Recently in Karchev1 Category

My 3 lists were my standard evlad and irusk lists, with karchev t4 as the third.

First game, opponent had terminus, the new gaspy, and pdenny. I gambled on karchev, he went with pdenny, and that game went pretty much as you'd expect.

I was able to keep the satyxis from feedbacking me by waling with shocktroopers, then moving the greylords up and spraying them all to death. I even got relatively lucky on the 3 flags, since the middle one didn't disappear. But otherwise, sidearms really doesn't help much against that many debuffs, and I spent my time killing all his nasty support crap (gorman, pistol wraiths, warwitches, etc) while his banes and my jacks whittled each other down. I was actually holding both flags relatively well, until a game-changing turn when he potentially had a charge on karchev with snapjaw. He was going to start the turn with 2 fury on him, but I still didn't want that chance, so I ran a zerker out of the right hand flag area to foul up his charge lane.

His biles on that side were able to kill the juggernaut(!) that remained to hold that side, by rolling a ridiculous amount of 6s for damage on their sprays in addition to parasite. In retrospect, I think I would have been better off camping and taking the charge, healing up with mechanics, and killing snapjaw, because that was his last large point value piece in the middle area, and the zerker would have been able to kill at least a bile or two and help hold the right area. As it was I lost on scenario at dice down, after denny was finally able to get a crippling grasp on karchev who had been hiding at least 10" behind the line of battle the whole game.

Terminus and bane spam vs karchev and jack spam (with a side of MoW, since its my t4 list). Scenario was close quarters.

I lost 8 souls worth of MoW on his feat turn, but thankfully none of the mechaniks or greylords. I pretty carefully talked about what the total threat range on admonia's dispel was (he had corbeau in the list)... then managed to totally forget about it halfway through my turn. My plan had been to stick karchev in the brick and rely on sidearms, but of course that got dispelled. I still hadn't left any room for terminus to actually fly to a location where he could both see and reach karchev, but puppet gave him the crit pitch he needed to throw one of the jacks out of the way.

Even with 8 extra souls worth of focus, even without the sidearms def buff, terminus rolled snakeyes on one of his attacks and left karchev with 3 boxes left. 4 mechaniks were still alive, so opponent conceded without even waiting to see if the repair rolls could get the one box in the axe (and his body wasn't out, so unearthly rage + allocate to juggernaut probably would have done it anyway).

Obvious stupidity with admonia aside, I'm not sure I like the feel of karchev brick - its really a question of can you deal with it, and less a question of can I pilot it correctly.

Same karchev list from the tourney, wanted to get some practice with deathclock timing.

Opp had:
Jarl
earthborn
blitzer
mauler
impaler
slag
fenns w drummer
champs w skaldi

scenario was supply and demand, terrain layout wasn't going to be a factor.

I sent one unit of sts towards opp zone, others towards mine, jacks in the middle, with karchev slightly behind and offset towards my zone in order to control objective. Fenns and light beasts went towards my zone, blitzer mauler and jarl in the middle, champs and earthborn on the other side.

Blitzer got within charge range of 1 st, took it to get it tied in melee, one fenn was in charge range so i reflexively charged it, ran the others to engage the fenns. Ordinarily run to engage with STs should never happen, but I wanted the initial battle line well ahead of my zone. Making the charge attack was stupid, since they just got the vengeance attacks, but even so none of the fenns killed any STs, the blitzer had to clear itself but was able to kill 2 sts using its initial melee attacks and still get to shoot. Champs and the other STs got tied up with each other, earthborn ran over to join the party and accidentally got out of control range.

My jack brick hadn't taken a hit, but I was definitely within range of the blitzer, and within range of the lights or maybe the EBDT if i could clear either a few fenns or a few champs respectively, so I decided to go ahead and unearthly rage / feat. Karchev tried to spray the fenns but missed. settled for knocking down the lights and killing the blitzer on that side. Greylords were out of position to have helped with the fenns, so they went over to try and help with the champs, but pow 12 really isn't cutting it there. STs werent able to clear them either.

