Pauldron Problems: Heavy Infantry

Today, supplementing the usual battle reports I produce once a week, I have decided to try to delve into an issue that might be present to some more recent players into Warmachine/Hordes, and Skorne in particular if you've followed a buyers pattern similar to mine. Heavy Infantry. If you don't have any Multi-Wound Infantry, how do you deal with Multi-Wound Infantry? Specifically, High ARM Multi-Wound infantry.

These are a unit type I've had particular problems with in a lot of my games, and at low points levels, they are typically more efficient than large blobs of infantry. They are more survivable, meaner, and with a lot of UAs and solos that increase their hitting capacity/survivability it becomes a train wreck. One of my Orboros matches vs. eBaldur was completely obstructed by poor positioning of my Nihilators, my Gladiator, and the high ARM of his Skinwalkers. My many matches against Menoth are difficult against Bastions, as he still easily has full units when he should be down 4 or 5 men in the Unit.

Sadly, as I am yet to own Cataphracts of any kind, I have no strategy that involves fighting fire with fire. This is one of the simpler strategies. You have ARM 18 Weapon Masters? Well, I have ARM 20 9 inch Walking threat range Weapon Masters.

But for those of us not yet running Xerxis and his wall of Cetrati, I'll break down some of my thoughts on how we can deal with this problem unit type.

1. Shoot it off the table. This is more of a Cygnar/Legion strategy at it's core, but we have uses for it, and ways to do it. Cannoneers have healthy POW 15 guns, sure it turns into Blast Damage for everyone not in that central unit, but it can be a good way to disrupt shield walls if you aim it right. Couple it with a Cyclops Raider, you can shoot them before they even get near the center line. Couple this with a max Squad of Reivers + UA and a series of CRAs, there are going to be some dead infantry on the table. Use the Mini-Feat turn 1 along with the Cannoneer, and you will at least soften them up before they get to your melee center.

2. Continuous Effects: Yes, this is typically for light infantry, as it will lead to them dying in droves, but anything helps when they have 8 boxes to chew through and your Bronzeback, no matter how many he pushes around, can only be in threat range of a well spaced 5 man unit for so long. Venator Slingers are a good idea here, as they can lay down some early turn Corrosions, and can be easily tossed away due to their cheap 6 points for a max unit, letting us get in some shots and cause a road bump in the center line after laying down some more light damage to soften up Multi-Wound Meat Mountains. Incindiarii could also fulfill this role well, but due to still having to roll at dice mins 6 means that it is less reliable.

Now, combining these above 2 would be incredibly taxing on points, costing you around 28 points for a lot of whittling down effects, leaving your core less versatile than it otherwise would be, so this is something to consider more lightly than the other options, though when focused well, can create good effects on the battle field. I'll be looking to try Venator Reivers soon with eHexeris. It seems like a good way to harm D-Warded Black Spotted Bastions in CRAs. Groups of 3 Reivers CRAing at something, for dice - 4, if aiming needing only 4's to hit, inflicts a good bit of damage, gives out about 3 Damage per Bastion on average. This, gives you more points to build a center around, and is a good way to weaken Bastions or other Heavy Infantry before they become a problem, and if the Venators survive, they can be useful in taking down 'jacks also if they survive the coming onslaught.

With the above strategy being more difficult to implement points wise and not in Skorne's mentality of "Kill, Crush, Destroy" we have to consider other options if we have no Heavy Infantry of our own.
If we throw our beasts at Heavy Infantry poorly, they're doomed. Weapon Masters, and durable infantry are a death trap for beasts consigning them to uselessness, or death.

So, the other option I give is

3. Find a way for the positioning to render these units useless. Against some armies, this isn't that good of an idea, Circle comes to mind, but against slower Heavy Infantry, we can try to take advantage of Skorne's capacity for surprising movement to change our place on the battlefield and force them to choose bad targets/not move very far. This is more of a vague and personal way of analyzing the problem, but we do have some tools to ensure that we can divert their attention. Molik Karn can do good Hit and run strikes on these Multi-Wound Reach Units, with the benefit of things like Rush/Abuse to get into Melee, killing one or two, and then Side Stepping back, and using Fate Walker to get out of easy reach. Followed by having the rest be forced to deal with a tarpit unit, so they'd be forced to take Free Strikes if they diverted their attention could be clever. However, Molik is the easy response to give to these questions. The Archidon provides a similar role with Flight and the Lightning Strike Animus allowing for it to be a good way to kite heavy infantry, and maneuver as needed, and also to force the infantry to choose what threats to consider.

