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Just as the title says I used to be a die-hard Ork player who is finding himself tainted more and more by the spells of Dragon Lord Toruk!

I am in need of basic dos and donts of the army, the weak and the strong.

I have a basic working knowledge of gameplay/mechanics, as I've only played 2 learner games thus far.

I was hoping for an undead pirate themed list, but as I dig further into lists and unit compositions I'm finding it to be a farce.

Any advice or simple welcome is appreciated

An Ork player becoming a Cryx player seems so appropriate, both love spamming infantry

Frankly sir I am disappointed. I came in here expecting a cool model conversion and was all set to sarcastically berate you for using GW models in your Cryx army. For Shame!

That said... A quick and dirty Cryx helper guide would be avoid pirates, avoid Drudges, avoid the Bloat Thrall, take minimal Heavy Warjacks (except Deathjack, he's cool), get some Arc Nodes and you're well on your way to a decent army.

Cryx casters are notoriously good, where even our "bad" casters are still pretty good. pGoreshade and Venethrax are probably our worst. Witch Coven are good but harder to use. All the epic casters are real good.

Lol, sorry to disappoint with a lack of conversions, but I like my undead/reanimated to look the part, and my orks to look thiers. To try that conversion I feel would be an insult to both armies!

That's disappointing for the revenant crew and rengrave I have already purchased :( but my bane thrall and knights are good to go, and I've got the eDeneghra model, was considering Nightmare, but deathjack will be just as good

As you're looking at a pirate themeed list Skarre or Terminus would be a solid starting point with regards to casters. One thing to remember though about Cryx (and with Warmachine in general but more so with Cryx) is that each caster fundamentally impacts on how your force will operate so you'll need ot think accordingly about that. If you have a look through the bits for a caster you like the look and sound of (There's a site called battlecollege where you can get some ideas of what they do, but bear in mind the opinions and such on the site are that of only a handful of people so it's quite likely they might not tie up with wider thinking) we can give you a better idea of what will compliment them.

Some of the things you'll be looking for are stuff like Terminus' favourite minions the Revenant crew if you are set on pirates. They have a nice ability where if your opponent doesn't kill the unit leader, any that died in the last turn just get back up again.

Thanks Ravanar, I might look into terminus, he has quite a but of undead use. Yea I saw that about the revenant crew, which is why I was excited to use them

Nightmare isn't bad either. Cankerworm can be nice. Malice is fun, and gets to sick levels when combined with the Withershadow Combine and Scaverous. That reminds me, get the Withershadow Combine and a Skarlock Thrall. Couple of fun little toolboxes there.

Also, I'm going to make my Bloodgorgers (corrupted trollkin) with a bunch of Ork weapons and bitz and then paint em green skinned. =D

I don't see where the combine and skarlock thrall combine. What utility am I missing there?


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And I have no clue who Malice or Scaverous are, can't find them in the book >.<

Withershadow Combine is their name. Skarlock Thrall is a separate thing. The free spell from the Skarlock and the free Upkeep (plus other fun abilities) from the Combine help your caster get more work done.

Malice and Scaverous are found in the Wrath book. Not everything is in the Forces Of Cryx book. That's just what was out when the book came out, and there have been two more since then, Colossals and Wrath.

Yeah the forces of warmachine books don't work like a codex. It's a consolidation of what came in mark 1 rules rather then the complete compendium. Whenever a new set of releases is done all of the involved factions get everything in one book. Collosals has a cryx, cygnar, khador, menoth, scyrah & merc section so you can also learn about the new toys your enemy have at the same time as yours. "know thy foe" is a little more relavant in this game then others because of the myriad of tricks & counters available.

With further thoughts as to other jacks Seethers are good as they contribute to their own focus and if I remember correctly one of terminus' spells grants beserk if you got that route which is great vs infantry. The cream of cryx jacks though in my opinion is certainly deathjack. The problem there though is you really pay for what you get in cash & points but it's worth it, i'd suggest that as a long term purchase however.

