Today we have two batreps. I played my Unstable list, which seems to be working decently well. Church runs Uthuk first followed by Waiqar, both lists are prototype B-lists.

First game is capture the artifacts/unprepared.

I have initiative so I choose red. Terrain is fay glade, crumbling wall, and totem.

My list

197/200

Maegan Cyndewin [36] 1x1
Fortunas Dice [6]
Arcane Mastery [2]
Total Unit Cost: 44

Deepwood Archers [17] 2x1
Fire Rune [7]
Total Unit Cost: 24

Deepwood Archers [17] 2x1
Fire Rune [7]
Total Unit Cost: 24

Aliana of Summersong [33] 1x1
Malcornes Bequest [6]
Ambush Predator [3]
Total Unit Cost: 42

Darnati Warriors [19] 2x1
Corruption Rune [4]
Total Unit Cost: 23

Darnati Warriors [19] 2x1
Corruption Rune [4]
Total Unit Cost: 23

Aymhelin Scions [14] 1x1
Vicious Roots [3]
Total Unit Cost: 17

Church list

199/200

Flesh Rippers [38] 2x2
Moment of Inspiration [5]
Total Unit Cost: 43

Flesh Rippers [38] 2x2
Moment of Inspiration [5]
Total Unit Cost: 43

Spined Threshers [28] 2x1
Scuttling Horror [3]
Total Unit Cost: 31

Spined Threshers [28] 2x1
Scuttling Horror [3]
Total Unit Cost: 31

Berserkers [37] 3x2
Cacophony Reaver [6]
Bannerscamp [4]
Rallying Shrieker [4]
Total Unit Cost: 51

Setup: It's a well known fact that you don't play terrain games with the Uthuk, but without Ravos present to terrorize the masses, I decided to go for it. Church built a list far above the rule of 8, and started fairly spread out.

Turn 1: The uthuk hold until after i5, waiting to avoid deadly archer fire, then surge forward. My scion rustles into the crumbled wall and prepares to meet a pair of threshers head on. Meagan tries to sidestep oncoming rippers but falls short.

The darnati corruption runes fall short with only two unstable up. One fire rune makes its mark and severely wounds a ripper.

Turn 2: The thresher walk forward and reduce the armor 4 scion to splinters in one blow. The rippers jump eagerly in as well but fair much worse for damage. A morale caused immobillize keeps the archers from shifting away from the rippers and blasting them with fire.

A shift charge from darnati and a corruption rune put damage up on the central rippers. Meagan zaps two rippers and surges damage to the threshers.

The zerkers go for a flank but do not see Alliana lurking in the shadows on their flank.

Turn 3: Alliana sends the zerkers running with a flee in terror and heavy casualties. The archers lay into them even more.

Meagan takes two wounds, putting her up to 3, but drops several more rippers.

The archers fall to ripper claws, but the rippers are losing health fast.

The darnati keep swinging and chucking banes with corruption rune.

Turn 4: Missing this turn, and it was a weird one. Church scuttled out of the crumbling wall, but my darnati charged in, so flank charged the zoid, killing one.

Other things involving things dying happened elsewhere.

Turn 5: Question? Can scuttling horror leave terrain when engaged? Terrain says it's your front edge, and zoids can only scuttle sideways. We played it as no. My interpretation is, if you shift out of terrain while engaged, you must be touching the terrain with your front edge, since you can only disengage by shifting back. This would be most logical and make scuttling horror not ridiculous. Interruption over.

Lots of goofy moves this turn, church did some nice synchronizing. My archers keep shredding the threshers fairly well.

Turn 6: Alliana and the archers finish off one thresher, but the darnati cant hold against the other for long.

My last darnati in the wall falls. Church moves his rippers to advance on the archers.

Turn 7: the Thresher finishes the darnati, while alliana clears banes. Church catches my archers with a long march, preventing a move, but they still reform to prevent flanking.

Turn 8: Thresher scuttles in (it's actually fairly easy to see coming). Alliana hits it for two wounds, the thresher swings back...and blanks out!

