Crab People

By Darth Matthew, in Runewars Tactics

48 points, 4 trays of spined threshers.

Doing damage x3, re-rolls all dice, +1 re-roll 1 die.

Defense 2, with 20 wounds.

Is there any way to kill this unit that is in the same ball park in price?

I think I'm going to resort to:

Blight spam. (reanimate archers, carrion, blight banners, Barron Z, and Latari Assassins)

I keep seeing this 4 tray block plow through everything.

I think the best approach would be throwing lots of banes at it. Corruption rune does this decently, so do reanimate archers with blight.

Stuns can really mess up threshers, reducing damage and nullifying charges. Immobilize is good too.

A lone carrion lancer with rank discipline can 1 shot a blighted thresher with a good surge roll.

Executioner will kill it quickly, trouble is keeping an executioner alive and unstunned while going toe to toe with threshers.

Latari can send 2 sacrificial scions in while archers drop fire runes and arrows on them.

None of these are great solutions but might help.

Closest I can think of is 2x2 Lancers with master crafted and combat ingenuity. Cieling damage of a single attack reaches 14. (4 roll, 2 surge to hit, 1 dialed with threat 2)

Cost is 56, so 8 higher.

Having Ardus as an escort to dup the surge damage is really nice and helps his attack profile greatly.

14 minutes ago, Xquer said:

Closest I can think of is 2x2 Lancers with master crafted and combat ingenuity. Cieling damage of a single attack reaches 14. (4 roll, 2 surge to hit, 1 dialed with threat 2)

Cost is 56, so 8 higher.

Having Ardus as an escort to dup the surge damage is really nice and helps his attack profile greatly.

As opposed to the 2x2 with brutal 2, dishing out up to 15 damage and a morale 2 test a turn?

And swinging at init 4 instead of 5.

I think it might be the closest, but it isn't very close.

I think 2 trays of reanimate archers and 2 tray carrion lancer (51 points) could do it.

The init 5 shoot and init 5 fight helps, as you put down blight, fight with the lance (hoping for surges or hits), and then the following turn at init 4 spend the blights to keep your lancers alive longer.

Blight spam does look like the answer.

You just have to make sure the rest of your list can hold off the rest of his list, and keep your archers pumping out blights. But, at least that's a fairly fair fight.

I think it's 2 2x1's you've really gotta worry about. The 2x2 is fierce, but at least it's a lot of points tied up in one place, not swarming over you like locusts!

On 9/17/2018 at 5:12 AM, Jukey said:

I think the best approach would be throwing lots of banes at it. Corruption rune does this decently, so do reanimate archers with blight.

Stuns can really mess up threshers, reducing damage and nullifying charges. Immobilize is good too.

A lone carrion lancer with rank discipline can 1 shot a blighted thresher with a good surge roll.

Executioner will kill it quickly, trouble is keeping an executioner alive and unstunned while going toe to toe with threshers.

Latari can send 2 sacrificial scions in while archers drop fire runes and arrows on them.

None of these are great solutions but might help.

The problem in my experience is that basically most of these solutions are throwing half your army at one 50 point unit. Ditto for 2x 2x1 Threshers at 60 points. It's not that they're unkillable, it's that they require the attention of so much of your army that whatever's left gets steamrolled by 3/4s of their army in the meantime, which then moves on to help out the Threshers.

Eagerly awaiting a pre-Worlds FAQ/errata, hopefully soon so people don't get lists invalidated without prep time to adjust.

The Uthuk are one of the best straight-up damage dealers in the game, so you're not going to find a unit that can just plug in and stand up to them one versus one at that damage level. Even a comparable 2x2 of Siege units is just going to bludgeon themselves out with the Uthuk barely winning. To take out the units, you have to have a way to outdeploy/outmaneuver, and then outdamage them. And I think that is the strength of a 2x2 or 3x2 of siege. They have enough health that they can move across the map, find a target, engage, and start doing damage. And I agree that the 2x2 is less feared than a couple of 2x1s. Uthuk in general don't like banes, so I agree with a number of the bane solutions. When your damage is 2 dice plus brutal versus 3 dice without, you lose an awful lot more potential when a blight token takes away, and when some of the damage is the charge/hit modifier, losing it via a stun is rough. Threshers hit hard, but there isn't a lot of subtlety to them. If they're dancing, they aren't doing damage, and you know pretty much where they are going to be from turn to turn if they keep moving.

The worst possible option for you is to have a unit standing there trading out blows with them, particularly one that is more expensive. Multiple rounds favors the Threshers. Knowing this, you've got a few options:

1. Tarpit them with a cheap unit like a single Scion. The early rally/armor up dial is extremely helpful for keeping the banes off and forcing the opponent to engage an extra round, and then they have to deal with the immoblize token in some way. And a 2x2 is not necessary faster at bringing down that Scion than a 2x1, so you're benefiting from tying up more points of the opponent's list than if you had to deal with a 2x1. From there, you have two options. You either feed them the Scion and focus on killing everything else in the list, while avoiding/minimzing any Thresher contact the rest of the game. Or, you can use that block time to fire enough range shots into them to bring them down. It just depends upon what the opponent's list is.

2. Bane them to death. Covered above by others.

3. Use a big powerful unit of your own with Dispatch runner. An late charge followed by a late Dispatch, followed by an early Dispatch and a regular attack should finish them off. After all, you should be using Dispatch Runner on a unit that hits for 10+ damage, so you drop a Thresher per attack.

Some combination thereof might work even better. Banes might help with the tarpit, or with your big powerful unit trading more effectively.

@Vergilius Those are great suggestiins, but the question is, will those tactics serve you well against other factions or against Uthuk lists without Spined Threshers? Honestly, I think so. Lots of armies have a big, scary unit that is susceptible to tarpits. Banes are always good, though probably less useful against lists with multiple small units. Dispatch Runner looks like it's popular even without consideration for the Uthuk.

55 minutes ago, Budgernaut said:

@Vergilius Those are great suggestiins, but the question is, will those tactics serve you well against other factions or against Uthuk lists without Spined Threshers? Honestly, I think so. Lots of armies have a big, scary unit that is susceptible to tarpits. Banes are always good, though probably less useful against lists with multiple small units. Dispatch Runner looks like it's popular even without consideration for the Uthuk.

Those are my thoughts as well. In my local community, I'm the one that plays Latari/Uthuk, so my games end up being largely against Daqan/Waiqar. Pretty much everything serves against those factions as well.

Edited by Vergilius