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. 

Battle Report: Captain Shae vs. The Witch Coven of Garlghast

Played a game today at Dark Sphere London vs the mighty Geektoast, running Coven. This was a semi casual game, no timer, as he wanted to try out Coven for the first time. I decided not to bring Lilith3 and be that guy, instead bringing the pirates. On seeing the rest of his list, I decided to drop Shae.

He had:
-Coven
-- Arc Node
-- Deathjack
-- Barathrum

Maxy Satyxis Raiders + UA
Min Bane warriors
Max soulhunters

Skarlock thrall
Siren

You can find my list here: http://countingcroes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/mercenary-two-list-pair.html

I won the deployment roll and elected to go first. Deployment was fairly standard, though I think I put the pirate solos too far to the right as I ended up trying to focus the pirates on the left hand side of the board later. Not much I could have done about this, it's a fairly typical pirate problem. I pushed forward, spread out and expected the worst.

End of Turn 1

 He came forward a lot, the Egregore going front and centre behind the two heavy jacks and a bunch of clouds (objective, veil of mists x2). The banes held back with the witches and their support, the soulhunters and satyxis spread out on the flanks. Scary stuff.

Turn 2 Cloud Fortress

 My turn two I pulled some sweet pirate jank. Shae activates, scoots to the side his full 6" (I had to go around the Bosun as seen in picture one) and feats. Everybody comes forward, including crucially, Eiryss. Pirates activate and press forward, killing two Soulhunters, and one runs to engage Barathrum (prevents his countercharge), and one stands 1.5 inches in front of the Deathjack in the cloud. The Commodore gets a bead on the unfortunate pirate and slams him into the Deathjack like a large, meaty beanbag. This let Eiryss get exactly 5" from the Egregore and tag it with a disruption bolt. Goodnight floaty metal eye monster! I then craft a thrall rune for an extra charge, which chunks some damage off the witches, and then the mariner aims, hits the thrall in the back and boosts the blast on Egregore. The witches are left with about 8 hit points between them.

Cryx 2 becomes damage control, attempting to remove as many pirates as possible without any focus. The two heavy jacks get a lot of work done, and because I'd thrown the pirates really far forward I had to advance the support solos right up, the second picture up there is at the end of my turn 2. He removes a large amount of my support points and jams me up fairly heavily, revenge killing Eiryss and scoring 1 CP for controlling the central zone.

He feats and trusts his safety to everything being ~8" or more away from the Egregore, which is about 1" back from the zone, behind a cloud. Unfortunately, it's exactly 10" away from the Freebooter that's halfway up the board in picture 2.

I try to throw Barathrum (with the other Freebooter) to free up the Booter with distance on the Egregore but miss because of the feat, so I suck it up and tank the free strike, luckily not loosing any systems. Coup de Main and Jury Rig gives him a cool 9" advance and he's got 3 focus on him. One boost to hit and one boost to damage is all I need however, since I spike the roll and do 10 damage and he had no chance to replenish focus.

Freebooter destroys proxy base Egregore

Very enjoyable game, with a very fun opponent. Both of us learned some lessons, and another unlucky player is caught by janky pirate plays. Do your bit to prevent this happening on a game table near you by spreading this blog to everyone you know, for their own good.

Mercenary Two List Pair

My other faction being mercenaries, I thought it would be good to run through my two list pair. However, I must preface this by saying I am aware these lists are not optimal, they are in a theme that I stick to when it suits me, sort of. Privateers!

http://conflictchamber.com/#b61b8b9v8i8j8j8kca8m8o9w8N8O8Q3W8R9u8S

Mercenary Army - 75 / 75 points

(Shae 1) Captain Phinneus Shae [+28]
 - Sylys Wyshnalyrr, The Seeker [4]
 - Buccaneer [6]
 - Freebooter [9]
 - Freebooter [9]
 - Mariner [14]
The Commodore Cannon & Crew [7]
Sea Dog Pirates (max) [13]
 - Mr. Walls, the Quartermaster [4]
Alexia, Mistress of the Witchfire [7]
Bloody Bradigan [3]
Bosun Grogspar [4]
Doc Killingsworth [4]
Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios [7]
First Mate Hawk [4]
Ragman [4]
Lord Rockbottom [4]

Captain Shae, king of the pirates, with the crew of his ship. And Sylys, because Shae is incredibly focus starved, but we won't worry about that.

The idea of the list was to run Shae, the Sea Dogs with all their solos, and the Commodore. Shae gifts them with incredible speed and has some personal melee game, this list screams into zones and contests points. It then promptly dies, but whatever, I looked good losing.

Better pictures would be great right? You guys deserve better. Oh well.

So with an entire pirate boat, I figured I'd go whole hog and try to make them useful. Ragman and Alexia help them hit harder and recycle them respectively. 90% of wins with this list have involved throwing something with a freebooter at an enemy warcaster (or running a pirate right in front of them, and slamming it in the back with the Commodore...) and charging three Thrall Warriors at it from an odd angle.

The warjacks themselves benefit a TON from Coup De Main and become pretty efficient. The Mariner is growing on me a lot, the cannon is easy enough to manage (it's usually Sylys loading it for me, I rarely need his arcane secrets because I think I've cast Blow the Man Down like, never).

