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Popped the WM cherry yesterday and it was pretty fun!

Looking at the models up close and they are pretty darn good. Obviously their plastic isn't GW grade just yet, but holy cow are they good! Really characterful and they look like a blast to paint. And the cost for a decent army seems to be comparable to a very basic 40k army, so it seems accessible.

Anyways, enough preamble, WM is fun and I'm in. So now who to play? Well... Let's see. Cryx. I love their models and their big jacks look the best in my opinion. I'd probably buy them just to use in other games! Plus Banes look so sweet, like Grave Guard on steroids. So I'm sold on Cryx. I think all the models are cool, but from what I understand Cryx is viewed as the "powerful" faction because well... Banes.

So while I would love to run Banes I don't think that would be a good choice for a first list, especially since my gaming group is small and we are all just getting into the game. Technically just my one buddy has WM, the Khador Menoth box, so I don't want to jump into the game running on units that are so powerful at such low levels.

I was thinking the Cryx box would work just fine, despite Cryx not having very good jacks. I think this would be just fine for me because I like playing with different things than everyone else. So if everyone is running Banes, I want to run something else. So the Cryx box is option 1. Option 2 requires some input... Should I say screw the box and buy my army piece by piece and build something unique?

This Butcher guy, interwebs describes him as a one trick pony of a wrecking ball. One site called him Dracula, if Dracula was a sledgehammer. So what if a guy ran him, plus maybe 1 jack and a unit of something else and focussed on assassination?

Another route that looked really fun was the pirate theme, though I'm not sure about the unit of pirate chicks, their models don't grab me the same way Bane Knights do, but I understand there are skeleton pirates? That sounds really cool!

I dunno fill me in there Cryx players! What are some options for a good first army that isn't going to drive away other new gamers? Also not sure which caster I like best, they all seem pretty dope...

Cryx Pirates are the Revanent Crew(Okay, but not great compared to the rest of the infantry options) and the Blackbanes Ghost Raiders(not the best, but still very good), the Satyxsis(aka pirate chicks) are very good and probably int he top three Cryx infantry options.

I'd say buy piece by piece, unless you can find the All in One Army box, which is good. Unless you're planning on playing Mortenebra(the only cryx 'Caster that I'd be interested in playing) you'll rarely use a lot of jacks. Hell Divers, your preference of Arc Nodes, Deathjack, Nightmare, Kracken and the occasional Leviathan is what I see most Cryx players use. Check out http://www.discountgamesinc.com/tournaments/tournaments/search/s:Cryx they've got a collection of tournament lists that have won conventions or major tournaments, and can easily give you an idea on which models to buy(MOAR BANEZ) and which to stay away from(Black Ogrun and Revanent Crew).

As for Butcher, it depends on what version you're talking about Butcher1, 2, or 3. They can all do the one jack, lots of infantry, focus on assassination, but Butcher3 is the best out of the lost at doing that, but focusing on pure assassination isn't his best strategy. His strategy is to kill anything that can kill him, and then sit back and win on scenario.

Hmm. Good advice!

Blackbanes may be the way I want to go if I decide for that theme. Though this Butcher fellow sounds interesting. The way character tiers were explained to me was that you used them in a campaign and they gained levels as they accomplished things. Though I imagine you could use them in a one off game anyways.

I guess what I want to do is really concentrate on making a really small force to start with and learn the basics. I think this is why I want to do a unit of each type, not sure of the vernacular here... I want to run at least one jack and a unit and maybe a solo as well, just so I can learn how to uses all the types in one list.

I guess really I have to pick a caster first and go from there hey?

Best way to get started IMO is to get the battlebox and learn the game. Once you get a few games in and feel like you have a grasp on everything then the next step is to choose a caster you want to start with. What you buy and use really depends on the caster. So without choosing a caster you can't really choose an army. Though if there is a certain unit you like you can find out which caster goes well with them and then build around that caster.

As for Cryx, our strength is in excellent casters and infantry. You have a number of infantry to choose from and, frankly, you probably want to run more than just one unit. Now, when you talk about Banes, most people assume you are discussing Bane Thralls. However, there are knights, riders and the Lord as well.

