Clandra & Cryx

Calandra and Cryx
by Sevwall

There has been some discussions recently on how to handle Cryxian opponents. Cryx is arguably one of, if not the most threatening factions you can face, especially in a tournament environment. I personally find that Calandra is one of the best casters you can take to hamper cryx on a turn by turn basis. This article was written to convey the knowledge and strategies that I have learned to you. Hopefully it may help some of you, and if not, maybe it made you think a little. This whole article is based on months of tourney experiences. If you believe that this renders the article anecdotal or without merit, please feel free to read the article, but avoid making comments of that nature. Any helpful criticism or advice is fine. If you don’t feel that you understand Calandra very well, or want to know where I’m coming from with this advice, please feel free to read my article on Calandra to see where I’m coming from.



Here are a few advantages to Cryx that you will see most often.

- Huge Anti-ARM models and effects
- Large Threat Range models
- Large numbers of cheap models
- The ability for a single model to kill swaths of your troopers
- Plentiful Arcnodes and Magic spells as a finishing move

Here are a few weaknesses inherent to Cryx

- Low DEF
- Low MAT
- Low ARM
- Reliance upon Tartarus
- Jack light. Often with a few very expensive but fragile jacks (Mortenebra will be addressed later)
- Incorporeal models

Calandra helps exacerbate these weaknesses with her spells and abilities. Lets readdress the weaknesses with that in mind:

- Low DEF
Calandra’s feat is a slight bump up in accuracy and damage. On feat turn, even a lowly MAT or RAT 4 Pyg of either variety is going to hit nearly any non-Satyxis Raider infantry. Your MAT 5 troops will rarely miss, and anything buffed by a fellcaller is going to miss only if lady luck scorns you.

- Low MAT
Starcrossed is absolute hell on Cryx. Most Cryx MAT hovers around 5 or 6, with 7 being the absolute unbuffed top end of things. They do possess MAT increasers or DEF debuffs, but aside from one spell and two feats, they affect single targets at a time. Sure, your Fennblades or Dygmies may one turn be easy prey for Banes (fun fact, Mechanithrals still miss Crippling Grasped Pygs on average rolls), but the rest of your army hovers in the frustration range. If they underestimate the effects, you will destroy them piecemeal as they fail to kill your stuff and you easily kill them in retaliation. If they don’t underestimate the effects, they end up clumping around your models, easy prey for a bomber, fellcaller or champion hero.

Bullet Dodger is also a huge boon for Calandra herself. Even with Tartarus’s Curse, Banes will miss Calandra on average under starcrossed, and upon the first miss you are (likely) safe. This is an amazing counter to Tartarus’s feat. If you are feeling daring, you can save your bomber or champ hero from doom this way. The opponent will need to debuff your model (or use Tartarus) to even have a decent chance of hitting, and a single roll of a 3 will cause your model to shoot safely away. 3’s seem unlikely, but with starcrossed its not terribly uncommon, as the probability curve is heavily skewed towards lower rolls.

- Low ARM
Calandra’s feat is another stand out here. Its really frustrating when your fennblade smacks a bane knight and rolls a 4, or when your bomber rolls a 4 for blast damage against a mechanithrall or god forbid a necrosurgeon. With Calandra’s feat (and the occasional reroll), nearly all of your hits will kill, and your bomber will wreck havoc on the enemy forces, killing even Banes with blasts with relative ease. Dygmies on the charge will be killing two banes a turn, one with a dinky axe and one with the mighty slap of a slug gun.

- Reliance upon Tartarus
This is debateable, but in months of MKII tourney experience along the east coast I’ve come across Cryx lists without Tartarus so few times that I can’t even think of one. I’m sure there’s been one or two (wait, I remember an eDenny tier list, so that’s at least 1), but aside from tier lists, never in the last 2 games of a tourney.

So, what does Calandra do? Well, first of all she makes his curse necessary. That means that he is up front most of the time, whether he wants to be or not. This means that his stealth is less of an issue, and if you cannot catch him with models like Nyss or Fennblades or Gators, on feat turn you will have a decent chance of killing him with Bomber blast damage alone. With two shots from the bomber, you will need two 13’s to kill Tartarus. That’s well within what you should expect to roll with the feat and rerolls. Your Cryx opponent will likely never have seen Tartarus go down to blast damage before, so they will likely not expect it. Its not a 100% chance or anything, but if it gets tartarus off of the board its clearly worth it.

- Jack light. Often with a few very expensive but fragile jack
Again, we fall back on Starcrossed. Sure, MAT 7 or 8 will still hit DEF 12 most of the time. But the insidious probability of rolling a 2 or 3 is still there. When they are assigning focus to kill your models, they will likely assume that all attacks will hit, and a single miss can really screw up an opponents plans. An inexperienced opponent will just get screwed, while an experienced one will often overcommit resources, fearing the increased likelihood of botched rolls.

