All hail our Draconic Overlords – a MK3 edition!

Well, another Lock and Load has come and gone, and with that, we have an official release for Warmachine & Hordes MK3.  As you can probably imagine, this is my favourite time for any game!  When there’s something new and fresh, so that we can test and experiment to our cold undead hearts contents!  By now, I’m sure everyone has had a chance to see some of the rules revamps and today, I’m going to talk about 2 of our most changed casters briefly.

First, the family picture. 

As you guys know, I’m a sucker for fluff pairings and trios, and a while back, I made a post regarding how I like to pair up my casters.  This is one of my trios that I call “Secret Agendas”.  It was a strong trio before, albeit a boring one outside of Goreshade3.  Scaverous and Venethrax in MK2 were quite powerful, but were certainly not the most exciting casters to bring onto the table.  This has all changed with MK3.  Moving over into the new edition, this trio is actually rather substantially more powerful than it was before, which has me greatly excited, as it was one of my favourite trios to play from a fluff perspective!  First, we’re going to go through what changed about these casters and how they will affect the army.

Winter is Coming

Goreshade3 traded Ghostly for Immunity: Cold, and while Immunity: Cold is far more situational and circumstantial in usage than Ghostly, is something that can come in quite handy from time to time (I’m looking at you Sorscha).  While I think I would still prefer Ghostly, it did feel somewhat out of place on Goreshade3, whereas Immunity: Cold is something that he should have always had.  This is a buff that he gained on Goreshade2 and Goreshade3.

Spell Vortex also got a minor buff, as it now no longer requires it to be a living enemy model, but rather, just an enemy model that casts the spell for Spell Vortex to trigger.  Goreshade3 gained Reposition[3], much like how all cavalry gained Reposition, while Voass, his feat and his stats stayed the same.

Goreshade3’s spell list saw some changes, not in terms of what spells he has access to, but more importantly, how the spells function.  Infernal Machine retained the +2SPD buff, but now grants Murderous instead of +2MAT.  Murderous grants an additional die to attack rolls against warrior models.  In the majority of situations, this is a straight up buff.  The only time this is worse is when using it to go after warbeasts or warjacks, and hitting warjacks and warbeasts in melee is not something our jacks have typically been known to have problems with.  The Harrower and Kraken/Sepulcher were prime targets for Infernal Machine in MK2 and in MK3, this is no different.

The second big change on his spell list is the change to Scything Touch, which now grants Dark Shroud instead of +2 to melee damage rolls, and affects model rather than model/unit.  This means that you will no longer be able to stack Scything Touch with Dark Shroud to offer a 4 point damage swing against ARM, which means that dedicated armour crackers are going to be more important to bring with him now.

The biggest change to his spell list has a direct impact on his assassination game, though it may or may not be as big a change, given that people won’t be camping as much for the most part I feel.  Siphon Bolt was changed to cost 3 instead of 2, and has gained a point of POW.  Given that the primary purpose of the spell was to strip focus or fury, and less of a purely offensive nuke, this is a significant decrease in overall power to Siphon Bolt, as you will only be casting half as many siphon bolts as you previously were able to.  However, like I mentioned, this entirely depends on how much people camp going forward with the edition changes.  While this is a direct nerf to his assassination game, he’s got quite a potent attrition game, and that is something that isn’t to be overlooked, given that we had about a year to get used to recursion mechanics that require forfeiting action, and a lot of other factions hadn’t gotten used to them yet.

