A concept I’ve been playing around with:
Can you reimagine the goblin trash meta with the Brothermark?
I’ll be testing against @TastyBagel later today, so we’ll see how the early versions work and whether this concept is worth pursuing.
3 Likes
My buddy has been hot for Brothermark trash for a while now, blessedly I’ll probably never have to face it as he’s constantly distracted by shinier lists requiring fewer models 
Diving into your tournament post now!
1 Like
Reports are up! The Brothermark “trash” faced off against the Abyssals.
Battle 079 was Raze
Battle 080 was Control
And a link to the Forum thread on the battle reports is here.
It’s a neat approach for sure, and can catch some folks off-guard, but I think it’s missing a piece for more consistency. Not sure what that could be yet, so we’ll see what the internet suggests! Thanks for the games!
3 Likes
Yes. Thanks for the testing. If others have ideas, let me know how to tweak to test. I love the penitents themselves backed by rally,and Phoenixes, but I’m not sure what else to use to fill out the list.
1 Like
1 Like
This is something I’d be curious to read more about! I’ve dabbled in the Bromark trash, but compared to goblins the lack of fliers really hurts. At least for my play style. You would think there is no reason for Trashmark to not work, but I have for some reason had my doubts.
It is a curious concept, however!
1 Like
Yeah. ThePhoenixes are great with adding shooting support and heal for the grind, but at 145 points, they’re a pricey way to build it out.
Do you try with war engines? Any thoughts on how to get offensive impact behind the walls of penitents?
As a brothermark player I say the birds are worth it and if you run 3 of them you want an Ancient one as well
Also High Chaplain Augustus should be considered as support for the infantry
2 Likes
Good reads, as always!
The Faction Diversity post was surprising. I’ve been running some unisual armies it seems! I think my experiences track with their lack of popularity in competitive play though.
- KoM is a gateway army, and the basis for most other factions and lists. Probably not going to be seen on the top tables.
- Abyssals relies a lot on Regeneration, whoch can be fickle, and not something you want to rely on in competitative play!
- Herd has been funky to pilot. Pathfinder is nice, but very dependant on the table terrian, plus you pay a heck of a premium for it. They could do with some more hammers… but i can see why the RC might want them undertuned, as Pathfinder can be quite powerful, as shown by the items post.
My hypothosis on the Blade would be that it is linked to rising popularity of all these monster-sized heroes, and that their usual 5 base attacks is rough. Most have cs2 or similar, so the bigger hurdle is to hit. With the Blade being 5 points, it’s an easy pickup at the end of list building.
Fascinating to see the items not taken. I like the Varangur’s little flying Magnilde, and would have expected some lists to run the Wings of Honeymaze, like on a Dwarf Lord or Undead Pharoh or something, to fly up, hunt war machines, ground fliers, or just get in the way of things. Seems like the meta has shifted quite hard to scoring heroes since last year.
sputters incoherently Not enough hammers? Sir, how dare you! My Herd is basically only hammers or scenario pieces, and I’m not running Beasts of Nature! Here’s hoping we don’t get a large cav ultra-hammer like the top flight armies have 
In my experience taking Herd to tournaments, I would often do quite well up to a certain point, where I climbed high enough to face other maneuverable armies with significant shooting. When you’re mostly De 4+ and relying on speed to keep you alive, things start to fall apart when your speed doesn’t matter as much and your defense is put to the test. Between NA, TK, NS and the Dwarf stranglehold, there’s a lot of shooting in the meta again, much of it quite maneuverable. I also wonder if the alpha strikers of the meta have made alpha Herd’s life hard (Keith Conroy having won Masters with alpha Herd not that long ago), tho the WC Chieftain sorta edges those match-ups out … Anyway, Herd have always been a rarity but now feels particularly grim from a meta perspective.
