Tuesday, 24 February 2015

Cogs in the TheoryMachine

Hi all, and welcome back to the latest installation of Cogs in the TheoryMachine! Following the Valentines Massacre results from a week ago, I decided I needed to get more practice with some of the more traditionally tournament viable casters for the faction. I'm pretty ok with my eFeora play, and I got a decent run through with both pSeverius and pKreoss when I started playing Menoth. The caster I really wanted to get to grips with, though, was Harbinger.


I don't think that there would be any argument that she's one of the best casters in Menoth, and probably the game as a whole. Having said that she can be tricky to play, and I have very limited experience playing with her. In fact if you skim back through the archives I took her to a Tournament at the Outpost last year with a single practice game and got fairly consistently schooled using her against more experienced oppenents. To overcome this I've decided that now is the time to get a handle on her starting by playing her for the next few weeks until I feel confident enough with her. 

The list

The Harbinger of Menoth +5
-Heirophant -2
-Reckoner -8
-Devout -5
Minimum Choir -2
Wracks -1
Vassal of Menoth -2
Maximum Exemplar Errants with UA -10
Exemplar Errant Seneschal -2
Rhupert Carvolo -2
Covenant of Menoth -2
Minimum Holy Zealots with UA -6
Maximum Exemplar Bastions -8
Dartan Vilmon -3
Paladin of the Order of the Wall -2
Objective: Fuel Cache



The idea with this list is all control and denial. The Errant package (Max Errants with UA, Seneschal, Rhupert and Covenant) is designed to be a massive pain for my opponent to get rid of while also dishing out a reasonable amount of damage to clear zones etc. with Hunter Quick Work shots from charging weaponmasters. The Zealots are also in the list for zone control, jamming and obviously super-fun bomb throwing japes. The Bastions form a second wave to counter attack whatever's left from the rest of the grind in the list, adding in a hard to shift force that can polish off any troublemakers. The Devout is in the list to offer squishy Harbinger some protection from ranged, while the Reckoner is there to handle any heavy ARM that comes up. The support package is the deluxe edition with choir, wracks, vassal and a Heirophant. Then finally Dartan and his little brother are in the list to offer an immovable object to sit on flags and in zones and simply not die. Add in all of Harbingers cool native abilities (Awe for the pseudo DEF buff, FOCUS 10 for... being awesome, and obviously martyrdom) and the list becomes hard to kill and pretty heavy hitting on the retaliation. 

Test Game 

Ok. Full disclosure: I did actually already use this list and I was going to write it up as a bat rep... but the game went long and the store was literally closing around us at the time, so it didn't end properly and I didn't feel like it reflected how the game was going. I played against a Legion list that included pThagrosh with a Carnivean, Angelius and Scythean, along with a max unit of Legionnaires, a max Spawning vessel, the Black Frost Shard, a Foresaken, a shepherd and a Throne. We played Two Fronts from the 2015 Steamroller. 

My list out attritioned throughout the game, wiping out swathes of Legion models, including killing all the heavies (and one twice). The Reckoner in particular was very effective, using Enliven and Assault to dodge charges from a heavy and then one round it in the next turn. The Errants did a great job of making a nuisance of themselves while also whittling down the Legionaries. I wiped out the majority of the force and survived a couple of long shot assassination attempts along the way. By the last real turn his force was a Harrier with one box, a shredder, the Throne, Thagrosh, a mostly dead Carnivean and the Blackfrost Shard, while I had only lost about half the Errants along with all the Zealots, and only had a single model (the Harrier) stopping me from controlling the opposing zone.

I was in a commanding position and could easily have gotten Harby to a safe position from which I could continue to attrition and ultimately win on scenario, which is what I would have done normally, but as the store was closing and we had to get finished, I instead went for the cool option of charging the Throne with Harbinger to remove the last big threat. I used a boosted Cataclysm and a couple of melee attacks to hurt it and then poured damage onto it, and the Reckoner killed the Carnivean. The Throne was left on 1 box when I was done, and so I allowed him to take his turn, and he managed to kill Harbinger using every model he had left on the table to pull it off. It's a shame that we didn't have more time to be able to play the game out properly as I feel if I played it safe I was in a strong position to win the game within a couple more turns. More importantly I felt that this game gave me a good chance to play around with her abilities and use them effectively in a real game. 

I'm really looking forward to having a another practice with her to hone my experience a little further. I'll be sure to tell you all about it as it happens!

Stay tuned for more, and don't forget to like Mitsuharu on Minis on Facebook for more updates!

-M




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