Well, having had my first serious circle game (not counting proxying models; I find it's best to proxy models before buying anything to see if I really want to play the faction), it's time to toss around the lists for the first caster I'm using. Experience from playing Khador and a bit of deeper thinking on warmachine/hordes in general has shown me that it's best to focus on a single Warcaster/Warlock when first learning how to play a faction. With Khador I started out with Strakhov; with Circle Orboros, I'm starting with Baldur the Stonecleaver (pBaldur).
From experience yesterday, I know that the list I have is pretty solid, but could use a few tweaks. Here's the breakdown:
1. Warbeasts -- Megalith performed admirably, throwing around some nice AOE's and boxing the Cannoneer nearly single handed, so he's definitely a keeper. The Woldwyrd did alright, but I can see half a dozen places where he would have been even more effective (i.e. played right, he could have taken out 1-2 Cetrati a turn thanks to Purgation, and against other warlocks the animus would have been quite annoying), so he's staying as well. The Woldwarden... while a 2nd Geomancy is nice to have, his lower fury (compared to Megalith) and general pillow-fistedness without pBaldur's Stone Skin means that he's not as effective as he could be.
After taking stock of my options, I'm going to try switching him out for a Woldguardian - harder hitting, far tougher, doesn't need to bother using fury for Geomancy-ing, and it has a nice auto-knockdown feature. The Woldguardian is a bit slower, but as a Khador player that's nothing new, and circle has enough movement shenanigans to more than make up for it.
2. Fury Managment -- this was a big problem throughout the game, and thankfully with a list consisting of entirely Wolds I was able to effectively load the fury onto the least useful one that turn (Woldwarden one turn, Woldwyrd the later 2), but this still left me with the problem of having nothing to transfer to when it came down to it, almost killing Baldur in the process. The Woldguardian will do quite a bit to mitigate the transfer problem, but I still need a bit more fury management. The obvious answer to this is adding in a Druid Wilder, however since dropping anything from the 35pt list would leave holes in other areas, the Wilder is going to have to wait till the 50pt level, and I'm going to need to get better at using stones and foresight to deal with excess fury.
Here's the revised 35pt list:
Baldur 35pt List (Tier 2)
Baldur the Stonecleaver
* Woldwyrd
* Megalith
* Woldguardian
Druids of Orboros (Leader and 5 Grunts)
* Druid of Orboros Overseer
Sentry Stone (Leader and 3 Manikins)
Shifting Stones
Blackclad Wayfarer
So, now that I've got the 35pt list down, I can work up to a 50pt list. Here's where I need to make a decision -- to Tier, or not to Tier? pBaldur has a pretty impressive tier list; to begin with, it's actually worth taking up to tier 4 as everything he can take will mesh well together, and lastly the tier benefits are actually quite nice (1 - Sentry Stones/Manikins gain 20" deployment, 2 - one warbeast gains Adv. Dep. per Sentry Stone/Shifting stone unit, 3 - Woldstalker units gain advance move, and 4 - heavy construct warbeasts cost 1pt less). However, the models he can take become quite limiting at 50pts, and I'll end up with more duplicate models than I'd normally like (i.e. I would probably never take 2 units of woldstalkers outside of this specific list, and I'm not altogether happy with having to pick up 2 Blackclads yet). So, for these reason I'm going to change it up a bit and stick with tier 2. Here's the list:
Baldur 50pts (Tier 2)
Baldur the Stonecleaver
* Woldwatcher
* Woldwyrd
* Megalith
* Woldguardian
Druid Wilder
Druids of Orboros (Leader and 5 Grunts)
* Druid of Orboros Overseer
Sentry Stone (Leader and 3 Manikins)
Shifting Stones
* Stone keeper
Shifting Stones
Stoneward and 5 Woldstalkers
Blackclad Wayfarer
Switching the Woldwatcher for a unit of woldstalkers would actually give me an extra 2 pts and an advance move on the woldstalkers, but as mentioned I really do not want to buy 2 units of woldstalkers (yet). The woldwatcher offers a nice alternative that lets me keep the tier 2 benefits -- plus, he's got Shield Guard to keep Baldur safe, and the scrappy little fella can make a real nuisance of himself by throwing up forests with his melee and ranged attacks for Baldur to jump around in.
2 units of shifting stones improve movement shenanigan options considerably, and in conjunction with the Wilder should make fury management faaar easier. The stone keeper is all but required to keep at least one unit alive, as he grants stealth and improves the command radius, allowing that unit to spread out more.
Overall, I like both lists. I'm going to be giving the 50pt list a shot this weekend, so lets see how it turns out.
Coming Up (in the next few days or so):
- Musings on pKrueger or Mohsar as an alternate caster for 2-list tournaments
- Display Board How-To
Stay tuned!
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