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Had a game against Carver last night. The last encounter I had with pigs I rolled Garryth as the caster and after Carver's failed assassination a unit of sentinels vengenced up to carver and smacked him around, then they teleported out of melee with mirage, Garryth death sentenced Carver and they charged back in. This time around I roll the dice and it comes up as Rahn. He wants to get in some 50pt practice, so I break out the 50 pt list, it’s a killbox scenario:

Rahn
-Chimera
-Phoenix
-Discordia
Battle Mages
Dawnguard Invictors Full + UA
Magister
Mage Hunter Assassin
Mage Hunter Assassin
eEiryss
Narn
Arcanist

Vs.

Carver
-War Hog
-War Hog
-Gun Boar
-Gun Boar
Rorsch
-Brine
Farrow Brigands Full
Farrow Brigands Min
Saxon Orrick
Alten Ashley
Godrun

I get first turn and it gets off to a weird start as eEiryss takes a shot against Alten Ashley with his camo in a forest and even with a -4 damage roll still kills him. The first three turns are pretty much just rock throwing with Discordia protected, Polarity Shielded, Invictors having to CRA to hit dug in pigs and pigs having to CRA to break armor. Godrun drops, but due to bad dice rolling I end up having to do with an MHA and she gets killed by a charge from a Brigand. Saxon Orrick also gets shot by eEiryss, but she only does 2-3 damage this time around meanwhile a battle mage walks up to him to keep him from leaving to attack eEriyss. The Chimera walked out of hiding to get Rahn a chance to Telekinesis Rorsch into a position where I could kill him and do away with Brine in the Process, but even with the boost Rahn fails to hit.

The game really kicks off at around turn four. My opponent moves Carver up to feat, casts Batten Down the Hatches and forms wall around him with a War Hog and two gun boars. He sends three brigands with Quagmire up to the Chimera, and they take out all of its boxes except for column four (for those that don’t know, column four is where both the field generator that teleports it every turn and the arc node are located). Then he sends Brine in on Discordia and easily wrecks her.

At this point, I’m ready to go for the assassination, Carver only has 2 fury and the Chimera is right next to him. I give the Phoenix three focus and the Chimera manages to teleport out of melee range and into a perfect position to where it can see a Gun Boar and after a telekinesis will also be able to see Carver. Rahn feats, TKs the Gun Boar off to the side and turns him around for good measure and finally TKs Carver into the open with his back to my army. I end up having to use Eiryss and two Battle Mages to clear out a lane for the push, but the remaining Battle Mages are easily able to push Carver into a position where I can hit him with him with everything including the kitchen sink and they do a surprising amount of damage even at -10. The Magister blasts Carver for some more damage that he has to transfer and Whip Snaps the Phoenix to a position where it won’t need to charge to get in. I even have Narn throw a crossbow shot at Carver, but even a back strike and -2 DEF for Batten Down the Hatches he still misses. The only model that I can’t get into a position to swing on Carver is the remaining MHA. After a little buff from the Arcanist, The Phoenix goes in, but the positioning on this has to be right, I can’t break Carvers front arc or it’ll lose the back strike and it needs to leave room for some Invictors just in case Carver survives. The First swing from the Phoenix forces Carver to use up his last Fury to transfer. Two more swings connect and force tough checks and Carver passes both. The last swing misses. I can only get 2 Invictors in on Carver, but they’ll have +2 for the flank, +2 for a back strike and Carver’s at -2 DEF for Batten, so they only need 3’s to hit and they’ll have 4D6 for damage. The first Invcitor misses…problem…the second one hits and yet again Carver passes his tough check. I got nothing else, I drug him out of his army kicking and screaming, blasted him with spells and hit him in the back of the head with a full focus, damage buffed, heavy jack and two flanking Invictors and he’s still standing. Guess I’ll just hope the fire from the Phoenix’s sword does it because if it doesn’t Carver will have fury next turn and I’ll have to kill him a lot more times to even force another tough check. Since the MHA isn’t in a position to go for Carver, I send her after Brine and she gets a lot of damage through nearly killing him.

Carver doesn’t put out the fire, but I don’t roll the 6+ required to force another tough check. The pigs get some revenge killing the Phoenix and a fair amount of the front line. Brine frenzies and eats an Invictor who’s slightly closer than the MHA who nearly killed him. After Carver gets liberated from potential free strikes, he flees into the backfield still on fire and cowers behind some Gun Boars doing a little healing in the process.