Abyssals I assume are out because we’re waiting for the new rules (and because they’re also a De 4+ army with a single slow hammer in the Molochs). Men are of course mid by design. Surprised we aren’t seeing the triple flying beast hammers I saw kicking around throughout the year but maybe folks have admitted that OGL probably does do it better.
On the Blade, I see Tasty’s logic on getting more from scoring square heroes with fewer attaks. Generally speaking, top tier list building in dice games tends to focus on minimizing RNG and maximizing control of results. The Blade is a very cheap way to add to that goal, especially if you’ve already picked up the Staying Stone (or can’t use it because fearless).
1 Like
…I was pretty sleepy last night. 
I guess to reframe my arguement, in my own forays I feel like everything the Herd has comes with some conditionality. Herder is great, but expensive; GEE has shambling hoops to jump through; Stampede is there but not repeatable; Brutes are there, but rely on TC, line troops all can get TC but you pay for them upgrade; Spirits are expensive, Def3 and just TC1; Longhorns got reworked; ala carte Beast is neat but expensive (was considering dropping Fly in my future tests); Striders don’t have enough attacks to be shock cavalry… so yeah, there are options, but none are striaghtforward or easy to use.
The Herd has been a lot of fun to play, but I don’t think I’d want to bring them to a tournament right now!
Also, good luck to you and the Freeforged!
2 Likes
Thank you much! I’m admittedly worried about a) being out of practice and b) all the damn Northern Alliance 
1 Like
Thanks for analysis.
I agree with @TastyBagel on the blade of slashing.
I’ll add that the Blade of Slashing is also a cost effective hero upgrade. The Helm of the Drunken Ram and Lute of Insatiable Darkness are also cost effective ways to boost units.
Where the Hammer of Measured force is a counter to De6+, these artefacts improve units in general.
In my experience there are 4 reasons to take cost effective artefacts.
- To save points for something else. Perhaps linked to the slight increase in average drops?
- To boost more units after the big upgrade artefacts have already been taken. Are there more artefacts in total in 2024?
- To use up left over points. This usually only leaves points for cheaper artefacts.
- Another reason is that I prefer not to invest too many points in one unit, but I’m not sure Master’s level players share this concern.
The Lute having the added benefit of not being a boost for only one unit. I would be curious about if there is more Bane Chant taken too.
1 Like
The buff to most standard bearer type characters means you probably see more taken, and they are fairly obvious candidates for lute.
Bit surprised by no Wings, especially in armies with no other flying options
2 Likes
1 Like
Fancy looking into upcoming UK Clash?
| Row Labels | Count of Name |
|---|---|
| Dwarfs | 16 |
| Ogres | 16 |
| Twilight Kin | 14 |
| Halflings | 13 |
| Undead | 13 |
| Forces of the Abyss | 13 |
| Empire of Dust | 12 |
| Northern Alliance | 11 |
| Abyssal Dwarfs | 11 |
| Salamanders | 10 |
| Ratkin | 6 |
| Goblins | 6 |
| Nightstalkers | 6 |
| Riftforged Orcs | 6 |
| Basileans | 5 |
| Elves | 5 |
| Forces of Nature | 5 |
| Free Dwarfs | 4 |
| Trident Realm of Neritica (2024) | 3 |
| The Order of the Green Lady | 3 |
| The Order of the Brothermark | 3 |
| Sylvan Kin | 3 |
| The Herd | 3 |
| Varangur | 2 |
| Kingdoms of Men | 2 |
| Orcs | 2 |
| League of Rhordia | 1 |
| (blank) | 1 |
| Ratkin Slaves | 1 |
| Grand Total | 196 |
4 Likes
Yep! I’m leaving town tomorrow through Thursday, so I’m going to try to download and parse the lists tonight. For some technical reasons, I have to manually update any list that has a formation in it, so hopefully that won’t take too incredibly long. Once I get the data parsed I just have to hit a button to crunch the numbers and get a quick report out. I may or may not have time to dig into it and analyze, but I’ll at least post it for discussion and maybe update later.
2 Likes