Yeah, cos they suck (unfortunately, as xbow units look cool)!
If you want static shooting get an arbalest or 2 - longer range and more damage output
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Yeah, I got the idea of them. One thing I’ve noticed in the three games I played so far is that if you have only one battlegroup which can cause serious damage, it’s pretty easy for your opponent to deploy in such a manner as to avoid them getting into the good stuff. Your shooters might help with that a bit, forcing them to move into bad positions, but I don’t know whether that’ll work out to be honest.
Maybe the artillery does more for you than I give it credit for, I dunno. At any rate, it can’t hurt to test it a few times, right?
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I play Brothermark and I’d agree with @Sceleris, crossbows are simply not a good choice for ranged attacks. They don’t hit very often at the best of times and even less when moving or the target is in cover. I have had some success running arbalests; with two units and 4+ to hit you cause damage most turns.
I’ve also found using a spearmen horde with the Brew of Strength does give you hitting power and durability, particularly with bane chant, heal, veteran command, rally, battle hymns and inspiring available.
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I like measured force on something like a pike or spear horde - decent number of attacks, will iften hang around a long time and means you can BC the flanking units!
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Still updating and testing. What do you all think of this list? I’ve added in some lightning bolt today deal with gladestalker spam, which is otherwise tough to take off.
The Order of the Brothermark [2300]
Villein Penitents (Infantry) Legion (60) [190]
Villein Penitents (Infantry) Legion (60) [190]
Paladin Monster Slayers (Infantry) Horde (40) [270]
Two-handed Weapons [10]
Healing Brew [5]
Villein Bowmen (Infantry) Horde (40) [165]
Villein Skirmishers (Cavalry) Troop (5) [95]
Exemplar Chaplain (Hero (Infantry)) 1 [95]
Battle Hymns [5]
Inspiring Talisman [20]
Heal (2) [10]
Exemplar Hunter (Hero (Infantry)) 1 [140]
Order of the Lone Wolf [15]
Gnome-Glass Shield [10]
War-Wizard (Hero (Infantry)) 1 [100]
The Boomstick [25]
Lightning Bolt (6) [0]
War-Wizard (Hero (Infantry)) 1 [75]
Lightning Bolt (4) [0]
High Chaplain Augustus [1] (Hero (Infantry)) 1 [145]
Bane Chant (3) [0]
Heal (5) [0]
[F] The Defenders of Righteousness (Defenders of Righteousness) [1] (Cavalry) Regiment (10) [240]
Aegis Fragment [5]
Blessing of the Gods [20]
[F] The Defenders of Righteousness (Defenders of Righteousness) [1] (Cavalry) Regiment (10) [220]
Aegis Fragment [5]
[F] Sir Roderick Demonbane (Defenders of Righteousness) [1] (Hero (Titan)) 1 [375]
Aegis Fragment [5]
Blade of Slashing [5]
Heal (4) [15]
2 Likes
Oh no, the Penitents can come in Legions??? 
No additional Villein Skirmishers yet? I thought another unit or two of those would be near the top of things you’d want to add in.
Speaking from team-human, I think the Villein Bowmen might be a disappointment for you. Phalanx can make them a little harder to disrupt and dislodge, but hitting on 5+ is just rough. I can dig a regiment of archers as a cheap unluck or objective camper, but it is not something I am actively trying to fit in to my test lists as our shooting is so abysmal.
When we had your NA vs my KOM, we had your Ice Kin vs my multiple groups of Bowmen, and triple LB Wizards AND we got into a shooting war out in the open… and your Kin still handily cleaned my clock. So I don’t think the lightning bolts or bow shots will be all that effective against Gladestalkers, but I don’t know for sure as my experience against the elvish shooting is pretty limited.
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The penitent legion backed up by a chaplain with battle hymns turn into effectively -/28 units. They’re nasty and cheap.
I really like the skirmishers and will probably try to find a way to get in another troop. With the bowmen, in my early testing they have done the best at points per damage given/received of anything in my list. On paper they’re awful, but in practice the two times I’ve run them they’ve performed really well. Maybe lucky rolling? We’ll see.
I’m debating going to Dragonfall in October. If I do, I’ll need to find a way to deal with gladestalkers. Lightning bolt seems to be the only option, or getting up in them quickly to disrupt. Maybe the wings on the hunter? I don’t have anything else fast enough to get there in time, and countershooting doesn’t seem to be that great. I don’t know.
