Wow, just wow!!

Welcome to the House Shyeel, a warmachine blog dedicated to the Retribution of Scyrah faction.
This week has been an awesome week for us elves out there with a lot of new models being previewed as well as NQ 25 being leaked on the PP boards. Now granted I haven't personally seen the stats, nor have I had any table time with them, I will still give my thoughts on what has been posted. I will do a more in depth review once I've had a little play time with the army. Also credit for this goes to bothDemeritus and Loveless

This post, I'll start with the most important part of your Army; the Warcaster.

The NQ gives us rules for both Dawnlord Vyros and Kaelyssa, Night's Whisper as well as the MkII rules for Garryth, Blade of Retribution. I'm going to concentrate on the MkI rules for now as there is still a lot of time to play under the MkI rules before we make the shift.

Dawnlord Vyros:

He is definitely a Myrmidon caster, with the standard Jack caster 6 FOC. He has a really decent stat line with a MAT 8, P+S14 Reach sword, DEF 15 and ARM 17. So you're not going to have to worry too much about boosting hit rolls, although you're probably going to want to boost the damage on opposing casters/jacks. Add to that he has flank Myrmidon (unknown if its heavy, light, or just myrmidon right now), he's going to be putting a severe hurting on whoever he decides to go after.

One of his major abilities is the fact that all models in his control area and in his battle group have a 360 LOS and ignore clouds, forests and models for determining LOS. With the fact that all Myrmidons have a ranged attack, this is a particularly powerful ability.

Feat:

His feat is definitely a game changer. The way it reads is for every enemy model killed by a faction friendly model in his control place one focus on a jack in his control. This could very easily max out all the jacks in his control, who can then turn around and start ripping everything in sight to shreds.

Spells:

Eliminator: 3 focus rng 8 aoe 3 pow 13 and for each model destroyed by the attack, Vyros can move 2". This has some awesome potential for either getting Vyros out of danger, or to move him to a better position for a charge.
Hallowed Avenger (see Testament of Menoth): This is far more useful on Vyros than ToM, due to the fact that we're (probably) going to runing a lot more jacks with Vyros.
Inviolable Resolve (see Epic Kreoss): Fearless is always good.
Mobility (see Amon): MKI mobility is nice, but it is a move not a SPD increase, but our jacks are already incredibly fast. The main benefit is the granting of pathfinder, and the getting up for free.
Stranglehold: a model damaged by stranglehold forfeits its movement or action during its next activation. Amazing ability to hold a model in place.

All in all, I like the way that Vyros looks. He's going to push a really mobile army to its limits, so we're going to have to make sure that we don't over extend ourselves.

Kaelyssa, Night's Whisper:

A RAT 7 ROF 3 RNG 12 POW 10 True sighted caster with energy siphon. Wow, just very simply wow. Granted POW 10 isn't going to be making a lot of models sweat, but on a caster or jack/beast with focus/fury on them you're basically getting a free boost. Another really nice ability of her's is the fact that she stole Witch Hunter from Reznik. Again we have another caster that can increase the mobility of our army. Do you really want to cast a spell on that jack, when I have another one close to your caster? I definitely love these damned if you do, damned if you don't casters.

Feat:

Grants everyone in her control stealth and makes it so they can not be charged. Now I'm assuming that the no charge applies to models that ignore stealth.

Spells:

Arcantrik Bolt: 2 focus spell that when a warjack is damaged by it, it becomes stationary for one turn. This is a little more limited than Vyros'lock spell,but when coupled with backlash makes for a really powerful combo.
Arcane Reckoning: 3 focus friendly upkeep that makes it so whenever a friendly faction model/unit is missed with a magic attack, the attacking model becomes the target and is automatically hit and if its an aoe the attacking model has the aoe centered on them. Basically its a castable version of whiplash, nice, but I can really only see it being useful on models with a high DEF as even a 5 FOC caster can hit DEF 15 on a boosted roll. I also wouldn't bother casting this spell if your up against Sevvy, Harby, or the Coven as they have such a high FOC stat they won't be missing much, if anything at all.
Backlash: 3 focus offensive upkeep that says whenever target enemy warjack is damaged, its controlling warcaster suffers 1 damage point. Now, I just want you to sit there for a minute and think about paring this with Arcantrik Bolt. . . . . Got it? Good. Couple these 2 spells with Invictors, mage hunters, any model with snipe and you can very, very easily take out the opposing caster.
Banishing ward same as Zerkova. It costs 2 focus
Phantom Hunter: 2 focus upkeep that allows any model in her battle group to declare charges, slams, ranged and magic attacks without LoS and the affected model ignores cloud effects cover and concealment. Basically the same thing that Vryos does, but on a single model. Still useful on a Node at the beginning to make sure that you can always arc a spell where you need it.
Rift: 4 focus spell that is rng 10 pw 13 aoe 4 and is offensive and upkeep, it treats the aoe as rough terrain and remains in play for one round. Another denial spell that fits really nicely with her feat.

So there we have it. 2 very interesting casters to start our war against the lesser races. Let me know what you all think.

Enjoy

High Serraphim