Incidentally, with the change to spell slave, not being able to cast upkeeps and siphon bolt specifying that the “spellcaster” gains the focus, the skarlock has actually lost his place in Goreshade3’s lists, which opens up place for the Combine or Corbeau.  I’m actually going to go on a limb now and say that in the majority of cases, I’m going to want Corbeau with him over the other 2 potential caster attachments.  The overall nerf to spell slave hit us quite hard and as a result, a lot of our casters who have lots of upkeeps are going to be forgoing the Skarlock now.  The Combine is quite strong still, but once again, the nerf to spell slave, and the inability of spell slaves to cycle upkeeps, or cast Mockery of Life means that you’re wasting a rule on the card.  This puts me firmly of the opinion that Corbeau is 100% the best caster attachment for Goreshade3 now with her ability to strip Stealth for our various ranged options and make Goreshade3 safe against opposing warrior models.  The interesting thing about this is that if you can remove or neutralize your opponent’s battlegroup, Corbeau can make it so that your opponent will have a great deal of trouble targeting Goreshade with anything they have due to Parlay specifying “warrior models”.  If you want to make it even more of a nightmare for your opponent, add Wrongeye and Snapjaw to the mix and watch your opponent struggle to remove the trio between Starcrossed, Parlay and Stealth.

Overall, I’m quite happy with Goreshade3 still, and will be playing a lot of him.  Even though his role has changed to primarily an attrition based caster, he is still incredibly flexible and will be dominating a lot of tables still.  He is still going to be my number 2 caster right behind Deneghra2, but today’s topic isn’t Deneghra2, as there will be a lot of Deneghra2 content coming down the pipe.

At the Gates of Castle Black

Continuing with Game of Thrones themed subject headings, we move on to the second caster in the family, and the one who received few changes, but the changes make a huge difference to his effectiveness.

Lord Exhumator Scaverous has always been one of the most underplayed casters in our faction.  In MK2, he brought a solid debuff game, and a really potent assassination threat, but other casters like Deneghra1 and Deneghra2 simply outclassed him.  Now, Scaverous has his own identity as one of our strongest abusers of the soul gathering mechanic, and all it too was for him to gain a new passive ability and to take one of the spells from Lich Lord Venethrax (who will be the last caster we talk about today), while everything else remained unchanged.

Knowledge of the Damned is his new passive ability that he gained. It’s an incredibly simply ability that allows Scaverous to spend a soul token to force a model to reroll an attack or damage roll.  This can be a friendly model, or an enemy model.  This is an incredibly powerful ability that also now encourages you to get into the mix with Avernus to gather up some souls, as you can force your opponent to reroll their successful attack or damage rolls against Scaverous with the souls that you gain with Avernus. This is a great ability that you can use for protecting your other heavies as well, and can seriously mess with your opponents ability to be effective on the battlefield.  Once you start gathering up souls, Scaverous and his army can be incredibly hard to move.  But what about those times you don’t want to risk Scaverous?  What about those times when you need to get the Soul Train started before you can risk his big slayer-framed body?

There are 4 reliable means of getting those souls.  Remember Erebus?  The jack that everyone probably forgot existed?  This is number 1.  Erebus gained the universal warjack buffs which makes him a particularly attractive option with Scaverous, due to having 1″ reach which is a significant buff due to the presence of Overtake, as well as the free focus.  Additionally, Erebus is naturally tougher than the majority of the Slayer chassis at DEF14 ARM18, and has Poltergeist, which is a particularly useful ability when combined with Knowledge of the Damned.  A fully loaded heavy is no longer something that your opponent can reasonably put into Erebus if you have souls on Scaverous and can do something to stop from getting base to base with Erebus.  Erebus furthermore gained the ability Freeze on his fists, which allows him to stationary anything he hits that isn’t immune to cold, and Erebus himself gained Immunity: Cold.  This works particularly well with one of my personal favourite Cryx models, which isn’t actually a Cryx model (but in my mind, is a Cryx model).  One of the buffs that Wrongeye gained was Starcrossed, and if there’s something that sounds like a ridiculous amount of fun, it’s having souls on Scaverous to force an opponent to reroll while they’re under the effects of Starcrossed for maximum levels of frustration.  Combine that with Poltergeist on Erebus and you’ve got a very effective zone holding model.  Stick Death Ward on Erebus, and you have a DEF14 ARM20 model where your opponent can’t reasonably move him from the table.

The second effective means of getting the Soul Train started are Soul Trappers in conjunction with soul gathering models such as Malice, Harrowers, and Soulhunters.  This still requires solid board positioning and good setup of the Soul Trappers the turn before you want to use them, but remains an effective means of soul gathering, especially since Harrowers and Malice now collect from 5″ out, which makes the positioning and order of activations significantly easier to plan out now.

