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hey all,

i am a newer protectorate of menoth player, and i ran into something today that just totally wiped the floor with me. i mean, it was horribly brutal. my opponent was playing:

lich lord asphyxious
tartarus
max bane knights unit
max bile thralls unit
2 pistol wraiths
death jack
defiler

i am not 100% on what he had in his army, but that was the basis of it.

here is what i ran:
PKreoss
max zealots and UA
Max errants and UA
piper of odd
wracks
reckoner
max bastions
bastion seneschal


here is my problem.

i cant beat the lich lords freaking feat. as a new player, i know a lot of times things seem broken as all get out, but his feat is particularly nasty. i tried screening kreos and that didn't work, as he couldnt see anything. i tried keeping him behind the long line of infantry, but the spells from the death jack and from the lich lord just completely blew a hole in the line, and his feat charges in and kills me every time.

if the spells dont do it, the bile thralls just clear house, as they are NUTS, and the death knights easily kill PKreoss in like one or two attacks on the charge, which happens on his feat turn. the death jacks is also such a power hours that i feel like if i deal with him, i struggle to deal with the knights, and it seems like i dont have enough units to deal with his infantry, but that i also dont have the punch to deal with his jacks either.

i really found myself in a catch 22 that i could use a lot of help with. it was frustrating enough to just want to walk away from the game.

i thought about running him directly behind the recokner, but then line of sight becomes a problem right?

i just dont know how to beat that feat. what should i do? its like the ultimate assassination run on crack against it.

That is a very hard list to play against.
An idea might be to push hard up front early so you can use your feat in your earlygame and try to hurt him as much as possible. Kreoss doesn´t need LOS and knocks down stealthed models too.

Were you using the errata'd version of his feat? That can make a big difference in your tactics.

i think we were, but honestly, I'm so new we might not have been, but the card was from the war room, so I'm pretty sure we were.

Yep, war room is auto-updated.

In general, there are a few things that you can do to try and tie up parts of his list.

With bile thralls, purge is a ranged attack, so either try and engage them so they can't purge, or when you get try to get close, push one or two reach models ahead of your units to minimize who dies to the purge.

The defiler (and cryx arc nodes in general) should be a top priority, as it then means eGaspy needs to move in to do his own dirty work.

Priority also goes to BLT going down, no more banes and he can't be feat'ed back.

And it's usually hard to do, but if you can engage deathjack with jacks and not have living units nearby it'll cripple a lot of what he can do. I can't tell you how many games I've had DJ go into "zombie" mode and eat some nearby souls in order to heal and then wreck more stuff.

Sorry for no specific advice there, but as mentioned, it's a brutal list.

Well warmachine isn't a balanced game. Sometimes you just get badmatchups. Of course, the cryx this you put down is basically the standard net list for them.

I would advice ignoring this list for now, since you're new and all, and of course if your cryx opponent only likes beating new players, you can always deny giving him games. Sometimes not playing is better than wasting your time getting beaten.

RFP effects do a number on banes if you have any (unfamiliar with Menoth's RFP options).

novaspike wrote:
In general, there are a few things that you can do to try and tie up parts of his list.

With bile thralls, purge is a ranged attack, so either try and engage them so they can't purge, or when you get try to get close, push one or two reach models ahead of your units to minimize who dies to the purge.

The defiler (and cryx arc nodes in general) should be a top priority, as it then means eGaspy needs to move in to do his own dirty work.

Priority also goes to BLT going down, no more banes and he can't be feat'ed back.

And it's usually hard to do, but if you can engage deathjack with jacks and not have living units nearby it'll cripple a lot of what he can do. I can't tell you how many games I've had DJ go into "zombie" mode and eat some nearby souls in order to heal and then wreck more stuff.

