Retribution Spoilers - Warcasters

Warcasters:

Adeptis Rahn
Focus 8.
Feat: +2 range to non channeled spells at magic attack and damage rolls are boosted to everyone in ctrl.
+2 def again range attack and no blast damage. Beat Back, Critical Smite, Reach, Magic Weapon
Spells
Chain Blast – 3″ AOE that rolls an addition 3″ aoe deviation.
Force Blast – Target battlegroup model. Enemies are pushed 4″ directly away.
Force Field – Self – doesn’t suffer b last or collateral damage, no KD, if an AOE attack deviates you choose the direction.
Force Hammer – Slams non incorporeal models d6″a and suffers pow 12.
Polarity Shield – Like the cent.
Telekinesis – Like eHaley.

- Rahn looks like an interesting caster. 8 Focus is really nice, hitting DEF 15 on average rolls. One thing that is definitely obvious is that he really wants more focus. He has such a nice tool box of spells, you're going to have to really plan out your casting. Polarity shield works amazingly with our ranged troops giving us an added protection against retaliation. Force Blast is also an amazing spell for getting our jacks out of sticky situations. As of now his feat seems to only apply to himself and other House Shyeel models. Whether or not this is going to be a useful feat remains to be seen. I do like Rahn, being able to couple a TK with a FH while still upkeeping a couple spells is really nice. He continues our theme of moving our enemies into the most advantageous positions for us.

Ravyn, Eternal Light
Foc 6
Feat: Fire Storm – Models in CTRL gain boosted attack rolls and swift hunter.
Gunfighter, Quick Work (after destroying model with melee can make a range), Swift Hunter, Virtuoso, Magi Weapon, Blaster (may spend a focus to turn into AOE), Thresher.
Spells
Eliminator
Locomotion
Snipe
Veil of Mists – 4″ AOE cloud that doesn’t affect friend models, give friendly pathfinder, move through obstructions while in it
Vortex of Destruction – Damage rolls against enemy modes in SELF range are automatically boosted.

- Ravyn is another of our casters that look really interesting. Thresher + Vortex of Destruction will absolutely demolish troops in her melee range. Snipe is just one of those golden spells for a faction with a lot of range, and once you see our ranged units you'll why its so gross. Veil of Mists is a really nice cloud effect due to the fact that it's a 4" cloud giving much, much greater protection to our lightly armored models. I'll have to wait for my book to see if Quick Work procs off every kill, which in essence will double the amount of attacks she can make due to her gunfighter rule. Actually forget that, if it works the way that I think it does, thresher and then fire off a bunch of ranged shots at something, which can also be turned into an AoE for a focus. Nasty if you think about it.

From everything I've seen, it looks like we don't have a type cast caster. Vyros isn't really a Jack caster, Rahn and Ravyn aren't troop casters. All 5 of our casters are asking for combined forces, they can all use a node, maybe a heavy and with our amazing troops and solos, you re going to want those too.

I personally can not wait to start getting models.

Wow

Everyone knows that Gencon week is an awesome week for announcements and SPOILERS. So thanks to Larkin Vain over at Miniature Mayhem we now have RoS MkII spoilers, and let me just say that they are very, very tasty. I'm going to take today to digest all this new information and I'll start posting my thoughts tomorrow.

All quiet

It's been a little while since I last posted, mainly due to the fact that I've started school again (and some commission work that I've been doing).

I have to say I love the fact that Privateer previews models for us with the awesome 360. It looks like the full line is almost completely up, and when it is ill repost them here for you guys, but I'm going to refrain for making any rules comments until we've seen all the rules for them.

RoS vs CoO Batrep

Another Sunday has passed and another round of games for me. As we're pretty much done with our CTA league, we were just playing games to play games, so I thought why not try out my beloved Elves. So after getting photocopies I went a put a list together:

Vyros
- Manticore
- Manticore
- Phoenix

6 Invictors
6 Invictors
10 Sentinels
A&H
Eiryss

749/750

vs

Baldur
- Megalith
- Woldwarden
- Woldwryd

Wrong Eye
- Snapjaw

Dahlia
- Skarrath

Farrow Bone Grinders
Stoneward & Woldstalkers
Gatormen Posse

Deployment:

I won the roll off and deployed first. I had the Phoenix and 1st Manticore a little to the right of center with the other Manticore about 10" away from them. Behind the 2 groups of Jacks were both Invictor units, with A&H in the middle, Vyros behind the Invictors on the right and the Sentinels and Eiryss off to the hold the right flank. He pretty much placed everything in front of me hiding behind a building, with the Woldstalkers opposite the Sentinels.

