A friend and I ran through Black Tide Scenario 6: Salt the Earth last night, with me running a Makeda2 list, and he running Hurruskh and two tyrants.
The tyrants had quad bolters and shredders, and like always when I play Orgoth, I can’t get any models within twelve inches without the tyrants immediately killing everything. It didn’t help that the buildings in this scenario, which were the only real cover, were being destroyed (mostly by me) and removing cover, but it took them just two rounds to shoot out my Siege Animantarax. They ignore cover, they get 2-4 boosted POW 15 shots every round, with Hurruskh giving them re-rolls, and that shredder is a blessed POW16 with powerful attack.
On one round, I had Makeda on an elevated bridge with Force Aura, Deflection, and Storm Rager, making her DEF21 ARM20. She was unwounded, and a single double-boosted shredder shot hit and would have killed her if she hadn’t transferred it.
In the end, my friend’s Orgoth army tabled me, like always. Makeda2’s army is built to stand up to shooting - it’s their niche. But I haven’t been able to field a thing that can stand up to Tyrants, and my friend isn’t even bringing his third tyrant.
That’s a very wide-open killing field right there. The only LOS-blocking terrain pieces are those houses, and they really don’t block off any parts of the table of consequence.
Forests, fog, inconveniently-placed obstacles and obstructions (that prevent the player with guns from sitting with almost-unobstructed LOS to everything), rough terrain that slows down his advance and bottlenecks his forces, and other terrain would go a long way to evening this out.
I made a very quick check of the scenario, and it looks like each player can place 4 pieces of terrain. That should be enough to give you adequate protection until you can close.
Yup. Our eight terrain pieces above were two lakes, which my opponent put two bridges above, a rubble and hill on his side, a fence (wall) on my side, and the water trough in the center of the ring of houses.
Also worth noting that although a very powerful gun platform, a Tyrant with that loadout costs 17 points, so your opponent has 34 points invested in those two alone (plus probably some more points on Warwitch covens to keep those jacks loaded with Empower). Then those Tyrants have only a single POW12 melee attack, they don’t have the Unstoppable quality, and their ranged weapons don’t have the Pistol quality. Running some chaff infantry (such as Beast Handlers) to engage them should at least make your opponent adjust his activation order.
Army of the Western Reaches also has access to Shield guard warbeasts, which you can use to spread the damage around a little.
And as Michael said, your table could use some more meaningful terrain pieces.
My first experience with Orgoth shooting was similar, and my post on FB where I called out how oppressive their shooting was had multiple responses basically saying the same thing which was that my table didn’t have enough terrain. Even emailed PP with my thoughts on how Orgoth shooting is both super powerful and has a huge range but their response was that they didn’t see any problem with it at the moment.
My only advice from playing against lists like this is to take something both fast enough to close with his jacks and hardy enough to survive. Stay outside of his huge threat ranges on turn 1 even if it means giving up board presence, survive (hopefully) one round of shooting, and engage his force with models like Ferox. Sort of like how to deal with those highly exciting, one-dimensional Kara Sloan lists: survive long enough to engage them and then watch them wither when they actually have to play the game and can’t just sit back and shoot. What sucks about Orgoth is that with those quad bolters, they have a high volume of good quality attacks (especially under Kishtaar’s feat) so it is potentially even worse than the old handful of AP attacks from Cygnar Hunters.
My friends and I tested out the new factions shooting vs. specifically tailored anti-shooting lists and found that shooting > anti-shooting tech every time. Use the anti-shooting tech to mitigate the damage on a single turn, then explode into their lines. If you try to play the game on their terms when they can shoot you over multiple turns, it is an uphill battle.
A Siege Animantarax seems like an odd choice for Makeda. She can’t buff it really, Stay Death doesn’t work, and it can’t take Storm Rager. Usually for anti-shooting she wants a swarm of models in the way.
Our local-ish Skorne player (WTC-caliber) runs her with double Ferox and other bodies. Ferox get up the field fast, you can use Stay Death to keep them alive, and engage. Those Tyrants won’t do much once they’re in melee since their guns suddenly need 10s to hit (12 with Deflection up for non-Shredder), and you still have Stay Death.
Double boosted used to mean boost to hit and damage. With the gun being blessed and a head ignoring cover and concealment the jack is shooting at makedas base stats hitting a def 15 isn’t hard boosted and then the damage roll would have to be a 16. Not impossible but not likely. Maybe it was feat turn getting 5 dice discard 2 to roll a 16?
Okay, this was my assumption as well. I wanted to make sure that it was an “unlikely” roll and that the OP hadn’t come upon a situation where this damage was the norm.
Don’t recall the hit roll, but the dice came up 16 for damage. I recall it was even dice, so it must have been a POW 16 shot which rolled 16 on three dice, with blessed ignoring the storm rager ARM bonus.
Just to point out: the original scenario in question is Horruskh + Tyrants, presumably in this configuration:
Hunter head (ignore concealment and cover)
Right arm - Shredder (POW 16 powerful attack, blessed, magic weapon)
Left arm - Quad Bolt Thrower (d3+1 POW 13 shots)
Re-rolls of attack and damage rolls are available, but Horruskh has to spend focus to activate Fate-Blessed.
Makeda has to be standing within ≈17" of each Tyrant and with unobstructed LOS. The more I think about it, the more I’m at a loss as to why Makeda is that close but her army isn’t already tearing into the Orgoth models.
Also, Makeda really ought to have some fury around for transfers. One hit – unless it’s a truly exceptional hit – should never take out a warlock.
Anyway, beating a dead horse and all that.
As an aside: that “I placed water and my friend placed a bridge” strikes me as kind of a lame play. Bridges technically are not in the rules, and offhand I can’t think of any piece of terrain in the book that completely negates another piece of terrain like that. I personally would not allow that.
It strikes me as “I already know he’s gonna place water, so I’m going to bring these otherwise utterly worthless pieces of terrain to counteract that.” So…I dunno. Bad form? If you placed some rough terrain, would they place a paved road over it and say “Nuh uh!”
Horruskh was at the far back edge of her control area, allowing for rerolls. Makeda was just barely far enough forward to stay death on her swordsmen, on the far back edge of her bridge, for the elevation. There had been LOS blocking houses, but as per scenario, I destroyed those houses.
Makeda did have fury, and did transfer the damage, but by that point of the game I’d joked that I should just let the caster die to have it all over with. And I guess it was a somewhat exceptional hit - 16 on three dice.
As far as terrain, yes I’m getting that terrain was one of my biggest issues. We hadn’t placed a ton of LOS-blocking terrain given all the houses, but given that the houses would be destroyed, I guess we should have. My opponent didn’t place the bridges for any kind of competitive advantage - we play super-casually and he felt bad afterwards.
No worries there. It’s essentially impossible to judge intent when hearing about something through text, so I assumed it was done in a “Ha, gotcha!” way.
Long, long ago, my opponent learned the exact same lesson about houses. We were playing Unbound, and he triumphantly brought down one of the objective structures he was tasked with destroying… Which left his naked caster open to two-thirds of my yet-to-activate army.
The game went poorly for that caster a few moments later.
Yeah, even with the houses, that table is a shooting paradise. Tons of wide, open lines, no LOS blocking terrain in the middle of the table, and no walls/rubble, etc.
You should take a look at Wartable to get some ideas of starting terrain that will help allow for a more balanced match.
