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How? Of the two times I've faced them, both times they hurt me badly. I play pNemo and despite arcing Chain Lightnings into them even during their feat turn, they still clog up the whole board, set all my expensive Stormblades on fire thanks to that damn book, and generally own me.

I'm still new, so I often can't even identify where I'm screwing up. But the Zealots seem this unstoppable wall of hurt and death that blocks me from attacking anything important, has too many models to kill, sets everything on fire, and too long of a threat range to preempt.

my best answer is to tarpit them in melee. if they advance under their no spells prayer then pop greater destiny, you have very few options. i would slap a unit in there, something with high def that can dodge swings.

I've never played against them and I don't play Cygnar so I don't know how helpful I can be. Are you using units that can shoot, like the ATGM or long gunner units or even rangers? If so then all you have to do is gun them down. He only has an effective range of 11 inches and he can only make himself immune to your shooting once per game. Also he has to cast greater destiny on his turn so you know when it's happening. The turn he uses greater destiny just pull back to 12" and shoot at something else or ready your ranks for your next turn.
You may be able to get more help if you list the units you're playing and what you have available. Then maybe some of the more experienced players can help you with better advice.

Your Stormblades need something to run interference, too.

Trenchers, Stormguard, Swordknights, etc.

Counting on chain lightning means that you're exposing your arc node to the zealots.

The turn he uses Greater Destiny, if he uses Fervor that means he can't use Spell Ward. So
hit him with the spells, though I think you're going to need the focus for at least two
chain lightnings to deal with the zealots (just expect to hit and kill 2 with each casting,
then become happy should random chance favor you).

If he's running them deep into your lines, keep an eye out for a trample path onto
his warcaster. Nemo can supercharge a 'jack and move it to where it needs to be. It's
not ideal, but it might catch the player off guard. Well, supercharge a 'jack and then
step back with nemo

Cygnar is sorely lacking in cheap tarpit units but we do have a couple of units that can be effective at mowing down infantry. stormguard should be rather good since they electro-leap. likewise storm towers could be rather effective at supplementing those chain lightnings.
The issue with zealots (and temple flameguard to a lesser degree) is the minifeat is typically used to deny you of an effective charge or deny a meaningful counterattack to them running into your face. try to fake them out and be slightly out of range of their aggression.

The guy who plays them generally plays the High Reclaimer, so I have to keep Nemo well back. Already lost once to his feat putting zealots behind my units, who promptly grenaded Nemo to death.

Running a unit into melee with them doesn't help, as he'll just pop his mini-feat, use the Covenant to make their attacks cause fire, and then grenade me. Or just hit me with fire causing maces. Either way, it's a dead unit.

So I either have to bait the feat and feed a unit to them, hoping I can win with that handicap, or hope he can't read distances and then not get lucky with deviations? Or try to skirt the difference between 14" on gunners vs. his 12.5 threat range while giving ground and hoping it's not an objective scenario?

This is starting to feel like the Btech clix game again. I just can't read the flow of the game. My most recent pounding was Kara+Nemo vs H.Reclaimer+Denny league team game where Denny popped her feat in t3, the Zelots melee'd my Stormblades to death, we lost a Charger, a Defender, most of a long gunners unit, and in our turn we accomplished literally nothing. Then time ran out and we conceded. Nemo spent all 3 turns casting 2-3 CLs per turn into the Zealot/Covenant/Bane Thrall/Pistol Wraith blob in the center and yet I was the one left with no infantry at the end of turn 3.

If you can wipe out the unit, High Reclaimer can't feat them back. So there's that, at least.

Team games are something else entirely.

And Denny in a team game is off the charts.

Yeah, team games are generally not a good way to measure if something's broken or not...

Anyhow, what does your list look like? While the Zealots are intended primarily as a tarpit from hell, they generally lack staying power after they use their one trick. Locking them down by feeding them a unit that they'll either have to use GD against or die works well, and Cygnar has a variety of hard counters as well: Any model with Electro Leap will slaughter them quickly by poking the front rank harmlessly and letting the lightning (not an attack!) murder zealots. Likewise, Storm Smiths will do nicely against them, especially if you can Triangulate.

Outranging them and shooting the everliving crap out of them works nicely as well. Consider Long Gunners with snipe. With a 23" threat range, a volley of 2-man CRAs will thin the herd nicely, with the possible option of Dead Eye to sweeten the deal. Similarly, Sentinels and Cyclones can chew through a remarkable amount of bodies very quickly, especially if fielded with Kraye or Sloane.

