Strong Gaming

Lich Lord Venethrax From when I started playing in MK2, Venethrax always seemed like he was about being a counter to legion. The transition to MK3 drastically changed his kit, but made him a counter for all Hordes instead of a single faction. From the first time I saw his new spell list and feat, I knew I would want to be playing a lot of Venethrax in MK3. He encourages bringing jacks and looks like he can actually make it work.   Stat Line and Abilities Venethrax has a solid defensive statline. DEF 15 and ARM 17 is a fairly solid statline to be starting with, however he is on a medium base and his army is likely to have difficulty blocking line of sight to him.  Unfortunately, he doesn't have much in the way of additional defensive tech, so he generally needs to make sure he is sitting on some focus if he is playing forward and his offensive capabilities will frequently encourage this. If he needs to get into the mix and do some work himself, Venethrax is

As always, participating in the scrum resulted in good times.  This was also my best finish in the scrum so far.  I ended with a 4-1 record and my tie breakers managed to push me into fourth place overall.  I am not sure anyone would have predicted that kind of a result for me, but I am super excited because the top four finishers got special custom dice as a prize.  I started the scrum hoping for a shot at them, but thought my chances were done after I lost in round 1. My list pairing was interesting.  I took the Skarre1 Dark Host list with the thought that it could handle high defense or high armor.  I honestly wasn't sure what type of list would scare me off dropping it.  Oddly enough, that safety net was supposed to be my off list.  I wanted to run Venethrax as much as possible and figured he would be an easy drop any time I saw a Hordes faction.  The funny thing is, I think my Skarre list ended up skewing my ability to drop Venethrax.  Anytime I looked at my opponent's l

Round 5 - vs Brian Cortese (Minions) Scenario: Outlast Leading up to this game, I was excited that I was going against another Hordes faction and could have a chance to run Venethrax again. However, as I examined his lists, I realized he would likely be playing Maelok with the Sacral Vault and Venethrax would have real issues with that. As a result, I dropped Skarre for the fourth time in this scrum. If I had been told going into the scrum that I would play a Hordes opponent every round, but only play Venethrax once I would have been greatly surprised. I am not certain if this speaks to the power of the Skarre Dark Host list, or if it means Venethrax doesn’t quite have the plays I am looking for in Black Industries. Here are the lists: Pirate Queen Skarre - WJ: +28 - Skarlock Thrall - PC: 0 - Kraken - PC: 36 (Battlegroup Points Used: 28) Wraith Engine - PC: 15 Bane Lord Tartarus - PC: 0 Soul Trapper - PC: 1 Bane Knights - Leader & 9 Grunts: 15 Bane Riders - Leader &

Round 4 - vs Chris Woodward (Trolls) Scenario: Recon I looked over Chris's two lists.  He was running a Jarl Storm of the North list and a Madrak1 Band of Heroes list.  I knew that Jarl would be a bad matchup for him into my Black Industries list, so I figured he would drop Madrak into me.  My first instinct was to play Skarre again, with the thought that the sea of banes would overwhelm his troops.  However, the more I thought about it, I thought Venethrax does a lot to counter what his list does and he didn't have so many troops that I needed to be worried about getting completely overrun by them.  I ended up dropping Venethrax (finally).  Credit goes to Mark Howard for getting photographic evidence of this game in progress.  It is now a couple weeks since I played this game and the photos are helping me recall what happened.  I am hoping that I recall everything that happened correctly. I won the roll and chose to go second.  The terrain was arranged with a trench plac

Lists and Prep I have a habit of wanting to run lists that I have created rather than lists that are proven and known as competitive. For this scrum, I wanted to bring one list that is a known, solid list and one that I created. The proven list was going to be Coven running the dark host theme. I was fairly committed to this until I saw a Skarre1 list for dark host on the Cryx Facebook page that I thought looked both strong and fun to play. I ended up using this as my dark host list. Theme: Dark Host 3 / 3 Free Cards 75 / 75 Army Pirate Queen Skarre - WJ: +28 - Skarlock Thrall - PC: 0 - Kraken - PC: 36 (Battlegroup Points Used: 28) Wraith Engine - PC: 15 Bane Lord Tartarus - PC: 0 Soul Trapper - PC: 1 Bane Knights - Leader & 9 Grunts: 15 Bane Riders - Leader & 4 Grunts: 20 Bane Warriors - Leader & 9 Grunts: 16 - Bane Warrior Officer & Standard - Officer & Standard: 0 I enjoyed the idea of being able to use feat to have an ARM 24, P+S 24 Kraken. If