The archers take two wounds, back up, and the game ends.

6-5 Latari

Afterthoughts: Uthuk are good, but they need heroes. Too much tray width made it hard for church to get good angles in combat, and no rapid fire wrecking ball (Ravos) made it very hard to collapse flanks.

Fire rune and corruption rune running in pairs is really good. You need malcorne to make it work, but the reward in damage and banes is worth it.

After trying meagan for awhile as a melee hero I've returned to Fdice ranged meagan. With enough fortress units she puts out massive splash damage.

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Battle 2

Maelstrom/volatile runes, but we forgot the runes, so played a deathmatch.

Latari vs Waiqar

My list

Same as before

Church list

3x2 reanimates profane banner

2x2 wraiths

3x2 Death knights column tactics, magarth

2x1 death knights reaping blade

2x1 death knights rank discipline

Setup: I have initiative again, I fortress my army in a clump. Church sets up to make a fast flank on the left and a hammer on the right.

Turn 1: Church keeps his units clear of my ranged abilities. I set up ranged defenses but overstep with my center darnati unit.

The scion gets cozy in the ruins, while Alliana prowls stealthily to the right.

Turn 2: This picture is missing. Reanimates moved forward, and get immobilized by corruption rune. The wraiths move and reform to face the darnati. The death knights move and reform, staring Alliana down. Meagan shifts and rallies, stacking two inspiration.

Turn 3: The wraiths charge the darnati, taking a tray. Church does not close in and uses the reform to face Meagan.

My archers fire on the wraiths but suffer from wraith rerolling, causing less than optimal damage. The second archers have to shoot the reanimates, profane banner is pretty cool.

My scion survives the 2x1 death knights charge and drops one night, along with a stun and immobilize, adding to the immobilize already on them.

Meagan charged the wraiths and rolls 2 hits and 4 surges, the wraiths reroll puts her to 2 hits and 2 surges after Fdice. Wraiths reroll really hurts. Still dropped to 1 tray after everything.

The death knights decide Alliana isn't worth their time after she shifts away, and focus on breaking the right flank.

The 2x1 death knights finish the scion, but are tangled in vines.

Turn 4: The Darnati counter-march the reanimates. The death knight hammer marches into my right darnati, who shift back and hit the death knights with an immobilize.

Alliana keeps prowling. Meagan finishes the wraiths, surging damage to the knights and dropping them to 1 tray.

Turn 5: Picture missing. Meagan charges the death knights, doing decent damage. Alliana closes in cautiously while the death knights crush the darnati.

The reanimates and remaining darnati trade tiny single threat attacks. The archers keep raining arrows but have trouble chipping death knights.

Turn 6: Meagan finishes the rear death knights. Alliana hits the death knights after they turn to face her. She kills 3 trays, 2 from ambush Alliana. Also takes a wound from magarth.

Church catches my left archers with a march from terrain, they had a shift reform dialed so it worked out.

Turn 7: Picture missing. Meagan reforms. Darnati win the side to side with the reanimates thanks to corruption rune.

Alliana does damage to the death knights, then dies. The death knights fall to archer fire.

The single tray death knight charges my archers and scores 4 damage thanks to reaping blade.

Turn 8: This is the final turn, ended a 7/4 I think.

Afterthoughts:

I've never seen so many banes going around. This game the corruption runes really did some work.

Alliana is really great, on her first swing, after that her damage is lackluster when facing death knights, being immune to first mortal strike. Still a great malcorne wielder though.

Profane banner is awesome, and pretty annoying to deal with, except that it's a relatively weak figure upgrade and is easy to snipe out. Seems useful for getting wraiths into position.

Wraiths are glass cannons with a a fairly small boom. But what they don't do in melee power they do in defense. Rerolls killed meagans splash damage for 2 turns, and fizzled a few fire runes too.

After playing, church pointed out that both his armies had ignored the rule of 8 (no more than 8 threat wide for all melee units) and he suffered for it in both matches. Could be the algorithm works, but needs more testing.