There's also the possible option of Aiyanna and Holt. Not sure I'm recalling the text on Zealots properly (I don't field them regularly, tbh), but does the minifeat read melee and ranged attacks, or nonmagical attacks? If the latter, they can hand your 'gunners a rather easy "I win" button against them.

Finally, Trenchers often do a number on Zealots, especially with the UA for Cautious Advance so you can advance, shoot, and then become immune to blast damage.

My current 35p list (fielded it in the team league game):
pNemo
Stormclad
Centurion
Stormblades
Lancer
Journeyman
Charger
Stormsmith x 2

Other models owned:
Alexia & Risen
Long Gunners
Trenchers
Sword Knights
Firefly

I have a Squire on order. I haven't fielded the Gunners or Trenchers much, as Nemo lacks Deadeye or Snipe.

I'm a vet minis player of a couple different games, so I'm not new to the general idea, but I haven't been playing WM more than a few weeks/6 games or so.

Zealots have plenty of attack power when the Covenant is on the table, making all their attacks cause fire. If you are immune to blast damage, and the blast template causes fire, do you still get set on fire? The problem is, as I said in previous posts, is that if you run to engage they pop feat, back up, and set you on fire with bombs. Then that unit dies from fire. If you don't and play range games, and you fail at it, they move up, pop feat, and set you on fire with bombs. The Covenant makes them incredibly dangerous to all infantry and moderately so to light jacks due to auto-fire and it only requires a handful of models left to wipe an infantry unit with fire grenades. Plus the return from the Reclaimer's feat.

Triangulate virtually requires a Firefly, no Stormsmith will live long enough to curl the flank and league games don't allow Fireflies.

Well first things first, warmachine isn't really like other mini's games. In my experience the learning curve is much steeper, especially when playing against veteran opponents. 30 games is probably a more reasonable estimate, for being competitive.
Play a bunch more games things start to work themselves out with experience. As far as zealots go heavy jacks are your friend, and a quick kill vs the monolith bearer helps a lot too.

Dais wrote:Cygnar is sorely lacking in cheap tarpit units but we do have a couple of units that can be effective at mowing down infantry. stormguard should be rather good since they electro-leap. likewise storm towers could be rather effective at supplementing those chain lightnings.
The issue with zealots (and temple flameguard to a lesser degree) is the minifeat is typically used to deny you of an effective charge or deny a meaningful counterattack to them running into your face. try to fake them out and be slightly out of range of their aggression.

Sword Knights and Precurser knights are some excellent tarpit units, their only weakness is that they do not have reach. Their big bonus is that either one can demolish jacks either with Flank, or the precurser mini feat. Also, cygnar has great access to good defensive spells such as Arcane shield, that can bring either of those units close to or even over 20ARM.

For the OP: have you tried running siege against them? Siege has some excellent ways to deal with zealots. First off; his 1focus explosivo spell gives a warjack's gun a 3in AOE. The damage dealt by the Aoe is dealt simultaneously (i think) and is magical. Toss that on a charger and/or a defender, and you can easily wipe out several zealots per turn. Also, Siege has his own rng14, POW 12 AOE4!!! nuke from his own gun. If you want to slow down the zealots, siege has Rift which is an AOE4 POW 13 that creates rough terrain. On top of all those, he can foxhole his units, which not only gives them cover, but makes them immune to blast damage. This would prevent them from being lit on fire due to the book, as the book reads "...models that are directly hit..."

Put a squad of sword knights in there and a journeyman to upkeep the shield and zealots will have a very tough time of taking them out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The Grog wrote:My current 35p list (fielded it in the team league game):
pNemo
Stormclad
Centurion
Stormblades
Lancer
Journeyman
Charger
Stormsmith x 2

Other models owned:
Alexia & Risen
Long Gunners
Trenchers
Sword Knights
Firefly

I have a Squire on order. I haven't fielded the Gunners or Trenchers much, as Nemo lacks Deadeye or Snipe.

I'm a vet minis player of a couple different games, so I'm not new to the general idea, but I haven't been playing WM more than a few weeks/6 games or so.

Zealots have plenty of attack power when the Covenant is on the table, making all their attacks cause fire. If you are immune to blast damage, and the blast template causes fire, do you still get set on fire? The problem is, as I said in previous posts, is that if you run to engage they pop feat, back up, and set you on fire with bombs. Then that unit dies from fire. If you don't and play range games, and you fail at it, they move up, pop feat, and set you on fire with bombs. The Covenant makes them incredibly dangerous to all infantry and moderately so to light jacks due to auto-fire and it only requires a handful of models left to wipe an infantry unit with fire grenades. Plus the return from the Reclaimer's feat.