Mediocre feat turn, but then again nothing was really in danger of getting to karchev due to the number of jacks in the way. Opp did what she could to kill some more STs and attack jacks, but otherwise uneventful.

Next turn I did UR again and camped the rest, juggs killed the mauler, finished the lights, and was able to get the zerker onto jarl but missed attacks. Thinned out the fenns some more, wasnt able to kill the champs but positioned at least 1 ST to stop the EBDT trample, as well as clogged the lane with mechaniks and a greylord. Got a control point because the mauler had been the last thing in opp zone and I got another jugg in.

Opp was ready to concede since there was a jack on Jarl and the EBDT was out of control range still, but I talked through how to get an assassination attempt on karchev. Champs needed to clear the ST, which they did. Jarl walked out of combat around the zerker, who missed (only mat5 base) in order to get the EBDT back in control range. Used the gun to clear out mechanik and greylord in the way. EBDT was just in charge range, but left karchev on like 9-10 boxes thanks to the focus camp. Win on scenario was inevitable at that point, jarl wasn't contesting and the EBDT wasn't either.

Couple things that bothered me about this game (besides little stupid stuff like not charging things with vengeance) were the consistent pattern of karchev needing to take a significant amount of damage in pretty much every game (thanks to 10" control), and me taking too long on the turn when I feat and break up the brick. I used maybe 30 minutes total, which would be fine in a SR situation but is wayyy too long for hardcore.

eVayl
2 angels
scythean
ravagore
legionaires
hex hunters
spawning vessel
2 shepherds
3 spell martyrs

Scenario was the one with the central destructible objective and two zones, score by controlling the objective or your opponent's zone. I figured I'd just brick towards the objective to prevent him from hit & run, and hope he didn't destroy the objective. One group of sts for my zone, the other for his zone. Greylords on crowd control since clouds weren't going to do squat.

He did a turn 1 obliteration through a spell martyr at the zerker in the middle of the brick, "theyre like def 11 or something right" "nope, def 15" "hrrm maybe i'll boost the hit". Did a bit of damage, all of which was healed by the mechs next turn, at the cost of slightly disrupting the alignment of the brick and forcing one of the jacks to trample a mech (who survived) in order to get back into sidearms position. Otherwise stuff just advanced, it was going to be hexhunters vs the sts in my zone, legos and the pot vs the sts near his zone. Ravagore put down a scather but i just ran through it anyway, STs were able to avoid it.

His feat turn he pinged a jack with the oraculus to boost obliterations at karchev, but figured he was going to be out for purification. boosted 15s against arm 21 34 boxes don't really matter much, karchevs paint was scratched a little bit and vayl refuged back. His heavies went ahead and hit the jack wall. The sidearms math-hammer did its job, scythean bounced right off missing twice including not getting the chain attack, angel had to come in to finish off for a grand total of 1 jack dead, other angel didn't do enough to matter for any systems. hex hunters ran to engage the STs in my zone.

Obviously this was going to be UR turn, and I wanted to kill the angels, but would end up feating in case enough of the line got clear for a charge to matter.. One of the angels had tenacity, the other had admonition. The objective was kind of fouling up my ability to get multiple jacks on the tenacity'ed angel, so I gave 2 the one jack that could for sure get to it, one to the jack near the scythean. STs were going to need to block the admonition move, so greylords sprayed the hex hunters off of them. STs charged/ran and fouled up admonition pretty good, he wriggled and squirmed but couldn't get out, had to settle for moving back in the pocket enough that only 1 got a successful charge; most importantly, he was still in charge range.

The jug with 2 focus failed against the angel due to not being able to roll 9s to hit under unearthly rage. At the time I was thinking this may have been poor target selection and I would have been better off making sure the ravagore was dead. However, afterwards looking at the math I think it was just bad luck, 2 focus + UR is above 70% chance, and the STs that came up afterwards in shieldwall and did a big CMA push that to 85%.