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You are way better at planning and list building than I. I think it might be helpful to determine how much you want to commit to fighting the elf meta vs your own core list and plans though. Finding that split and the available points might better determine the list route you want to try? Gladestalkers are still bows, so three avenues for list building come to my mind for the Brothermark to counter that:
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Commit more to Iron Resolve, High Defense units and your Heal spells, which you are already running, and should “go farther” healing high defense units. Even a few more Aegis Fragments might be good investments. Bows are bows, and might struggle to get through high defense units. Units of Ogre Palace Guards, Def5 Paladin Monster Slayers and even Veteran Swordsmen might be able to threaten / eat fire for a turn or two, allowing your heavy stuff to get into position against the Gladestalkers or grab objectives. Against non-elf armies, these units should still fare ok and still have plenty of uses. Each one is 100+ points though, so this could get expensive and would likely require some larger list changes to accommodate.
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Double down on your high Nerve, running another Penitent group, or run two 2h Paladin Hordes and one Penitent Legion. Just give the elves a lot to shoot through. These large units would also help in the scenarios and holding objectives I’d think. Bows should be good against Def3 Penitents though, so this isn’t without some danger, but running another horde or something might be a good idea generally.
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One final idea is Heavy Arbalest. I have my KoM version (Ballista) as something that I want to test down the road as the main source of shooting for a list. I don’t think either of us has found much success with war machines yet, but these bolt throwers hit on 4’s and outrange bows and should get more consistent damage for you than the LB wizards would vs units. Swapping a few war machines in instead of the current Wizards might be a cheap way to get some good anti-Gladestalker firepower in.
Just some thoughts.
1 Like
Thanks–this is all really helpful. Lots to think about.
The main advantage I see of siege artillery vs arbalests is in taking down flyers or monsters because the combination of ignore cover, blast d3+1 (vs d3 for arbalest), and piercing(3) vs piercing(2) makes siege artillery worth it. They’re not as good vs regular hordes of infantry or counter-shooting (where arbalests have the advantage), but my list handles those options pretty well already.
It’s a solid list, lots of bodies and has loads of cool Brothermark-centric tools at hand. My two thoughts, one small and one big:
- Swap the Monster Slayers’ healing brew to fire-oil on the Bowmen. Mediocre one use item becomes a significant boost in shooting effectiveness against a large number of units (and I guess in combat too but peasants
) - If you strangle the list, you can free up 100+ points to buy another unit. My money is on a second Skirmisher troop to be chaff / suicide into shooters:
Defenders of Righteousness [1] (Formation):
Paladin Knights (F) (Regiment)
Paladin Knights (F) (Regiment)
High Paladin on Dragon (F)
+
Villein Penitents (Legion)
Villein Penitents (Legion)
Paladin Monster Slayers (Horde) - Exchange shields for two-handed weapons
Villein Bowmen (Horde) - Fire-Oil
Villein Skirmishers (Troop)
Villein Skirmishers (Troop)
+
High Chaplain Augustus [1]
Exemplar Hunter - Gnome-Glass Shield, Order of the Lone Wolf
Exemplar Chaplain - Inspiring Talisman, Upgrade with Battle Hymns, Heal (2)
War-Wizard - Replace Fireball with Lightning Bolt (4)
War-Wizard - Replace Fireball with Lightning Bolt (4)
-------------------------
Total Unit Strength: 24
Total Units: 14
Total Points: 2300
The shield on the Hunter is cute! I’d be tempted to give the Dragon a staying stone + aegis fragment for the same points, simply because the Hunter isn’t Def 4+, but given the scouting it’s probably a good idea to give the plucky little hero a leg up.
Go Gauntlet on the Hunter - (D3+5)×2 v Individuals on sp6 scout isn’t shabby?