In the maneuverability department, I'd also say that other than pMorghoul with the delicious spell Admonition, I support that Mordikaar is for all of our "I'll move where I want" casters. With Ghostly, and a defensive feat that allows you to Push targets out of melee threat, and revive models to move into good positions to take down big targets. All this makes him great at avoiding danger, heavily influencing the enemy to make their big meaty infantry not as dangerous.

A way I'd find to deal with this all on a strategic level would be a sort of reinforced flank maneuver depending on your force composition. Particularly this works if you go second and your opponent tosses his Heavy infantry on a flank.

My final piece of advice would be to save your heavy or light beasts until the infantry are already engaged in melee, say with Nihilators, and then take advantage of their relative proximity to implement these other strategies by picking off ones at the sides, kiting them in, or even shooting them before they become engaged, or any that had just become unengaged, and so on.

Eventually, we'll cave and get Cetrati, but for lists that don't include those the Meat Mountain is a particular way of doing Armor Skew that we need to think about and how to deal with. When killing a players models is so intensely difficult that we can't take much damage without fear of never reciprocating said damage then things become difficult for us Pain Givers because we love inflicting damage.

If you have any ideas, toss them down in the comments, and play well, play hard, and play Skorne.

Risk and Reward: Mercs vs. Skorne

This week I went up against Mercs again. I'm glad to show you my newly purchased Nihilators finally on this page, but also to give you a bold realization I've had. Something that probably has been holding me back on a more subtle level than my lack of experience.

Mercenaries vs. Skorne 25pts.
pMagnus
Nomad
Renegade
Mangler
Buccaneer
Freebooter

Reinholdt Gobber Speculator

eHexeris
Titan Gladiator
Basilisk Krea
Cyclops Savage

Max. Nihilators
Min. Beast Handlers

Aptimus Marketh

As I'm typing this, I just realized I was down a point. For some reason I'm terrible at accounting with eHexeris...

Deployment:
As always, I lost the go first roll.

He covered all of his jacks pretty straight forwardly, the light was on my left, pMagnus in the middle, and his heavies near by. I was immediately nervous about all the Knockdown effects that seemed to be everywhere here as I have no real responses to Knockdown.

I set the Nihilators in the front, and was nervous about how I'd move them around the board. The Gladiator is to the right next to the Krea, and the Savage takes left. eHexeris sits in the back of it all, with the Aptimus next to him, and the Paingivers spread out pretty well.



 Turn 1:
He tosses Blur onto pMagnus, Snipe onto the Buccaneer, and runs things forward.

I run my Nihilators up 10" (more or less), and everything runs up. Aptimus tosses Ashen veil onto the Nihilators, and Hexeris tosses Arcane Reckoning on himself as he has nothing to really toss around. Magnus is really well shielded this turn due to the wall, and my offensive spells are out of range.


The Krea has it's Animus up because the less chances I have for him to tie up one of my beasts or my 'lock I can give the better. I leave Hexeris screened Hexeris well, but I left my right flank a little expose, and didn't move my Nihilators up far enough. However, I did get them all in the tiny 7" command bubble, so I made an improvement there.




Turn 2:
He misses on most of his shots that he tosses around, and shuffles around a smidge. He blocks off a charge lane to his caster with his Nomad.
I have the Nihilators run/charge and do their best to block lanes and to try to get to his caster. None of them manage to hit his ridiculous defense through the Cover. Most of them spread around and kind of clog up my Titan.



I managed to still keep Hexeris well protected just by these two light beasts. I upkeep Arcane Reckoning on Hexeris. He had set Reinholdt off to the side and I killed it with a Nihilator which I quickly realized is a waste of time/points. My Savage runs off into the woods to give more control to the left flank.
I quickly realized at this point I should have concentrated more on the right as that is where more of his jacks were. I spread out too far over the course of this game not allowing me to get any holes into him.


Turn 3:
He has to pop feat to get at my caster, which I take as a compliment to how I kept him hidden. However this means I have to deal with a Freebooter behind my lines who wants to hogtie my caster and toss him onto that rotisserie spit of a spear he has. This causes this next turn to be incredibly flubbed. He also moves over his Buccaneer to knockdown my Titan. Which I'll force back to normal on my turn.