The game proceeds for a stupid number of turns and from this point on it’s something of a circus. eEiryss ends up killing Saxon Orrick with a follow up shot. Narn charges Rorsch, but dies to Brines retaliation as the dying hog falls on the elf ninja. Rahn ends up spamming a ridiculous number of Force Hammers slamming War Hogs all over the place to keep them from charging while occasionally unleashing a chain blast to finish off the Brigands. eEiryss polishes off one of the War Hog’s last damage boxes with Sniper. Carver stays on fire for about 3-4 turns and every time he tries to heal he takes as much damage as he healed from the fire in the subsequent maintenance phase, so he stayed at one damage box for a while. Eventually he puts it out and starts making headway on the healing. One of the Gun Boars gets one-shotted by the last MHA, while the second Gun Boar walks to within 5” and shoots and kills the MHA. Then the Last Gun Boar after having War Hogs slammed into it two or three times gets charged and killed by eEiryss. The last War Hog finally kills eEiryss and he and Carver meet up with Rahn at the edge of the Killbox.

The War Hog is beat the hell up, but Carver’s been able to heal a fair number of boxes and all I’ve got left is Rahn. I charge Rahn into Carver and boost the hit, but don’t get the crit I’m looking for, it does do a fair bit of damage though. He buys another attack and boosts the hit, this time getting the crit and slamming Carver into the War Hog. Rahn boosts the collateral damage from the slam for a 4D6 damage roll and gets a good bit through. At this I had a brain fart and completely forgot about Beat Back. If I had used Beat Back, Rahn would still be in melee range and auto-hitting, but because I forgot, he’s now out of melee range, so all I’ve got left is a POW 12 spell with boosted damage. Rahn’s dice come up pretty poor though, and he leaves Carver at 4 health and his War Hog at 1 health. Next turn Carver shakes his KD and beats Rahn to death. There are total of 5 damage boxes left on the table at the end.


Final Assessment: Good times. Between Carver running around on fire and at 1 health for several turns and Rahn throwing around War Hogs, everything after about turn four was a three ring circus of stupid. eEiryss was apparently feeling froggy all game and accounted for 2 solos, a few grunts and the last boxes on a heavy and light beast; a good showing for a 3pt solo. It sucked that I forgot about beat back in the last turn, but all things considered Carver probably would’ve just toughed it anyways.

It’s also somewhat appropriate. If anyone ever wants to know what I dislike about Tough, I can just point them to this battle. The limited amount of anti-Tough I had available couldn’t get into position to swing on the key model, interesting because literally every thing that this army could’ve fielded to ignore Tough on a caster was on the table in the form of a whopping 2 solos. Even with every available model in my army swinging on the enemy caster, I couldn’t do anything but hope he failed to roll a 5+. To top it all off, the enemy caster had an ability that kept him from being knocked down (an ability that is far too frequently married to tough) meaning that not only is the model not dead, but you still need to hit it and damage it again to force additional Tough checks. As my army demonstrated during these follow ups, I have more than enough ability to roll like crap and I don’t need the extra help of the enemy caster having a saving throw. All the grand talk of “redundancy” and “strategy” being able to defeat Tough with superior planning is a joke and the punch line is that is your opponent just keeps rolling 5+s you’re screwed. In conclusion, Tough needs to crawl in a hole and die somewhere before MKIII rolls around.

Heh... lovely.
I know a certain group of people that rather enjoy seeing Rahn get flustered .

Cool game, tough is like that...though I wish my tough rolls were half as good...

So let me get this right, you think your Ravyn army with the mhsf killing casters at the bottom of turn one is ok. But tough has to go. You crack me up.

whitekong wrote:So let me get this right, you think your Ravyn army with the mhsf killing casters at the bottom of turn one is ok. But tough has to go. You crack me up.

Casters have assassinations...okay GOOD casters have assassinations. I'm not going to begrudge a caster for having a reliable way to win the game if they can get into position even in the case of eGaspy who has IMHO one of the strongest in the game.

What I do dislike is having a game come down to nothing more than blind luck with no alternative. No amount of grand strategy, preparation or precise maneuvering can mitigate Tough. It's one thing to have a dice based game with luck as a factor, but in a game where you often have to jump through flaming hoops and hang yourself out to dry to get the opportunity to roll against the enemy caster (and often enough fail on your own), Tough makes the game less interesting. If all we're going to do is roll 2-3 dice and see how many come up as 5+s to determine the winner, I can do that easily enough without wasting my time playing out a game and pretending like what I do actually matters.