The third means of getting the Soul Train starting is the spell that Scaverous picked up from Venethrax, Soul Harvester.  This spell turns a model or unit into a soul collecting unit, and allows all of the souls to end up in Scaverous’ possession. This is a significant boost to his effectiveness, and works incredibly well with Knowledge of the Damned.  Remember that any souls left over at the start of the turn convert to focus so any leftover souls that you don’t end up using aren’t completely for naught, as you will be able to utilize them next turn to power up his incredibly potent spell list.  Granted, Scaverous has traded away Ghost Walk in order to attain Soul Harvester, but it’s not all that difficult to get Saxon Orrik into the list to provide pathfinder if needed.  This will likely be the most common way for Scaverous to attain souls as it is also the safest way for him to do so.  The gift from Venethrax, combined with his Knowledge of the Damned is something that grants Scaverous incredible game, however, that will once again be opponent dependent, so there is a possibility that he can be very strong, or be incredibly weak depending on how your meta shapes up.

The last means that he has of getting the soul train started is Feast of Worms.  While it works similarly to how it worked before, they added an additional effect where Scaverous collects souls from models that are underneath the template.

At the moment, my Scaverous lists are all starting here:

Lord Exhumator Scaverous (*27pts)
* Withershadow Combine (9pts)
* Erebus (16pts)
* Deathripper (6pts)
* Deathripper (6pts)
Soul Trapper (1pts)
Soul Trapper (1pts)
Wrongeye & Snapjaw (17pts)

This gives you a starting point of 29/75 points, and packs the core models that I want with Scaverous.

Wrath of the Dragonfather

This is by far the most changed caster in the entire faction, and quite possibly the most changed model in the entire faction.  Venethrax has changed from a slow campy caster who gorged on souls to become an invincible super solo, and has turned into a fantastic control caster.  So, given that he mostly changed entirely, what did Venethrax actually keep?

The first thing that Venethrax actually kept was Lamentation.  An incredibly potent upkeep that doubles the cost of spells, as well as upkeeping spells, this is one of the best ways of hampering a lot of caster oriented strategies.  Lamentation has stayed the same and no longer fights with Dragon Slayer for which upkeep to put on Venethrax, as Dragon Slayer no longer exists.  He kept Dismember, which still gives him an incredibly significant damage output against warbeasts of all varieties, especially since he’s still MAT8 and SPD6 with a 2″ melee range for good personal threat.  He still has Blood Rain, which is a fairly average nuke and still has Cull Soul as per all the Lich Lords.

This is where the similarities end.

First off, Venethrax gained a point of ARM and gained an additional point of STR to compensate for losing Dragon Slayer.  I much prefer this as it removes the need to gorge and cycle between Lamentation, Soul Harvester and Dragon Slayer. This also makes him less hampered by upkeep removal and the changes to overboosted powerfields means he can actually afford to cast and stay safe while doing so.

Venethrax’s old clunky feat is now gone.  Instead, Wyrmbane now has Eruption of Ash, which is the same rule that Thagrosh has on Rapture.  Instead of having to feat to make hazards now, Venethrax just has to get in there and kill a pair of infantry models to make the clouds instead, which allows him to do it every turn, albeit in a far less broad application.  This means that Venethrax is able to keep himself extremely safe from single wound infantry.  His new feat is far simpler in application and simply doesn’t allow allocating or leeching in his control area.  This is a great way for Venethrax to protect his army against opposing jacks and beasts, while getting up there to put Eruption of Ash templates to protect against opposing infantry.  It’s a strong denial tool that goes great with his new spell list.

Venethrax’s spell list is the most altered part of his game.  The only spells that he kept from his previous incarnation were Lamentation and Blood Rain.  Lamentation fits into his strong denial game by really stifling opposing casters unless they back out of the Lamentation bubble.  Since Venethrax will be midfield or further forward, this means that opposing casters will need to back up quite far, and potentially risk kill box in order to do so.