I used my Nihilators terribly so I was wasting 8 points a turn. Anyhow, he popped feat to maneuver his stuff around, and failed to knock down my Titan again. He shielded his caster over on the right side of the field, which left my Cyclops pretty useless, as it had been all game. I have it run across the board to try to block a charge lane.

This next moment is me auto-piloting through, so I have to apologize for the absolutely titanic stupid I was operating on. The Titan tried to slam and was half an inch shy of actually getting the charge benefit on the Buccaneer and I bought a boat load of attacks which did functionally no damage. I couldn't quite figure out how I was going to deal with this thing. What i should have done was used Hexeris to get toe to toe with the jack, along with the Krea. Instead, I had the Aptimus toss down Hellfire on it, have the Krea start hitting it, and then waste piles of fury on Hellfire as he moved into difficult terrain which I thought would have given me cover.




Turn 4:
Since I messed up that turn beautifully, he has me dead to rights. He uses the Obliterator Rocket to knock down my caster, has the Buccaneer kill my Titan, and then has the Free Booter hit me for more attacks then I can transfer to my beasts.




 I mismanaged a lot of pieces. I thought that covering the board would be my path to victory, when in fact it's about making a series of strong decisive moves over board presence. I over estimated how much he'd use the pieces he'd have on my left side of the board. I was most of all frantic over how I'd make the Nihilators useful, largely because I underestimated the value of charge attacks at 3d6 - 6 on his heavies.

 He used his low model count to force me into the encounters he wanted. I was distracted by pointless pieces and fear of AoEs. I was also scared of the imaginary threat of a deadly trample to my caster.  In this match I find that I don't move far enough up the field, and I try to play incredibly conservatively rather than taking risks.

So my big revelation is to take Risks, and invest all your pieces to all capacity without fear. Stupid risks are one thing, but well backed risks are different. I valued my Nihilators and didn't find a use for them due to skepticism and not having the right match up for those pieces in particular.

On a positive note, if I had scooted the Nihilators slightly to the right, I was still good at denying shots to my caster, and will need to walk away with a lesson on how to keep him from being targeted.

I GOT BLISTERS ON THESE FINGERS!

The past couple of games I've done a terrible job of taking enough pictures, and the sad part is this happened in the first game I played with my new Nihilators.

However, as this is dedicated to new Skorne players, either veterans coming to Skorne, or more likely, new players who were drawn to the lash, I'm going to make this post dedicated to the horrible pain of assembling Skorne models, with advice from what I've heard from others and what I recommend.

This entire post is brought to you by Nihilators, the most limp-wristed hunks of pewter that have ever been cast.

The first thing that you have to understand is that assembling these models will sting and hurt, because everything is covered in what look like tiny spikes. These will, in turn, slowly feel like someone is digging into your skin with a cleaver. What I recommend for dealing with that is trying to find a comfortable position and move the model around to make sure you can still apply pressure and at the same time. It can be tough to find, but anything to get to either less prickly parts of the Paingiver pear, or just to balance things so more surface area of the spike is against your palm/fingers.

That's logical though, and I don't have to go into too much detail on comfort. What I'll be talking about first is one we've all experienced as logical Skorne collectors. If you got the metal version of the Battle Box, or just realized Gladiators are great and bought a metal one, there is the critical flaw in the Titan Gladiator. The Titan Gap. A huge gap between the upper and lower torso that we all know and hate. It's exposed and ugly.
What you use is Green Stuff.
It's an epoxy modelling putty, and it is good for conversion work, or for putting together angry elephants.
What you can do is get the Green Stuff prepared into a donut, set down the Gladiator, and then blend and fill in the gap.

Savages are also difficult to assemble because of how poorly they want to fit together due to the flat surfaces on the arms and the arcane way the arms have to align in the most arcane ways. In all honestly, I recommend scoring the surfaces, holding on, and praying when you get around to actually gluing them. What I'd also recommend is carefully preplanning so the arms fit properly. Particularly the Savage with both hands holding different parts of the sword, which is one of the most insidiously ridiculous design choices that I've seen and had to deal with.

Speaking of ridiculous arms. Nihilators. Nihilators are one of Skorne's best tarpits and you will have a unit of them. And most of them are easy to assemble, and most of mine are durable and fine. But, Oh My God, who ever things that Falchions should only be attached to a model at a wrist is an imbecile who seems to have no understanding of physics. The Leader of the Nihilators, who I am here referring to as Hannibal

I wonder if he keeps his fava beans in that face mask...