You could have killed him sooner just by killing his beasts instead of pushing them around.
As long as he had beasts to transfer to, tough didn't matter.

Tough is tough. It will stay as part of the game. You have at least 5 years, and hopefully more, before they even consider removing it.
It is just your opponent getting the roll he needed when he needed it. How is it different from the times you need boxcars to hit or kill?

MHA's also can ignore tough. Make them really fun to take against trolls.

You could have killed him sooner just by killing his beasts instead of pushing them around.
As long as he had beasts to transfer to, tough didn't matter.

Kinda the point, he only had two fury to transfer, it's why I went for the assassination and why he needed 3 tough checks.

Tough is tough. It will stay as part of the game. You have at least 5 years, and hopefully more, before they even consider removing it.
It is just your opponent getting the roll he needed when he needed it. How is it different from the times you need boxcars to hit or kill?

What you need to hit or kill can be changed or altered in your favor. How you run the turn and manage your resources means something. In short the difference is strategy vs. blind luck.

Yeah they do.

Kill the beasts, preserve the MHAs, and THEN go for the kill on Carver.

Warlock assassination shouldn't happen until you deal with the beasts.

You weren't ready to go for the assassination, because your MHAs were out of position. Hence, you failed.

So because after transfers I was ONLY able to force 3 tough checks I was "unprepared"...are you kidding? What exactly do armies that don't bring MHA's do? Don't even bother trying to assassinate Tough casters or should they just concede the game right away to make it simple? And why exactly shouldn't warlock assassinations succeed without killing all of the beasts when you have enough damage to break through transfers? By definition, if you can break through transfers, the beasts are irrelavent to the assassination.

You could try for scenario instead.
Unlikely if you guys end up in the center, but many times I wished I had an open fist on the table to throw the caster out of the box...

Doesn't work, the caster just walks back in. In Killbox the enemy caster has to end their activation outside of the box, so unless you have something to keep them from walking/running back in, getting them out of the box won't help.

As a finer point, I dislike Tough as an ability and just wanted to bring up that everything I dislike about it was conveniently located in one game. If you think it's fine and belongs in WM/H then more power to you, but I don't. I've said my piece on the ability and it's just an opinion.

Mastershake wrote:So because after transfers I was ONLY able to force 3 tough checks I was "unprepared"...are you kidding? What exactly do armies that don't bring MHA's do? Don't even bother trying to assassinate Tough casters or should they just concede the game right away to make it simple? And why exactly shouldn't warlock assassinations succeed without killing all of the beasts when you have enough damage to break through transfers? By definition, if you can break through transfers, the beasts are irrelavent to the assassination.

You had the right tools and were over-aggressive. Yeah, he got lucky with the tough rolls. But you knew he had it and you had stuff to deal with it, but it wasn't in position yet.

Those without the counter do their best to mitigate the problems it can cause.
If you go into a charge knowing he might tough it out, you don't throw everything into it, you keep your defense up.
Its like throwing a haymaker. If the guy doesn't go down, you are in a bad spot.
You left yourself in a bad spot going for the assassination when he had so much stuff left.

On Throwing out of kill-box. So what if he can walk/charge back in.
You position so that when he does, you throw him out again, or you make a wall of stuff that he can't get through.
Its not a "Do x and win" solution.

Carver doesn't have Parry (IIRC) so throw him out and then put something on him so he'd have to eat free strikes. Even if he makes tough he's still outside the box on his turn cause he's knocked down.

Well maybe you should only play against armies who are susceptible to your mhsf shenanigans, that way you can win every game.

Tough is the greatest part of warmachine/hordes.
That one rule is how my friend covinced me to play.
Im a long time warhammer 40k player and was very hard to convince that a game with no armor save roll would be any fun.

My favorite units are Terminius and blighted trolls for cryx.
And every mercenery army I build has at least a minimum size Boomhowler unit+Rupert carvolo.
albit nothing compared to how I play 40k
Terminators with storm shields and feel no pain,
2+armor save, 3+invulnerable backed by a feel no pain save of 4+. I get alot of dirty looks but usealy win our local tournyments to fund my warmachine addiction.

Nothing like being outnumberd 10-1 and still winning!

skrulnik wrote:You had the right tools and were over-aggressive. Yeah, he got lucky with the tough rolls. But you knew he had it and you had stuff to deal with it, but it wasn't in position yet.

Those without the counter do their best to mitigate the problems it can cause.
If you go into a charge knowing he might tough it out, you don't throw everything into it, you keep your defense up.
Its like throwing a haymaker. If the guy doesn't go down, you are in a bad spot.
You left yourself in a bad spot going for the assassination when he had so much stuff left.

