Pairing Musings

The challenge I had for Norwegian Masters to play Stryker3 ensured that I fell a little behind on getting to know Storm Division properly. I did master it with Nemo3, but casters like Haley2 and Stryker1 were neglected. This means I've been playing catch-up for a little more than a month now. I talk a lot with fellow Cygnar players and indeed SmogCon taught me a thing or two about the meta now. 

What have I tried? Where am I at? Where am I going? 

Serious mode thus far has seen me start off with a Nemo3 / Stryker1 pairing, the former in Storm Division and the latter in Heavy Metal with doublewall. Unfortunately it collapsed rather quickly. Why? I had this idea that Stryker1's feat can timewalk armies largely the same way Haley2's feat does. While that is true to an extent, it fails to perform this job against the really hard hitters out there. I had a couple of eye-opening games where I simply couldn't do as I pleased with my ARM27 Stormwalls because they would die. In a nutshell I found that Stryker1 couldn't cope with Haley2's matchups and thus the pairing collapsed.

I was sad to see Nemo3 go but that was a necessity. Nemo3 is so much fun to play and he has some absolutely outrageous matchups. Ironically the biggest hit to Nemo3 was arguably the nerf to Una2. Prior to that nerf I was very comfortable with dropping Nemo3 into Circle. Since the Una2 nerf Krueger2 appears to be the hottest Circle caster and, well, our lord of thunder has 0 game into that. Mirror is also problematic seeing as Stryker1 is up against Haley2.

With Nemo3 gone I looked to Haley2 and Stryker1. The former with a very vanilla Storm Division list (it seriously builds itself) and the latter with the same Heavy Metal variant. This has been working out fairly well, but the Stormwall in Haley2 can feel surprisingly clumsy at times. I think it's a combination of how much the Lances rely on charging, how the meta sees an increasing amount of counters for the Lances and how vulnerable they are to being jammed. This all means that the 'wall has to do more work than it's sometimes capable of. Don't get me wrong, it's still a very solid list, but it gets me thinking if there might be better alternatives out there.

This year has been crazy busy for me thus far. The past weekend was my first without any plans since 2016. What do I do when I finally have some time off? Dojo Cygnar of course! One of the players I dojo the most with is Patrick Dunford and he's schooled me since he won SmogCon 2016 (following SmogCon 2017 he's also schooled me on the tabletop). While I immediately set off to Thornwall once Mk. 3 hit I know Patrick played variants with multiple heavies instead. One of his favourite lists early on included an Avenger and two Stormclads and it was dubbed "robots".

As part of my experiment to find new Haley2 lists I believe in I had to take a look at Heavy Metal. Haley is a very strong jack caster because of how her skill-set enables them. It's not like she makes them particularly strong nor durable, but she allows them to keep grinding for turn after turn, something which is very valuable. They lack the jamming vulnerability of the Lances and they allow the list to project a lot of force in multiple locations at once. They are also significantly more nimble than a colossal, which enables you to disengage easier.

My resulting list felt very much like an evolution for "robots" and thus I've coined this list "electrobots":

Theme: Heavy Metal
4 / 4 Free Cards 75 / 75 Army
Major Victoria Haley - WJ: +25
- Squire - PC: 0
- Thorn - PC: 13 (Battlegroup Points Used: 13)
- Stormclad - PC: 18 (Battlegroup Points Used: 12)
- Stormclad - PC: 18
- Avenger - PC: 17
- Firefly - PC: 8
Captain Arlan Strangewayes - PC: 0
Journeyman Warcaster - PC: 0
- Firefly - PC: 8
Lieutenant Allison Jakes - PC: 0
- Stormclad - PC: 18

The basic idea is that there's a ton of electro leaps and lightning generators here which should help compensate for the lack of volume. Stormclads without any models providing accumular benefits might seem counter-intuitive but they're the best we have for what this list needs I believe. As of yet I haven't fielded this list. I intend to change that very soon and hopefully I'll get some practice games in with it which will enable me to take it to a tournament in a little over a week.

It dawned on me some time after I wrote this list that with my current pair of Stryker1/Haley2, there's actually not a single Storm Lance in my pairing. Leaving Lances at home might seem weird, but I honestly think this pairing could be legit. At the very least I will try it out. I've said it many times before, experiments are what bring the very best lists. We must all be willing to take a leap of faith and go with something wacky, even if that means leaving powerful choices like the Lances at home.