That Wrist joint has way too much weight on it, and I offer no salvation to any sort of drilling in all the arms on your Nihilators. All your nihilators will cause you one or more problem. The ridiculous pain hooks that inflate their chests like steroids will hurt your fingers and the arms will never stay on. You'll have to break out a hand drill and pins to keep the arms decently on, and I am still working on getting one of those.

This serves as warning and advice for model assembly.
Welcome to the tortured peoples, the masochistic. They're creepy pain Buddhists. You knew this is what the faction's aesthetic and design philosophy is, you brought this suffering on yourself.

It's Strictly Business: Skorne vs. Mercenaries.

Unfortunately, this game doesn't have any pictures because my phone died.
This match has pushed me to start playing eHexeris instead of pMorghoul.
It was a 15 point game, and I was eager to go up against Mercenaries, as it's hard to find full on Mercenaries players.

Mercenaries (15)
Ashlynn D'Elyse
 - Nomad

Tactical Arcanist Core
Dannon & Blythe
Aiyanna and Holt

Viktor Pendrake
Reinhold Gobber Speculator



Skorne (15)
pMorghoul
  - Titan Gladiator
  - Cyclops Savage
  - Basilisk Krea

Swamp Gobbers


He won the roll to go to first, and he scattered everything pretty far around since it was mostly solos and small units. He had Dannon and Blythe prey the Savage.
I bricked up like I typically do, using the Krea and the Savage as a screen for the Gladiator.
Morghoul sat to the right of the Gladiator.

He puts Admonition onto Ashlynn, and tosses Quicken onto the Nomad.
The Tacticals walk forward getting no meaningful scatters out of their Firebombs
D&B get in position, along with Viktor Pendrake. Reinholdt stays in the back. The Nomad walks to the side.

Given that he has more board control, higher armor on an equal defense caster to my own, more focus, and a better spell suite, I was scrambling to figure things out, so I just continued to brick up, trying to not get alpha struck to any capacity. I let the Gobbers run up the side and pop smoke to block LOS to anything from the two arcanists, and I brick up and walk forward.

This being my first time dealing with Prey, I didn't realize to try to get the Savage to a safer place, maybe to the left instead of the right, and have him try to pick off the arcanist core.  The Krea was to the left of the Savage.

During his turn, D&B massacred my Savage thanks to stacking damage buffs and made the Krea their next target, which was quickly killed due to attack multitudes from Bull on his Backswing. The Arcanists failed a lot of to hit rolls, as did Viktor with his Bola. Some of the Arcanists/Aiyanna and Holt started wailing on, and missed, a gobber. The Nomad, having no good charge targets, just ran off to kill a Gobber.

Next turn, I have the Titan Gladiator slam into an arcanist and try to knock down Ashlynn, but she had upkept Admonition and ran 3 inches away, and I kill myself an Arcanist. I have Morghoul pop feat and avoid D&B.

Viktor and Ashlynn do their best to kill the Gladiator but he is operating well, and Viktor misses with his Bolas again, Ashlynn pops feat, leaving my Gladiator with a lot less boxes, and making all my attempts fruitless during my turn to wail on him with my Abused Gladiator, as he ripostes my Gladiator to death.

I had Morghoul put Admonition on himself, being unable to reach Ashlynn to start trying to kill her I move him close to the center of the board and pop feat to keep from doing anything useful.

Viktor missed with the Bolas AGAIN, and I ended up being cock blocked for my next turn by Reinholdt who runs straight across the field base to base with Morghoul. I choose not to Admonition out of the way for fear of certain doom.

At that point I get killed mercilessly by Ashlynn who walks up and murdernates him thoroughly.

I pretty much went up against a better version of Morghoul that night. Better by leagues. I was sufficiently done with Morghoul at that point, having a pretty big W/L record with him at this point of  2 - 13.

Maybe it's the low points cost making his utility less apparent, but at the same time, I need to practice with someone more generally useful to get some more experience with winning strategies. Morghoul can't interact with opponents at all, and his low control area and squishyness makes him hard to use if you can't pinball out on low hit box infantry.

For a long, long time now, I'll be setting down pMorghoul until I get deeper into Skorne in terms of available points to play with.

