Ever since the shift to Mk3, it seems there’s a lot of people having difficulty finding their groove with Cryx. I seem to have hit a sweet spot where I’m a) enjoying playing Cryx, and b) doing reasonably well with them, so this evening I figured I’d try and offer some insight.
Except he didn’t actually say those exact words, he said something along those lines. Anyhow, the sentiment is relevant all the same. I remember how helpful the Legion community was when I was playing Legion, and I lament that the Cryx community isn’t as constructive. So, time to start doing my bit to try and put something into the community for a change.
Except. I can’t. I can’t articulate how I manage to win more games with Cryx than I lose. So, let’s break it down. This will likely be the first in a short series of articles as I try to break down, for my own benefit too, how I manage to win more games than I lose with what is widely regarded as one of the worst factions in Mk3 (just joking… or am I?!).
Let’s start at the start. This piece will focus on list building. I’ve always been a firm believer that your ability to win or lose the game starts at the list-building stage. Let’s nip something in the bud to start with, please do away with the “this is my anti-infantry list, and this is my anti-armour list” logic, it’s a surefire way to lose list-chicken against a lot of pairings, and that’s a pretty bad place to be IMO. Sure, you might “auto-win” some matchups at the pairing stage, but you’ll “auto-lose” as many. Lists can be slanted towards countering something harder, but the whole list absolutely should not be tooled to destroying one skew at the expense of another. This piece will be mostly focused on list building from the perspective of a Cryx player, but the principles (if not the example) can probably be applied to most factions. Worst case, other factions players can have a read and a giggle at how narrow the options are in Cryx 😉
This probably runs counter-intuitive to the way some people build lists, but I don’t see them writing articles, so we’re doing this one my way!
We’re going to run through the thought process I run through when I’m building any single given list (i.e. not even thinking about a pair yet). There’ll be running themes throughout I’m sure. I’ll warn you now, this is a long one, so buckle up!
Armour Stacking / Box Spam
I’ve grouped these together, but they’re slightly different problems.
Box spam could be something like a swarm of light ‘jacks (e.g. Vyros Griffon spam, or Amon Dervish spam) where the quantity of relatively cheap models and the boxes they bring makes it harder to chew through in the numbers they bring.
Box spam requires quantity of attacks, at a sufficient P&S relevant to the targets in question. It’s absolutely no good having a heavy with 5 MAT 12 P&S 21 attacks on maybe 2 Lights if you die to a 3rd Light with +3 Synergy and Concentrated Power/Battle. Quantity of attacks crushes boxes better than quality attacks ever well. Satyxis Raiders and Blood Witches both excel at this. Raiders bring Chain Weapons which is relevant vs Shields / Shield Wall, and Witches bring Blessed (with the Hag) which is relevant vs Armour stacking. Revenant Crew should also get good work done here, between Gang/Veteran Leader getting their MAT up to reasonable levels, and Gang / Point Blank shots giving them a good quantity of attacks.
Armour stacking isn’t as prevalent in Mk3, but it’s still there in places. There’s two kinds, that you need to apply different solutions too. High ARM plus boxes, something like an Inviolable Resolve Mountain King under the Krielstone aura, and single-wound armour stacking, e.g. Dawnguard Sentinels with Iron Zeal under Helynna’s Feat.
The latter is an easier problem to deal with, Continuous Corrosion from Sirens / Venom / Bloats isn’t hugely reliable, but it’s a start on thinning their numbers out.
The former is a slightly harder problem, you either need to be able to power through the armour, slow it down, or be able to kill said target over multiple turns. Powering through the armour is why pretty much every list I field can manage at least a -4 ARM swing (being a -2 from the ‘caster, and Dark Shroud somewhere), preferably higher (such as Parasite plus Dark Shroud, or Curse of Shadows plus Dark Shroud plus Rust, for example). Slowing it down is where Control Feats like Denny come in, or cloud walls from Lich1 / Lich2 work to limit the target(s) ability to contribute meaningfully the following turn. Killing said target(s) over multiple turns is, again, where Control Feats like Denny come in, as well as things like the Hag’s Entropic aura, or Grievous Wounds on Stalkers / Desecrators (not relevant to Colossals / Gargantuans anymore).
Special mention here to Colossals / Gargantuans, lists that are a single huge base, it’s not the end of the world if you can’t kill it in most cases. It’s still only a single model that can contest, kill everything else and give it the runaround on scenario.
