My Thoughts on the Current Meta, part2 B-Tier.

B-tier: Circle, Protectorate, Mercs, Skorne 

I did not talk about it in my previous post but I think that Warmachine is getting towards being the most perfectly imbalanced it has ever been. If Perfect Imbalance is a new term for you I would recommend Here.


Skill is still the most important thing in this game and the biggest part to skill is having played the matchup before. Having a plan is never a bad thing.

Lastly I'm a big fish in a small pond. My opinions might not be correct and my lists might be bad. You can use the comment thing to tell me why bellow. Just remember to be polite I will remove any comment I deem mean.

Circle of Orboros

Circle has been the Wurmwood show since the start of mk3. So their competitiveness more or less lives and dies with his current state in the meta. Which is not great at the moment since a lot of his popular counter picks got a good theme list and he did not. For example Amon, Vyros2, Abby2 all fit into their respective themes without sacrifices.

The current theme lists I like in Circle is Tanith in The Wild Hunt  I need more time to test it. I have not had time for that yet. The Baldur2 Double WW tier seems bad to me. You lose a majority of your repair for some extra points. That seems counter productive. You also lose wraithbane, which is important against the only faction I would actually want to run it against, Cygnar. 

As a legion player I feel comfortable with Abby2 into most lists. Just be careful of the Woldwyrd. Purgation can wreck you if you put up Bracer. A tip is to use one heavy behind and then block line of sight to that heavy with other heavies. Vayl2 is still my preferred drop against Kaya2 and Tanith but yeah otherwise Abby2 is great.

I'm really comfortable with my Wurmwood list. I have played it a lot and it works well. When we talk about the casters that list is weak against (Amon, Vyros2, Abby2, Nemo3) they all share a common weakness. They are prone to dying. So to partner with my WW list I bring jank. Just straight up jank. If you need to know how this works check here. Here This is an updated version where you have a Wyrd in. Just remember to put it into the stones so it can get the extra threat. The premise is still the same. Threaten scenario to force their caster forward then caster kill.

Protectorate of Menoth

Just like WW for Circle, High Reclaimer was the poster child for Protectorate. So when he was nerfed they lost their identity and have not really found their next carry yet. For their theme list they have one good and one I don't see the point of and even the good one is kinda meh. You need choir and you can't get it for free that means it's more or less impossible to get 100 points of jacks to get the full benefit of theme.

If you are awesome with Amon he is probably the best option but keeping him safe is extremely hard and an unsafe caster is terrible in a tournament setting. So for me Sevy2 is the man. I have experimented on some different builds for him. I really liked the Reckoner spam. You shoot hard enough to force the opponent to charge into you and then you can start swinging. It was something I built to be a partner for HR and then it just fit into the new theme. I'm not sure it's the best partner though. You can probably build some kind of Templar spam and then bring a Sevy1/Kreoss1 shooting list as a partner. Especially when the new colossal gets here. I would need to experiment more. Something I won't do.

I really like the Sevvy2 list and I have tested the Kreoss1 list a couple of times. I don't know if you want one or two wracks. I went with one since you really need the repair to make the vessel work. It felt all right in my test games. Kreoss1 got a way to accelerate the game so the extra wrack does not matter. I also started with Reckoner on K1 but it's powerful to be able to only present a reckoner and a colossal both with an arm buff.

Mercenaries

You have Thexus and Damiano fighting over who is the better dude spam list. Then you have Ossrum, Bart and Magnus2 fighting over who is the reigning champ of the arm spam. In my opinion Damiano and Ossrum gets the strongest pair of the combination available.

As a legion player I'm happy facing Mercenaries. The only list really scary is the gun bunnies and that is still highly playable since most people don't bring the Forge Guard to back up the gun bunnies so you can just engage force him to spend all his focus on bulldoze and then kill him the turn after his feat turn.

This is the right way to build Damiano. When I see Stannis in a list I think this person is bad at the game. You pay points to get Tactician. A skill you only need if you can't place your models correctly. So Git Gud and stop playing the game on easy mode. You can get so much more value out of other solos.

The Ossrum list was something I built for Jocke Rapp back in the day. He has something against running more then 3 of the same thing. So of course the list has only 3 off each thing. It was built as a joke but I really liked it when I tested it out. It has 2 max and one min Forge Guard. Conflict chamber for some reason seems to think they are FA2.
It's actually a weird list for me since I went to skew less but the Forge Guard gives the list longevity. They are great against Legion since right now all Legion lists are oracles and then there are no deathstalkers. Stopping people from running up to the gun bunnies and then deal with them later. The Forge Guard will just wreck everything. While testing the list the Artillery have been superstars. Giving you that ability to cycle Fire For Effect and chilling.
By going theme you lose some matchups but you get more stuff in the matchups you want for the list. So it becomes a more demanding partner but yeah Damiano is a loving partner. Only really need Ossrum to stomp Legion and hard arm skews. Which it does well. It also dealt surprisingly well with Haley2. It got the threat range to force her into feating first and then you can brick through her feat turn. The artillery was also fun against her since she got terrified of walking up and aggressively feating on my army. She had to spend resources building a bunker.

Well that became a wall of text. General Ossrum is generally Awesome. Okay? ☺

Skorne

From what I have seen and played against Skorne is right now the Makeda show. There are other lists but they are just not that good. I have never felt the want or the need to play Skorne. They felt like a faction that lived on clocking their opponents. So yeah. Go read Johan Dyrlinds blog since I ain't playing that style of game. Here

Fighting Makeda is all about finding that chink in the armor and just killing her. There as to be some way of pushing a mode/throw something out of the way and get the line. Then just kill her. Don't be obvious about it. Just start killing stuff. Like against Harby. You use unnecessary models to kill stuff forcing her low. Then you go for the throat.