Treatise on Morghoul: List Architecture and Building

Now, after all this break down and analysis and rambling from last time, let's get to list building with him. I'll structure this at 35 pts.

He wants to run a lot of beasts despite the 5 FURY. We have the Beast Handlers mitigate fury to what ever we need, he can take any excess and take advantage of it with Maltreatment. Which, if cleverly used, can allow him to take his 14 attacks on max fury, and by stealing fury from beasts you've already activated, can give you even more attacks. Further, he has 7 Warbeast points guaranteeing room for at least one heavy, or in some cases, an essentially free one (X-idons).

                             

Starting off with the beasts:

Titan Gladiator. This is definitely recommended. It's animus is a good source of Pathfinder, and a free Movement buff in a typically SPD 4 faction is always appreciated.

Taking a Titan Gladiator makes it easy to take a Bronzeback and is a perfectly valid decision, as it helps even more with Fury management, by guaranteeing successful Frenzy checks if it becomes necessary. Further, there's just an inherent synergy between the two.

What we want to make sure is a couple things in this list, beyond two fantastic heavies.

1. How does our list keep Morghoul safe?

1a. What is Morghoul weak to?

2. How does a beast heavy caster deal with multiwound infantry (since Morghoul can deal with single wound just fine)

3. How do we make sure the fury on the table is being used efficiently?

4. How do we fit in even more fantastic heavies to all of this?

I ask these questions because with Bronzeback and a Gladiator in the list, we can crack armor open easily, so no need to worry too much about armor skews. Except for things like ARM 20 8 Box infantry thanks to Shield Wall. That will come later.

Morghoul's weaknesses though are as follows:

Knockdown: His DEF 17 is what saves him from most attacks. If his armor is all that protects him, our caster is dead. Period.

Ranged Attacks/AOEs: Blast Damage can kill him, and aiming on most ranged attack oriented models can lead to him being hit more often than you think.

His own Control area: 10" isn't much. It's easy for him to over commit and die due to his tiny control area.

So we need stuff to: Protect Morghoul from Knockdown, Ranged/Blast Attacks, and something that allows his control area to be expanded.

What first comes to mind as answers to these are:

Knockdown: Cyclops Brute

Ranged/Bast: Basilisk Krea

Control Area: Mortitheurge Willbreaker.

The Mortitheurge Willbreaker is almost an auto-include in my opinion, just because it lets the beasts we've gviven hilariously huge threat ranges to, the capacity to still be forced out of our control area.

If you keep the also Auto-include for Morghoul Pain Giver Beast Handlers at a good angle, then they can rinse off all the fury you need.

The Cyclops Brute is useful for the Animus to protect Morghoul from Knockdown, and Shield Guard is also a good ability for keeping Morghoul safe.

If you want to toss in another heavy to take in the Shield Guard role, you could use Tiberion, but the Cyclops is lower on points, more utilitarian, and while he can't be slammed anywhere, Morghoul is still vulnerable, despite hiding behind it. It could work, I'd just need to try a couple games with it to see if it works.

The Krea is a good Utility beast with her gun locking down Run/Charge on key Beasts, lowering DEF to 7, and has an Animus that can keep Morghoul alive during AOE heavy turns.

So with this in mind we have

pMorghoul       (-7)

Titan Gladiator   (8)

Bronzeback     (10)

Cyclops Brute    (5)

Basilisk Krea      (4)

Troops:

Max. Handlers    (3)

Solos:

Mortitheurge       (2)

So we have 25 out of our 35 pt. list done, and answered our first question.

Next, how are we going to deal with Multi Wound infantry?

This is answered in different ways at different times.

Is it Shield Walled infantry?

I like to put Admonition onto a heavy, and strike near the edge of Shield Wall lines, breaking a hole open in a unit, and having it swivel around when one of the members of the unit is in 6" during his turn, sticking a heavy  behind their lines.

Is it just normal High ARM, Multiwound infantry?

Then we either must combat with infantry of our own, or find a beast that can do that.

The last thing we want is our beasts to get caught in a tarpit, because what'll happen is what happened to actual Mammoths in the real La Brea tarpits. A slow, slow death.

So we have a couple of options:

Try to poke a hole in it

Find a way to ignore it, creating wasted points on his part, giving us an advantage

Fight Infantry with Infantry

Or find a way to smash it into paste.

