[Lost Hemisphere Challenge 2013] Thoughts on Venethrax and his theme force

It’s time for the next instalment of my Lost Hemisphere Challenge, and since this is going to be year-long series of posts I’ve decided to create new heading. It’s been a couple of weeks since I signed up to the challenge, and it may seem as though I’ve been slacking off. I’ve actually been rather busy doing some background research. I read Lamoron’s blog posts chronicling his experiement with Venethrax over at “The Overseer”, I read GentleBen’s post at “Bell of Lost Souls”, I watched several YouTube video battlereports featuring Venethrax, mostly from bitzandpiecesNL, and I re-listened to the Chain Attack podcast of Venethrax vs. Reznik. Today I want to share some of my thoughts and conclusions based on that research.

Lets start with Venethrax himself. Looking at his statline, your first impression is that he’s a frontline combat ‘caster. He’s got high STR and very high MAT, and his defensive stats are formidable before you even consider camping focus.  That plus the second highest number of hit boxes for a Cryx ‘caster (after Terminus) means that he should be pretty survivable, but his medium base counts against him. He has no ranged weapon, reinforcing that frontline melee conclusion. His sword is relatively simple, but has reach and hits hard. His special abilities are fairly simple, but ‘Caustic Presence’ preventing corrosion from expiring is an interesting wrinkle.

His spell list doesn’t scream out to me, or seem very nuanced. He certainly doesn’t do much for his army, and his only buff spell also mainly helps himself. The two attack spells have been seen before, but are both decent. Automatic command checks from Hellfire are nice, and the automatic corrosion on Blood Rain synergises with Caustic Presence. I’d suggest that you’re unlikely to be casting these two outside of a Skarlock or assassination attempt (more on that later) though, as Venethrax is very much a super solo and focus hog.

There are some great Venethrax conversions out there. This one's by vegron on

the Privateer Press forums.

His three upkeeps are Lamentation, which has a lot of potential in certain matchups, opponents ‘caster. But as a range self spell it competes with Dragon Slayer, which makes him more survivable and increases his damage output. The last one is Soul Harvester, which I think is Venethrax’s meat and potatoes.  Get it on a unit turn one, and try to get some early kills to start the soul influx, and keep it rolling with a few kills per turn. With a Skarlock and recasting you can cycle it around three units per turn if necessary. As for the feat, I find it interesting. Shooting seems helpful to trigger the clouds, and potentially sacrificing cheap troops to make it work is an interesting option. Certainly I agree with GentleBen on timing though; early seems better, but it’s by no-means game breaking and not popping it won’t cripple you I think.

I see a couple of ways to play Venethrax. You can go the Lamentation route and attrition, keeping him safe behind something and capitalising on mistakes. I see this working well against ‘casters that use a lot of their spell list and focus each turn, as it forces them to make tough choices on their spell list. The other option is to Dragon Slayer and run Venethrax straight up the middle, relying on his stats and souls gained through Sould Harvester to keep him safe while you look for an assassination route. Speaking of which, the obvious route is melee via Venethrax himself. But a good crop from Soul Harvester also opens up the possibility of spell assassination via multiple castings of Hellfire. In the course of my research I’ve seen all of these options being used, so they all seem to be viable. Which one is best seems to be match-up dependent, and the wrong choice can be a dealbreaker from what I’ve seen.

Here's one based on Nightmare from Soul Caliber, by Temoinlanuit on the forums.

Now lets look at his theme force: the Dragon Slayers.

• Allowed models: non-character Warjacks; Black Ogrun; Bloodgorgers; Mechanithralls; Necrosurgeon; Pistol Wraiths; Skarlock Thrall; Gerlak Slaughterborn
• Tier 1: Reduce the cost of Seethers by 1.
• Tier 2 (2+ units): For each unit, place up to one 3” AOE within 20” of board edge. This lasts for one round and blocks los, even to eyeless sight.
• Tier 3 (Gerlak): Gerlak and Bloodgorgers gain Advance Deployment
• Tier 4 (2+ Seethers): Seethers gain advance move

It’s fairly restrictive, but includes everything you need in my opinion. the tier requirements aren’t too onerous and tier 4 is certainly achievable. There’s no obvious stopping point either, although I think that tiers 3 and 4 synergise nicely and if possible would go for both; definitely so at 50pts. It’s possibly a bit lacking as far as shooting options for triggering the feat go, and cracking armour could be a problem. Venethrax has no debuffs, and there’s not much in the way of high P+S attacks in the force. Mechanithralls can do the job via combo-strike, but that’s a less than optimum solution. Avoidance might be the tactic to go for, utilising Death Chill from the Pistol Wraiths.

There are cheap (and durable) units available in the Mechanithralls, Necrosurgeon, and Black Ogrun that make getting to tier 2 quite easy with minimal points expenditure. Reducing the points cost for Seethers is great. I really like Seethers, but find them a mite expensive. At 8 points they’re much more appealing, and their inherent focus efficiency feeds Venethrax’s need to keep as much of his own as possible.

And another, by Press Ganger The Captain on the forums. 

This conversion to Skeletor is brilliant. 

I mentioned the lack of shooting, but Pistol Wraiths are at least reliable. The Black Ogrun also have a reasonable gun on them, and you can always use warjacks I suppose although Cryxian shooting on ‘jacks tends to require a lot of focus to be effective, so that’s not a great route to take.

As I said earlier, Soul Harvester seems to be the engine for this army from what I’ve seen. To get the most out of it you want multiple attacks, and/or accurate attacks. Preferably both. The Bloodgorgers and Gerlak provide that in spades, and Mechanithralls also work in a pinch through sheer volume.

So there you have it. It’ll be interesting to revisit this at the end of the year and see how close to the mark I was! Next time out I’ll present the lists that I’ve come up with for the Challenge.