Venethrax gained another excellent control spell in Deadweight.  While everyone may be going nuts over him gaining Terminal Velocity, I personally feel that Deadweight is the strongest spell that he gained.  Deadweight is a deceptively simple spell.  Use it as a nuke to snipe out an opposing warrior model, then make another model within 2″ forfeit its movement or action next turn.  Another awesome thing about it is that because it isn’t an upkeep spell, you can cast it through a spell slave and control even more things than you were able to before.  Another advantage to Deadweight is that you can’t shake it, which means that you’re getting value through it no matter what, as the spell is effectively a 2-for-1 at all times.  One thing that you need to be wary of when you’re trying to abuse Deadweight as a control spell is the presence of Tough, as Tough can seriously hamper your control game in that regard if your opponent gets lucky.  Thankfully, Venethrax has a means of mitigating that.

Venethrax gained a debuff in Mortality.  Once again, Mortality isn’t an upkeep which means that you can cast it through Deathjack or a Spell Slave, and applies -2DEF/-2ARM and removes Tough from the model/unit that you hit with Mortality.  This is how you can get around tough to fully abuse Deadweight, which will be quite strong with all of the big battlegroups that everyone will be excited to play early on.  However, even if you aren’t using it to abuse Deadweight, Mortality is a fantastic debuff that allows you to really get work done, significantly increasing the damage output of your army with it. The importance of Venethrax’s spells leads me to strongly always consider the Withershadow Combine and Deathjack with him.  Don’t forget that Mortality now affects repair as well, as healing and repairing are both means of “removing damage”, which Mortality stops.  This is another great control mechanism as it allows you to stifle an opposing heavy hitter that is damaged, by preventing it from repairing any systems or aspects that are knocked out.

The last spell that Venethrax gained is Terminal Velocity, which he outright stole from Mortenebra (who no longer has Terminal Velocity).  This is one of the 2 battlegroup abilities that Venethrax gained, which allows him to efficiently run his battlegroups.  His strong spell list means that I won’t be spamming heavies with him, but at the same time, I definitely want at least 2 or 3 combat jacks to take advantage of his battlegroup support abilities.  Terminal Velocity is fantastic.  It is excellent on any of our jacks that can effectively go into groups of infantry and run through them.  Harrowers, Krakens, and Sepulchers are great examples of jacks that can do this with their 2″ and 4″ melee ranges, and the ability to Thresher or Sweep, while jacks such as the Inflictor are good because of the added likelihood of triggering Critical: Poison.

In the vein of battlegroup support abilities, Venethrax also gained Field Marshall: Countercharge.  The thing about Countercharge is that you don’t need a lot of jacks to take advantage of this.  2 or 3 strong heavies is rather adequate for it.  My feeling at the moment on Venethrax’s jacks is that building for Terminal Velocity and Countercharge is a trap, and you need to leverage his full spell list to really maximize his effectiveness.  That being said, this is where a lot of my lists with Venethrax are starting:

Lich Lord Venethrax (*26pts)
* Withershadow Combine (9pts)
* Deathjack (23pts)
* Harrower (16pts)
* Inflictor (13pts)
* Deathripper (6pts)

This leaves you with 34 points left for the rest of your army, which gives you about half of your army points left to massage in some units and support.  This gives you 2 additional spellcasting outlets, while not stretching his focus so thin that he is unable to power his battlegroup.  The 34 points allows you to add in 1 to 2 units, and maybe 1 to 2 support models to fill out any gaps that you may have for the match ups that you want to cover.

We’ll be testing more,  but these are just some initial impressions that I have on these 3 casters.  MK3 has made it a very exciting time for testing and this is something that I’m greatly looking forward to for the next few months!

’til next time!

 

Unravelling the Black Gate

Lord Exhumator Scaverous was a model that I absolutely fell in love with the moment I saw it.  Anyone who knows me knows that a lot of what drives my desire to play a specific model, especially warcasters, are the aesthetics of the model.  I then read his fluff blurb and decided that I had to play him.  After that, I read his card and saw that he had my favourite spell in the entire game in Telekinesis. 