So anyway, I settled for killing the scythean, got another jack in on the angel/ravagore but didn't kill. I need to keep better track of crit freeze, I know I got at least one that turn but don't think it got accounted for. I did make a potentially major mistake, healing a jack with the mechaniks instead of the 2 boxes karchev still had on him from something (low healing rolls turn before? don't recall).

He decided to go all out after karchev, who was at arm 19 def 12 having spent everything last turn. Remnants of the hex hunters in the forest came out, didn't hurt him. Vayl came up and threw more arced oblits (did he do two unboosted? he cleared her out of fury). Ravagore 2h threw the jug into one of the STs on the angel, angel repulsed the other STs and charged karchev. Karchev was only about half dead at this point.

He went over to the other angel, declared the animus, spent the fury for it, started going to move models, realized that the ST shieldwall brick was going to totally screw that idea up. Said no I don't want to do that yet. Attacked the STs with legos and a stinger that the pot had spawned, nothing doing against arm21. At that point he basically decided it was over, didn't even fly the angel out due to the number of free strikes it would have taken.

Some shepherds were in in the way, but vayl was on 0 fury and was going to get it one way or another. Karchev gave 3 to the knocked down jugg, who made sure to shake the KD. Looking at it, he may actually have done me a favor by throwing him back into Karchev's control area. That jugg was totally undamaged (2h throw last turn did nothing), and had a line on vayl , albeit taking ravagore freestrike and needing something to clear the shepherds. Greylords sprayed through my stuff to kill the shepherds. STs charged the ravagore trying to get a branch out but didn't do it. Karchev moved up, staying in reach range of the angel on him, cast UR once I made sure his control was going to cover where the jugg would end up and that the charge distance was good. Didn't bother to swing at the angel with karchev, probably should have just to cover my bases, I was fine on time.

Free strike only did 9, it takes at least 11 to take out any system, so plan axe-to-face was go. UR didn't fail me this time and vayl was dead after the second swing, with one more bought swing to go.

This was pretty much exactly the kind of fight I wanted with karchev - an unbuffed scythean has essentially no chance of killing a sidearms jugg in one go, and I'll gladly trade a 6 point jack to get multiples of his heavies in melee range all day long. The angels were the only legit threat to karchev, and even though I wasn't able to kill them, I bogged them down sufficiently when it mattered. He honestly may have been better off killing the objective, delaying with legos, and playing hit and run on the jackwall with admonition / refuge as I advanced towards the further zone.

As for the T4 in the tournament, it seems pretty legit to me. STs are fine as long as you've got the tier bonus to get them up the field, and two max units came in pretty handy in the last game. Greylords are MVP with magic 7 pow 12 spray 8" of infantry-clearing doom, even when they can't cloud. The sidearms math-hammer works as long as you can keep the brick together. I never needed to use my time extension. It would probably do better at hardcore with a little time practice, and perhaps swapping in behemoth in exchange for min STs. That clearly defeats the point of having a "third list" in character restricted tourneys, but does bring more anti-eiryss.

Scenario was the radial one where you have to control the flag on your right and contest the far zone near your opponent's deployment.

So never having played this scenario, I could see how I could maybe tow some jacks toward the flag I needed to control, but there was no way I was going to get something else across to his zone to contest. I felt like I pretty much had to camp the flag he had to target and make him come to the brick.

Opp had

rahn
2 phoenix
manticore
sentinels + UA + soulless
battlemages
magister
arcanist
2 mage hunter assasins
pEiryss

The other thing I had told myself I didn't want to do this tourney was put karchev in the brick. The issue was, I had no good answer to pEiryss, and I was concerned that if karchev was well behind the brick, there wasn't much to protect him from her shooting around the (relatively small, even with clouds on the corners) front line of jacks. Even with the amount of push-pull, I felt like I'd have a better chance trying to keep the brick together with him in it.

