barrier, but if I’m praying for Pathfinder it’s so I can charge something. If I really need the extra survivability that Force Barrier normally gives Axiara can give the unit Repo 3 so they can make sure they end the turn engaged.
- Eilish - I know some people prefer him over the Blood Priestess, but I prefer the free upkeep, Sucker, and dispel-via-stabbings versus Puppet Master, and dispel-via-action. It’s probably a meta call, if you’re expecting to drop Asphyxious1 Scourge into Casters with brutal offensive upkeeps like Rebuke go Eilish, if you’re planning to drop him into lists with extreme Ranged assassinations go Priestess. Personally the only Rebuke caster I see regularly is Krueger2, and I don’t drop Asphyxious1 into him anyway, and I see a lot of Ranged focused lists in my meta.
- With the intro over, let's talk about which match ups he is going to find tough but playable, vs which ones he wants to dodge entirely; and what you'll want to pair with.
Tough Matchups - How to Deliver the Girls
By 'Deliver' we don't just mean 'run and jam', we mean 'get a significant number of attacks into the enemy'. There’s a few options you have, and it depends on what you’re playing against. The first thing to remember is that BoC isn’t just a POW 12 to everything under the AOE, it also leaves behind a cloud. While it’s not as easy to block off LOS with BoC clouds as it is with Asphyxious2's Caustic Mist clouds, you can block off quite a bit when you factor in the central LOS-blocking terrain feature. Even if it means you have to shoot some of your own Girls in the butt to get the clouds exactly where you want them, it can be worth it if it gets the rest of them to the enemy intact.
The other factor that’s important for delivery is considering what you’re going up against, and how you’re going to kill it. For example when playing against someone like Haley3 the answer to "How does Asphyxious deliver Satyxis" is: you don’t. The Girls are going to be killing very little in that matchup, and dying in droves. But you want them to die in the right place; their job is to run screaming across the table and set the line of engagement on the opponent’s side of the table. They’re there to run, jam, and make themselves difficult to remove while keeping your opponent away from scenario elements. Asphyxious1 does the killing himself with the POW 5 from his Feat, and drifting tons of BoCs all over the Trenchers. Some games, the only attacks your Satyxis Raiders will make all game are Free Strikes vs models that try to run past them to contest scenario.
Versus a more armor-focused brick list (like Primal Terrors, Armored Korps, or Band of Heroes) you don’t really need delivery since those lists are heavily melee focused - they're going to come to you. The armor brick lists don’t typically have great methods of clearing Satyxis Raiders at range, so you tend to either get the alpha strike, or they alpha you with melee which you can mitigate the damage from with proper spacing. Just run 2-3 Girls per Raider unit ahead of everyone else so that if your opponent tries to charge in he can only get a max of 3 Girls. Even if they can charge far enough to reach your second line, most people won’t risk free strikes from the front Satyxis because of the Crit Knockdown. Into Bricks you rely on chain Weapon + Scything Touch + Parasite to bypass as much of the armor as possible.
Versus auto-hitting effects it very much depends on what the effect is, and if there’s a way to play around it. Some of them, like the Conquest’s Creeping Barrage we can just ignore because it’s blast damage. Other effects like the Covering Fire on Suppression Tankers, Manticores, & Trencher Chain Guns (nobody plays the Cyclone) we need to move around. Now in the case of the Trencher Chain Gun & Manticore this isn’t a big deal since the game plan into Ret & Gravediggers is usually “Run the Raiders” and have Asphyxious1 do the work; in those cases Covering Fire is just a mild annoyance. The Suppression Tanker is a little trickier since we do need our raiders to make charge attacks to crack ARM vs Armored Korp.
- Now the first important thing to remember is Covering Fire is a (★ Action) so the Korps will only ever have 2 Covering Fires. Two Wall Templates of death are not going to protect an entire Armored Korp list, especially when every Satyxis Raider & Bloodwitch is potentially lethal. Ambush is also your friend here. It’s very hard to Wall off Ambushing Bloodwitches with Covering Fire.
- The second thing to remember is Covering Fire is an ability that’s tied to the gun, so if the model is engaged it can’t use Covering Fire. Only the Strike Tanker got Duel Attack, the Suppression Tanker didn’t. Forcing the Tanker to Bulldoze Girls away from it & protect itself with Covering Fire means it’s not protecting everything else.
The auto-hitting effects you really need to worry about are the ones like BoC, Electro Leap, or AOE attacks that apply continuous fire or corrosion.