Turn 1:
RoS - Vyros cast Mobility and then moved to catch the Sentinels with Invoilable Resolve. The Jacks moved up with both Manticores dropping their covering fire in front of the Woldstalkers. The Sentinels ran and both units of Invictors moved up but they were not able to take a shot on anything. And I had forgot to activate Eiryss who was hiding really well in a building.
CoO - Moved everything up. Woldstalkers moved around the templates and shot at the Sentienls, but couldn't get passed their ARM 19. The Warden moved up and Earthspiked the Phoenix knocking it and the Manticore next to it down. Megalith then moved up and Earthspiked the Invictors killing the unit leader.

Turn 2:
RoS - I gave 2 to the Manticore on the ground and upkept IR. Sentinels charged the Woldstalkers and wiped them all out except for the druid. I then moved the left most Invictors up to take a pot shot at the Woldwryd and only did a couple points to it. The other Invictor unit just advanced up. Activated Vyros and moved him up and then cast Mobility. The Phoenix then moved to get a better shot at Baldur but missed. A&H moved up and Aiyanna Harmed the Woldwarden. Then Manticore with 2 focus then moved into Melee with the Woldwarden and in one swing took out both its Mind and Spirit. 4D6 +5 was insane. The other Manticore moved around to counter charge if necessary. And again I forgot about Eiryss.
CoO - Megalith then charged in and caught both Manticores in his melee range and proceed to wail on them both, but failed to disable the first Manticore. Snapjaw then charged in and finished off the already heavily damaged jack. The Warden moved up onto the wreck marker to swing on the Manticore and took out the rest of its field and did a couple points to the hull. while the second Manticore received a charge from Skarath, and took a little damage from it too. The remaining druid ran from the Sentinels and the Gatormen repositioned to charge the next turn. Baldur moved behind the building and stone skined the Warden.

Turn 3:
RoS - Moved the full Invictor unit around to take a shot at Megalith in combat and did a couple points to its body. The Phoenix moved again to catch Baldur and shot with it going wide. Vyros arc'd an Eliminator through the Phoenix onto Dahlia killing her. I then used the 2" place to get Vyros in Charge range of Megalith and feated then charged in, but failed to get rid of Megalith. The Invictors then killed 2 of the Bone grinders giving the 2 focus to the Manticore. Aiyanna moved around to catch Baldur in her no spell zone, and Holt tried to do some more to the Wryd. The Manticore then 2 Hand threw Megalith at Baldur but missed.
CoO - The Wyrd shot Vyros and then Snapjaw took him out in combat.

Impressions -

As my first game not all that bad. Vryos wants/needs more focus to be a serious Jack caster, which to be honest I don't think that's what he is. I truly believe that he is a combined arms caster. You definitely need the mix of troops and jacks to make the most of his feat.

The Manticore was just wow, this jack can seriously put a hurting on anything it comes within 0.5" of and I love the board control that covering fire gives me. I love this Jack. Whereas the Phoenix really didn't need to be in this list. I could have used a Gorgon or even a Hydra (as the Node situationally useful with Vyros).

I deployed the Sentinels way too far away for them to make any kind of difference, and while the Invictors where really nice, there really wasn't many opportunities for them to shoot due to the terrain on the table.

All in all, I think the Retribution is shaping up to be a really nice army, but it's going to be impossible to tell as there is just not enough options right now.

Apologies

I'm going to apologise to everyone for my over reaction to the loss of the ranged flank. I really wasn't thinking clearly and I posted in that state.

The Invictors are a really good ranged unit, the problem I see is that we have at least 2 more ranged units that we need to see the stats for. My other issue is what the Invictors can do, the Sentinels can do better and cheaper.

So again, apologies for the outbursts on the PP boards.

Flank Typo

PPS_DC wrote:
Please add:
Invictor "Flank" should be worded exactly the same as Vyros' Flank.

Thank you.

I understand that they want to keep rules with the same name the same, but the problem that I have with this is it truly reduces the reason to take Invictors over Sentinels.