Thanks for reading!

Edit: Second game was a 6/5, the surviving death knights killed Alliana and moved off camera. Just realized that.

42 minutes ago, Jukey said:

Question    ? Can scuttling horror leave terrain when engaged? Terrain says it's your front edge, and zoids can only scuttle sideways. We played it as no. My interpretatio  n is, if you shift out of terrain while engaged, you   must be touching the terrain with your front edge, since you can only disengage by shifting back. This would be most logical and make scuttling horror not  r  idicu  lous. 

Makes sense to me.

Upon further reading, I think I may be wrong. There is no rule that says your front edge must be touching the terrain when you disengage by exiting terrain. All it says is, "When a unit exits a piece of terrain that an enemy is touching, it counts as disengaging from that enemy, receiving the panic token and suffering any other game effects that would trigger from disengaging." We know that if you try to march while engaged, that action will be cancelled, so the only way to leave terrain while engaged is to perform a shift. The special rules for shift say, "If the unit exits a piece of terrain by performing a shift ( ? ) action, any part of either the unit’s front or side edge must be touching the edge of the terrain. So even if you disengage by exiting terrain with a shift, you can choose to have your side or front touching the terrain (at least according to rules as written).

I still maintain that Spined Threshers cannot exit terrain when using the shift from Scuttling Horror, but that is based on different reasoning.

Quote

Disengage: To disengage, the unit must perform the shift in the direction directly opposite of its contacted edge for that engagement.

When in terrain, anyone touching that terrain is considered to be contacting your front edge. To me, that implies that you have to be able to shift backward to disengage.

I think @Xelto pointing out the disengage clause sequences it out properly.

Unit is in terrain, a unit of the opponent engages. Now they are engaged front to front as per terrain engagement rules. The unit shifts, so terrain shift rule says side or front must be touching. But, because of engagement, the disengage clause occurs, so the unit must exit with its front touching the terrain.

This seems to work for RAW and RAI.

I haven't given the Rule of 8 much thought because I always include a ranged attacker. With only Kethra as that option, Uthuk really need to plan out their lists.

My current 12 tray Reanimates + 3 Lancers and a 4 tray Reanimate Archers is sitting at 7 threat and a ranged unit, so that seems to be fit the optimal configuration.

2 hours ago, Parakitor said:

I haven't given the Rule of 8 much thought because I always include a ranged attacker. With only Kethra as that option, Uthuk really need to plan out their lists.

My current 12 tray Reanimates + 3 Lancers and a 4 tray Reanimate Archers is sitting at 7 threat and a ranged unit, so that seems to be fit the optimal configuration.

My experience has been around 8 wide so that is what I’ve posted. It may actually be Rule of 9. I haven’t tried testing that

The rule should probably be phrased more of “You will not realiably bring more than 8 trays wide of melee to bear on an opposing army on any one turn” more than “don’t build more than 8 wide of melee in an army.” You can build an army with more, but realize that some will be held back at first

That being said, I cause a ****pile for myself when I violate that rule.

Hmm, my version of rule of 8 is a bit more complex. It's more the rule of 5/8/12

I think you need minimum of 8 melee threat in an army, however, 8 trays are not necessary. There should always be at least 5 tray width of melee in the build, but equaling 8 threat or more via brutal and column tactics and such. An ideal build will have 12 threat total with 3 to 5 of it being ranged units.

Could be unnecessary, but this algorithm has been working for me lately.

50 minutes ago, Jukey said:

Hmm, my version of rule of 8 is a bit more complex. It's more the rule of 5/8/12

I think you need minimum of 8 melee threat in an army, however, 8 trays are not necessary. There should always be at least 5 tray width of melee in the build, but equaling 8 threat or more via brutal and column tactics and such. An ideal build will have 12 threat total with 3 to 5 of it being ranged units.

Could be unnecessary, but this algorithm has been working for me lately.

You also have an army with several ranged threats. For Latari that seems like a good guide.