I wouldn't say your pirates are undoable. But they may not be the best units to learn the game with as they take a bit more work to make work.

The nice thing about warmachine compared to 40K is the units and armies are much more balanced. Not perfect, but at the level most people play they are close enough.

So learn the game, get a favorite caster or two and then you can add your pirates back in later. <hint> the two Denny's tend to make anything shine.

If you really want to be Pirate theme'd I think going Mercenary would not be a bad idea

Mordeklem, I've got the eDeneghra , and I might try and go with terminus for sacrificial pawn shinannigans with regnant crew

If you do try the sacrificial pawn trick remember to hide the unit leader behind terminus (You'd be surprised how many people forget that small nugget about line of sight.)

welcome to cryx, ive been playing them for 2 years now, and a pirate theme works really well for cryx, my advice to you is that your definitely going to struggle at the learning part for cryx, warmachine can be very unforgiving so its important to examine your models abilities. strengths, weaknesses, and you should really pick up a caster that suits your play style, one of the many advantages of cryx is that we have AMAZING casters you cant go wrong with any of them, now back to the pirate theme, i would suggest skarre the pirate queen, shes very interesting and she really suits what cryx is all about, now for warjacks, cryx love there arcnodes light warjacks AKA defiler, deathrippers, and nightwretches, you can never go wrong with a pair of those on the battle feild to increase your spell distance. as for heavy warjacks leviathan suits skarre well, and provides ranged fire which is rare for cryx to have ranged attacks like that, now for troops i would recommend bane thralls they are absolutely amazing pretty much plug in and play, generally the backbone in my army, along with there Unit attachment they become a very intimidating presence on the board, that being said, skarre loves her satyxis raiders with the sea witch unit attachment, they really suit the pirate theme, and overall creates some awesome synergy with your army. now on to solos, your best bet would be a skarlock thrall, cryx warcasters are very greedy with focus points, so having a model to relieve some of that pressure opens us up to being a little more generous about giving our warjacks some valuable much needed focus. another solo i would recommend is a pair of warwitch sirens they are like a mini warcaster, they relieve some focus stress with there abilities by supporting warjacks in the beginning and clean up infantry nicely with spray attacks. now also there is a downfall to playing cryx, as balance the game is intended to be, people dont like cryx too much, due to our debuff magic, and our high defense, it makes us rather annoying to play against and since most of our units are squishy it often means that we have to go for a caster assassination in games. we are not really built for long term games its all about hitting fast and hard, in order for me to really still play the game ive had to buy another army to play, i really only now pull out cryx when im entering into a tournament

Rejn wrote:

I was hoping for an undead pirate themed list, but as I dig further into lists and unit compositions I'm finding it to be a farce.

Any advice or simple welcome is appreciated

Welcome.

And pDenegra can run a pretty fierce undead pirate horde!

Thanks Teejk!

Thanks Phantomviper, I've got eDenny, but I'll want to try most of them out before I settle on a couple casters, thanks for all the info

Thanks everyone for the feedback and help!

A question along similar lines - what *could* I convert my Orks into? I hear great things about the rules for this game but don't really dig the aesthetics, so I reckon I could turn some of my surplus boys into something.

>what armies could suitably work for such a conversion?
>would you play against it?

The one that comes to mind are the Trollbloods. But as far as I know they can't make any Warjack-esk Orky Walkers...

 Dakkamite wrote:
A question along similar lines - what *could* I convert my Orks into? I hear great things about the rules for this game but don't really dig the aesthetics, so I reckon I could turn some of my surplus boys into something.

>what armies could suitably work for such a conversion?
>would you play against it?

The one that comes to mind are the Trollbloods. But as far as I know they can't make any Warjack-esk Orky Walkers...

Trolls fit the best thematically. If you want the weirdboys to draw the power of the WAAAAAGGGG from the orky idols of gork and mork as killa kans or deff dreads, that would work. Just make sure to make their appearance as clear as possible to what troll they are representing. Tournaments may be iffy with these guys, but casual play should be okay.