Last night I put my Ulix proxy on the table for the first time, fielding him against the mighty John Wharton. Before that I tried one go at Vassal with him against Chasing Bacon presenter Chris King. I thought what I'd do, rather than go through the games themselves, is go over what I think I have learnt.
First off, I thought I'd cover things that went well. Lenny is awesome. Just as expected he worked amazingly with the crew. With such a high number of wounds on the models in the crew, being able to reduce damage within 3" is great. Adding rams to bring up the triggers is fantastic, essential for the crew I think. I did find that he was somewhat stuck with what to do with his ap sometimes, but thinking about it I should have been dropping scheme markers to pave the way for another warpig. I am thinking about giving him the upgrade which allows him to heal other models, but it is very expensive.
I have also had some good fun with the pig slingshot. This works by shooting in the rear (rams built in because of Lenny) to make a pig charge and then using Sooey (rams to heal built in because of Lenny) to make them come back again! There are some issues with this, the compulsory triggers on the Warpig make it susceptible to leaving Sooey's range! It is effective, however.
John got pretty frustrated by how much I can heal. Combining Ulix with a slop hauler meant I was able to heal masses of damage on the pigs, which is pretty tasty in Reckoning.
In both games I have played, however, I have run out of pigs. My list only includes 2 to begin with, Gracie and Old Major, and turn 1 I summon another. I am starting to think that is not enough. Once Ulix has no pigs he is a fish out of water, all of his abilities revolve around pigs. What do we lose then? My current list is:
Ulix
Old Major
Gracie
Lenny
Slop Hauler
Hog Whisperer
The one model that seems to not live up to expectation is the Hog Whisperer. I have already mentioned that Lenny has been bad ass and healing fantastic, it just leaves the man who I thought would be awesome. On paper reactivating pigs is great, but it often leaves much to answer for. Taking wounds is pretty savage, Gracie can already give it to herself and needing a mask is pretty brutal. I have found the same in a Som'er crew, I thought giving out masks to summon would mean it would be easy to reactivate pigs, but getting both to work at the same time is not possible in an effective crew. I was also hoping that dropping scheme markers on dead pigs would be handy, but this leads to the not enough pig issue and needing to be in the right place, which is difficult to make work.
So what's the solution? Well piglets, though adorable, don't have much place in Reckoning. The Sow summons 1 wound piglets when she dies, which just leads to easy reckoning points. War Pigs are a bit expensive and I can summon them (tbh I only have one and won't be buying more until plastics). What does that leave. Wild Boar.
As far as I can tell the Wild Board could be pretty effective. Positive to flips outside of activation works well with Ulix and he has decent damage and wounds (enough for Reckoning anyway). It has the same damage spread as a War Pig, with one less melee, and less triggers it has to declare which could mess things up. It's 0 to push and discard scheme markers is also mint. Doesn't charge for one ap, but for 6 stones I can't complain. The one major disadvantage is that I can't interact on the first turn, which makes it slightly harder to summon a warpig, but not impossible. I still think it's worth swapping out the Hog Whisperer for, at least to give it a go.
All this being said and done, however, I am still feeling he is simply not as good as Som'er. I might try messing around with a Gremlin Reckoning list at some point again, to see what I can work out. I won't have as many large hard models, but it will give me more flexibility with schemes. I can also dig Wong out at some point and give him a run, but I don't want to try too many things at once.
Anyway, that's enough from me. I hope it was vaguely interesting. No doubt I will continue to report my learnings soon. Chat later.
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