This is the second installment in my “Unravelling” article series, where I break down the most complex casters in our faction in an attempt to make it easier for people to pick them up and play them without feeling entirely overwhelmed by the amount of options and decisions that they have to make during the game with them (and many of the decisions are not easy decisions).  This time, I am going to be dealing with the most complicated caster we have access to, Lord Exhumator Scaverous.

Overview

Scaverous is a caster who thrives on the sheer multitude of options he has at his disposal.  While his overall tools aren’t quite as ball busting and flexible as Deneghra2’s, he still has Telekinesis, which really is what his entire game is going to be based around, at least with the way I play him.  Scaverous has an extremely abusable spell list that, much like either Deneghra, is enough to make other factions cry out in envy.  He is capable of camping to ridiculous levels, as well as staying back and slinging spells, and can switch between the 2 on the fly.  He has an incredibly potent assassination run and can support almost anything extremely well.

So why is it that we don’t see Scaverous more?  The fact of the matter is that for all of Scaverous’ tools, he is incredibly difficult to play.  Being on a medium base with no other defensive measures other than focus camping means that he suffers from being incredibly unsafe as he starts casting his spells.  You need to be making some incredibly difficult decisions with Scaverous every turn, which is extremely overwhelming for people who have never played a caster as complex as Scaverous.  However, that being said, once you can wrap your head around the multitude of decisions that need to be made every turn, he is an incredibly rewarding caster.

One of the biggest issues that I see people having with Scaverous is that they see how amazing his spell list is, and they start slinging spells non-stop, which often leads to them getting Scaverous killed.  This leads me to the first thing I’m going to discuss with Scaverous, which is how to keep him alive…well, or at least as alive as a Lich can be anyways.

For whom the bell tolls

Scaverous is a mixed bag when it comes to his survivability.  On one hand, he camps like a boss.  On the other hand, he wants to spend focus, which very easily gets him killed due to the fact that camping is the only defensive measure he has.  To top if off, he is on a medium base and has no other defensive mechanisms.  This  means that on a turn to turn basis, you need to determine how likely he is to die and with that information, determine how much focus you can safely spend on that turn.  As with my Deneghra2 article, I’m going to go over target priority:

1. Boostable ranged guns – This is the first thing that you need to watch for in the opposing army.  The reason is because boostable ranged shooting is capable of putting dents into Scaverous, even if he’s camping a fair amount.  The more boostable ranged weapons your opponent has access to, the less focus you can safely spend.  While this isn’t to say that you should spend no focus while your opponent has any boostable guns, but it does mean that you need to be much safer about how much you decide to spend or not spend.
2. Non-boostable ranged guns – Scaverous likes to spend focus.  He has an incredible toolbox of spells and wants to maximize it every turn.  Unfortunately, this means that he is extremely susceptible to any ranged attacks on the opposing side of the board.  DEF14  isn’t particularly stellar and while base ARM 17 is fairly solid, most average infantry shooting is very capable of putting damage on that if he is at zero camp. Watch out for large CRAs from units such as Nyss, as they have extremely long threat ranges that you may not be expecting. On zero camp, 2 POW15s from a unit of Nyss will not only put a huge dent into him (over half his boxes in one go), but if they spike both damage rolls, they stand a chance at killing him outright.

These are the 2 most important things to watch for in an opposing army with Scaverous, as they are the things that can seriously hamper his ability to spend his focus.  Any opponent who can put some early damage on Scaverous with some extremely long range guns can force Scaverous into a camping playstyle, which may not necessarily be what you want to be doing with Scaverous in certain matchups.

Due to the fact that Scaverous has no built in defenses against ranged, and the fact that he is on a medium base, the first few turns of the game will mostly be spent getting upkeeps out, slinging maybe 1 Telekinesis and then camping the rest.  He doesn’t have access to Ashen Veil like Asphyxious3 (DEF17 on a caster who can camp to ARM26 is obscene), or Sacrificial Pawn like Terminus which is a huge blow to his survivability during the early turns of the game.  Death Ward is a fine spell, but I would much rather have Death Ward on Bane Thralls and while I will cast it on Scaverous in the blink of an eye when needed, DEF still trumps ARM at those middling DEF values.