I took second for the extra distance, to make sure I made it to the flag by turn 2 without too much trouble. He moved up uneventfully.

Karchev towed up, swapped to sidearms, the other jacks ran in either for free (zerker) or with the help of the koldun lord. Here was my first screwup, I saw the linear obstacle and thought oh, it'd be good for karchev to have some cover as backup... except that now his jack cant end movement there to plug the gap in the brick. Thankfully he at least had a greylord cloud on him.

I didn't see much point in shieldwalling the group of STs near the mages, since they would just pull them out before rolling damage anyway, so they ran up ahead of the brick to get in the way; the other group shieldwalled towards the far flag (although in retrospect, the MHA ignore shieldwall too anyway, so they should have run too.

He didn't want to risk eiryss trying to shoot through the gap against def19 (we rolled for whether karchev would get the cover since I was pretty sloppy about getting him within an inch, and came up no) so he backed her up. Feated and killed as many of the STs with battlemages as he could, he said afterwards that they were too tempting all spread out like that, so maybe that's a good bait for me... I'd rather trade a handful of STs for most feats, honestly.

sorry about the rotated images, need to figure out why the thumbnailing software is doing that, but too tired at the moment. I wish I had taken pictures every turn, because looking at this eiryss might have been in tow-alpha-strike range depending on how far back up the hill he had moved her, and one of his jacks almost certainly was.

As it was, I moved, bricked, and headlocked amongst the brick. I knew he could TK to beat it but was hoping def 15 would be enough to miss at least one. The STs sacced movement to stand back up and shoot, they killed several sentinels and one of the MHAs, but would have been better off running to foul up TK placement as much as possible, ditto for the mechaniks.

Anyway, he ran the arc node up, boosted all 3 TKs (not sure in restrospect why it was 3 boosted, since rahn's 8 focus, need to ask if I'm misremembering that or if it was only 2 tks; i had 2 headlocks but thought he needed a third to start getting a pull angle from the mages). Anyway, the brick was broken. Whip snap from the magister moved eiryss up, karchev got disrupted and charged by some sentinels. They only did 9 dmg thanks to some poor dmg rolls, which the mechaniks would end up fully healing next turn.

I felt like this was going to be a really lackluster feat turn without being able to cast, but I needed my jacks turned around the right way and doing something useful. First off, the greylords sprayed most of the sentinels to death, including all but one of the ones engaging karchev. I killed the remaining engaging one with karchev and feated; my opponent said he expected me to spray eiryss, but I would have needed 11 to hit (9 if I was able to powerbooster a jack to push karchev into aiming range, but I don't recall if that would have been possible). Even so, that would have been a better chance to take, I think - have the zerker or something kill the last sentinel first to clear engagement.

Couple jacks got charges on the arc node, couldnt get any more thanks to the flag, one trampled towards eiryss but was well short (and as my opponent pointed out, engaging her doesn't help, since he'll just TK), the last I was really frustrated with the placement of, considered failing a charge towards a sentinel just to get him in the way but vengeance would have moved him around anyway, ended up just pointlessly moving him up. Would have been better to trample to plug a bit of a gap.

Because I had charge issues due to not being able to end on the flag, I had stopped thinking about it as incorporeal, and misread the situation on that side. The phoenix was able to walk out of engagement with the juggernaut through the flag and into range of karchev, while only taking 1 free strike. He had rolled a 6 for field healing, and the free strike didn't crit, so no systems out and he took a big chunk off of karchev. TKed forward manticore finished the job; that one I flat didn't see and would have at least made a little more troublesome if I had done something useful with my last jack.

All in all, this is kinda what I wanted to get out of this tourney - one of the better players in the area, with a list thats a bad matchup for karchev, playing a scenario that's bad for him. Its one thing to know in the abstract that these are bad matchups, but I'm the kind of person that generally needs to play things out at least once to realize how bad they are.