In summary, ensure your lists have a high quantity of meaningful attacks (McThralls don’t count, unless you can a) buff their ability to hit, b) buff their output, and c) deliver them), as well as sufficient armour debuffs (at least -4 ARM available, preferably more).
High Defence
Next problem to consider, consistently hitting high DEF models. This can be broken down into high DEF infantry, and high DEF “other things”.
High DEF infantry requires a reasonable volume of attacks, partly because you’re killing infantry which are generally numerous, but also because it allows you to play the odds (e.g. if your Raiders are making 22 attacks vs 10 infantry needing 6’s to hit, you can pretty reliably kill the whole unit). Other solutions include reasonably accurate ranged attacks (Gunslingers, Nyss, Overlords too even if they’re not technically ranged attacks) with a hit-buff in there somewhere (Marked for Death, Icy Grip, Mortality etc). Soulhunters, if you can deliver them (Occultation, clouds etc) are also stellar at mulching living infantry, the boosted attack on the charge increases their likelihood of snagging a soul, which lets you boost their second initial. AoE’s are also an option if that’s your jam, this is pretty much limited to Bloat Thralls, I’m not a fan as it’s not particularly reliable planning for scatters.
Honorable mention to Ghostly / Incorporeal models. Even with the reversal on the melee range ruling, you can still engineer charges into back arcs to artificially inflate MAT stats.
DEF 14 is the magic number for me in terms of hitting high DEF infantry, for which you should be looking to hit on 6’s at the worst case, preferably less if you’re relying on ranged attacks from Nyss / Gunslingers etc. There isn’t much higher than DEF 14 in sufficient quantities for it to be worth planning for.
As for high DEF “other stuff”, this is either ‘casters, or Warpwolves / Angelius type Legion ‘beasts. I don’t generally build a plan for hitting DEF 16/17 ‘casters into my lists, as I don’t go for long-odds assassinations, preferring to play the attrition game (once you’ve crushed their army, you can just give their ‘caster the runaround while you win on scenario), which leaves us planning to kill Warpwolves / Angelius.
There’s two ways to do it, high accuracy quality attacks, or volume of reasonable quantity attacks, with one or more hit or damage buff. The former would be something like Nightmare attacking a Prey’ed Warpwolf, hitting on 4’s with Prey and hitting at dice +X for damage, he’s likely to kill the Warpwolf. The latter would be something like a handful of MAT 8 models charging an Angelius that’s been Crippling Grasped, or maybe just Parasited, again playing the odds on rolling multiple attacks / damage rolls to reliably put that high DEF “other thing” into the dirt. Again, Raiders, Witches and Revenants excel here with Gang. Honorable mention again to Ghostly / Incorporeal models, getting them up to an effective MAT 8 is often worth the risk of a swing or two (if a Bane Warrior connects, it’s going to hurt).
In summary, ensure you can reliably (6’s or better) hit at least DEF 14 models consistently, in sufficient quantity to mulch high DEF infantry, and at sufficient damage to kill high DEF “other things”.
Quantity & Quality of Attacks
Having briefly touched on this above, you need both in any given list.
High quantity of attacks gives you the tools for dealing with high numbers of enemy models, as well as the ability to play the odds vs high ARM / high DEF models / high number of boxes (in simple terms, the more dice you roll, the more chance of hitting spikes). Simple stuff.
High quality attacks requires a little more elaboration. In many match-ups there are single important models, often fragile, that if you can kill shifts the gamestate heavily in your favour for at least a turn or longer. This is generally where you want high quality attacks, i.e. attacks that can reliably do the job you need them too when you need to get it done. This could be a piece like a Forsaken, to ensure your camping ‘caster doesn’t get blown up while Dominating the zone, or the Krielstone to let you power through armour stacking Trollblood ‘beasts. High quality attacks could be something like an extra arc node with your spell slinging ‘caster to throw out a Hellfire into the Krielstone, or a Stygian Abyss to take out that pesky Gunmage Captain Adept. I tend towards Stalkers for this task, they can’t reach out as far as a running arc node + spell will, but they take less resources from your ‘caster and can fill other roles in many match-ups. It may be an expensive “trade” but the swing is often worth more than the points in question would suggest.
