Fyanna 2

A few quick thoughts on the new Legion warlock, Fyanna: The Torment of Everblight.

Front of the card is ok, nothing special. 15/15 is reasonable but not amazing. A pow 12 chain weapon isn't nothing but it isn't going to wreck heavies either. Back of the card is a little more interesting, since she kept the 4" reach and has critical slam on her weapon. She's even able to slam large base models, which is interesting. She has pathfinder, overtake, dodge and field marshall: overtake.

The field marshall is an odd duck for me, since we'll see when we get to the feat that you're probably looking to skew towards defence, and our infamous def14 heavy already has overtake. It does have great synergy on paper with the carnivean/scythean, but she doesn't otherwise offer much to those beasts (I know a furied carnivean is going to hit hard, but that's about it).

Spell list is Admonition, Fury, Iron Flesh, Gallows. Now this is a very nice looking spell list, if she was Fury 7 I think we'd be looking at a top tier caster. As it is, you're not likely to cast Gallows very often, and when you do it's unreliable in terms of distance. Fury is a high potential spell in Legion, since a major issue for me is doing enough damage with the fragile models before losing them. Swordsmen, Grotesques and Raptors can use it to spread a lot of damage, the Grotesques becoming reasonably competent against most targets 'en masse' assuming you trigger gang, and the weaponmasters becoming pretty fearsome. Mix in the new Nyss Warlord and the Swordsmen will be carving our cortexes and lopping off arms!

Cycling fury on beasts is also viable, I've found that the humble Neraph can put out some nice damage, sprint away and be a major headache under feat. Iron flesh is nice because it prevents blast damage, something the fragile Swordsmen or stealthed Grotesques really benefit from. You can also Iron Flesh a stealthed Blackfrost Shard or maybe, just maybe get some use out of Legionnaires. Probably still not worth the points though. Admonition is a standard spell, an extra hurdle for your opponent to cross to close in on your Angeli or on Fyanna herself since she lacks defensive tech.

Oh yes, the feat. Offering +3 Def and Dodge to all friendly faction models in control range, you can field an entire army that is def 17+ for a turn. The reason I like it so much is that as a faction, Legion are the high def/low arm trope. Sareyn1 had a great feat in Mk2, but in Mk3 she just adds some armour. It doesn't seem bad, but then when your beasts are base arm 17/18 and infantry are mostly around the 11/12 mark, +3 armour doesn't cut it. +3 defence is pushing your army into the skew range, and to top it off any melee attacks that miss will allow a dodge move. I've tried her out with double Angelius and double Neraph, and they strike hard, sprint out, sit in zones and weather a turn under feat perfectly. It almost feels like Mk2 Vayl2 with refuge alphas, only you have furied swordsmen and nyss warlords to back it up.

In summary, my initial opinion of Fyanna2 is high, though she may be quite at risk a lot of the time with the lack of defesive tech and the need to be midline support. She is very playable, but overlaps a lot with Kallus/Abby2 in a pair. I'm not sure she'll become a staple, but I do think right now that she's competitive enough that she'll be seen without being ubiquitous. Couldn't hope for more really, and I look forward to playing more games with her!

Model Dojo: Alexia2

Time to talk about Alexia2, who sees table in my Shae list. I've not seen her much anywhere else, but we'll get into why I think that is, first lets look at why she finds a place with Shae.

For just 7 points you get a cavalry solo, Spd8 Def15 Arm16 10 boxes. She's got a fairly neat pow12 magical weapon and reposition 5.

Back of the card gets even better, Magic ability 7 with an ability to spend up to 3 souls for 3 thrall solos, or a high power solid range nuke. She has soul taker command range and can buy melee attacks or boost hit/damage rolls (including magic attack rolls) using souls. Finally, she can also spell vortex spells targeting her or models in 3", which is often forgotten but can be clutch.

All in all, my initial thoughts about her are along the lines of : cool model, decently cheap points cost, useful abilities. So why don't you see her too much? It could just be local meta, but I think the answer lies in the fact that she feeds off living infantry, which you don't see much of currently. Not only that, but she is only really good at killing a handful of infantry herself, she doesn't threaten hard targets. Then you have the fact that she's lacking in defensive tech outside of a decent speed stat and reposition. All of a sudden her bargain 7 points seem hard to justify in a competitive list.

Why do I run her with Shae? Well, that list is all about getting work out of the pirates, which includes recycling their souls. The summoned thrall warriors also offer a ton of options. Those guys threat a meagre 10" on the charge, but happen to be pow10 weapon masters. Alexia's speed lets her summon them in places where you can get a lot of leverage out of that charge attack though, and the Commodore offers a way to knock down targets reliably at long range, making the surprise thrall missile a very real threat. She can also offer some much needed magic protection to the pirate support solos.

That's just the tip of the thrall iceberg, since thralls can run into some really unexpected spots to take a cannon shot in the back. Their low defence lets you place an Incendiary Shot with frightening accuracy for instance, and Alexia herself can even lay on the hurt with boostable pow12s. With Shae she makes a decent phantasm target, helping her toe zones or flags while being safer from reprisal. She'd be a decent mobile Telgesh Mark target for Fiona as well, and I'm sure other mercenary casters I don't play could find a use for her.

Right, so can she do anything else? A medium base can screen a warcaster from LoS maybe? Sure, at Def15 it's not even that bad. People forget that she can make impact attacks on a charge, which is part of your combat action and so she is perhaps the only non-warcaster cavalry model that can boost impact attacks for a psuedo trample. Your charge attack also gains a boosted attack roll as a cavalry model, but this is all pretty last ditch isn't it, since if you have the souls you'll probably let the thralls do the work.

So, try to find 7 spare points in your next list and let me know what other tricks you can find for this versatile, powerful solo.