Warmachine: Earthbreaker List Building and Practice

I’ve finally gotten a bunch of games with this Monstrosity under my belt so now I’m here to examine whether or not the Earthbreaker lives up to expectations once it’s actually on the table top.

General Stuff

This is the third time I’ve come here to write about field experience with a “Gargossall,” the rather clumsy term the internet has coined to refer collectively to Colossals and Gargantuans. With the Mountain King and the Judicator, it was sometimes hard to gather decent data. There were times I failed to get the models where they needed to be in order for them to have a real effect on the battle. There were even a couple times I had different pieces from the army perform so heroically they outshined the models I was trying so hard to test out.

I did not have this problem with the Earthbreaker. With Thor Steinhammer there to tune the thing up the effect of it’s guns are devastating and immediate. I have seen my Earthbreaker level nearly an entire army with it’s torpedoes and repeating cannons. As long as you can keep Thor alive, the damage you can dish out is obscene.

But that’s the downside to the thing. Thor is everything to this model. Get him killed and the Earthbreaker is suddenly reduced to an over-sized warjack, wanting to suck your Rhulic casters dry of all the focus they can’t spare. The Mage Hunter Strike Force are your worst enemy, along with anything else that can freely shoot through your models – but those are hardly the only threats. Any opponent worth playing against will already have strategies for picking off pieces like the Choir of Menoth, Vassals, Arcanists and the like. Whatever methods they use for these tasks (and there are so many out there I won’t bother to list them all) will be more or less as effective against poor Thor. So keep him as far from danger as possible, at the absolute bleeding edge of his 5″ Tune Up range, and try to wipe out all those threats before they can get to him. 

I was pleased at how differently the three Rhulic casters worked with this piece. So with that in mind, let’s look at the lists I was using.

Ossrum

The Earthbreaker is a fantastic addition to Gorten’s Landslide assassination game. Before the Colossal’s arrival, your best bet with Gorten’s feat was to try to move everyone back away from objectives. It’s still a good strategy, but I was always one of those who wanted to drag my opponents closer. Madelyn Corbeau will help Gorten get close enough to catch an enemy caster in Landslide range. If he charges (and makes the charge – I usually have him charge a Kayazy in the back just to be sure) while having used Intrigue, Gorten has a 20″ threat on his feat. Once in range of the Earthbreaker’s guns/charge, most casters will be easy pickings with -3 DEF.  For those with really high scores in that department, Gorman is there to try to offer up a Black Oil bomb to help if he can. If the caster you’re trying to kill is still screened, one Quake Torpedo should open line of sight to them. Or, rather than use the Earthbreaker’s guns for the kill, they can open a charge lane for you to use Snap Jaw as the kill piece. The Nyss and/or charging Kayazy are there to add even more damage for those really tough to crack nuts.

It bears mention that Gorten needs perhaps even more practice than most for competitive play. Use of his feat can be a lengthy process and if you don’t know what you’re doing it can easily eat through the time allotted to your turn – possibly even your extension. Once you’ve completed all the feat pushes, you’ll still have multiple models to activate and lots of dice to roll. The order in which you choose to make the pushes is also crucial. If you’re very careful, you can keep the lions’ share of your opponents forces away from our own, stopping their pushes when they bump into other models and ensuring that they can’t engage your army next turn as a result of their limited SPD. But sometimes it can be difficult to judge when a model when contact another’s base or if it will squeak past. This can be the cause of a lot of disputes between you and your opponent. They’ll be looking at the field from a different angle after all. If a push ends up contacting a model when you thought it would not, it can cause a sort of cascade as more models bump into one another keeping them away from where you wanted them. In a worst case scenario the enemy caster may end up out of striking range. Alternatively, pushing your opponent too close might find your Nyss engaged and unable to shoot, or Snap Jaw forced to Trample to reach an enemy caster causing him to lose his initial attacks. Be aware of these limitations, because if you can overcome them, Gorten is a real terror.