Other high quality attacks tend to come from expensive heavy ‘jacks, or a Kraken / Sepulcher. If your list is reliant on, say, Nightmare or a Kraken doing most of the heavy lifting, you absolutely need to buff their ability to do so, whether it be ensuring their delivery (Infernal Machine / Mobility SPD buffs), or the damage they do when they get there (Mortality, Death Field from Ragman), these quality attacks can’t afford to a) be missing, or b) bounce off armour or not kill it in a turn.
Special mention to Death Field on the Kraken if you’re planning to kill multiple heavies in a turn, Death Field benefits the Kill Shot when you pump a shot into the second heavy after killing the first, another P&S 16-19 attack. Worth.
In summary, ensure high quantity of attacks so you don’t get swarmed by mass infantry, and ensure availability of high quality attacks so that the attacks that absolutely need to connect and kill, do.
Delivery / Threat Range
Delivery is where a lot of ‘lists can often fall down. Sure, 40 Banes would have a lot of attacks to deal with infantry, and can crack armour when they get there, but what’s the point if your whole list is SPD 5 infantry that gets out-threat and killed?
Let’s touch on threat range first. If your model(s) threat 12″ on a charge and the enemy unit opposite them threats 10″ on a charge, then you should a) get the jump on that unit, and b) win the final “trade” of infantry models. Where it gets slightly more sticky is you can’t just play the ‘stand outside enemy threat range’ all game, you’ll lose on scenario. What you can do, however, is position your models within threat range of contest of scenario elements, e.g. positioning within charge range of the opposite side of a flag in Incursion, if they put models to contest, they’re in charge range.
You can also use high value models to draw other models out, such as offering Bane Warriors inside threat range of Rifle Corp, with Satyxis Raiders about 4″ ahead of the Bane Warriors, preferably on/in terrain. The Raiders will be DEF 16/18+, so the Rifle Corp are needing unreliable numbers to hit, if they take the attacks on the Raiders they’re not reliably hitting and connecting, so waste of an activation whilst also being inside run-to-engage range, if they take attacks on the Banes, they’re in charge range. You lose some Banes, but take away a unit of guns. Stalkers excel at this too, being relatively high DEF they generally draw out the models that can make high quality attacks as they’re the main things that can reliably connect with the Stalker’s DF 15, so send a Stalker in, kill something juicy like an important solo, snag something else nearby if you can, and position relative to the Stalker, within threat range of the opposite side of the Stalker. E.g. If I lead with a Stalker, with Occultated Soulhunters in back-up, they’ll be positioned within 12″ of the front of the Stalker’s base, anything that comes in to kill the Stalker can get counter-killed by the Soulhunters. Either they take the bait and you get to kill what you baited out, or they don’t take the bait and your Stalker gets to hand out tickle time for another turn.
So, going back to delivery. Guns are the biggest source of bellyaching at the moment. In order to tackle the guns, you need to understand what they can and can’t deal with, and what they do and don’t ignore. If something ignores Stealth and Clouds then anything opposite that model needs to find concealment in a forest / cloud, or elevation. If models ignores concealment and cover, then anything opposite that needs to find something to block LoS (clouds, forest etc), or elevation. Stealth is better than most people give it credit for, sure there’s some True Sight out there, and Eyeless Sight still exists in Legion, but True Sight isn’t available in quantities to worry your whole list, and Cryx still have plenty enough tools vs Legion for lack of Stealth to not be a problem.
In terms of list-building, you can plan around this concept by building a whole list that is, functionally, very difficult to shoot off the board. For example, my Coven list centres around Soulhunters that get Occultation, Raiders that get dibs on concealment / elevation, and multiple ‘jacks that get the Egregore right up their butt to give them Stealth. The only thing not-Stealth is the Banes, who make good bait (see above) and the Witches (who are miles away). Goreshade2 is another example, but in a very different fashion. A Goreshade2 list built with living recursion around flavours of Satyxis (I like a unit of each) and McThrall recursion can undo multiple turns of attrition by turning created McThralls and Scrap Thralls back into the Satyxis that died the first time around, who subsequently get recreated back into McThralls. Both examples use long threat ranges to exacerbate things for your opponent.
Honorable mention here to Wrong Eye & Snapjaw. If you can persist with their anaemic threat range, their ability to deliver Snapjaw to the enemy unmolested is beautiful.
In summary, have a plan for getting your units where they need to be. Either you need anti-shooting tech on the unit in question (Stealth, Force Barrier etc), or you need to be faster than the opponent’s models. On a related note, if going first, don’t be afraid to relocate models to be opposite better targets, you still have your second turn to ensure you’re positioned relative to the scenario.
