Korrok, Eternal Champion: The Interview

On Saturday, March 25th, a total of twenty-four players slugged it out in the Adepticon halls, playing three highly anticipated rounds of Warzone Eternal. Now the din of battle has passed, the smoke has cleared and we’re proud to say that ++Chronicles Eternal++’s very own Zach “Korrok” Grogan has been crowned as the first reigning Eternal Champion!

It was a hell of a night to say the least. Hosted by Warzone Eternal rules emcee and all-around games industry luminary Bryan C.P. Steele, the evening saw some incredible armies, ferocious play and good cheer among the crowd. After three hard-fought rounds using the new Warzone Eternal tournament system, Zach emerged as the winner of the first-ever Warzone Eternal Adepticon event. His name will be carved into the grand trophy of winners, and he’ll hold his title of Eternal Champion until at least next year, when he’ll once more defend it against all comers. Additionally, he’s won the chance to put a single model into development for the next round of Warzone Eternal model releases!

How did it all go down? What were his greatest challenges? And, of course, what’s his pick for a new Warzone Eternal model? Luckily, I was able to sit down with Zach to get all those questions answered – and more!

You’ve been pretty involved in Warzone Eternal as a community member, playtester and big-time advocate for the game overall. How’d you get involved in Warzone Eternal?

I don’t recall if Bryan messaged me directly or if I saw a post from him on the old Dark Age board, but I was made aware that he was working on this new game and that it would feel very reminiscent of Dark Age. So, I backed the original project, it got canceled and I backed again when it was brought back. After some Monday night voice chats, bitching about Grenade Launchers and begging Alex to make Necromutants MW12 instead of 11, here I am.

What did your list for the Tournament look like, and how did you conceive of using it?

This is a fun question, since list building is one of my favorite aspects of tabletop miniatures games. Algeroth has the most variable list-building options in the game and doesn’t share the same mathematical conventions as the rest of the factions if you want to use most of their models. However, with the 40DP limit on this initial event, you’re fairly restrained in terms of your “big gun” model choices before you’re playing the Pass Token game and hoping you don’t lose anything too early. Additionally, the objective pool we currently have has a number of goals that have to be performed by a Leader model. Seeing as I had no clue what the specific objective pools were going to be, I decided to make what I felt was a strong generalist list with a few key goals:

1. I needed multiple Leaders to cover the potential Leader-dependent objectives
2. Maintain a reasonable Activation count while bringing a Praetorian Stalker (because they are my favorite)

So this is what I ended on:

• 2x Centurion
• 1x Necromutant Leader
• 2x Necromutant
• 1x Necromutant  Tormentor
• 1x Praetorian Stalker
• 1x Legionnaire

This got me eight Activations and three models with 3 Wounds, three with 5″ of Movement, two flamethrowers, an HMG and a Grenade Launcher. Though three of those support weapons were tied into one 10DP model. A risk, but one I think is worth it.

Who’d you play in your three games, and how did they end up playing out via-a-vis those expectations?

My general strategy was fairly simple. I used the Stalker’s Grenade Launcher to try to bait out Dive for Cover Reactions, and if I got lucky maybe kill or pin some models early on to kneecap my opponents resources while I grabbed stronger central positions.

My first game was against Andrew W and his Brotherhood list. Faith poses a pretty considerable hurdle, which Andrew got maximum value out of. Every one of his five Faith Points converted a critical AR test failure into a success. Ultimately, I just managed to keep more models alive and across the board than he did. I took the right flank, he took the left.

The second game was against (also ++Chronicles Eternal++’s own! – Ed) Woah77 from the WZE Discord. He also played Brotherhood. The board we played on had a fairly open center with small blocking covers. The side I deployed on let me set my Stalker up on an elevated platform, so he got to rain down shells and HMG fire across a lot of the board. Whoah tried to rush me to take advantage of his better melee capabilities and also flame me out with his Support models. I had a stronger position to dig in and shoot back and ultimately the fire fight went my way before Woah’s forces got close enough to overwhelm me.

Game three was against Lexington.

We hate that guy. He sucks.

The worst. Hey, at least you finally got to play against something other than Brotherhood with your Bauhaus.

Yeah, for all the good it did me*. That game was something, though. I think we might’ve spent more time laughing than actually moving models around and rolling dice.

Oh yeah. The Grenade Launcher did great early work this game, as the deployment forced models together and I managed to gun down the Venusian Ranger Medic in my first Activation. From there, though, it was a hilarious-to-us mismatch in dice rolls that lead to very implausible things happening consistently.

All right, so here’s a thing I know a lot of the audience is looking forward to – as the Eternal Champion, you got to choose a model to go directly into the Warzone Eternal development queue. Before we make with the big reveal, how’d you make your choice?

I took all of the unreleased Dark Legion units, applied numbers to each of them and then rolled the d120 that I keep in the glove box of my car.

Joking aside. I’m new to the Mutant Chronicles universe, so I don’t have the same attachments to specific units that many of the OG players from previous editions have. I didn’t have an old favorite to fall back on. So, I started digging through the 1st Edition books specifically for ideas. I ended up with a list about nine models long, then sat down with Alex and Bryan and to look over and grade on a few key criteria:

1. Novelty. How novel would the release be for what the game currently has available, but also for me in terms of what the model may represent and what kind of creative freedom might be available with it.
2. Value it brings to my faction/ the game. This was, funny enough, the one that eliminated the most choices from the list, and is why I didn’t chose the Bio Giant or the Pretorian Behemoth. Yes, they bring something unique in genuinely large units hitting the field, but at the same time, Algeroth already has plenty of larger expensive units. Not to mention, the rest of the factions in the game may not be in the best place to counter play stuff of that nature. So while I could have, I decided against it.
3. Lastly was general appeal to me. Mostly visually. This was why I dident chose the Reaper of Souls – I like gross monsters usually.

With all those factors ultimately considered what I ended up on what was apparently an unorthodox pick – I chose the Nassal from the Dark Eden book.

There you have it, folks – the Nassal will immediately be put into the Res Nova development queue and will be hitting tables somewhere in the next few waves of models. What is it about the Nassal that led you to put it on your list, and ultimately choose it for your Eternal Champion signature model?

The Nassal ultimately fits within my criteria in a fairly unique manner compared to the other units I considered, with novelty and value really standing out in favor of its inclusion.

From a value standpoint, the model was noted in the Dark Eden book as being a Leader of Centurions, Necromutants and Legionnaires, which indicated to me that it’d have synergistic applications for my current model selection. Additionally, it being a Leader for Centurions really makes me curious what that means for Centurions. What was most exciting here, though, was that its lore and rules are bare-bones at best, which leaves a mile-wide runway for Alex and Bryan to really define what this unit is about without any prior expectation from players, or a lore stand point. So, they get a lot of creative freedom, here.

From my understanding, the model has also never received a sculpt at any point in the history of the game, which put me in the unique situation of being able to pull the trigger on establishing a Warzone first. So, that’s incredibly novel. Not to mention that its art also depicts a brand new weapon that also hasn’t been named or defined with rules. Maybe they will name it after me? 🤞

This combination resulted in a case where its inclusion does a number of things. It stays within the rules of what I can choose while also basically allowing me to pick something that, regardless your history with Warzone, should end up being new and, I hope, exciting for everyone.

That’s it! Thanks much to Zach for his time and efforts, and congratulations from all of us here at ++Chronicles Eternal++ for your victory!

_{* A 9-0 loss, every model wiped off the table by the cruelty of Zach’s forces. The man does not take prisoners, everyone.}