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I had two great 500 point games last night versus some friendly opponents.

My list looked something like this:

Kaya
Argus
Warpwolf
Shadowhorn
Sentry Stone
Sentry Stone
Shifting Stone
Druids
Min Bone Grinders

The first game was against a Caine gun mage army which I guess was:

Caine
Gun Mages
Gun Mages
Journeyman
ACGM
Hunter
Hunter

I guess I screwed up things to start with...being a bit eager and ran everything forwards, my manakins should have made forests in better positions to protect my forces and as a result they didn't do much of anything. So in the cygnars first turn other than moving up the gun mages and armouring up caine and caine sniping himself the hunters and the ACGM ended up taking out the argus and the hunters moved back out of range of reprisals with their reserve tanks. Doh.

I forgot to make manakins on one of my sentry stones, the other exploded killing a couple of gun mages with lucky to hit rolls (needed 9's I think).
The druids moved around to the side and devoured a whole unit of gun mages in one hit. This left them exposed however. In the middle I gave kaya 13" range on her attack spell and teleported forwards with the stones, threw a boosted shot at the ACGM needing an 8 or something and missing! I then spirit doored behind my shadowhorn for safety.

The cygnar player was quite peeved at the loss of a whole unit of gun mages in a single strike and moved caine over to that side of the board and elected NOT to use his feat, instead he shot 4 of the 6 of the druids down (including the warder) but importantly burning his focus down to 1. The hunters almost took out the shadowhorns spirit spiral and most of the rest of its life but importantly it still had all aspects up and running. The ACGM used a special ability to shoot past the screening shadowhorn and hit kaya with no fury for 5 damage.

I was a numpty and had not put any fury on the beasts this turn so I had to cut another 6 leaving her almost dead. Caine had left himself close enough for the warpwolf to run across and be in range for the feat, as well as the shadowhorn being able to waltz up to the intervening building terrain and then just jump over next to him.

Kay then ported in, got the critical first hit and just burned fury boosting damage on the knocked down caine, feating until he was dead.

The warpwolf may as well been an argus.

Second game was against Menoth with Kreoss.

I've never played him before so it would be new. The most important thing that I noted was his defence 14 armour 15.

His list was jack heavy with:

Kreoss
Avatar
Fires of salvation
Devout
Devout
Choir
Paladin

The game started with him giving me first turn so again I ran everything forwards, but this time in a tighter bunch. The menoth player had held back on his deployment and was a little to one side. So i had placed my sentry stones together behind a central forest piece of terrain. The menoth player was quite reserved on his next turns not moving to engage. I decided to spend some time building up my mannakins and shifting the stones forwards to be able to move one of the sentry stones forwards agressively in the next turn.

By the time we started to engage I had a rather large scrum of a unit of stealthed countermagic druids, 6 mannakins, 4 bone grinders shifting stones with kaya in the middle an argus out the front and my war beasts flanking on either side.

The Protectorate player had all kinds of upkeeps and spells going on in his jacks and advanced them into a solid wall in front of me with the avatar, the gaze locked in the argus, several druids and a couple of bone grinders.

I responded by teleporting the sentry stone forwards and then making a massive amount of exploding terrain in front of his lines. Counter magicking again and running a couple of mannakins into gaps and into forwards positions to block charges (not sure what kreoss and the jacks could do in terms of this). I also doppler bark the avatar so he can't walk up through the forest and smash the sentry stone. Things are close but the casters are pretty spread. The choir sings no spells.

The menoth player manages to blast a manakin out of the way and charges a devout though a gap in my trees (I focused more trees around the avatar as he was the closest and scariest and left a gap in the middle with a mannakin filling the space. The devout does half life to the argus and misses its next attack. He also shuffles his forces around and makes a big cage around kreoss with his other devout, the choir and a big front line of jacks.