Dealing with Control Feats
I’ll say up-front, I’m ignoring the elephant in the room (Haley2), I haven’t “solved” her yet so won’t be offering false advice (personally, I think her different builds warrant different solutions, which makes solving her, relative to other Cygnar ‘casters, especially difficult).
So, Control Feats. Generally these are Feats that stop you doing what you want the following turn. They could be something like Krueger2 or Irusk2, which slow you down, or something less obvious like Ragnor where he can ram his army down your throat with little fear of reprisals.
First principles, you really can’t allow your opponent a ‘double alpha strike’, by that I mean you can’t allow him to get meaningful attacks on your army the turn he feats. Whatever you do, you need to try and force the feat with expendable models of your own, to retain the important pieces for the follow-up.
You can generally force control feats by out-threating the enemy models, which gives you the option to back-up and wait out their control feat to ensure a proper alpha of your own the following turn. In terms of list building, this means long threat range models that can’t be ignored, this could be Stalkers with Skarre1, or Deathjack with an Infernal Machine ‘caster, you position aggressively (but in relative safety) with something they can’t afford to ignore. If they back-up just outside your threat range, you move up just outside theirs. Eventually they have to commit. At this point you can pop your own control feat if you’re playing something like Denny1 or Coven, and go to town in relative safety, or you can back-up and give them something expendable while you keep your key pieces back for a better counter-attack the following turn.
As an example of this (sorry Chris!), I had a game before Christmas of Coven v Irusk2. I know Irusk2’s Feat lets him ignore cloud effects and forests, but going first I chose to position super-aggressively with an Infernal Machine’d Deathjack behind a forest + Veil of Mists, purposely not Stealthed. Irusk2 can feat to get his Rifle Corp shooting into the Deathjack bottom of 1, but Deathjack likely survives and I get Irusk2’s feat out of the way. If Irusk2 doesn’t feat, then I can get Deathjack into something meaty to start the attrition game. As it was, he popped his Feat, put a bunch of shooting into Deathjack, who limped away the following turn when Coven counter-feated, safe in the knowledge that Irusk2 had already burnt his feat so my ‘alpha strike’ wouldn’t get blunted the following turn.
Different control feats have better different answers, for something like Ragnor (and other similiar feats that are very difficult to power through) you need to give them something to keep them occupied while keeping your pieces that will win the game safe (e.g. Dark Shroud models are kept safe for a better counter-attack after Ragnor’s Feat has expired) or limit their ability to attack relevant models (e.g. dropping clouds in their way with Lich2 / Coven). You can often afford to concede scenario a little here, as long as you have a plan for getting back into the scenario, there’s no point putting things in a zone just to die when you can put one model in to contest on your turn, and position everything else for next turn.
Some control feats can be powered through with your own debuffs, for example, a Denny1 mirror match where one list is predominantly melee and the other is predominantly guns, the Denny1 list with guns will generally force the feat from the other, at which point there is no reason for gunline Denny1 not to counter-feat if she’s positioned properly, as the guns will simply aim to mitigate the melee Denny’s Feat. Granted, this is an oversimplified example, but the principle remains, if you can get meaningful work done, there is no reason not to simply counter-feat and get to work.
In summary, have a plan for different types of control feat. Be it a plan to slow them down, counter-attack under the effects of their feat, or simply nip it in the bud before it can be a danger. You ideally need to have a plan when you build the list, but at the very least you need to have a plan when you get to the table.
Overview
The above is just my take on how I approach list building. It works for me, it may not work for your tastes, but it should go some way to showing why the things that are a) popular, and b) doing well in the meta, are chosen relative to other things in faction.
As a final point, don’t dismiss things that don’t tick all the above boxes. Very few things are objectively bad across the board, some things just have a tighter niche than others. Case in point, I took Black Ogrun Boarding Party to the WTC because they were the only unit that could fulfill the role I needed them to (Faction unit, with guns, that doesn’t die to trivial blasts), so don’t be afraid to think outside the box to define the meta, rather than conform to the meta.
For anybody coming to SmogCon, I’ll be there if you want to chew the fat and tell me I’m wrong and talking a load of bollocks!
Strat Cat Scribblings 
Reblogged this on Mangled Metal Tactics.
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