In light of the new Uthuk hero also having ways to ignore armor pretty reliably, i decided to tally up all the ways you can ignore armor in this game. It felt like there was a lot...i wasnt wrong. It almost feels easier to ignore armor than do high damage right now.

Daqan:
--Heavy Crossbowmen: One doublesurge per ranged attack adds a Mort (range 1-3)
--Piercing Shots upgrade: Discard [R] or [M] at range 1-3 when attacking to add a Mort
--Eagle-Banner Bearer: Spend any number of Inspiration tokens to add a Mort

Waiqar:
--Carrion Lancer ability: Requires blight so it can be difficult to pull off, but it can easily add multiple morts if it does trigger.
--Ankaur Maro: Can add a mortal strike to ranged attack
--DKs: Adds a mortal strike to melee attack (also a great candidate for Reaping Blade since they have 2R1B, which is blank prone)
--Touch of Death: Deals mortal wounds equal to Stable runes at the end of each round.
--Deathcaller: Skill to spend a blight at range 1-5 to cause Stable rune wounds.

Latari:
--Aliana: Straight up adds Mortal Strike for existing
--Leonx Riders: Can reliably add a Mortal Strike for 2surge once per melee

Uthuk: (Still mostly unknown but they do have ways revealed already)
--Ravos: Once per melee attack, each enemy unit at Range1 suffers 1 wound (not mortal strike but same effect). He can also force a unit at range 1 to take a wound at the end of the round.
--Kethra: Can Skill to select a friendly unit anywhere on the board to potentially cause 1-2 wounds to that unit and enemy units within range 1-2 of the chosen unit. Can also flatout add a mortal strike to her attacks.

Universal:
--Reaping Blade: Blanks are deadly!
--White Dice: 1/12 chance to cause a Mortal Strike on their own (admittedly i rarely see this one)

That is a LOT of ways to just ignore armor. While only the DK's actually have a resistance to mortal strikes (subtract 1 mortal strike when defending). And this game is fresh, there isnt even that many options yet. Also feel like i missed another source of ignoring armor.

All of these options are reasonably cheap too, while the crazy high damage approach to just burn through the armor can easily take half your list.
i hope they stop adding more ways to cause mortal strikes (or similar effects). Armor really feels like it has little value right now except in basic infantry vs basic infantry. Or offer ways to defend against it, that would work too.

Edit: i did miss one, Eagle-banner bearer for Daqans
And Deathcaller.

The cynic in me says these are all great ways to get people to play horde/large armies over elite/small armies so they have to buy more product.

Or it's getting people afraid of armor avoidance so that when FFG drops that zombie dragon who ignores mortal strikes or whatnot, it's that much more scary.

Ankaur Maro loves this news. An efficient way to get 2-4 mortal strike kills... 2-4 of his reanimates. He'll just bring that many back.

Seems like a mechanic to keep armies focused on using large numbers of mooks and a select few extraordinary/odd units.

What do you envision the lists will look like in the future? I feel like they will be pretty diverse within the 200 points. It makes sense to have some blobs of infantry, to have a hero, to have some fast cavalry and some ranged units. Mortal strikes will be useful against the armored targets, but they really reduce the damage you do against infantry. Won't the list building itself balance this out a bit? You'll need a bit of everything?

If all Daqan does is spam cavalry, I can see a lot of mortal strike lists developing to counter it. Which will make them start adding some differentiation to their lists to compete. Hopefully ending up with lists that are not one-trick ponies.

It seem balanced to me. Armor is really freaking good considering how lethal combat is on average, and Mortal Strikes are useless against 1/1 units. If Armor was not checked by Mortal Strikes there would too often be times where units just couldn't damage another model. I've seen this already with Archers firing at Hawthorne, it's not very fun

But I do feel for your poor Golems They need another half point of health or something.

1 minute ago, Glucose98 said:

What do you envision the lists will look like in the future? I feel like they will be pretty diverse within the 200 points. It makes sense to have some blobs of infantry, to have a hero, to have some fast cavalry and some ranged units. Mortal strikes will be useful against the armored targets, but they really reduce the damage you do against infantry. Won't the list building itself balance this out a bit? You'll need a bit of everything?

If all Daqan does is spam cavalry, I can see a lot of mortal strike lists developing to counter it. Which will make them start adding some differentiation to their lists to compete. Hopefully ending up with lists that are not one-trick ponies.

Well said! There probably aren't enough games of Runewars happening right now, and not enough of the product released, for the meta to develop as fast as it does in other games. Everyone is still just feeling things out

31 minutes ago, Click5 said:

Well said! There probably aren't enough games of Runewars happening right now, and not enough of the product released, for the meta to develop as fast as it does in other games. Everyone is still just feeling things out

X-wing certainly did not follow this path however. I think the mechanics of this game make it quite a bit different though. Initial positioning and successful charging seem to be the dominant factor. I'm hoping it that it promotes diversity in lists, we shall see. There will be some meta-breaking stuff eventually, its nearly inevitable.

@Vineheart01

Deathcaller too.

And I feel piercing strike for the exhaust to reduce armor by 1 minimum 2 is meh.

Makes me running Rune Golems in a large group pretty offputting since I can lose half of them surprisingly easy.