Bad Matchup #1 : Hard spell denial
When it comes to spell denial I’m not talking about things like Doom Reavers, Rasheth, or the Choir of Menoth. Those are examples of 'Soft' spell denial and you can play around them relatively easily by killing off the Choir boys before going after Protectorate jacks, walking within 8” of a Turtle to debuff it then Teleporting to safety, or drifting BoCs into Doom Reavers by targeting non spell immune models.
'Hard' denial is stuff like a Woldwrath that you need to debuff to kill but it's always immune to spells, Kromac1’s anti-spell spell Bestial (try saying that 10 times fast), or Goreshade4 post-CID version fielding high-armored models protected by his ridiculous number of Arcane Vortexes. There’s no way to play around this level of hard spell denial, you simply won't be casting much of anything in these games. The only way Asphyxious1 is going to win is assassination, and if the caster shuts down spell assassination (like Goreshade4 or Kromac1 do), good luck.
The good news is you might never need to worry about this type of hard spell denial, because stuff like Kromac1 & Woldwrath aren’t very popular. On the other hand, Goreshade4 is likely going to see a major surge in popularity once the CID changes hit.
Bad Matchup #2 : Auto-hitting attacks plus tough targets
The other kinds of list you need to dodge with Asphyxious1 Scourge are ones where you need the Raiders to survive and do work, but your opponent can kill swathes of low armored infantry easily. Examples are Krueger2 Bones or Nemo3 with double Storm Striders. If you did play into that match up, Asphyxious1’s path to victory is Assassination-Or-Bust, because he’s not going to kill Striders or Wolds himself.
Whether you can drop Asphyxious1 Scourge into lists that have these elements is heavily dependent on who needs to do the work, Asphyxious1 or the Girls, and how much auto-hitting does the opponent actually have. For example a list like Rasheth double Turtle has BoC, but it’s not that big of a deal since he can only ever throw out two BoCs a turn. With proper spacing you can avoid taking too many casualties, and the Girls kill Turtles easily when they’re -5 ARM. Into a matchup like the Asphyxious1 mirror it’s also not a big deal. Even though the enemy Asphyxious1 can put out 4 BoCs on his feat turn he’s likely playing in Ghost Fleet or Scourge himself meaning you can get just as much work done with your Asphyxious1, and it doesn’t really matter that your Girls are dropping like flies.
Krueger2 can put out two Lightning Storms a turn (which are just as effective as BoC at killing Satyxis since it’s not blast damage), and leave behind no-go zones that basically auto-kill any Girls that enter. Additionally Krueger will probably have at least two sources of Geomancy for an additional two Lightning Storms a turn, so he can kill a lot of Girls, and deny a lot of board space. Bones is also a matchup where you need the Girls to do the work, since Asphyxious1 can’t spell an army of Wolds to death by himself.
List Pairing
With the bad matchups given above, I would avoid pairing Asphyxious1 Scourge with Ghost Fleet, Infernal Machines, or a second Scourge list. Any list that can chew through Asphyxious1’s Satyxis can probably chew through Revenants, Thralls, or Satyxis under another caster with equal ease. Secondly it’s best not to pair Asphyxious1 with another spellslinging caster like a Deneghra or Scaverous, because you leave yourself open to the same hard spell denial weakness.
As a result I would look towards pairing it with Slaughter Fleet, Black Industries, or Dark Host since the models in those themes have a combination of higher armor & more boxes so they won’t completely fold to the same mass anti-infantry that Satyxis fold to. Casters that are primarily buff-focused and play well in those themes include Skarre1, Skarre3, Asphyxious3, Venethrax, Terminus, Goreshade1, Goreshade3, Mortenebra2, or Aiakos2.
If there was a perfect list-pairing for Asphyxious1 Scourge, which I’m not 100% sold there is, it would probably be Asphyxious3 with 9 Slayers. I’m just not 100% sure because I don’t play the 9 Slayer list (as I find it boring as dirt to play).
Deneghra1
There is an argument to be made that Deneghra debuffs ARM better than Asphyxious1. Although she can't get to -5ARM except on her feat turn, she can affect more of the board on a turn-by-turn basis.
However where she differs, and why Deller considers her the worse choice for Scourge, is her personal output - especially into high-DEF skews. Whereas Asphyxious1 can just drift BoCs or use his feat to annihilate high-DEF low-ARM troops, Deneghra is stuck either trying to hit with Venoms, or trying to hit with Crippling Grasp so that the Girls have a better chance when they try to hit. That's a lot of "trying to hit" (which is exactly how your high-DEF opponent wants you to play).