At the time, I thought afterwards that I need to change up the list specifically to deal with eiryss (and pEiryss is MUCH worse for karchev than eEiryss), but in retrospect I'm not so sure. His tow threat range is comparable to hers, and there was at least one (probably two) times I could have taken a crack at her in this game.

I wanted to see how karchev t4 would fare in a tournament environment, so I just took a single list to keep myself from falling back to something more reliable against bad matchups.

Karchev
4 juggernauts
berzerker
2 max shocktroopers
koldun lord
greylords
min mechaniks

zerker was swapped in because otherwise the points are weird, I wanted two max STs for scenarios.

first opp had pSevvy and high reclaimer, he went with the high reclaimer

High Reclaimer
reckoner
avatar
idrians + ua
errants + ua
gorman
covenant
choir
rhupert
eEiryss

I had told myself before the tourney that I really didn't want to use tow, I wanted to just play attritional sidearms brick with karchev well behind the brick.

And then it was announced that Guidons would be the first scenario... not much choice there, really. Opponent won the roll, and then gave me first because he was unfamiliar with the scenario.

So the STs moved up in shieldwall, with advance move from the tier that put them in perfect range for karchev to tow and charge the corner of em, then run the three jacks towards the objective.

We were playing the giant bizzare piece of terrain as rough terrain, because blocking LOS that close to a zone would be just unfair.

He didn't move his errants up to intervene between the jacks and the objective, just tried to shoot up the leading jack and left it with cortex out but all other important systems up.

I activated my objective, placed it b2b with karchev, who then moved up to get the jack into unearthly rage, while staying within 4" of the objective and less than 2" away from the zone, popped feat. Front jack didn't finish the objective on the charge, but the second on was thankfully just in charge range and got it done. Remaining jack in the tow group moved back towards karchev but didn't get close enough to be a cloud target, in retrospect I should have trampled him. Other jacks were too far out of position to do much of anything interesting, although in retrospect at least the zerker could have run to block some LOS. Had to settle for clouding karchev, put some clouds up on the STs who moved to block my objective; doing the math now, 2 clouds isnt quite enough to cover 3 sts without some more creative placement so there would have been a small LOS gap anyway. Other STs moved up as a buffer against any errants that tried to contest my zone.

After talking with me about it, opponent realized he pretty much had to kill karchev that turn or lose on scenario, because I would get 2 this turn for the destruction and 1 next turn when the objective placed b2b with karchev and into my zone. He started to activate the reckoner, I pointed out he needed to get small bases out of the way first, so gorman moved up and threw a hopelessly out of range black oil at karchev (cause rust bomb wont work on him)... which then deviated 6 inches to the 1, directly on top of him. So much for the cloud helping DEF. Eiryss shot him, with a roll that would have missed without the black oil. So much for the camp. Reckoner shot him, got ancillaried and shot him again. Idrians got fire from the book, moved up. I pointed out that some of them were going to be out, let him rearrange the movement a bit but one of them was still going to be out, so it was a couple of preyed 3 man CRAs and a two man due to the guy out. They left karchev on one box, and that was all she wrote.

Opp had thought the book gives crit fire, in looking it up afterwards, it's actually just plain continuous fire on direct hit. Thankfully in talking about the game, we had played "what if" because he was rushing for time and not entirely sure if he had gotten a crit; the fire would have gone out, and failing that wouldn't have done enough damage.

This was pretty much a failure to protect karchev on my part, thankfully the dice smiled on him (well, aside from the black oil that is).

The pigs were itching to fight someone that spoke their language (rather than those cheating kayazy), so Karchev was happy to oblige

Karchev
5 juggernauts
max shocktroopers
greylords
koldun lord
mechs + UA

Carver
3 warhogs
brigands
slaughterhousers
targ
alten ashley
rorsch & brine
gunboar w/rorsch

No scenario, just axe to face.

There was a nicely 5-shocktrooper sized gap in the middle between some rough terrain on the west and a forest on the east, so I shoved em in there with the sidearms jack brick behind them, karchev and support behind that

Brigands came up with slaughterhousers behind them, carver and the hogs behind that. Rorsch was flanking behind the forest.