I decide to go for the assassination and openly tell my opponent, Its funny because I move the grinders up into range to harness spirit of the argus when it dies...when he realises my plan its funny how hard he works to NOT kill my argus. LOL not taking freestrikes or the devout defensive strike. I charge the argus with my mannakin to destroy it (stole some fury from the avatar to boost attack) but the dvout defensive strikes him :( I'm left with the druids charging him to take him out in melee. haha the unit members need 9's to hit him with 3 of them and the warder able to make charges on him. Funnily I get a hit on the first charge and do half of his remaining damage, miss the second and hit and kill on the 3rd, not even needing the warder with his awesome MAT 6 Anyway kaya goes up to P&S 14. I warp the wolf for speed and run him around the outside up as close as I can go to Kreoss while not engaging the FOS and just in control range for the feat later in the turn. I use the shadowhorns animus on itself walk up to the avatar and BOING! leap straight over him to the side of the choir, he is out of control here because I forgot to warp kaya forwards first...so my idea of throwing the poor choir boy at kreoss couldn't come to fruition. Instead he justs pastes him and makes a gap for kaya to warp in a beat down. Kaya misses her first two attacks, pops her feat and gets the critical on her 3rd attempt. Kreoss is paste with 2 fury to spare.

In both games I only used the warp wolves for the feat, and he would have been just as effective being an argus. The options that the shadowhorn give you in terms of assassination seem to be many. I think that taking a second instead of the wolf would be a great backup option, and also give the points for other juicer options in the list. While I didn't get to use any of the shadowhorns funky stuff I could see his potential for greatness in terms of jumping in, pounding models and then either throwing them away or into other models and out of position, or throwing them back to the rest of your army to eat.

Anyway I was really impressed with them and think that they can only get better as I get more consistent and don't forget to do things in the right order.

Activation order (or tactics of any kind) really confounds me sometimes.

Yeah, when all you use the Warpwolf for is a taxi for Kaya, he may as well be an Argus (plus, an Argus is smaller and can fit through gaps better). However, if you actually need to take down a heavy, or if you can get Kaya close enough to do the reverse-spirit-door assassination (drop in the Warpwolf instead of Kaya herself) you'll be happy the Warpwolf is there.

Plus, it's a lot easier to keep a Warpwolf alive long enough to get him into position. Better armor, more health, reactive warping, and regeneration really can't be argued with.

I'm not trying to pick at your list, but what do they bone grinders really do for you? I know Spirit fang helps out alot since it can drop DEF and SPD by -2, but it still has to damage, and on POW 11 you have to boost most times. If you use it for Stealth, just try and start the druids closer. Kaya is fast and Spirit Door already gives her alot of mobility.

The Shadowhorn has done very well for you. Kaya is one of the few cheap warlocks that can handle several heavy beasts, so I would consider bumping it up to 2 Shadows like you said before. The Warpwolf could be there just in case you needed the extra muscle.

I would drop the Argus, a Sentry Stone, and the Bone Grinders. I would try and find room for another Shadow and another group of Shifting Stones. Having that much ability to teleport can make her nasty and all her beast are just as bad.

Just my $0.02

Bone Grinders actually have a fantastic synergy with Kaya, though I have not used it yet myself.

Basically what they do is give Kaya the STR of one of her beasts for her assassination run. Since Kaya herself has a low STR and a high weapon POW, this dramatically effects her P+S.

What you generally need to do is to kill one of your own beasts just before you want to assassinate. Generally a Gorax is used as it gives the best cost-to-STR ratio (and it's easier to kill than a heavy). The Shadowhorn's low cost might make it the optimal choice now.

Getting a range increase on Spirit Fang is simply a free bonus if it comes into play.

Isn't that pretty much the only way that Kaya will reliably get an assassination run herself
via Spirit Door?

Nah, she's been able to do the unsupported assassination via spirit door since Primal. The Grinders do make it a lot easier and help to improve your odds.