Durgen

Durgen Madhammer – WJ: +6
– Grundback Blaster – PC: 3
– Ghordson Earthbreaker – PC: 19

Bosun Grogspar – PC: 2
Lanyssa Ryssyl, Nyss Sorceress – PC: 2
Lord Rockbottom – PC: 2
Thor Steinhammer – PC: 2
Gobber Tinker – PC: 1
Gobber Tinker – PC: 1
Ogrun Bokur – PC: 3

Alexia Ciannor & the Risen – Alexia & 9 Risen Grunts: 5
Press Gangers – Lass & 9 Grunts: 6
Sea Dog Crew – Leader & 9 Grunts: 8
– Mr. Walls, the Quartermaster – Mr. Walls 2

I’ve always liked the way Durgen and pirates work together. They make a good tarpit to keep the Earthbreaker out of harm’s way and with Primed they become vicious fighters. Of course in this list it’s the Risen that are meant to be Primed while the Privateers fed them bodies to keep them growing. Primed models are Removed from Play when destroyed and don’t leave Corpse tokens, so be careful before you go Priming anyone other than the Risen. The idea is that once my opponent has chewed through a bunch of Tough Privateers they’ll have a bunch of exploding skeletons to fight. And also, of course, the Earthbreaker.

I’ve brought along Lanyssa Ryssyl as between her and Redline, you can get the Earthbreaker up to an excellent 15″ threat. And Redline also gives it +2 STR and a free charge, so between that and Tune Up, the Earthbreaker can dish out 5 boosted P+S 21 attacks after covering all that distance. Unfortunately this is another one of things I never got to work “in the field.” Lanyssa frequently managed to get shot despite a Bokur there to protect her. Other times the mid-field got clogged up with too many bases for an alpha strike like this to be plausible. Once, with the assistance of Inhospitable Ground, the Earthbreaker managed to eliminate enough threats at range that charging wasn’t even necessary.

And since I’ve brought up that spell, I should really point out how rarely it comes in handy. There’s a lot of Pathfinder out there, so unless you really know what your opponent’s army is capable of, advancing up the field, blindly assuming all that Difficult Terrain will keep you from harm is a good way to lose games. And in a competive environment with multi-list formats, your opponent will probably have at least one list with a decent amount of Pathfinder.

In practice, the limitations with this list are that it can be too tarpit-y. It has had a lot of problems grinding it’s way through models to get to scenario points. With two big units with Advance Deployment, there are often so many engaged models that it can be tough to find targets for the Earthbreaker that won’t get a Target in Melee bonus to their DEF. For what it’s worth, I think Durgen could perform great with a list almost identical to the one I have for Gorten (lose Sylyss add a Tinker to accommodate for warjack point). 

In Conclusion.

While I often like to argue that Warmachine is well balanced enough that there are no auto-includes, I can’t see myself ever playing a Rhulic Warcaster without the Earthbreaker and Thor. I would argue that there is quite literally no better way to spend the 21 points. While I’ve gone on at length about how dangerous it is, I haven’t even mentioned how hard it is to kill. It’s the only Colossal other than Conquest with 20 ARM and it has nearly as many damage boxes. Anyone trying to kill it in one round will need 9 P+S 20 attacks (assuming average rolls) or something similarly impressive to do so.

Finally I’ll answer a question some of you reading this may have. If you’re wondering why none of these lists include some of the really popular/obvious Mercenary choices like Eiryss, Aiyana & Holt, Hawk, etc. it’s all due to character restrictions. When list building, you always have to remember that in the vast majority of events you can only take characters in one list. The absentees are in the Damiano list I would run in a tournament.

~Hope you enjoyed the article. As always let me know if there are any cool tricks of your own you’d like to share. Just because these were the three lists I went with doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of other great choices..

Author: Ben Williams

Ben Willimans is a Professional Painter and Columnist at Bell of Lost Souls. He has been involved in the hobby and art side of miniatures and the tabletop gaming industry for over 20 years. He has won multiple national painting awards.