5 hours ago, Glucose98 said:

If all Daqan does is spam cavalry, I can see a lot of mortal strike lists developing to counter it. Which will make them start adding some differentiation to their lists to compete. Hopefully ending up with lists that are not one-trick ponies.

After facing my first all cavalry Daqan list my very next list had 5 ways to deal mortal strikes, guess what the all cavalry has been modified to a mixed one again.

So far this game is pretty well balanced in regards to having hard counters to the various builds out there. It'll be interesting to see how people start to counter an all archer wind rune elven list. Waiqar seem to have this one covered already as the archers cant kill as fast as the regeneration occurs. So again balanced lists are encouraged.

5 hours ago, Glucose98 said:

If all Daqan does is spam cavalry , I can see a lot of mortal strike lists developing to counter it. Which will make them start adding some differentiation to their lists to compete. Hopefully ending up with lists that are not one-trick ponies.

Pun intended? Or happy accident?

11 minutes ago, Curlycross said:

Pun intended? Or happy accident?

Happy accident

14 hours ago, Vineheart01 said:

In light of the new Uthuk hero also having ways to ignore armor pretty reliably, i decided to tally up all the ways you can ignore armor in this game. It felt like there was a lot...i wasnt wrong. It almost feels easier to ignore armor than do high damage right now.

Daqan:
--Heavy Crossbowmen: One doublesurge per ranged attack adds a Mort (range 1-3)
--Piercing Shots upgrade: Discard [R] or [M] at range 1-3 when attacking to add a Mort
--Eagle-Banner Bearer: Spend any number of Inspiration tokens to add a Mort

Waiqar:
--Carrion Lancer ability: Requires blight so it can be difficult to pull off, but it can easily add multiple morts if it does trigger.
--Ankaur Maro: Can add a mortal strike to ranged attack
--DKs: Adds a mortal strike to melee attack (also a great candidate for Reaping Blade since they have 2R1B, which is blank prone)
--Touch of Death: Deals mortal wounds equal to Stable runes at the end of each round.
--Deathcaller: Skill to spend a blight at range 1-5 to cause Stable rune wounds.

Latari:
--Aliana: Straight up adds Mortal Strike for existing
--Leonx Riders: Can reliably add a Mortal Strike for 2surge once per melee

Uthuk: (Still mostly unknown but they do have ways revealed already)
--Ravos: Once per melee attack, each enemy unit at Range1 suffers 1 wound (not mortal strike but same effect). He can also force a unit at range 1 to take a wound at the end of the round.
--Kethra: Can Skill to select a friendly unit anywhere on the board to potentially cause 1-2 wounds to that unit and enemy units within range 1-2 of the chosen unit. Can also flatout add a mortal strike to her attacks.

Universal:
--Reaping Blade: Blanks are deadly!
--White Dice: 1/12 chance to cause a Mortal Strike on their own (admittedly i rarely see this one)

That is a LOT of ways to just ignore armor. While only the DK's actually have a resistance to mortal strikes (subtract 1 mortal strike when defending). And this game is fresh, there isnt even that many options yet. Also feel like i missed another source of ignoring armor.

All of these options are reasonably cheap too, while the crazy high damage approach to just burn through the armor can easily take half your list.
i hope they stop adding more ways to cause mortal strikes (or similar effects). Armor really feels like it has little value right now except in basic infantry vs basic infantry. Or offer ways to defend against it, that would work too.

Edit: i did miss one, Eagle-banner bearer for Daqans
And Deathcaller.

You missed Ardus for Waiqar. With the right build and flanking, you can get him to 4 guaranteed and up to 8 mortal strikes in one hit.

2 hours ago, Aetheriac said:

You missed Ardus for Waiqar. With the right build and flanking, you can get him to 4 guaranteed and up to 8 mortal strikes in one hit.

What is the right build for Ardus? Ardus fury and Fortuna's dice, is that right?

And a blue dice for flanking to create more surges?

9 hours ago, Aetheriac said:

You missed Ardus for Waiqar. With the right build and flanking, you can get him to 4 guaranteed and up to 8 mortal strikes in one hit.

that would fall both under the White Dice and Carrion Lancer, since he himself cant do anything else to cause mortal strikes.
He's using a lancer ability, hes not the owner of it.

Plus, that would be not only pretty hard to flank with him against a unit with blight but youre asking for a perfect roll w/o rerolls AND have a lancer nearby. How often would this actually happen?

On 9/13/2017 at 2:13 AM, Rhargar said:

What is the right build for Ardus? Ardus fury and Fortuna's dice, is that right?

And a blue dice for flanking to create more surges?

Yes

On 9/13/2017 at 8:24 AM, Vineheart01 said:

that would fall both under the White Dice and Carrion Lancer, since he himself cant do anything else to cause mortal strikes.
He's using a lancer ability, hes not the owner of it.

Plus, that would be not only pretty hard to flank with him against a unit with blight but youre asking for a perfect roll w/o rerolls AND have a lancer nearby. How often would this actually happen?

I never said it was frequent, but if it were to hit, it would be phenomenal. Guaranteed 4+ mortal wounds is nice though, 5-6 is common. One shotting Rune Golems and trays of cavalry is fun. I had Ardus plow through 4x1 Oathsworn on a flank while they were engaged with some reanimates. He took out 5 units, in one hit, leaving just 3 for the reanimates to mop up after.