We can Admonition/Beat Back our way through it

We can use an Archidon to fly straight over the multiwound infantry, and giving a heavy Sprint is a good way to get out of a tarpit anyhow.

We can toss out a unit of Nihilators to act as a screen for our beasts, and as a way to gain more board control. Possibly you could include a unit of Gatormen with a task master.

Or you could toss in a Rhinodon to deal with it.

The poor, poor Rhinodon. Dismissed by the community, but having a secret, masochistic use with pMorghoul. Since it can be Abused and Enraged to get good threat ranges, and suddenly get POW 17's and 18's, it can do a good job taking out High ARM infantry walls, plus it's Animus makes Slams easier to pull off for cheap amounts of Fury in comparison.

So we have the answers:

Movement tricks and Flying

Nihilators/Gatormen

or Rhinodon.

Some of this is a matter of taste. I like the idea of Yo-Yoing Bronzebacks to create a Molik Karn with tusks (what's not to love?), the Rhinodon is a cheap and simple answer while sticking to a beast heavy theme.

Nihilators/Gatormen w/Task masters are good self sufficient walls of churning death, and can easily take up a lot of board space.

So for this role of Screening Unit/Anti-Infantry we are definitely investing 7-8 points. Which is quite a huge sum. We need something that can keep our heavies safe for a turn, soak up some hits, block some charge lanes, while still providing utility.

Since most of our lights in this list are not exactly screening material, and more utility material with a key purpose later on, I'd recommend not screening with those. Therefore, I think we should take the infantry  route.

For 5 points we can get 6 Nihilators.

For 8 points, we can 10 Nihilators, or 3 Gatormen Posse w/Task Master.

One is a wall of Tough, Reach SPD 6 Infantry, that can die in droves and there is no regret. They can cover the board out to a lot of angles, and serve the purpose of either clearing up that first wall of infantry, or taking attacks from opposing heavies. It can be a total of 6-10 boxes of Warrior models.

The Gatormen, like most of Morghoul's list, brick up. They don't cover as many areas, but can hold a central position really well. They are conceivably 24 boxes of medium base, Tough infantry, with Reach and the capacity to take a shot and quickly move toward and eat infantry. They are much MUCH better under Rasheth, but they can still do work here.

If you really want to get in more Gatormen, you could drop the Krea to fit in a Max unit + Taskmaster, to get 40 boxes of centralized screening, but that's a lot of points put into a unit Morghoul can't interact with.

However, Gatormen can't be trampled, making them more effective against heavies and as a good meat grinder for infantry.

Morghoul has a lot of issues when it comes to board control, beyond his feat. He wants to brick up and walk a lot of the time, having a slow moving first turn, and then exponentially increasing threat ranges and speed on his beasts. However, you can't trust a wall of infantry to always screen your important beasts when heavies can just trample through them. In most cases though, if you spread out your infantry well, they'll be farther up the board relative to the rest, and your opponent can't trample through all of them.

So I'll say a max Unit of Nihilators for now, and definitely experiment around with the system to get everything worked out nicely.

With that, we have 2 points left, which can just have an Agonizer in it to help make life harder for your opponent.

So in total, my recommended pMorghoul list for beginners and new Skorne players is:

pMorghoul

Gladiator

Bronzeback

Krea

Brute

Max. Nihilators

Max. PGBH

Agonizer

Mortitheurge

All adding up to 35 pts.

I will be experimenting around with this format, while also getting to know eHexeris over the next couple of weeks. As I'll soon be able to afford some infantry.

So break out the pain whip, bring your beasts and have fun experimenting around with this list, and variations, in your games.

A Treatise on Morghoul pt. 1 Musings on Morghoul

In my most recent match, I realized that along with my capacity as a player I need to change the models that I use to make pMorghoul shine. So today, I'll be doing some List Crafting to try to figure out what I need to update and what fellow Skorne players that like how pMorghoul operates could run him. Over the next couple of days, I'll be examining what pMorghoul can do, what he wants to use, and what he should use in a list.

To do this, we obviously need to take Morghoul apart piece by piece and figure him out. We'll be pretty orderly about this and break down his card front to back, to give an order to it.