If you don't want to go with any of the various flavors of banes then the Satyxis raiders are really good. Mechanithralls can be excellent when run properly. Bile thralls and blood witches both also can be devastating. All in all you have a lot of options when it comes to infantry.

I also want to address what you said about the jacks being bad. They really aren't. Cryx has some great jacks. It's just that, point for point, our infantry is usually better. They don't require focus, buffs and debuffs can be used by more models making them much better, etc. So when it comes to spending 10 points on a heavy or 10 points on infantry, the infantry usually are more cost effective. Also, if you want a heavy in your list then consider Wrongeye and Snapjaw.

Also not sure if you realized it or not but the Butcher guy is Khador, not Cryx. Still cool if you want to go with him, but it is a different faction.

Welcome to the game!

Whoops! Wrong caster!

The guy I was thinking of was Goreshade. He might win based on the model alone!

Cryx jacks... Well I definitely want to run at least one. I guess the thing with them is that you want to use all your focus on your caster am I right? This makes sense. Still though I think they look sweet as hell. The general impression from them that I'm getting is that they are usable, but not really the style that Cryx favours.

Well... Who works best with what jacks? Or rather what are some fun combos that offer a few different aspects of play?

I would just grab a box set, but those hunched over dudes don't really appeal to me. Maybe that's just a photo vs in your hand kind of thing though.

Every Warmachine army runs at least 1 warjack because every Warcaster has a number of Warjack points added to the point total of your list, which can only be spent on warjacks.

As far as I can tell Mortenebra is the best Warcaster in Cryx for running a large number of jacks.

Doesn't Goreshade have five models?

1. pGoreshade
2. eGoreshade
3. Goreshade 3
4. Convention exclusive "Rolling Bones" Goreshade
5. Alternate pGoreshade (very similar to Rolling Bones Goreshade)

I've always kinda liked Goreshade. Never liked playing against him in like a 15-25 point game ("You get an entire unit of WHAT when you pop your feat?!?!"). His fluff is one of the better story lines in the game, especially when they linked it to the Iosian Elves/Retribution of Scyrah, Legion of Everblight, and the poor Nyss Elves. He is like the one character in the whole Iron Kingdoms that has his own agenda and doesn't care what anyone else thinks. His agenda is to save the Iosian race, but the way he goes about it...! Classic good guy that sees no other way to save his people then to become the bad guy. Very much reminds me of the "You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." Fallen Hero's are always much more interesting then the regular hero to me.

Continuing to comment on his play style- pGoreshade is a pretty good warcaster, but he is over shadowed by Deneghra and Skarre (which was the problem when he first came out in Escalation). As the game has continued to evolve, Cryx has received better and better warcasters such that poor Goreshade gets left behind.

eGoreshade is kinda like more of the same of pGoreshade. I liked Voass, his sword a lot more in MK I, but understand why it was changed for MK II. Winter's Wraith was the bomb, and his spell list was awesome. Ah well. His latest incarnation is, well, different. His feat is a bit of a downer, as you have to sacrifice your own models to make it work. Combine that with the rather bad spell Mockery of Life, and well... you are wrecking your army to make your opponent's army stationary for a turn. /shrug

He definitely favors the Bane Knight/Thrall spam, and you'll want a Skarlok Thrall for his spells- funny enough, all of Goreshades spells in all his incarnations are less then 3 focus except for Mage Blight on pGoreshade. Bane Lord Tartarus is a must with him. After that, you kinda get to build the army the way you like to. A fun thing to do with pGoreshade is the "Deathjack Yoyo": Have the Deathjack charge something, do whatever, and then bring it back to Goreshade with Soul Gate. Keeps the Death Jack out of harms way (for the most part...). I hesitate to say that the Deathjack is a must have with him, but because of his great spell list and the Deathjack self generating focus every turn, you can seriously throw out a lot of spells. Just off the top of my head, a Deathjack and Skarlok Thrall give "5 free virtual focus" every turn on a 7 Focus warcaster. Not too shabby if you ask me.

Interestingly enough, Goreshade is one of the very few Cryz Warcasters that can't use souls for anything. This is ironic in that he is trying to save the souls of the Iosian Elves.

TLDR; Goreshade in all his incarnations is a good warcaster that is overshadowed by the great warcasters in Cryx.