That said, Deneghra1 is a strong Scourge caster and will play well into a lot of opponents, but what she does for Scourge is too similar to Asphyxious1 and she doesn't outperform him (in Deller's opinion). She will certainly outperform Scaverous or Agathia in Scourge (see below) most of the time, but those two at least offer some interesting tech that Asphyxious1 or the Coven can’t, so they get to be in the Top 4 and Denny doesn't.
Coven
They don't crank up the damage nearly as well as Asphyxious1, but Coven crank up the survivability with Occultation, Veil of Mists, & the Feat. They also offer unparalleled mobility with Veil, Ghost Walk, and Curse of Shadows.
Satyxis are very easy to murder, and accurate shooting is everywhere these days. The Coven's feat makes it extremely difficult to remove Satyxis on the approach and this, combined with their speed, means they’ll likely be able to make it to melee completely untouched.
Side note: Hilarious theme interaction, the Egregore is a solo so it gains dodge from the Theme Force, making it more obnoxious to deal with than it usually is.
Agathia
So as a caster she’s basically just a hybrid of Deneghra1 & Coven that isn’t better than either of them. Her delivery isn’t as great as the Coven’s, her mobility is worse than the Coven’s, and her ARM swing is worse than Asphyxious1’s.
The reason I list her though, and not Deneghra1, is because I think Deneghra1 is just a worse version of Asphyxious1 whereas Agathia has one trick that’s available to her because she is a Bane - she triggers the Accumulator of the Desecrator, allowing it to make a fully boosted shot with no focus investment.
The Desecrator’s Void Field brings an interesting element of board denial to an already extremely fast and strong scenario list. It also interacts hilariously with Severa since anything pulled into a Void Field AOE by Severa's Vortex Blast will take an auto point of damage. Take the fully boosted shot at an enemy heavy or objective then Vortex Blast it with Severa to auto kill any single wound models within 2”.
Scaverous
Scaverous’s niche in Scourge is asking the question “What happens when I stack Wrong-Eye’s Star-Crossed, Axiara’s Dodge plan, and Scav's Knowledge of the Damned rerolls on a unit of Satyxis Raiders and jam my opponent with them?”
If your opponent can’t deal with them you just win, if they can you’re on a worse version of the Asphyxious1 assassination plan.
Other Casters
A lot of other casters can run Scourge just fine, but I don’t think they do anything different enough from the top 4, or do better into problem matchups, to justify bringing them over the top 4.
But what about Skarre?
While Skarre is a Satyxis caster and she works okay in Scourge, the casters listed above are considered stronger Scourge casters. Skarre herself is normally seen in different themes, that said in Scourge she can:
Skarre1
- She can stack Backlash on top of Feedback. Sure it's only useful against warmachine armies, but it's a well known combo for a reason.
- Dark Guidance will make those crit knockdowns come up more often.
- However, Skarre1 really misses having a Skarlock Thrall to cast Dark Ritual for her, and cheap fodder troops to use for the Ritual itself.
Skarre2
- She also has Backlash
- Black Spot combined with either the Blood Witches' Side Step or the Raider's Overtake will make those Satyxis pseudo-Gerlaks. It can also potentially let the Gunslingers pump out 12 shots per unit per turn.
Skarre3
- Do you like SPD 7 Raiders? Try having SPD 8!
- She has a melee damage buff, can reinforce units, and makes everyone slightly more resilient with Deceleration (although +2 ARM on such low-ARM troops is unlikely to make a difference).
- She also supports a ranged battlegroup, opening up your strategy a bit.
Other
Trivia
Released in the themeopaclyse (2017.09), updated almost immediately in the Black Fleet CID (2017.11)
Rules Clarifications
Rules Clarification: Theme Forces (Edit) Themes that change a model's Faction [Show/Hide]
Rerolling the starting roll [Show/Hide]
Warjacks/Warbeasts with bonds [Show/Hide]
Including Mercenaries [Show/Hide]
Number of Mercenaries
Mercenaries and Ranking Officers
Other
Including Partisan Mercenaries [Show/Hide]
Partisans & Theme Forces (Edit)
Requisition Points [Show/Hide]
Free models and Specialists (ADR) [Show/Hide]
Unit Attachments [Show/Hide]
When to apply theme benefits [Show/Hide]
See also these Theme-Specific Rulings [Show/Hide]
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Rules Clarification : Dodge (Edit)
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Rules Clarification : Ambush (Edit)
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Models in this Theme Force
Refer to Category: Scourge of the Broken Coast