In addition, Befuddle is of huge use against Cryx jacks in particular. Cryx jacks generally have a larger threat range than our jacks, and as such their controller can be a little loose in their positioning, assure that he outthreats you. With Befuddle, you gain a whole 3 extra inches on threat range, and +2 to attack rolls to boot, which is huge against those DEF 13 jacks that Cryx likes to field.

- Incorporeal models
Calandra can’t be good at everything, and this is a failing. While trolls have a great answer in the krielstone, Calandra doesn’t generally like the Krielstone in her low ARM infantry or minion heavy lists. So unlike, say, Borka or eMadrak, she is simply not the best at dealing with pistol wraiths or Blackbanes. She also lacks a good way to actually kill eDeneghra, but usually once you kill her army its equally impossible for the eDenny player to kill you.

The one bright spot is the Runebearer. Calandra loves the runebearer, and with his special action he can sacrifice himself to remove that pistol wraith or blackbane himself, which has come in handy in a few of my games. Since rerolls are less important vs Cryx (low stats), the sacrifice of the Runebearer is often a good trade.

So, we’ve gone over how Calandra helps exacerbate the weaknesses inherent to Cryx. Well, what about the strengths? Aside from Befuddle and the threat ranges, she doesn’t really do all that much. And what about either Deneghra’s feat? Doesn’t that neuter Starcrossed? Well, yes, it does. So we turn to army selection to shore up the holes that Calandra herself cannot plug up.

- Huge Anti-ARM models and effects
Luckily for Calandra, she loves to have a ton of models on the board, the higher DEF the better. That means that there is very little heavy ARM on the board to lower. This doesn’t help the beasts that you are going to need to take, but it also means that your opponent can’t concentrate on, say, your champions instead of your fennblades. They just have a choice between your fennblades or your burrowers, and neither of them care about their own ARM value.

- Large Threat Range models
Fennblades, a wonderful unit with Calandra, have a huge threat range with vengeance and SPD 6, up to 14” in ideal circumstances. That’s more than even Cursed Banes. In addition, the burrowers that she loves have a huge threat range and can’t be killed before the pop up, against stealing the initiative that Cryxian models love so much.

(The below is speculation)
The UA is going to be the big game change. With it, fennblades will have a base 13” threat range, fearless for a round, and set defense just in case you lose the initiative anyway. Cursed banes charging UA’d fenns still need 6’s and thus still miss on averages. The UA really makes the fenns spectacular, especially vs Cryx with Calandra in tow.

- Large numbers of cheap models
This is where your huge number of troops comes in handy. They have 10 bane knights, you have 10 fennblades. They have 11 Satyxis, you have 10 Nyss. They have 10 Mechanithralls, you have 10 Burrowers. Calandra really loves her infantry, so Cryx doesn’t hold the kind of massive model count advantage that they sometimes have over trolls. With the field equaled, and a Bomber or Champ Hero to clear out some models, you will have less issues than most lists.

- The ability for a single model to kill swaths of your troopers
Tartarus has already been addressed. This largely leaves Bile thralls as the huge offender here. There is one solution to the problem for a list that otherwise really fears bile thralls, and that answer is Nyss Hunters. Nyss Hunters already excel vs Cryx, but with Calandra their DEF 15 is a giant problem. Luckily for you, they are also handy with those bows, and Bile thralls are like bloated apples with targets painted on them. Most troll casters don’t have a great answer to bile thralls, but most troll casters don’t have such a huge reason to take Nyss.

- Plentiful Arcnodes and Magic spells as a finishing move
You can’t fix all problems. Calandra has no specific counter to this other than the fact that she is a back line caster, nearly always 14” away from the action. She also tends to have 3 or 4 fury on her at the end of her turns, so saving a few for transfers is never really an issue. Since this is the one unaddressed weakness, you have to play with this in mind, and go out of your way to destroy enemy arc nodes if the enemy caster has a viable chance of killing you with spells.

And finally, there are a few other things to be aware of vs Cryx:

Terror
The poor fellcaller forgot how to make people fearless. Fortunately, the Champ Hero is a CMD 10 commander with thresher. Take him. He helps the fennblades and the burrowers, and with thresher is a terror in his own right.

e/pDeneghra’s feat
Both feats will seriously mess up starcrossed’s ability to save your models. Luckily, you have a trump card in burrowers. Burrowers, when burrowed, ignore both feats, allowing you to retain a highly destructive unit that will be terrifyingly effective vs the low DEF cryx troops and demolish the low ARM Cryx jacks. Just be sure to keep your fellcaller well in the back, so that he can remain alive until pop up turn.

If your opponent waits until the turn after pop up turn to feat, make sure that you use that turn wisely, killing as much of your opponent as you possibly can. If you do a good job, its actually sometimes more beneficial for you if your opponent waits.

That said, I’ve never had a tourney opponent wait (just local ones). Most Denny players games are pretty streamlined, and they almost always pop turn 2. Combined with their desire to go first in most scenario’s that means that you will nearly always be popping up after their feat.

Please, feel free to discuss the above and add your advice or critiques. I will do my best to address and questions that come up, or clarify any issues that people might have.