Hardcore: A Review

Having just attended the wonderful Privateer Weekend at Diecon in St. Louis, I think it's a perfect time for me to talk about the Hardcore format.  Also, I'm glad to be back blogging after a long and unintentional hiatus!  Most of my Warmahordes time in the past little while was in preparation for Hardcore, and the rest is attributed to laziness.  Without further adieu, my first blog post in a month and a half!

For those of you who don't know, the Hardcore format is as follows:

-50 point list, one list only
-7 minute turns and (generally) 60 min rounds.
-Fully painted army following the Hardcore Painting Requirement in SR2011
-Killbox scenario only (also included in SR2011 with link above)

In preparation for Hardcore, first I came up with a list that I thought would be competitive, I could paint, and wouldn't break the bank.  Here's what I came up with.

Adeptis Rahn
-Discordia
-Phoenix

Arcanist x2
eEiryss
Fane Knight
Artificer
Battle Mages
Magister x2
Madelyn Corbeau
Mage Hunter Assassin
Mage Hunter Strike Force
-UA
Narn

The idea behind the list was to have so many vectors to get to an opponent that I could reliably get the caster kill.  In retrospect, this army was pretty easy to paint, and was average cost for a 50 point army, because there were so many cheap solos.

In terms of play, this army performed exactly how it was supposed to... against people who didn't really know what Rahn could do.  Against more experienced players, who know what Rahn can do, my army didn't really have the staying power or sheer amount of attacks to kill enough things.

Planning for future Hardcores


A lot of lists that did well at Diecon were a lot of unconventional lists.  They also had a lot of things that could be very tough to kill.  While always being aware of assassination vectors is very important, a Hardcore list should also be able to kill a lot of different things.  Some things that I will plan for in the future will be:

-Light infantry
-Heavy infantry
-Multiple heavy beasts/jacks

Of course, this is a pretty straightforward idea, but at times difficult to pull off.  Taking flexible units is always a good idea, especially because of the One List Only format of Hardcore.  For example, Dawnguard Invictors are an extremely versatile unit because:  they have good melee weapons and good MAT, they have good ranged weapons at MAT 6, they have CRA allowing them to take down heavier targets with rerolling to hit, they have ARM 17 when B2B.  So they could do single shots or charge in to kill light infantry, they could do 2 or 3 man CRA's to crack heavy infantry, or they could do an 11 man CRA to do some serious damage to a warjack or warbeast.

Well, I think that's it for now.  I'm sure there are a lot of other things I could talk about on the subject of Hardcore, but I am tired.  If I can get around to it, I'll take some pics of my Hardcore army and post them in the near future.