So the question here becomes how much to camp.  This is not an easy question to answer and is one that requires a fair bit of familiarity with expected values.  There is a common misconception that I feel the need to address first with regards to expected values and averages.  When someone says that “you will hit on average dice”, it doesn’t mean that you will roll that number every time, it means that half the time, you will roll that number or greater.  This is a fundamental misconception that many people have with regards to dice averages.  They expect to get expected values on each roll rather than a statistical average of a set of rolls.  While I won’t go into the math of it here, just remember that “on average rolls” means roughly 50% of the time, you will get your expected value and that the expected value is just that, an average.

How does this factor into deciding how much to camp?  That’s where you need to remember that the expected value of rolling 2D6 is 7 and that the expected value of 3D6 is 10.5 (or 11 for safety sake when determining how much damage you will likely take on any given turn).  For example, if are playing against Cygnar and are wondering how much damage you will take from the Black 13th on Scaverous if you commit him that turn, I tend to look at it like this:

1. 3 shots from the Black 13th with Deadeye has a vastly greater than 50% chance of hitting Scaverous, so I assume that all 3 shots will hit (assume the worst when thinking about caster death).
2. POW10 with brutal shot if all 3 shots hit is an average of 21 per dice roll.  Scaverous is base ARM17, so if I have him at ARM21, he will take 0-1 damage on average per shot.  In order to allow for this scenario, I need to have him camping at least 4 if Death Ward is not on him and 2 if Death Ward is.  This assures me that I will not likely die to Black 13th shooting unless the damage rolls spike spectacularly.
3. I will generally factor in 1 extra point of armour on top of what I feel I need to account for dice variance.  So in the scenario listed above, I would like to be at ARM22.

This is the kind of mental math that I do with Scaverous every turn after I identify what I will be in the threat range of that turn.  I quickly go through this with each model that can potentially kill Scaverous that turn and then proceed to determine what I want to camp to, based on what I expect to attack Scaverous.  This changes if you have a way of increasing Scaverous’ DEF however.  For example, if you are behind a linear obstacle or in a wreck and are DEF18 as a result, you will not have to camp as much due to the fact that your chances of being hit go down significantly.

The next thing that some people consider an auto-include (which I don’t, because correct decision making is a far more valuable thing to have with Scaverous) is a medium based unit.  While I don’t necessarily say that you need a medium based infantry, it certainly does alleviate the need to camp as much on any given turn, which may be reason enough to consider inclusion.  We only have 2 medium based units and while they aren’t stellar, they are actually quite good for this role.  I often don’t consider Bloodgorgers to be a screening unit however due to how sketchy tough can be, so if I want a screening unit, I often relegate that roll to the Black Ogrun Boarding Party with Death Ward up on them.  Alternatively, you can run an Ogrun Bokur instead to help guard against Eiryss bolts.

Speaking of Eiryss, she is your priority target when playing Scaverous.

You may be wondering why I haven’t listed melee as a potential threat for him.  There are several reasons for this.  Primary amongst the reasons is Telekinesis.  Telekinesis allows you to modify threat ranges by up to 4″ for any individual model.  This generally allows you to be able to effectively prevent charges that your opponent may want to throw at Scaverous as a 4″ modification in threat range, in addition to denying the charge bonus is a pretty significant neutering of the opposing heavy hitters.  This takes care of the heavy hitters and as far as infantry goes, Scaverous does have access to the Excarnate+Bile Thrall trick, which allows you to deal with infantry before it becomes problematic.

Proper positioning of Scaverous and careful use to Telekinesis will generally be all you need to keep the opposing melee out of Scaverous, factor in Bile Thralls, and unless your opponent has some incredible melee threat ranges, you should not have to worry about melee assassinations.

Properly assessing where Scaverous can die from and then being able to identify how much you need to camp is the first thing that you should do when learning how to play Scaverous.  Next, lets go ahead and explore the tools that make him such an incredible caster when played well.