List 2

http://conflictchamber.com/#b61b8gc59vca8m8o8P8Q8O8S7ydHbF

Mercenary Army - 75 / 75 points

(Fiona 1) Fiona the Black [+31]

 - Galleon [39]

 - Sylys Wyshnalyrr, The Seeker [4]

The Commodore Cannon & Crew [7]

Sea Dog Pirates (max) [13]

 - Mr. Walls, the Quartermaster [4]

Dirty Meg [3]

Doc Killingsworth [4]

Bosun Grogspar [4]

Lord Rockbottom [4]

Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor [5]

Gobber Tinker [2]

Wrong Eye [17]

 - Snapjaw

I spent all that time painting damn Sea Dogs, I'm going to use them. Bare minimum to let them be difficult to shift from a zone, with added Wrong Eye and Snapjaw (def13 starcrossed becomes just the right side of hard to hit for mat6 trampling warjacks).

Galleon and his entourage of repair bots/spell vortexes goes up front and centre, dropping aoes, dragging things in and doing as he does. Affliction and Nonokiron brand help him land hits and see through things, but the brand usually sits on the Commodore all game for me because it turns it from pretty hot to super spicy. Snapjaw is a great Telgesh Mark holder, as he's usually submerged and always pushing forwards (plus he's a decent heavy that sucks none of your short focus). Roth's mercy is perfectly stupid on 4+ tough, immune to knockdown pirates in a zone.

Fiona herself has a reasonable ranged game with arced Soulfires, but generally this list all about applying exact force in exact places. It's very fun to play and not awfully bad, just sort of.

That's it for a high level summary, expect more in depth posts about the individual lists, their warcasters and components. Plus battle reports and maybe even pictures if I'm particularly benevolent. Yaarrr!

Vayl2 in MK3

As a first post, I'll be discussing how my favourite MK2 warlock fared in the transition to MK3.

Basic changes:
+ Chasten - single target upkeep purge
+ Deadly Storm - Fury3, Pow13, AoE 3 replacement for Obliteration

- Lost Machinations of Shadow theme force
- Refuge
- Obliteration
- Purification

On paper, it looks like Vayl lost a lot, and she certainly lost what made her most interesting to me in MK2; Refuge. The faction as a whole also changes drastically, and the landscape of the whole game is also very different, so these changes cannot be considered in a vacuum.

Lets cover a few of the major in faction winners and how Vayl can still make them shine:

Hellmouth
The current poster child for why Legion can't have nice things, this is a great control piece. Vayl loves control pieces, but ones that can spawn a free, far up the field, impossible to kill with the oraculus arc node target? Please. Plus dragging in enemy heavies is almost as good as having refuge back. Almost. It's a neat occultation target as well.

Swordsmen
In my opinion, these guys are one of the better light infantry melee units in the game, and certainly the best available in faction. Vayl can give them occultation to help deliver them, debuff defence and purge enemy upkeeps for them. Not bad.

Carnivean Chassis (And Character Beasts)
Offers similar benefits to these guys, with the addition of Admonition and Boundless Charge. Extra speed and pathfinder on Typhon is straight cash, especially with an icy grip on a juicy clumped up spray.

Archangel
It's decent now, boundless charge makes it scream across the table, and it's a big base to hide behind and arc spells through (you can also see it to shoot it regardless of any 14" forests that might be on your table....)

Raptors, Anyssa
Still great, still better with Occultation, still great for a ranged assassination.

Nephelim Bolt Thrower
Almost an auto include for the animus, extending how far away from your arc node you can be. Also pretty decent in and of itself.


Sample Lists
http://conflictchamber.com/#ba1bbtbfbvaOaRaYfTbqbdbd

Legion Army - 69 / 75 points

!!! Your army must contain at least 98 total points.

(Vayl 2) Vayl, Consul of Everblight [+28]
 - Nephilim Bolt Thrower [11]
 - Naga Nightlurker [8]
 - Seraph [14]
 - Typhon [24]
Blighted Nyss Raptors (max) [18]
Hellmouth [6]
Annyssa Ryvaal [8]
Strider Deathstalker [4]

Strider Deathstalker [4]

This has a few leftover points to play with, a second hellmouth can round it out, or some spell martyrs, fury support, minions, whatever you fancy. This list is all about the huge threat ranges, with a very strong ranged/spell assassination, and all the tools needed to play a more attrition based game.

http://conflictchamber.com/#ba1bbtcqbfaOfTa_b0fUbdbdbb

Legion Army - 75 / 75 points

!!! Your army contains a pre-release entry.

(Vayl 2) Vayl, Consul of Everblight [+28]

 - Archangel [37]

 - Nephilim Bolt Thrower [11]

 - Seraph [14]

Hellmouth [6]

Blighted Nyss Swordsmen (max) [15]

 - Blighted Nyss Swordsman Abbot & Champion [6]

Blighted Nyss Warlord [5]

Strider Deathstalker [4]

Strider Deathstalker [4]

Blighted Nyss Shepherd [1]

Who else can't wait for the Warlord? Vayl2 can't! This list hits hard and hits fast in melee, the seraph could be swapped out but I do love the threat of arcing a spell or 6 through a model 22" away....

Let me know in comments what you think of Vayl2 in MK3, and how you're playing her. She's not quite trash yet, and who knows, maybe one day we'll see Vayl3?