Damn, you maybe just sold me on Goreshade!

Solid fluff (not punny guys) is important to me because that is what drives the hobby aspect of the game. I feel more inclined to paint a bunch of dudes if I can relate to them in some way.

However! This Goreshade does seem to favour the Cryx theme of units and casters so I'm unsure of going this route. I would rather run a list based off of a caster and jack that have good synergy.

Despite my misgivings about the light jacks appearance the box set may be the best route for me. Denny is considered one of the beat casters, so having her run a couple jacks might not be a bad idea. I guess I can always trade the models I don't like later on. I may have been right about the photo vs real life thing though. I thought all the Khador models looked silly in pics but when I actually held one it was pretty damn cool.

Goreshades Fluff is amazing, and it spans basically the entire history of the world.

Long ago Menoth created Man, and the other gods got jealous of how awesome Man was that they wanted to create their own races. A committee of gods got together, and after working together created Iosians(Elves who follow most standard tropes), The gods kept hanging around with the Iosians allowing them to develop faster than Man, as Menoth was off fighting the Devourer Wurm(the thing Circle Orobus kind of worship). The Iosians got it into their head that it would be cool to bring their gods to this world, so they build this massive device, bring the gods over and BOOM, everything goes to gak, and basically all that's left of the Iosian race are a few cities that are dedicated to one of their surviving gods.

Several Centuries later, one of the gods decides to go walk about, and is mysteriously killed. Coincidentally, it's around this same time that a human becomes the first human to be able to use magic and she eventually becomes a god. The Iosians think this is a bit suspicious. But they don't do much about it. Until one day they realized that with the death of that god, their race begins to die off even faster, with some of their children being born without souls. Again, completely coincidentally the more humans who gain the ability to use magic, the faster the Iosians die off, and the more of their children that are born Souless.

Enter this guy GorShylld(sp?) who thinks it's one coincidence to far and decides to do something about it. He goes around doing random stuff, killing humans, trying to find the remaining gods, etc. Until one day he finds a god, and has a revalation. Maybe, Just maybe, if he kills off the gods they'll be reborn in Urcain(the realm of the gods), so he steals a gods sword, tries to kill the god, and shacks up with The Dragon Father, thinking he needs to kill of his gods in order to save his people.

I use Nightmare with pDenny all the time.

Most Cryx casters spend their jack points on arcnodes. But their are ways to run jacks.

Well I can see right away that if you plan it right those arc nodes could be absolutely deadly. The thing is just having enough focus to get them there, throw a debuff, and then hit with something substantial.

Another interesting tactic I think is using Drag to pull stuff in range of a slayer. Pretty fragile though...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another thing I want to do is make a list that always goes second and try to play a reactionary game where I can dictate the action as I see fit.

I know WM is an aggressive game, but perhaps this can be capitalized upon? If your enemy is always looking to be ballsy then there must be plenty of opportunities to use that against them. Am I on the right track here?

I wanna run Cryx like that Gracie fellow from MMA. You know the little dude who can beat anybody with judo.

I wanna play Cryx like a judo master!

One strategy I've found very effective (and infuriating to deal with) for Cryx is to use the threat ranges to push up the board and restrict their opponent's movement, as moving something to far forward would get it dragged off and killed, have a nasty spell arced into it or just get charged into by a swarm of infantry.

The drag thingy.. when a model gets dragged through a models melee range does that model get to take a free strike against the dragged model? Does this only happen when the dragged model stops? Can the dragged model continue to be dragged after a free strike?

Involuntary movement never triggers free strikes.

Hmm, yeah I suppose that would be pretty rage inducing hey?

Oh look I just dragged your jack past 5 Mechathralls! pafpafpafpafpaf!

I suppose if I really wanted to run Cryx jacks Denny would be the best option as she can severely hamper enemies, and thus protect the jacks better.

What about something like this, for 15 points?

Denny
Slayer jack
2x Reaper jacks

Use the Reapers to pull enemies into debuff range and then splat them with the Slayer?

How much would something like this cost to buy anyways?

Going 1 or 2 and how aggressive you should be often depends on the win conditions and your opponent. Not just your army.

