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Hi folks, I'm looking to go for my first decent sized army after playing a few battlebox games of Warmachine and Hordes. I've been reading through the Cryx handbook and I really fancy going with pGoreshade, maybe switching to eGoreshade at some point. I guess I just like the fluff and the models and given how slowly I paint that's a good starting point for me.

I was hoping to do a heavy Banes army, thralls, knights and riders and light on the warjacks but one thing I noticed is that if I end up going against a couple of Khador heavies I'm seriously lacking in the ability to crack the armour. What are the common ways around this? I notice that Deathjack has good damage output and with his self focus generation he would seem to work fairly well with a warcaster who doesn't seem to like 'jacks too much but I'm fairly new to the game and the synergies so I'd be interested to know what people think.

Banes crack ARM. Pretty hard too. So no worries there.

If you really wanted, Gorman Di Wulfe (merc solo) can throw a -2 ARM rust grenade on a jack first, but bane thralls already have a built in -2, so that would be just mean.

Banes eat heavy armor for breakfast. They are the poster boys for killing armor.

On average a bane thrall would deal a standard khador heavy 7 damage per model when charging. Thats pretty solid for a 5/8 stealth unit. That means 5 bane thralls will just barely kill a standard khador heavy on average rolls. Very good considering they cost about half what a cheap khador heavy costs.

Weapon masters are prone to dice spikes too. The standard deviation is bigger on 4D6 than it is with only 2 or 3. This means they can quite easily do a lot more, or a lot less, than the average would suggest.

If you find yourself routinely facing off against multiple Khador heavies, Gorman should be an auto-include for your list. Gorman is nearly always an include anyway just because he brings a lot of threat for two points.

Thanks folks, that was me missing the whole 4D6 damage as they are weapon masters. Looks like I'm reasonably good to go with working on the army.

Yeah, between 4d6 charge and the -2 ARM from Dark Shroud, they shouldn't have too terribly difficult a time wrecking if not horribly crippling a Khadoran heavy. Toss on a debuff from your warcaster or support model and it's all but guaranteed.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Weapon masters are prone to dice spikes too. The standard deviation is bigger on 4D6 than it is with only 2 or 3. This means they can quite easily do a lot more, or a lot less, than the average would suggest.

Yes but you should never plan a move based on spiking rolls. Better off planning on 3.5 (or 3.0) from each D6 since dice quality is a variable that you can't track. You just have to assume average rolls always.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would rather replace weapon master with an extra 3 weapon power, but then there wouldn't be as much risk so, probably not as fun

Trip (or quad) ones make the game interesting. And also terrible.

Haha, yes. Adds a ton of risk and chaos to the game. It would certainly be boring without the randomization of rolling dice