War wizards are one of the few mage types where i wouldn’t automatically swap out LB for FB - esp if you can squeeze in diadem
1 Like
I got in a fun game last night vs @TastyBagel and tested the following:
The Order of the Brothermark [2300]
Villein Penitents (Infantry) Regiment (20) [75]
Villein Penitents (Infantry) Regiment (20) [75]
Villein Penitents (Infantry) Regiment (20) [75]
Villein Penitents (Infantry) Regiment (20) [75]
Paladin Monster Slayers (Infantry) Horde (40) [255]
Villein Bowmen (Infantry) Horde (40) [170]
Fire-Oil [5]
Order of the Abyssal Hunt (Cavalry) Regiment (10) [240]
Blade of Slashing [5]
Order of the Abyssal Hunt (Cavalry) Regiment (10) [240]
Mace of Crushing [5]
Villein Skirmishers (Cavalry) Troop (5) [95]
Villein Skirmishers (Cavalry) Troop (5) [95]
Villein Siege Artillery (War Engine) 1 [90]
Villein Siege Artillery (War Engine) 1 [90]
Villein Siege Artillery (War Engine) 1 [90]
Exemplar Chaplain (Hero (Infantry)) 1 [65]
Battle Hymns [5]
Exemplar Hunter (Hero (Infantry)) 1 [130]
Order of the Hawk [15]
Exemplar Hunter (Hero (Infantry)) 1 [130]
Order of the Lone Wolf [15]
Dictator (Hero (Infantry)) 1 [115]
Wings of Honeymaze [40]
Priest (Hero (Cavalry)) 1 [120]
Horse Mount [25]
Heal (3) [0]
Bane Chant (2) [20]
Priest (Hero (Infantry)) 1 [75]
Heal (3) [0] I’m sure he’ll have another great battle report up soon, but a few quick notes:
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Bowmen don’t look great on paper, but they’re surprisingly effective. 20 attacks hitting on 5s is going to be putting out a couple of wounds per turn. It’s a big block of cheap nerve and US that can hurt over time (20+ wounds over a game if you ignore them). But taking them out isn’t as easy as it should be for a def 3 unit because they have phalanx, so your traditional cav/flyer to disorder isn’t super effective. E.g., charging a 30-attack horde of Frostfangs hindered into phalanx where you waste the crushing against low defense is going to land 5 wounds or so a turn . . . which means you probably have to charge for three turns before you kill it. Too annoying to ignore, too big to kill easily, too difficult to readily disorder, and pretty inexpensive to boot.
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My siege artillery managed 27 wounds over the course of the game. Initially this seemed high, but when I did the math I figured they should actually be around 30-35 wounds if they have targets each turn. They’re a nightmare to h4 and bigger units because they can’t hide behind hills and avoid the fire.
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For the Paladin Monster Slayers, I ditched the two-handed weapons (cs1) and bumped defense to 5+. As to whether that was a good decision or a poor one, you’ll have to wait for the battle report to come out.
2 Likes
For both Brothermark and Northern Alliance, I’ve been tracking damage output and effectiveness. Still a small sample size, but it’s interesting to see. Here’s average damage versus points per damage (so the higher the unit, the greater the typical damage; the further the right, the more cost effective the damage). The bigger the circle, the more times I’ve used the unit. You’ll see some units listed multiple times (e.g. Penitents) because of different unit sizes. I haven’t bothered to fix that yet, but the hordes have been the best performing:
You can see that the expected stars are on the top right (Paladin Monster Slayers, Hrimm, Lord on Frostfang), while cost-effective but low-damage units are on the bottom right (war wizard, siege artillery, exemplar hunter)), and the chaff/specialty units are on the bottom left (Augustus, Skirmishers, Snow Foxes). Not a ton of data yet, but it’s fascinating to see the trends so far.
2 Likes
The Battle report is up! Posted on the blog here. I had a great time, and @Cartwright brought a very interesting list. Here are some of my thoughts, taken from the end of the report.
- Penitent Regiments . My opponent said he wanted to outdrop me and that these would go a long way towards that. They did! With Crushing Strength and 14 Nerve, they also don’t seem like bad buys at all to take up space on the field and bait some deployment drops. It will be neat to see if these show up again or not.
- Exemplar Hunters. My opponent wanted to outdrop me as he was expecting a flier, and intended to have the Hunters (and Dictator) ground it. Overall, these seem like very cool specialist characters for the Brothermark. Lots of fluff, lots of stuff you can do with them both on the table and for hobbying. Very cool!
- Order of the Abyssal Hunt . I believe he took these over normal knights to get their Slayer effect, to then slay the grounded flier. Monsters can really mess things up for humans, so I could see the desire to have these in some match-ups.
- Horde of Bowmen. These were interesting! Having Phalanx is huge as it really dissuades folks from charging, and prevents the typical fast things from getting there too soon to disorder you. I don’t think you would want more than one, but just having that much nerve in reserve throwing out 20 attacks a turn was really fascinating. They definitely surprised me and seemed great for these more casual games. My opponent also got to deploy these smartly in the forest from the beginning, so used them well. Very interesting.
- Siege Artillery . My opponent has been tracking the performance of these, and per his math, he says they performed about average. Yikes! This seemed like an amazingly good match-up and map for them though. There was really no locking terrain in the center, so all the Height 4 Frostfangs I brought had nowhere to hide with the Height 3 hills.