Sorry for no specific advice there, but as mentioned, it's a brutal list.

so as a question,

the death jack can cast spells off of the war-casters card. if the death jack is within command range of PKreoss, and i have lamentation up and running, does the death jack have to pay double to case the spell from the casters card, or is the caster the "point of origin" like on an arc node jack? reason i ask is that he kept casting some blast template pow 10 blast attack, that just ate my zealots alive (even with the mini-feat) because its magical. he was casting it from his jack, but since its the war casters spell, i was told by the other guy that he didnt have to pay double. if so, i may have been able to pull out the second game in that set.

i was going to feat the turn after he assassinated me, and then charge his knocked down death jack with my reckoner with some focus on it, to make sure i did some damage, so i might have been able to deal with that, and i had him down to about 2 knights on the table, but it just seems the more i killed, the more he gets back, and no matter what i screened with, he could just make a hole and charge the PKreoss

i know as a new player (played less than 10 games) i am going to loose every game i play.

i understand that. the experienced players have already warned me that this will happen. but when i loose, i like to think that i have learned something, but so far the only thing i have learned against cryx is that they are broken as @#$@, and in order to keep my caster alive, i have to hide him in the back of the table, where i cant use his spells or his feat, basically giving the game to my opponent.

even if he doesn't get his assassination run, the turn he brings everything back, i just loose the attrition war at that point, as he basically gets to field 20 Bane knights for the price of ten. and while they do only last a turn, they do kill everything in sight, leaving me with nothing left after i have fought like hell to get rid of them.

like i said, i played some games with mercs, and had a lot of fun with them vs trollbloods, and legion, and even another cryx player (where i got introduced to satyxis raiders, and lost miserably, because apparently they can't be shot by normal mortals) but at least in that game, i felt like i had a shot at it. these games i played against eGaspy , i just got killed ridiculously, and didnt even put up a challenge.

Deathjack is affected by Lamentation and pays double
Zealots aren't dying because its magical but because its a spell (spells in this game are not "magical" but they are "magic", I hate this rule too)
-- This means that they should survive just fine if you also activate Warding which makes it so that he can't target your Zealots with Spells

Not to mention Errants with UA should have the same

+1 on the lamentation affecting the DJ

You could possibly try taking a devout with some kind of buff or repair? It won't last long but it could just keep you in the game

Personally, as a Cryx player, I would try to swamp, but not kill, the enemy unit and try to work around that. IDK what Menoth has in the way of swamping units or RFP

DJ is casting the spell, so he is effected by anything that interacts with spell casting.

And when you pop the Zealots mini-feat you should almost always pray for Warding. It synergizes so well with their mini-feat. Can only be damaged by spell and feats and also can't be targeted by spells.



Menoth doesn't have much in the way of RFP besides Thyra. And that's not the best option for lists.

eGaspy is pretty nasty. He's the reason all Cryx players whine when they get new releases. "its not eGaspy, it suxs"


That said, you don't have the best pKreoss list. Typical pKreoss list has a Reckoner, Vanquisher, and a Redeemer for Jacks.

Consider picking up Visgoth Rhoven. He can give one of your guys the ability to ignore Stealth. You can try to snipe out the banner or officer. Once they lose Tough or Dead Rise they become a lot less scary. Even a drifting Vanquisher shot can do a decent job. Fire kills stuff.



Consider using speed bumps.

Send in your Zealots under Greater Destiny to jam the banes for a turn. This gives you time to position for a counter charge.

Or, with Errants. Run 4 or so of the Errants way out in front of the unit. Space them so he can't get past them without taking free strikes. He'll only be able to kill them, or maybe not if they passed their Tough checks. And you can counter charge with the rest of the unit. Quick Work can help a lot too.

Eyriss can also be a help. Disruption on Deathjack really neuters him.

Good advise there Grey Templar. Except the last bit about distruption and the Deathjack.

War Room wrote:
Disruption:
A warjack hit with Disruption loses its focus points and cannot be allocated focus or channel spells for one round

He still gains the two focus from the Skulls of Hate and he can still use them. Yes, it stops it from running around with five focus, but it's still a threat.

Based on your army, you are not going to open up LOS from Kreoss. At all.

Lamentation goes up or your Zealots and Errants are up front
to prevent Excarnate from tagging anybody. Bile Purges are
still nasty against this, but Errants can out-shoot Biles, and if
need be, Kreoss can move up (probably the only time you want
to do this) to feat to buy time for your force to position. (this will
help slow down those annoying pistol wraiths until your
magical weapon guys can deal with them, blech.)