Triangulate virtually requires a Firefly, no Stormsmith will live long enough to curl the flank and league games don't allow Fireflies.

Maybe Malfred could verify this; The Covenant reads: "...models directly hit suffer the fire continuous effect..." Wouldnt this mean that the only models they set on fire is the model they target, assuming they even hit it that is?

Yes, only the model directly hit, not from splash, suffers the fire. Battle College says so.

Surtur wrote:Yes, only the model directly hit, not from splash, suffers the fire. Battle College says so.

That's true. I completely forgot about that part.

It's why people don't use the Covenant with something like Deliverers or the Redeemer.

However, the Zealots CAN light everything on fire if they manage to
critically hit. It's not very likely to happen, but you get really happy when
it does.

Really. I didn't know that. I'll have to read the card next time. We were playing 'models hit', and it meant the zealots would set the whole stormblade unit on fire, and even with Arcane Shield moving me to armor 18, fire kills 58% of the time.

This drastically shortens their threat range, from 12.5 to 11. I'm not that afraid of the bombs, of even critical fire, but the autofire was a problem.

Next problem was that Menoth 'jack with assault + choir + vassal, but that wasn't quite so thorny a problem.

Yup.

So here's two rules to compare.

Efeora's Warjack bond: "When a model is hit by a ranged or melee attack...the model hit suffers the Fire continuous effect."

Covenant's Flames of Wrath: "enemy models directly hit..."

So a warjack bonded with efeora will cause fire with template weapons, but
models with Flames of Wrath on will not cause fire on anything other than a
critical hit (all models) or a regular hit (model targeted only).

On a related note, looks like they changed the Zealots rules from last I played them (read: Field Test). The actual text on Greater Destiny reads "can only be damaged by spells and feats," so ignore a lot of the advice I gave and either shoot the crap out of them before they can pop the feat or feed 'em a unit of Sword Knights with Arcane Shield on 'em.

I recommend Bile thralls. Purge even works when they have used their mini feat as the corrosion effect triggers next turn.

Wouldn't "blessed" weapons also be able to be used? If so then, a Circle army with a pureblood werewolf can enable a whole lot of killing.

I would switch your caster to siege. You can get him for around $12.

My buddy plays with him in 75% of his games and he does very well, hes just a very well rounded caster with great support, great offense, and an excellent and easy to use assassination feat. He really works with so many of cygnar's units (line of precurser knights blocking a line of Longgunners + foxhole = really tough gun line). Imagine trying to deal with DEF17/ARM18 spell immune knights with the best ranged infantry mowing you down all game.

Siege is also a tough sob to deal with with his 17 ARM and high health, hes nearly as tough as butcher. He has extremely powerful weapons as well, and his rocket launcher has the same range as the longgunners, which means you can hide him behind the precursers with the longgunners and drop missiles and rifts on people, while they have to try and kill the precursers and your jacks first.

Coming from a khador standpoint, hes just really hard to deal with, primarily because hes so hard to get to and the second you get your warcaster within 19in of him, hes going to pop feat and pound it with a full boosted AP defender shot from hell.

Oh, did I mention he has a rng CTRL stealth remover? Yeah...he has the answer for just about anything.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Leo_the_Rat wrote:Wouldn't "blessed" weapons also be able to be used? If so then, a Circle army with a pureblood werewolf can enable a whole lot of killing.

"Blessed" ignores spell effects that add to DEF or ARM. Zealots's just ignore all damage, and their monolith bearer's ability is not a spell effect, I dont think.

It would work for all those buffs that menoth has, like defender's ward.

Hammersmith - Arlan - overcharge = trample and finish the beating!

Greater Destiny isn't a spell effect.

Blessed can't help you.

To be clear Greater Destiny prevents damage from all sources except spells and feats. Prayers (Warding) prevents targeting by spells for one round.

So any Feat that does direct damage or any Spell that does not target the unit may affect them.

So pgaspys feat should be able to take out quite a few guys as it has a S5 hit to everything in his CTRL. the rest can be taken out with breaths of corruption targeting your own thralls.

easy answer to your zealot problems is play cryx

^Agreed.
Better yet, run the banes in first before the feat, it'll be effectively Str 7 if the banes have nothing better to do.

Then Breath them in the back ...maybe they will make their tough rolls