Shocktroopers moved up to the edge of the gap in shieldwall, shot a couple of the slaughterhousers until I, y'know, read their card, and remembered how crappy their range really is. Had my opp put the models back.

Brigands came up and got quagmire on the shocktroopers, slaughterhousers charged em and didn't kill any of them. Rorsch & co moved up a bit, gunboar shot at something I forget.

STs turned sideways in shieldwall to prepare for what was coming their way, karchev and the greylords came up and sprayed the %$^%$ out of everything, doing minimal damage to my line and only knocking down one or two STs thanks to sidearms keeping the jacks standing through karchevs spray.

Brine came up and killed two STs, the scraps of the slaughterhousers and brigands re-engaged them but didnt take many more out. Hogs hung back, he didnt want to waste them or the feat killing the STs. This time I sprayed before shieldwalling, killed all but one of my remaining STs and cleared the line for feat + unearthly rage. This killed brine, left one hog frozen due to the crit freeze with no spirit to shake, both others injured but able to shake the freeze. Batten down the hatches is no joke, everything protected by it at least survived.

He still wanted to save the feat for karchev, did what damage he could, tried to finish off one of the juggs with carver after I pointed out exactly where to stay safe from karchevs threat range, but didn't quite get it done.

My turn, I prioritized the hogs and killed em all, swung at carver but missed. So it was rorsch plus a gunboard, one slaughterhouser, and carver, with 2 juggernauts engaging him. On the plus side, I had moved karchev up such that they were mutually in charge range, if he could clear out the 2 juggernauts, battlemechaniks, and greylords in the way and avoid freestrikes from at least one other juggernaut plus an ST.

I said, well, that last slaughterhouser will kill the injured juggernaut if he rolls a 15 for damage, might as well go for it. 15 on the dot. Gunboar shot at the greylords & etc, missed and deviated completely wildly, 6 inches right onto the last ST. Well, heck, if he rolls a 13 on blast damage it'll kill him... 13. I was starting to believe. Rorsch came up and shot at a greylord, missed, shot again and killed him. We talked it over a bit, and it looked like he could actually get past the battlemechanik in the way for a charge on karchev... he'd just take free strikes from the remaining juggernaut engaging him, another jugg along the path, and the battlemechanik.

First jugg hit but no crit freeze and didn't do enough to kill him. Second one blew him up (in retrospect, I really should have let the battlemechanik take the honors, he would have rolled high enough).

We rolled out what would have happened cause I didn't think he could take karchev on 21 arm even with the feat, and he ended up falling short, although that's the closest karchev has come to death so far.

Wanted to try out karchevs t4 to see if the shocktroopers with advance move were useful for holding objectives. Ended up rolling gauntlet for the scenario, which isn't the best example given that karchev can just run up the middle, but decided to play it anyway.

Karchev
5 juggernauts
2 x max shocktroopers
koldun lord
greylord

opp had
pBaldur
wold guardian
wold wyrd
wold watcher
gorax
wrongeye + snapjaw
max gators
druids +ua
woldstalkers

There was a hill in each zone, obstructions to the side. He had baldur and most of the beasts in the middle with the druids ready to move into his zone, woldstalkers and watcher flanking to the west, gators and wrongeye to the east. I put karchev and the jacks in a brick opposing baldur, with the greylords behind them, one unit of STs ready to go into my zone, the other unit facing the gators.

Ended up being out of range to cloud the front of the jack wall, need to either move the greylords first or have them deploy right behind the jacks. On later turns the clouds plus sidearms did a good job of keeping woldstalker fire from hitting, but that was about all the greylords did.

The jack brick did what it does, run up the middle, altering course only slightly to engage the gorax just to stop him from being able to get to karchev. Took a charge from the guardian next turn as well. Between the wyrd, guardian, gorax, and devouring from the druid ua, I think the jacks lost a total of maybe 30 boxes across all of them, with the most badly damaged still having 8 boxes and his ice axe.

