Players were not asked if they won their game nor whether they were playing in a casual game, tournament, or any other format. Based off this data set, we can see that there is a pretty even spread of all Trollblood warlocks being played. Obviously there are exceptions, as Captain Gunnbjorn was not played at all and epic Madrak was played the most, but on average every warlock was played at least 4 times.
This week we are going to explore these results. We are not concerned about the competitive relevance of these warlocks at this time. We will explore that in future articles. What we want to focus on in this article is the process by which players choose the warlocks they play.
This past weekend the US sent two five player teams across the pond to compete in the World Team Championships. Prior to the competition there had been an insane amount of preparation with many conversations about it. One conversation that really stood out was on the Privateer Press forum Trollblood Community board where Team USA player, Jason Flanzer, shared with everyone the process he goes through in warlock selection. You can read his thoughts on the subject here: Jason Flanzer. I won't just echo what Jason says, in this article, but to summarize he looks at two categories that Trollbloods have easy access to with their army: Durability and Raw Offense. Then he looks at how our warlocks enhance the army by focusing on five qualities: Mobility, Disruption, Multipliers, Negation, and Rare Qualities. I believe this level of thought requires you to know a lot about yourself and your play style but can be a nice exercise in self discovery.
Another way to look at the warlock selection process is to ask the ever popular question: "What is this list supposed to do?" It is widely believed that there are three basic plans that a player can have when they hit the table. These plans are:
Assassination - In my opinion, assassination is not just about killing your opponent's caster. You can do that almost by accident with some hot dice. I think that in order to effectively plan for assassination you need to put your opponent in a position where they can't avoid it. They see your threat on one side and focus forces to deal with them while models on another flank force the enemy to split while your assassination run flies up the middle. Assassination is the ultimate game of chess. Positioning is key and at the core of the list is a delivery system (a model or group of models that help a small force to move up the field to engage the enemy or trigger the assassination run) and your assassin (not necessarily your warlock but often times it is).
Attrition - Maybe your only plan is to outlast your opponent. This can be accomplished by putting so many models on the field your opponent can not possibly chew through them all before you chew through theirs or maybe you have smaller army with higher defense and armor stats and buffs so that even though your opponent can hit your troops they just can't crack the armor. All Trollblood models have tough so this puts our whole faction in the attrition category because they can take it across the chin, then get up and deliver an axe to the face over and over.
Control - Some players want to dictate what their opponent can and can't do. This plan is usually associated with strong scenario play because you control where your opponent can go, who they can attack and when, whether they can charge, cast spells, etc.
How you select your warlock may differ from either way presented here or could include factors that exist in both scenarios. There is no right or wrong to Warmachine/Hordes and that is what makes this game so great. One point, I personally believe and will continually stress in all articles featured here, is that in the end YOU have to pilot your list to success. YOU have to be comfortable enough with your list that you know everything it can and cannot do. Warlocks and armies that perform well in tournaments are not the only ones that should be played. Who knows, maybe this week someone will be brave enough to pull out Captain Gunnbjorn and champion him through a major convention.
I hope this article has helped to give you some different ways to look at your warlock selection process. In future articles we will dive into the topics of list composition where I will define and analyze the basic list types: Brick, Infantry Swarm, and Skew and how your warlock selection can effect these types.
Thank you for taking the time to visit Trollbloods: Kith,Kriel, and Kin. As with all Kith,Kriel, and Kin articles this is not meant to be the end of the discussion but, rather, the beginning.
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