Miniatures Games,  Tour de Cryx,  Warmachine,  Warmachine MK 3

Tour de Cryx Continued: Denny 2 Surprise Part II: Retrospective

The Tour is over, but as each caster receives new imaginings, or is released for the first time, I’m still going to take some time to go through them. I’ve finished up the five games with the New Deneghra 2, and though I will play many more with her as she is incredibly deep, these are my current impressions. 

Things I learned

Playing Denny 2 in her new incarnation is absolutely amazing. She has a great personal threat range, strong spells, useful control and the ability to deal with both infantry and limited armor. However, she is very difficult to build a list for. Many toolbox casters have to depend on their opponents to bring the correct army composition to allow them to excel, but I feel that Deneghra 2 more relies on your ability to bring a list that can capitalize on whatever tool needs to be brought to bear for the game at hand. She has so many different angles she can approach the game at that picking one, two or even three seems to short her options, which makes building lists with her irritating. I think its going to take some time to figure out the best list for her, and I also don’t really think its been discovered yet. 

Final List

Normally, I have a list here that I’ve decided is the best for the caster and what I think they want to do. Unfortuneatly, as I noted above. this isn’t the case for Denny 2. She’s such a hard caster to pin down what she need that she almost universally has to give something up in order to finish her list. Choosing which part is given up is very hard. I’ve attempted Ghost Fleet, Infernal Machines and Dark Host, and I don’t think that any of them feel quite right. I’m still trying to figure out what to build for her, so I’m not going to provide a final list here, though I wish I could. 

That said, I think the perfect list for her would have a bunch of multi-purpose models able to take on different roles based on the situation presented. 

I think that Denny 2 needs: 

  • High durability targets for a defensive feat, when needed
  • Long threat range targets for an offensive feat, which is prefered
  • Deathjack for an additional Hellmouth
  • Spell Slave for an additional Breath Stealer
  • Soul Trappers for that sweet extra focus
  • Arc Nodes to drop out Hellmouths and Breath Stealers
  • Puppet Strings to make boosting less important
  • Models to make use of Damnation
  • Units to make use of Breath Stealer/Curse of Shadows, probably with 

Coming up with models that do that is pretty rough while also maintaining a theme based platform and the 75 point list consideration. 

Models I think stand out

  • Deathjack, clearly 
  • Soul Trappers
  • Withershadow Combine (Spell Slave and Puppet Strings
  • Cavalry
  • Satyxis Gunslingers

We’ll see what comes out of this as I keep testing and working with her lists. I expect that something like a Dark Host list is where she shines best, with Black Industries a strong second. I am also curious about how she’d work out in Scourge of the Broken coast, but with no Spell Slave, no Deathjack and no Soul Trappers, I believe it is just going to be not as good as other lists. Man. I hate themes so much. 

Overall Impression

Denny is clearly a strong caster. Hellmouth was always good, and it was her lack of feat that really held her back. The rework essentially left her alone, keeping both her good offensive spells and then tossing out all her extremely niche spells for strong spells with everyday uses. Oh, and they gave her a feat worth using. All they did was make her better. 

Compounding her spells and feat is the new way her maneuverability works. With Mat 6, Dark Banishment working on hit, and Shadowstep, she has an interesting and permanent threat range that can often end the game for the unwary. I don’t know for how long, but its almost impossible to stop awful things from happening when she is within 15″. Her personal ability to finish the game is one of the most interesting things about her, and it may be what I focus on in the future. If the target is ever within 14″ on a turn that you can go incorporeal, you can get -2 arm and -5 defense, and if you have something granting Dark Shroud, you can get in there for a -4 armor -5 defense. -7 defense if you can manage to turn them around. Get a puppet strings in there, and it seems to work out just fine. 

That said, because I’ve finished 3 of 5 games with her personally getting involved, I don’t really know what I can do with her army. She stays in the back, trying not to get killed until they turn arrives where the opponent has to commit more than they like and I capitalize and bend the game. I really want to try not ending the game with her, but it feel so good!

Strong Points

What can I say here that I’ve not said before? She has a strong debuff potential, she has personal power, and the ability to readjust a bit when things go wrong. She has a feat that can be used both offensively and defensively, and one of the best offensive spells in the game. She wants a mixed arms army, and that’s likely fine if we can find the one that puts her in the position to do the most good over the most time. Interestingly, I think she might want 3 arc nodes so that she can toss hellmouths for three turns without regard to her bonejacks sacrifices. There is an undeniable part of me that wants to try out her with a pile of deadly light jacks, as well, just to see how they perform under her feat. 

I’ve been really unable to cast Breathstealer, and I think that’s a shame. I’ve cast it a couple times to end games, a few times to slow models down, but mostly its just going to be better to toss out hellmouths. I will say, though, that a boosted Breathstealer followed by a standard hellmouth is probably the play into one unit of infantry to help eat the other by catching troops where they overlap. 

She’s great into infantry, and can often out attrition recursion armies due to hellmouth RFPing plenty of models. properly geared and with the correct list, she likely also excels at personal assassination or group assassination assistance. 

Problem Areas

She is not without faults, however. She is incredibly fragile and has little to no defenses over 50% of the time. If the opponent comes to bear with Magic Weapons, she often has to hide herself far behind her own lines and play the waiting game until an opening presents itself that she can then exploit. If no opening appears, she is likely simply going to die. Similarly, she has not way to stop concentrated (as opposed to mass) armor, outside of a single spell, and if she didn’t bring the list to do it, she surely isn’t going to be able to punch through. Armor Cracking being the prevalent need that it is, its a pretty large ding against her in anything that can’t bring along Dark Shroud on its own. Additionally, she really wants Eilish (for puppet strings) so her Mercenary slot is filled up as well. They aren’t game breakers, but its the limitations you need to be aware of when building to her. 

Final Thoughts

I like the new Denny 2, and may continue to play her for the time being, at least until I get my Skarre 3 up and running. That Giant monster is going to another complicated caster to build for.  Denny has many strengths that I like, but has the unnerving ability to simply end games, either through her death or that of the opposing warcaster. I don’t know enough to rate her completely, but I give her a pretty high mark – below the top tier, but still in the better portion of the game: 8.6

 

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