Okay, I over-looked the Harness Spirit rule for them, but they have to be within 3" and then within 3" of Kaya... doesn't that kind cluter everyone before she attempts the assassination....

Not really. It's an out of activation ability, so you can run and daisy chain the unit.

but you still have to have the Bone Grinders within 3" AND Kaya within 3" of them. And that means you have the have the assassination run set-up for the following turn.

Dont get me wrong, Kaya is without a doubt my favorite caster for Circle. The use of the Shadowhorn in this way gives her another weapon to add to her. I'm still new to the game so maybe I'm just having a hard time putting the set-up together.

Here's what you do, all during your own turn:

Activate Bone Grinders and move them such that at least one is within 3" of Kaya.

Activate the Beast-who-will-be-sacrificed and move him within 3" of one Bone Grinder (run and rile if need be).

Activate a Warpwolf or some other thing capable of killing the sac-beast and commence with the killin'. Bone Grinders swipe the STR and pass it on while Kaya reaves fury from the dead beast if needed.

Activate Kaya's designated SD taxi and move it into position.

Activate Kaya, move, SD, beatdown.

The setup requires that you keep Kaya, Bone Grinders, sac-Beast, and killing Beast all within range of each other until you go for it. That shouldn't be too much of a problem. Several models are involved, so it sounds kinda tricky, but as long as you plan ahead it is do-able. You are in control of all of the factors.

Okay, understood. My main concern is the fact that you need to be close, and it involves sac-beast 1, attack-beast 2, SD taxi-beast 3, and Kaya. It pretty much takes out a unit and 3 beast in order to pull this off.

Kaya will have the high P+S to take out everything, but her MAT is only 6, needing a 9, or 10 on most casters/locks, and the lock would still push off damage on other beasts.. I know she comes flying in with 3 Fury and then can leach up to 6 when she pops her feat, but it's still risky knowing that there is a chance the guy would survive, then Kaya is left without support from those 3 beasts that gave her the assassination set-up.

To be honest it's a great idea, but the terrible side-effect of loosing the game if you roll like crap.. lol which I do when I need to roll average, scares me. I'd have to give it a shot one day and see how it plays out.

Yeah the bone grinders are there mainly for pumping up Kaya's P+S to a decent level. The synergy of this with her critical knockdown on her staff means that she is quite good at assassinating combined with her feat for a multitude of higher P+S, autohitting damage.

I've failed a lot with only P+S 11 leaving warcasters and warlocks with a few damage boxes due to a few bad rolls.

Getting the critical is "critical" to her assassination chances. She can still do it...but the chances start to push right out on the bell curve.

To be honest, its not hard at all to set up the spirit door assassination run.

Remember that you can move her into the correct position using shifting stones *before* her activation. Thus the trap can be in place...without having to have her exposed in any way each round. People start killing shifting stones when they figure this out...which is funny. 21 points of win.

Opponents who see it coming had best camp focus or fury for transfers...but if you can see them doing that, you just yo-yo kill/disable something of theirs retaining that pressure.

I see the shadowhorn as giving her better options in the game to both get that attack off...and also a beast that can do the yo-yo better because of it's animus...which isn't the fire and forget primal animus from the gorax.

Oh and don't be concerned about being close. In the game against Kreoss, Kaya started out approximately 22 inches away (possible 8 inches for the shifting stones teleport + 12 inches for the spirit door + 3 inches for the "within 2 inch placement" + 2 inches for reach) from kreoss for the assassination run with a ton of intervening models. To which the response was "you're shi77in me".

oomiestompa used the Shadowhorn to leap closer to Reznik for the Spirit Door and before that
he used his Warpwolf to kill the Argus and eat the Strength with the honeypot dudes.

Lost him the game, though. The jumping heavy is a nice delivery system for Kaya. Forgotall
about that.

(He missed two boosted swings. :( Everything else she did, including rolling low, couldn't do enough
damage to kill Reznik.)