[Lost Hemisphere Challenge 2013] Post-tournament thoughts

Now that I've had my first few games with Venethrax (at the tournament last Saturday), I've got a bit more of an idea of how he plays and what I can do with him. I've also had time to think about the army that I want to run with him, and might be giving my current list a few tweaks. In any case, I thought I'd put pen to paper and document some of my musings and lessons learnt.

• Venethrax is pretty easy to hit, as his DEF isn't great, so cover and/or concealment is  useful if you can get it. Otherwise, you need some decent screening from your other troops. I need more practice at that, being used to small base warcasters, as I was leaving shooting lanes open left, right, and centre.
• Getting good use out of Soul Harvester is crucial. He survived for several turns against lots of Retribution firepower partly because of the souls he'd acquired, but that was the only time I managed to get a decent tally. Again, more practice needed, but the Bloodgorgers and Gerlak can certainly rack them up when they get going. I just need to remember to collect them!
• I think I can be more aggressive with Venethrax, despite the aforementioned vulnerability without souls. Shoving him up in my opponents face worked well the one game I tried it, as they focused on him and left the army to do its thing. The rest of the games I was more careful with him, but I don't think it worked that well.
• Advance Deploy on the Bloodgorgers is golden. They're not very fast and have no pathfinder, so getting them further up the board to start is very helpful. Having said that, they can catch people out with the 2" extra charge against living models from Blood Thirst; I pulled that trick at least twice.
• Venethrax's lack of buffs really hurts the Mechanithralls. The Bloodgorgers can hit fairly reliably if Gang is triggered, and Gerlak, the Seether, the Pistol Wraiths, and Venethrax have decent MAT. But the Mechanithralls struggle to hit high DEF troops. I think they might be most useful as a tarpit/2nd wave, letting the Bloodgorgers go on the frontline. To that end I'm considering adding a second Necrosurgeon, but I'm not sure how to squeeze it in; probably either dropping two of the Brute Thralls, or reducing the Mechanithralls to a minimum unit.
• I have no real way of dealing with high ARM, particularly warjacks. Against warbeasts, Venethrax himself is killer. But against anything else, it's only really the Seether that can do anything.
• Lack of pathfinder wasn't an issue at the tournament, but on scenery heavy boards could be a heavy penalty to deal with.
• The large number of medium bases is not something I'm used to, and it made getting the most out of the Seether difficult, as it often ended up getting boxed in. That's just lack of practice though.
• I found myself being less aggressive with my arcnode that I usually am, which actually worked in my favour. I wasn't really feeding it focus (keeping it all for Venethrax), so it wasn't running miles up the board, and hanging it back saved it for when I really needed some Hellfires to get into the backfield somewhere.
• Time was an issue on the turn after the one that I engaged. With two attacks from each of the Bloodgorgers, plus Gerlak potentially going through several models, plus potential attacks from the Mechanithralls, I found myself tight on time on several occasions. I'd normally eat my extension on the first engagement, then run the clock down on the turn afterwards. It's something I run up against playing Skarre1 as well, but it's again a question of practice.

As far as list building goes, with two full units I was dedicating one to each half of the board, and the Mechanithralls normally acted as babysitters for Venethrax. However, I've been wondering whether I'd be better off having the Mechanithralls and Necrosurgeon behind the Bloodgorgers to make better use of the corpse tokens, and have Venethrax, his battlegroup, and the Pistol Wraiths take the other side. It's something I fancy trying out, but with a smaller Mechanithrall unit to basically act as sweepers for dead Bloodgorgers. That would give me some points to play with to add Black Ogrun as replacement bodyguards for Venethrax. 

Venethrax
*Seether
*Nightwretch
*Skarlock

Full Bloodgorgers
Gerlak Slaughterborn
Minimum Mechanithralls
*1 Brute Thrall
Necrosurgeon
Pistol Wraith
Pistol Wraith
Minimum Black Ogrun

That also give the army a bit more shooting power, and maybe a bit more accuracy as well. Now I just need to find an opportunity to test it.