Turning the Key

Scaverous has arguably the strongest toolbox in Cryx (next to Deneghra2).  It is incredibly flexible and very direct in its power.  He’s got utility spells, offensive spells, defensive spells and movement spells.  He is one of the few casters who can effectively ARM debuff the Avatar (which is a pretty significant), in addition to having a spell that we probably should have never gotten.  Speaking of spells we should not have gotten, let’s start with the elephant on his spell card…

• Telekinesis – I consider this the best spell in the game next to Purification.  The amount of uses for this spell is absolutely staggering and far better than what the simple wording of the spell would suggest.  I mentioned above that properly using his toolbox is how he can straight up not care about melee assassination attempts and this spell is the crux of that.  Moving a heavy back 2″ and turning it around so that it doesn’t get to charge effectively cuts its threat range by 5″, which is an extremely significant amount of threat range reduction.  This is just the tip of the iceberg with Telekinesis though.
  I was originally going to keep this section brief due to the sheer amount of flexibility in this spell, but after some consideration on the matter, I’m going to lay it out because I realize that this is an extremely complex spell that people who are newer to the game (or have never had the pleasure of playing with/displeasure of playing against) may not fully understand.  While my original means of doing this was to try to laundry list it out, Telekinesis is far too flexible a spell to do it in that means.
  One of the most common uses of Telekinesis is to adjust threat ranges.  Against opposing melee models, you can telekinesis them back 2″ and turn them around.  This effectively cuts their melee threat range by 5″ as they can no longer charge.  If you add a Telekinesis on the friendly model that your opponent will want to charge, you can get an additional 2″ away from them, effectively cutting their threat range by 7″ to their desired target.  On the flip side, you can also bring things closer, effectively increasing the threat range to any desired target by 2″ or 4″.  With ranged models, such as the Leviathan, you are able to Telekinesis the Leviathan into a position where it can then get an aiming bonus on targets within 15″ of the Leviathan, which is a fairly significant distance to get an aiming bonus from.
  The second most common use of Telekinesis is model positioning.  Now, you may wonder why I’ve placed this in the second most common use given the nature of the spell, but the fact of the matter is that the majority of people treat Telekinesis as a threat range extender and a non-linear threat range buffer.  However, this does not exclude the fact that one of the most important aspects of Telekinesis is its ability to position models exactly where they are needed in any given situation (whether that be to create a threat vector, or just to adjust a model’s placement and positioning after a charge, or to create additional movement so that a model can jam into a lane to close it off).  This is the most situational dependent of the uses of Telekinesis and is something that can make the biggest difference in a game.  This can completely mess up an opponents order of activations and severely decrease the likelihood that their plans will succeed.
  By turning models around, you can do things like avoid free strikes and when you combine that with Death Chill from a Pistol Wraith, you can cause some serious problems for opposing heavies.  The combination of those 2 abilities straight hoses almost any non-gargossal that tries to get a beat Scaverous and can keep them out of the game almost indefinitely.  This has an added benefit of completely hosing any ranged jacks or beasts and keeps the Pistol Wraiths completely safe from retaliation as they need to forfeit either movement or action, but they are facing their table edge, which denies them the ability to shoot the Pistol Wraiths.  Playing once against a Trollbloods opponent with Scaverous, with Telekinesis, 2 pistol Wraiths and a Warwitch Siren, I effectively kept 3 heavies out of the game for the entire game.  Mulg and the Earthborn never made it past the 15″ mark on my opponents side of the board.
  You can also do things like grant a Leviathan an aiming bonus from 15-17″ away from it’s target of choice (which is an extremely significant distance to get an aiming bonus for in Cryx), in addition to turning the target around to give yourself the +2 bonus to hit (making the Leviathan RAT9 from 15″ away).  With a high ROF weapon, this will allow you to punch holes or put significant amounts of damage onto heavies before they engage, while you’ve got Bile Thralls to deal with melee infantry rushing up the board to get to the Leviathan.