With Lamentation up, eGaspy's options are more limited.

Teleporting will cost him 4, so he's less likely to dive in and out
as much. He won't be able to put up as many clouds as he needs,
either, as Caustic Mist will force him to spend 4 Focus to
put up even one cloud.

I have to agree that you don't have the proper support for this force. You
already have two waves of infantry, zealots and Errants .How have
the Bastions been working out for you? Maybe consider swapping
them and the Seneschal out for an arc node, Redeemer or Vanquisher
and Choir?

 Grey Templar wrote:

Consider picking up Visgoth Rhoven. He can give one of your guys the ability to ignore Stealth. You can try to snipe out the banner or officer. Once they lose Tough or Dead Rise they become a lot less scary. Even a drifting Vanquisher shot can do a decent job. Fire kills stuff.

They are bane Knights not Thralls. Knights have ghostly, vengeance and reach and work much better with eGaspy's feat. The only cryx unit with stealth in that list is Tartarus.

He didn't list Thralls but I assumed they were there because of the supposed problems.

Knights are much easier to deal with because they don't have Stealth.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 yastobaal wrote:
Good advise there Grey Templar. Except the last bit about distruption and the Deathjack.

War Room wrote:
Disruption:
A warjack hit with Disruption loses its focus points and cannot be allocated focus or channel spells for one round

He still gains the two focus from the Skulls of Hate and he can still use them. Yes, it stops it from running around with five focus, but it's still a threat.

I know, but its pretty neutered for Cryx.


It will stop him from doing anything really nasty. Without his 5 Focus he's just an expensive melee beatstick.

wow, great feedback guys. i have a friend of mine that is really good, he is coaching me on the finer points of movement and how to use screens, so between the two, we'll see what the next round looks like!

i did re-visit the list, and changed up what i am playing a little bit. i don't have a vanquisher, but i do have a redeemer and reckoner and an avatar. so what about this list:

PKreoss
Reckoner
Redeemer
Avatar of Menoth
Choir (min)
Exemplar Errants (min) + UA
Holy Zealots (min) + UA

taking a little different look at this, thinking what can i do to jam him up and set up a strong second assault, and these models came to mind, and the choir will help against the DJ and spell casting. thats what i can think of. i dont have a huge army yet, so im trying to work in everyones feedback (which is great BTW) including my friend here in town that is mentoring me as i begin the game.

here are the models i have:
unit of zealots and UA
unit of Errants and UA
unit of bastions
choir of menoth
bastion seneschal
errant seneschal
gorman di wolfe
rhupert carvolo the piper of odd
visgoth rhoven
wracks
recokner
redeemer
avatar of menoth
pkreoss
testament of menoth
esevvy

so thats what i have. i do have a covenant of menoth, vassal, and harbinger on the way, they are order with my FLGS, but until they get here this is what i have. do you hvae some thoughts on what i could bring that might help me a little more? i am trying to stick with PKreoss, as right now, i am so new i don't want to hurt myself by switching between casters all the time and not really learning any one of them as in-depth as i should

knowing what are my trouble points, what would you build with these models. sorry there are not a lot of options there. i just started picking stuff up, and had a feind of mine put together a 50pt list that would give me lots of options, but not necessarily the most coherent (which he did want me about)

I would suggest dropping Avatar and buying a Repenter for like $10

Then you have space to bring back Rhupert in a 35

Sc077y wrote:

so thats what i have. i do have a covenant of menoth, vassal, and harbinger on the way, they are order with my FLGS, but until they get here this is what i have. do you hvae some thoughts on what i could bring that might help me a little more? i am trying to stick with PKreoss, as right now, i am so new i don't want to hurt myself by switching between casters all the time and not really learning any one of them as in-depth as i should

A quick note on this: not all casters are good in all situations, so it's entirely possible you may find pKreoss just doesn't have the right tools for some matchups.

Keep that in mind while you explore a single caster at a time. I think that your plan is a pretty good one, as you'll be able to get a good feel for the strengths and weaknesses of a single caster. Just remember that you'll sometimes have more of an uphill battle than you 'should.'