*sigh*, when an opportunity arises to force an enemy caster to take 4-5 tough checks even through his transfers, most people consider that a good assassination and going for it in that case is not considered "over-aggressive". Even when some low dice rolls only make it 3 tough checks, it's still considered viable. I'm not sure about you, but when the enemy caster has his back turned and is out of transfers with a health box left, throwing everything up to and including the kitchen sink at him before he can regain fury is pretty traditional regardless of where you play WM/H at.

Players routinely hang their armies out to dry for far less probable attempts at assassination. This wasn't a single Hail Mary to try and get the enemy caster, it was a calculated effort with multiple layers of redundancy. To go with your boxing analogy, this wasn't a single haymaker, I had him on the ropes and beat him unconcious, but he regained conciousness just before the final count and stood back up.

skrulnik wrote:On Throwing out of kill-box. So what if he can walk/charge back in.
You position so that when he does, you throw him out again, or you make a wall of stuff that he can't get through.
Its not a "Do x and win" solution.

Killbox is generally considered the biggest non-scenario in the SR10 rules packet, so it seems odd that I'm getting advice that says I should go for the scenario win. Getting through the entirety of the enemy army and throwing their caster back into their own deployment zone isn't viable by any stretch of the imagination. Also, the poor angry elves aren't blessed with abilities like Shadow Bind and Dark Banishing, so unless the enemy caster wanders dangerously close to the sides and I happen to have a fair number of models there as well...and he doesn't have his own models to clear them out, it's not happening. What makes this advice both amusing and sad is that a two handed throw generally requires a warjack with two focus. If I can get a warjack to the enemy caster with two focus, why am I going for a dodgy scenario win over simply giving the jack three focus and going for the far more plausible assassination win condition?

During the entirety of this game, the only instance he came anywhere near the sides was at the end when Rahn was alone and had his back to the corner of the Killbox and even then trying to block off his access to get back inside of the Killbox would've been stupid because all he does is kill Rahn. The only time I've personally witnessed anyone win by Killbox was when pCaine accidentally walked out of it. Forcing people out of the Killbox doesn't happen unless your name is eDeneghra or Gorten.

Then there are plenty of games where tough doesn't come in as a factor, and no-one remembers those.


Tough is just "one of those things", and my opinion is that it frustrates a lot of folks because they can't plan around it, or have limited opportunity to negate it.

In this game, you can just about negate everything out there: High Def, High Arm, Wounds, etc. But Tough is one of those things that sometimes bites you in the ass. Be thankful that retribution even has stuff that can negate tough, because the majority of forces don't.

Allmost all forces have some way of negating it as fasr as I know. Things that "remove from play ignore tough". Every faction has these kinds of things...

And while I agree it is very annoying when an opponent keeps making tough with a model that has to be removed for an assasination to succeed (be it caster or warrior in the way) I do not think you can cancel the ability out, as it is one of the main things for a certain faction.

I do agree though that it is very easy to get a no knockdown on though models. Pirates, trolls (blighted and normal) and apparently pigs all have pretty easy access to these kinds of things. maybe that is the problem, because once knocked down and easy to hit he should be making lot's of thoughrolls, eventually failing some.

Lets see...stuff that ignores it, but not including Remove from play at the moment.

Ret:
Garryth (melee)

Cryx:
Cryx Stalker (melee)
Blood Witch Hag (Aura)

Cygnar:
-none-

Protect:
-none-

Khador:
-none-

Mercs:
MACBAIN!!!(melee)

Circle:
-none-

Legion:
Scythean(self animi)

Trollbloods:
pMadrak(critical melee)
eMadrak(melee)
?Swamp Troll? (crit consume?)

Skorne:
eMorghoul(spell for a whole squad)

Minions:
?

That's as much as I can collect at the moment.
Edit: re: remove from play, ahhh, that adds much to the list above then.

Devilsquid wrote:Then there are plenty of games where tough doesn't come in as a factor, and no-one remembers those.


Tough is just "one of those things", and my opinion is that it frustrates a lot of folks because they can't plan around it, or have limited opportunity to negate it.

In this game, you can just about negate everything out there: High Def, High Arm, Wounds, etc. But Tough is one of those things that sometimes bites you in the ass. Be thankful that retribution even has stuff that can negate tough, because the majority of forces don't.

I agree with everything you said. You can't plan around it, whether you are the guy with it, or going against it.

All you can do is be aware it can happen and put yourself in a good position if it does.