  Telekinesis is a spell with endless amounts of application, and I’m only touching the tip of the iceberg here.  I could easily write an entire article on just Telekinesis, but seeing as this article is about Scaverous, I should move onto the next item in his toolbox before this turns into an article about Telekinesis.  This is the spell that you will need to spend the most time thinking about with Scaverous, as with any Telekinesis caster, and will be the spell that you should learn all the different applications of first.
  I mentioned Bile Thralls, which is the perfect segue into his second most important spell…
• Excarnate – This is one of the most influential spells in our entire faction because of the existence of Bile Thralls.  Asphyxious has proven that Excarnate combos extremely well with Bile Thralls to create a long distance purge that is extremely difficult to stop.  However, the spell serves a slightly different use on Scaverous than it does on Asphyxious.  Due to the fact that Scaverous does not have Teleport to help him get to safety after he casts Excarnate, the threat of Excarnate on Scaverous is a much bigger deal than actually casting the Excarnate.  It is something that every opponent must be wary of because of the huge implications that it has on game play.
  My primary method of utilizing Excarnate with Scaverous isn’t to do the long distance purge across the table that Asphyxious does, rather, it allows me to keep my Bile Thralls safe while still being able to get amazing use out of them.  I tend to run Scaverous fairly aggressively up the board and as such, I need ways of keeping hard hitting melee infantry from getting to him.  This is my primary method of doing so, as the threat of Excarnate+Bile Thralls is very effective at keeping opposing melee infantry away.
  That being said, do not discount the fact that Scaverous has a potential 21″ purge from the Bile Thrall leader, which is extremely nasty under the correct circumstances, especially if going up against a static infantry-based gunline.  That is a massive purge distance that can catch even the most crafty of players unaware if you position it correctly and don’t telegraph that you’re going to do it (or you can engineer a way to keep Scaverous safe from retaliation after he blows all his focus to do it).
  This isn’t to say that Excarnate is only usable with Biles.  Sometimes, creating another Bane is all you need to scrap a heavy and this is another way of getting that extra Bane.  This is a spell that isn’t going to be cast a lot, but the casts that you do make with it are the important ones as they will often lead to massive blow outs from a 3 focus spell.
• Feast of Worms – This is a spell that many people cite as a waste of a spell on his card.  However, there are several things about this spell that make it stand out.  The big thing is that this is a spell that can be used to provide an ARM debuff against models that are spell warded.  It also is a way to provide an ARM debuff across multiple models that would otherwise require you to cycle a debuff between in order to catch them all.  My original feeling on this spell was that it was simply a waste of a spell as well, however, the more I thought about its uses and the more I used it, the more that I discovered how effective the spell really is.  It also is decent at catching many models underneath it for some AoE damage, given that it leaves a 4″ AoE.
  However, when deciding whether or not to cast the spell, look at the opportunity cost of the 4 focus.  This is the reason why you don’t often see Feast of Worms getting cast.  4 focus is 2 unboosted TKs, a boosted Excarnate, or 4 extra ARM to ensure that Scaverous doesn’t just die.  What I typically do with Feast of Worms is that I will target my own model with it to place it exactly where I want it.  To this end, Scrap Thralls and Machine Wraiths are still the best targets.  Other good models to use as targeting beacons for Feast of Worms are Blackbane’s Ghost Raiders, as incorporeal and high speed allows them to get to wherever they want without too many problems.  The advent of Gargossals does somewhat hurt the usage of Feast of Worms, as single target spells such as Parasite and Curse of Shadows tend to be vastly more effective.  However, this spell does have some very specific applications that can be very useful and in ways that can’t be replicated by other ARM debuff spells.
• Icy Grip – They weren’t willing to give Scaverous Crippling Grasp, so this is really one of the next best things.  It is a -2DEF debuff that also turns off opposing special attacks.  This is extremely significant 0n units such as the Winterguard Infantry, Greylord Outriders, Bile Thralls, and a plethora of other units and models that have extremely potent special attacks.

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Alright guys, here’s an other “Unravelling” article that’s going up!  Much like the Deneghra2 article, I’ll be giving it a fair bit of time to make sure that I cover everything that feel needs to be covered and so that I don’t overlook something.  As always, please feel free to message me with any feedback or suggestions as the sections go up!