• Invictors are more expensive
• POW 10 vs POW 12
• In order to get the 3rd D6 there needs to be a jack in melee, increasing the cost of the unit again.

Now I'm not saying that I won't be getting the Invictors, I love the models, but outside of a Kaelyssa backlash list and a themed Dawnguard list, I'm failing to see a reason to take them now. I am sincerely hoping that PPS_DC is wrong and that they are supposed to have flank with their ranged shots.

Forth Round of Reviews

So this is the last article in which I review the previewed stuff in NQ 25. It's been a fun ride looking at everything that we're going to be using come September. In this last article I will be looking at the 2 units and 1 solo that are previewed. Firstly we have our 2 Dawnguard units, the Invictors and Sentinels and NARN (whose name shall always be capitalised), our most bad ass mage hunter.

Dawnguard Sentinels

The Sentinels are our melee experts being P+S12 weapon masters with Reach. The nice thing with reach is it's going to allow us to get more of our models into melee with whatever we're hitting. And for the most part, what we're hitting is dying. A charge from the Sentinels is doing 12 + 4D6 damage against you target, which against an ARM 18 jack they're doing 8 points a piece, which is more than enough for the whole unit to scrap 2 jacks in the turn that they charge.

Normally they are ARM 15 which coupled with their DEF 12 won't ensure that they last that long, but they do have Defensive line which will give them a +2ARM boost as long as they are in B2B. This is really nice as it means that at least half of the POW 10s that are going to be targeting them aren't doing anything. Couple this with Inviolable Resolve from Vyros and we now have a nice ARM 19 brick.

Their last ability is Jack Marshall (1). The is always a running debate as to whether or not jack marshalling is useful. For the most part it's not as jack's will always perform better with Focus. Given that, I still believe that the Hydra is best for jack marshalling as its ability to gain focus outside of a caster is essential for marshalling. Plus the chain attack: Smash and Grab will combo really nicely with the Sentinels as you can head butt that jack down and then trash it with the Sentinels charge. The is also a good one due to the fact that it has a reach weapon (and the only other reach weapon we have is on a node). The one drawback to all these abilities and potential is the fact that they are an expensive unit, expect to drop over a 100 points on a full unit of 10.

::Edit:: I was wrong about the Sentinels having Flank, but it really still doesn't change the overall damage that this unit can put out. They're just a solid melee unit that will fit into any of our lists.

Dawnguard Invictors

What the Sentinels do for melee the Invictors do for ranged. RAT 6 RNG 10 POW 12 is a very nice stat line for a ranged unit, most infantry are going to be taking heavy losses from their shooting attacks. What really pushes the damage out put of this unit is their flank ability, which is worded to work with their ranged attacks, the drawback being you are now shooting into melee, upping the DEF of your target by 4, which the flank bonus and aiming bonuses take care of. The real trick though is to either KD/stationary what you are shooting at; Head butt, slam, throw, arcantrik bolt and then move the jack into melee. Now you are doing POW 12 +3D6 to the KD/stationary target meaning that almost all of your shots are going to hit (barring the odd snake eye roll). Using flank, the Invictors are going to be doing 4.5 damage to an ARM 18 jack, couple this with backlash from Kaelyssa, and your opponent’s caster is going to take a hurting before that jack is trashed.

Like their Sentinel brothers they are only ARM 15, but they also have defensive line. Pushing their ARM up to 17 as long as they remain in B2B, making them a pretty tough ranged unit.

They also have Jack Marshall (1) like the Sentinels, not something I would normally use, but if you do again the Hydra is going to be best, mainly for smash and grab to try and KD your flank target so that you can put the hurting on it.

NARN

NARN is essentially the Melee version of Eiryss. Basically you want to point him in the direction of the enemy caster and let him do his thing. SPD 7 with pathfinder, acrobatics, sprint (when he kills an enemy model in melee he can make a full advance) and advanced deployment mean that he's going to get where you want him to. DEF 15 and stealth will help him survive the trip there. MAT 8 and 2 P+S 11 weapon master attacks with wraith bane and arcane assassin means he's going to hit and put the hurt on that caster. Warlocks will have a slightly easier time as they can still just transfer damage.

All in all he's a nice little cruise missile, but unless my opponent leaves their caster exposed, I'm probably going to use him to hunt down solo's, number 1 being my enemy's Eiryss.

So again, let me know what you guys think. Also, what combos/tactics have you all come up with?