STs took a charge from the gators like a champ, only killed 1 ST. They were able to tarpit the gators for the rest of the game. He might have been a little better off combining on one of the middle ones to de-shieldwall the end, i had a line of 4 backed up by one in the middle. Should probably consider a 2-3 or 3-2 phalanx.

The other unit of STs, once I saw there was nothing really in danger of contesting my zone, ran to engage the druids. This maybe wasn't the smartest in retrospect - they're magic users anyway so engaging them doesn't particularly matter, and wouldn't stop them from force bolting the brick apart. He force bolted the STs off the druids instead, he said he didn't really want the jacks getting any closer, and pushing away wasn't going to work against the brick. I guess at least the engagement stopped him from getting better angles to pull one sideways then push it back.

What the STs did do won me the game though - two of em were in range to charge back into the druids and kill the one blocking a charge lane to baldur (along with the wyrd). He had 2 fury on him, which wasn't enough to stop a juggernaut under unearthly rage and a free charge from the feat.

Really boiled down to inexperience on his part leaving baldur that close, but it probably would have been won on attrition as well - snapjaw was in charge range of at least one jugg, and the guardian and gorax were already engaged. This wasn't the best scenario to make use of the STs to be in a second zone that the brick wasn't, but I was still relatively pleased with them. So far in games they've been able to take a charge from a full unit of doomreavers and a full unit of gators and emerge relatively healthy, which seems pretty good to me, and the advance move fixes a lot of their speed issues in a way that tactical supremacy doesn't. They're not offensive powerhouses but mat 7 was enough to clear out the druids when I needed it.

Another mangled metal game

Karchev
2x spriggan

eDoomshaper
Mulg
Mauler

Karchev was able to get a charge on the mauler, angled nicely to place the towed spriggans such that they could charge mulg. They killed him in 4 attacks without any focus allocation. We rolled out what would have happened if they had fallen short against mulg, and he wouldn't have taken them down, the last spriggan survived with 13 boxes.

Opp just hadn't seen that trick before.

Mangled metal game

Karchev
2x spriggan

opp had

Grim
Mulg
Mauler

I had a tow opportunity on grim, but he had 4 fury so it would have been pointless, since without focus assistance karchev can only deliver a jack with 2 focus under unearthly rage. Backed up but still caught karchev and one of the spriggans in grim's feat.

Karchev sprayed the mauler to kd it, the unfeated spriggan killed the mauler.

Mulg charged karchev, taking a free strike from the spriggan that took out his mind.

Mulg boosted the hit rolls instead of just spending one to regenerate, which cost him the game. Karchev survived on 4 or 5 boxes, including his axe arm, so he promptly put mulg in the dirt.

Really this was just dumb luck on my part, should have moved karchev his inch to clear a better charge lane for the spriggan to end in a better position to blog mulg's charge.

SR2012 scenario with the objective that allows you to launch a aoe into the nearby rectangular zone. Because their are 2 objectives and 2 zones, it kind of seemed like a auto-lose on scenario for a karchev brick that can only be in one place at a time, but i decided to try it out.

Karchev
5 juggernauts
koldun lord
mechaniks

opp had

strakhov
behehehahahohmyextremoth
great bears
doom reavers
demo corps
widowmakers
kayazy eliminators

I decided to camp the zone on my side, preventing him from getting 2 points per turn, but giving up 1 point per turn to him controlling his zone and keeping his objective alive.

I went out of my way to kill the eliminator contesting my zone on the second round, which in retrospect didn't make any sense. Yes it got me a point and kept me even with him for the next turn, but really the game was going to boil down to whether I was able to kill his caster or the objective before he won on scenario, which should have only taken 4 rounds. Thankfully his doomies failed to kill their objective on their first attempt. Keeping karchev back to spray the kayazy and keeping a focus to boost the hit really screwed up forward momentum, I think the only way that list works is if it's going full speed ahead until it gets where it needs to be, which in this case was within striking distance of the objective.