Played a game last night and only made 2 tough checks with my Bane Thralls. That made me change my turns in a big way.

You don't count though. Cryx is immune to the game.

Personally, I find that if I play against Warmachine that it is going to be a quick game one way or the other. Against Hordes (all I have are WM armies), I have to settle into an attrition game and start killing everything rather than punch a hole and poke the caster for the win. My win rate against Hordes has gone way up because of that (0-fer in Mk1) every time it goes down like that.

It's also fun watching a warlock with tough after all the beasts are dead having to cut themselves for fury.

I gotta agree with the ronin, if you want to play against hordes and win regularly you should be going after the beasts first. Almost all the warlocks power comes from those beasts, so get rid of them and you can usually get a win.

Sanctjud wrote:
Trollbloods:
pMadrak(critical melee)
eMadrak(melee)
?Swamp Troll? (crit consume?)

I saw your edit to this post and just wanted to point out that snacking (which all heavy beasts have in Trollbloods) also triggers 'remove from play' and ignores tough... my understanding of it is, though, that you can't trigger snacking if you can not heal for the d3 (not allowed to heal nothing). Sooo, yeah... just a heads up.

And snaking only works on living models with tough, undead are still the best at everything.

Right right. It's a nasty nasty ability against easy to hit trooper models... *cough* Rhull.

As someone that plays Trollbloods, I can tell ya that tough is nothing that can be counted on. It's more or less sprinkles on my chocolate covered donuts. In fact, strategically, there are plenty of times I can think of that I wish I could just flat out fail tough on purpose, but.... sadly I block my own movement a lot.

Tough is just one thing that warmachine/hordes players need to take into account when trying to do a 1 or 2 shot assassination run that is a 'do or die' scenario. If you don't have a back-up plan, or a means to continue pressing your advantage (the knocked down caster), then it might not be worth the attempt if you're going to put yourself in danger. Pow 22s with double 6s on the dmg dice don't matter for crap if they roll tough... They just can't keep rolling tough every time.

Revarien wrote:just wanted to point out that snacking (which all heavy beasts have in Trollbloods) also triggers 'remove from play' and ignores tough...

Tough occurs on disabled which is before boxed (where snacking triggers)... so why would snacking prevent tough?

Snacking doesn't negate Tough. Some instances of RFP will i.e. Crit Consume or Take Down, but alot of them still require the model fail a Tough check before they RFP them because Tough triggers first and keeps the model from dying and triggering the RFP effect.

Snacking:

Snacking - When this model boxes a living model with a melee attack, this model can heal d3 damage points. If this model heals
the boxed model is removed from play.

When the model is "Disabled" which occurs first, it gets a Tough check, should it pass, the process stops and the resolution process ends, so the model will never be considered "Boxed" as long as it passes Tough.

Sanctjud:
Made in us Cygnar has a couple of things that handle tough. Off the top of my head we have Centurions and the Thunderhead, both of which have sustained attacks. As long as you have the focus to buy another attack you can keep forcing tough rolls.

They'll have a 1/3 chance of making their first roll, 1/9 for the second 1/27 for the third and so on.

Also, unless they can avoid knockdown (like Carver can) even non-sustained attacks attacks will force tough rolls as your subsequent melee attacks auto hit and your ranged attacks will need to roll anything but snake eyes.

Tough is one of those things were you just need some form of contingency plan to force a second roll.

Well, even I could have answered that, but I thought we were looking for ways to get around it completely.

The issue was the opponent was hot on tough rolls, so we are assuming that they make every one, no matter how much focus is on those jacks, it won't do.

At least that was the basis of my suggestion/arguments. Otherwise, yea, beat on it til it fails...but that's just a given.

Let's be honest. If you opponent is hot on the dice you're probably going to lose regardless of special rules or abilities. If the guy across from you can't roll under a five then unless your strategy is inhumanly brilliant it's going to fall apart.

I played a small game against Trollbloods last night and my opponent blew his tough rolls. My strategy worked. Even if he made a few I still had a back up plan to force him to make more next round. But if he just kept making them? Yeah, he would be effectively invincible. But how often does that happen? (Hint: It's 1/3 the first time, 1/9 the second, 1/27 the third and so on).

If your planed way of dealing with Tough relies on certain models that outright negate it you have a problem with your plan. Bypassing it should be Plan B, cool if you can make it work but not the lynch pin in your strategy. Plan A should always be hit the guy and ask him to make his tough roll.

Mastershake just got unlucky'd pretty hard on that game.