- Def5 vs CS1 on the Paladins . I think I’d usually argue for CS1 on the Paladins and hordes, since you want to trade the chaff in order to get a killing blow from a big unit. However, the Def5 did arguably give them the win here. I think I default towards CS1 since my regiments are typically defensive, like Pikes. With the Penitents here though, a sturdier horde seemed to do well.
It was a really neat list. They Bowmen definitely surprised me! The Exemplar Hunters were very interesting as well, and loading the list up with heroes was really cool to see.
2 Likes
Re Abyssal Hunt - at regiment size they are so much better than regular knights - 25pts for CS1/TS1 over TS2, Fury, Vicious and Slayer its a nobrainer. About the only time you see knights in Brothermark are as hordes or as a ‘tax’ in the formation to get a cloak of death dragon!
The de5 infantry horde takes a lot to shift - 22/24 nerve and Iron Resolve, even without Rally and Heal support - and the damage output is still decent, just because of the attacks/me.
2 Likes
With the new CoK update, I’ve been trying to work in an ancient phoenix. Heal (5), cloak of death, and radiance of life on a 3+ regen unit with fly is great at 175 points. In three games, they look fantastic so far backing up piles of nerve.
What I’m struggling with is on the hammer side. Abyssal Hunt is just 16 attacks, so even though they’re high quality, it’s tough to take things off without a combo charge. Three siege artillery can help, but they’re awfully swingy. If they’re not hitting, I’m in a lot of trouble.
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The Abyssal Hunt seemed solid to me. Yeah, they need help/support, but most things do. You could just do a third regiment of those, maybe mixing a regiment or two into the main battle line for a bit of a combined arms approach? Cavalry with CS is some great threat projection and the hordes can back them up through a grind.
I hesitate to suggest it, as I will have to play against it, but Ogre Palace Guard would probably be ideal here. Good nerve, good defense to play with Iron Resolve and heal and the Phoenix, and CS2 to really punch through things.
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Barring the knight horde, the list doesn’t really have too many one-shot type hammer units - as commented above the Abyssal Hunt don’t quite have enough attacks and even at cs1 the monster slayers only really do well when the vicious kicks in.
The fact that plenty of units get fury & IR does give you give you decent chance of a 2nd round of combat again pretty much anything - so you tend to get rid of things over two turns.
Oathsworn Guardians are fun unit to support an infantry line - the inspiring often frees up a priest etc to do something else, while 26-30 attacks is a nasty surprise against enemy characters
2 Likes
How about something like this. OPG as hammers… Ditching the cav to be a slower grind army with double phoenix to heal. Lots of rally. Spearmen to anchor a refused flank. Mounted hunter for flyers or war machines. And trusty siege artillery to force the issue if they have shooting.
The Order of the Brothermark [2300 / 2300]
~ List Valid ~
The Order of the Brothermark [2300]
Villein Penitents (Infantry) Horde (40) [125]
Villein Penitents (Infantry) Horde (40) [125]
Men-at-Arms Spearmen (Infantry) Horde (40) [220]
Veteran Command [15]
Oathsworn Guardians [1] (Infantry) Regiment (20) [180]
Ogre Palace Guard (Large Infantry) Horde (6) [265]
Blessing of the Gods [30]
Ogre Palace Guard (Large Infantry) Horde (6) [245]
Hann’s Sanguinary Scripture [10]
Villein Skirmishers (Cavalry) Troop (5) [95]
Villein Skirmishers (Cavalry) Troop (5) [95]
Villein Siege Artillery (War Engine) 1 [90]
Villein Siege Artillery (War Engine) 1 [90]
Villein Siege Artillery (War Engine) 1 [90]
Phoenix (Titan) 1 [175]
Ancient Phoenix [30]
Heal (5) [0]
Phoenix (Titan) 1 [145]
Heal (5) [0]
Exemplar Paladin (Hero (Infantry)) 1 [115]
Lead from the Front [10]
Exemplar Chaplain (Hero (Infantry)) 1 [85]
Battle Hymns [5]
Inspiring Talisman [20]
Exemplar Hunter (Hero (Cavalry)) 1 [160]
The Gauntlet (Gain Duelist) [10]
Horse Mount [35]
1 Like
Tend to like fury on OPG, which gives you a big chunk of stuff that will always fight back.
Measured force on the spearmen is nice if you can squeeze it in
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