There was a wall between each objective and the zone. Walls are a giant middle finger to a jack brick without reach. He had bears and widowmakers on the wall, I wasn't going to be able to hurt them without a trample or ranged attacks. I tried a trample on feat turn, fell short on distance and basically wasted the feat plus 1 focus. However, the jack stuffed in their face meant his bears couldn't get the charge, just had to swing over the wall, and they cant do much without the extra charge die or battle lust. Got a trample with a different jack the turn after that which put a jugg on his objective and ultimately "won" me the game. Looking at it in retrospect the trample only should have worked on feat turn, no pathfinder otherwise. Apologies about that, alex (assuming you read this). Karchev moving up and/or greylord spray might have been enough to clear a lane for the jack to get over the wall instead.

As we ended up playing it, strakhov snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by charging the juggernaut that was about to kill the objective and failing, after the bears failed to kill it (again no charge dice, although I think if he used the 360 arc to get full charge distance he should have been able to get at least one or two boosted damage rolls). Jugg still had an axe arm and cortex, so unearthly rage and 5 chances to roll a 9 to hit on 3 dice put strakhov down.

Really, karchev is at a pretty crippling disadvantage in this scenario; it seems like priority number 1 is getting to the objective and killing it, perhaps even with a tow + feat if necessary. Also seems like he needs a unit to contest another zone for at least a turn. Shocktroopers in his tier might have been able to get to my objective fast enough to delay the doomies another turn.

trying out sr2012

karchev
5 juggs
max mechaniks
koldun lord

zerkova
wishnailer
doomies + ua
devastator
torch
alexia
widowmakers
proxied kayazy eliminators

were playing scenario involving destruction of an objective, then next turn another objective appears.

Doomies were going to annihilate the first objective because of AD, I didn't see much point in towing some jacks over there to draw the issue out. I sidearms bricked around the spawn point for the second objective. Doomies tried to come up the backside to kill karchev. I stupidly tried to spray them with the koldun lord, luckily the eliminators were in the area as an alternate target. As an aside, the eliminators weren't that impressive, losing one means loss of gang, which means they can actually miss against a mechanik benefitting from iron sentinel. Anyway, a couple of mechaniks as a road block kept the doomies from charging karchev, and he cleared them out next turn with unearthly rage. One of the juggenauts had gone off to tie up / kill the widowmakers, the other 4 were enough to take care of torch and devastator.

Zerkova tried a last-ditch spell kill against the objective, wasn't able to get enough damage on it. I need to remember to actually use the special abilities in SR2012, since karchev was within 4" he could have shut down that spell kill even harder.

Overall I think karchev brick is going to have a hard time against multi-objective scenarios - there honestly wasn't much incentive for him to approach after he got the initial CP, even if he couldn't break the wall of jacks he could have just camped his objective and won.

Juggernauts have started showing up super cheap on ebay due to parting out the 2 player battle box, so I decided to proxy karchev to see if he was worth picking up.

Me:
Karchev
5 juggernauts
koldun lord
mechaniks

Opp:
strakhov
black ivan
torch
doomreavers + ua
manhunter
alexia

Doomreavers were sufficiently fast that I didn't see much of a choice other than sidearms and seeing if the front line of the brick (3 in front, two in back, ahead of karchev) could survive the hit. He got 4 doomies on one jack, 2 plus the manhunter on the other, and ignored the middle jack due to def14. Def12 on the corner jacks was enough to force a couple misses and let them both survive.

After that it was feat + unearthly rage + trample to get rid of the weaponmasters, unearthly rage on next turns was enough to get rid of his jacks.

I had a pretty big order of operations snafu trying to tow some jacks across wreck markers towards strakhov, resulting in karchev being backturned and not screened. Strakhov was only able to do like 6 points before karchev walked over and applied axe to face though.

I can see order of operations being a big issue with karchev, but having multiple jacks work properly in melee is quite nice.