That said, I often like to go second and play reactionary. Cryx's speed helps a lot here. I find Raiders work great for jamming allowing the rest of your force a lot of freedom.

Is the cryx all in one army box a good starting place or should I just get individual units? I'm just starting out also

Actually the more I look at the deals and the more I think about how I wanna run Cryx, the starter box gets better and better.

In the box you get Denny, Slayer, 2 Deathrippers and a Defiler. This is a silly set up as this only gives you 14 points! But if you convert the Defiler to either another Deathrippers or a Nightwretch you drop to 13 points, and now you can take a Skarlock Thrall for 2 points.

You can leave the Defiler as is, but then you need a 1 pointer to fill out. The only option in the book is a Necro & Thrall and these guys are not cheap irl, just to run them properly you need at least a dozen Thralls, just in case you get lucky with Create Scrap Thrall! If you're gonna do this then you might as well get the big box.

I was asking about the 35 point army deal that has the Bain thralls and some other stuff

Now I'm no Cryx player, but to me the all in one looks like a good deal with solid competitive models.

Well there really is no arguing that it's a great deal, but it may not be for everyone is all I'm saying.

I was aware that RR was asking about the all-in box. I don't really think that 35 points is a very good starting block though. To me that's like saying let's learn 40k at 2500 points.

For $50 you are basically paying for the warjack, and getting the rest of the starter box for next to nothing. Plus like I mentioned the Cryx starter is easy to bring up to 15 with either proxies or mild conversions. PP would much rather you buy another toy and that is a great option too.

I certainly feel more comfortable learning a new game with a small list and adding to that as my experience grows. Also the whole point of my thread was to explore Cryx without resorting to the tried and tested methods. If I had picked Khador or another faction I'd be steering away from their common builds as well.

I was going to start with lower points by for the savings was going to get the 35 point box set and just use less for now

ChrisRR wrote:
Is the cryx all in one army box a good starting place or should I just get individual units? I'm just starting out also

it is a good army if those are units you are interested in using.

That said. Alot of the box will work for multiple armies.

The all in ones are always worth it. If you want to start smaller you can by excluding some units but value wise always go AiO

That's what I wanted to hear. I like the look of the units in the start box but if they weren't very good units I didn't want to buy the box

The cryx AiO is pretty damn good. Honestly the only unit I haven't seen is bane riders but the cryx player who has them in my area hasn't pinted them yet. Thralls are good as is crabjck.

Bane Riders are good but they're one of those nice to have but not necessary units. I've played against them a couple of times and I wouldn't suggest running them without Darragh Wraith, and with Goreshade3 they're beastly. Though I've never seen them with an eDenny list(though if it means no Body and Soul I would gladly play against them) she can make anything good.

The Cryx Army set is a great deal!

Things you won't ever use in the set: The Leviathan.

Things you will want to add ASAP:
Skarlok Thrall
Bane Lord Tartarus
Nightmare
Deathjack
Seether
Bile Thralls

From there, you have a lot of other choices depending on how you want your army to play.

Bane Riders are very, very good especially with Deneghra and her debuff abilities. Bane Riders charging a unit that has Crippling Grasp and is cursed is insanely powerful, and it's the kind of synergy you have to look for in Warmachine.

The Leviathan is just such an anemic Cryx warjack that you will hate it the first time you play it. It's a focus hog in order to shoot its gun, and its big advantage (amphibious) is not so big when you don't play with a lot of water terrain features on the table. If it was a 6-7 point warjack, it would be used more often. For one point more, you could get a Harrower that gains souls and becomes focus efficient. The Seether is 9 points, generates a free focus every turn, can run/charge for free, and has chain attack: Smash and Grab with a MAT 8. How does that even compare to a Leviathan? It doesn't. The Seether is better even without a ranged attack. The game is all about melee, and ranged attacks are difficult to use, and expensive in terms of resources to make them effective compared to melee.

Get the army box, play it a couple times, figure out what you like about playing Cryx, and then make your purchases accordingly.

Have fun, and good luck!

 Tamwulf wrote:


Things you won't ever use in the set: The Leviathan*.

*Until you discover the magic that is Aiakos

Keep in mind it's not just a leviathan it's a full 3-variant kit. I don't know much about cryx jacks but you could magnetize it.