Stat-wise, the first thing that jumps out at me is the SPD 7 and MAT 8. More than anything SPD 7 just because I spend half my day trying to figure out how to get SPD 4 to reach it's target. the MAT 8 Speaks of his capacity as a melee caster. DEF 17 and ARM 13 give an illusion of survivability, by giving him the capacity to survive by the skin of his teeth, since any hit that he receives will probably leave him down half his boxes. This also means that I need to be worried about AOE's and Blast Damage, since you can Boost Blast Damage, making even POW 7's of Blast Damage work at 3d6 - 6; giving him about 4 pints of damage PER AOE. Hell, he will be at serious risk if anyone ever gets him stuck with Continuous Fire. POW 12's WILL kill Morghoul with enough application. Especially

He has 2 pretty weak looking initial attacks at P+S 9, so given him being structured as something of what looks like an Assassin style caster, he will have a special trick probably later on to make these useful.

His 5 FURY really holds him back from doing a lot on the field, and means we really have to work hard to make sure that Fury is well maintained on the board. So, for any Spells that he has, we'll need to do everything in our power to not have him use his Fury too much in any given round. He'll probably bounce 1 or 2 spells in a round, to keep one Transfer on himself.

Now, no Caster is complete without Special Rules, and his is a fun wall of text.
Anatomical Precision allows him to always get some use out of his Attacks, and he is able to both control fury on the board in the traditional Skornish way by harming his beasts with Maltreatment. It also lets him always have some form of transfer fury at the end of his turn. Overtake lets him move one inch when he destroys a warrior model, and Sprint lets him take a Full Advance when his activation. Perfect Balance keeps him safe from Free Strikes, Backstrike Bonuses and CM/CRA's. Further, if he's Knocked down, if he survives the turn, he can stand up without missing out on Move or action.

Finally, his weapon gives him 2 attacks whenever he buys one, and he can hit beasts to add or remove fury, giving him a capacity to mess with your opponents Fury management, but if he does make contact with your opponents beasts, there is an honest problem there that should be remedied immediately.

His Spell list is interesting, short, and to the point. Torment, is a RNG 10 POW 12 that stops your opponent from Transferring Damage and stops Tough checks on an individual model. This solidly cements him as an assassin caster. Interesting note: His Charge range is exactly 10", as is his Control area. So, if this spell is able to connect with it's target and your battlegroup is in 10", then you have at a basic level gotten things well positioned. Screening and such is more of a context oriented matter, but all this means you have the decent chance of having a very successful charge available.
Abuse is simple, and spammable. It gives +2 STR and SPD. It makes our threat ranges stronger, our beasts bigger, and combined with Enrage can turn our most pillow fisted beasts (Any of the X-idons we have) and makes them able to wreck properly, while still keeping niche utility.
Admonition is one of my favorites in his list just because it gives a lot of slow pieces interesting ways of getting into position, and surprising your opponent. When an opponent's model ends it's movement within 6" of the target model, you get a Free Strike free 3" advance.
This is spell makes me really like Morghoul. It lets us be tricky like an assassination caster has to be. It let's me surprise my opponent and give a chance to react to what he does.

His feat, Pain and Suffering, stops your opponent from Spending Fury/Focus or Forcing his beasts.
That is huge. It is a beautiful piece of one turn board control. It is one turn that you can play to completely negate your opponent's plans and give all his pieces a hard reset since he can't cast Animi, and has to drop his Upkeeps. It's a good way to make sure your opponent's pieces are vulnerable. Further, the question of whether you are going against Hordes or Warmachine Armies is whether the feat can be used offensively or not. Warcasters would have to camp their focus, making them harder to kill with Morghoul, even if he automatically gets one point of damage in. However, against Hordes, it leaves Warlocks unable to transfer on feat turn, allowing you to buy multiple attacks and rip them apart one point of damage at a time with a theoretical 14 attacks.

It can be used defensively, but given pMorghoul's aggressive play style, he wants to use it to keep an opponent from responding to a harrowing assault. It will keep him from buying attacks, from casting spells, and lets you take a lot of risks, though you have to be careful of your opponent's charge ranges, as they can still charge if outside of that 10" bubble.

So, he's an Assassin caster that wants to keep everything he uses nearby, while having to decide on when and how to boost threat ranges on his beasts with no real spells to help warrior units. Seems pretty simple.

Next time I'll be posting about what pMorghoul wants to use in a list, and build a 35 point list in the next article. Here's a sneak preview: He wants to use a lot of beasts.

Thanks for reading, and may Pain, Misery, and Agony befall your foes in a manner too horrifying to consider.