Solos in Warmachine may not have the raw power and durability of warjacks or the sheer numbers enjoyed by infantry. But don’t discount them. For so few points, no models can tip the balance of a game quite like solos can. Today, I’m taking a look at the Skarlock Thrall.
IN SHORT: Who doesn’t like a free spell a turn? The Skarlock is a Cryx warcaster’s best friend.
STRENGTHS: Two words. Spell Slave! With this ability, the Skarlock can cast one of its warcaster’s spells for free, while in that warcaster’s control area. And for only 2 points? Seriously, that is just so cool.
Now, there are a few exceptions to worry about. The Skarlock can only cast spells of COST 3 or less and cannot cast spells with target SELF or CTRL. Even with these limitations, there are so many applications for Spell Slave, it’s ridiculous.
The savings in Focus alone are phenomenal. The Skarlock is great for assisting Cryx warcasters with support spells. From a timely application of Ghost Walk to applying or re-applying buffs like Scything Touch and support spells Occultation, the Skarlock is a huge boon to Focus efficiency. It’s just great to have along.
WEAKNESSES: With DEF 14, ARM 12, and only 5 hit boxes, the Skarlock is squishy. Keep it safe, because if your opponent can take a shot at it, it’s likely dead. This makes it very risky to use the Skarlock for offensive spells, which force it into range of reprisal. It’s best to keep the Skarlock back in a support role until it’s needed. That said, don’t be afraid to sacrifice a Skarlock to get that extra debuff applied. Often, the right debuff in the right place is well worth a dead Skarlock.
Also, it … umm … It can’t cast every spell? It’s not a 1 point solo? You can’t take two?
Seriously, I’m stretching on this one.
SYNERGIES: Almost any warcaster can take advantage of the Skarlock. It’s basically an auto-include in most lists, so it’s easier to cover the exceptions rather than the synergies.
The Skarlock is a warcaster attachment, so it cannot be included with Mortenebra or Asphyxious the Hellbringer, who both have their own character Skarlocks. Of the remaining warcasters, Goreshade the Bastard is probably the one that will miss a Skarlock the least, since the only spells available to the Skarlock are offensive. Though do not discount even this. Goreshade can often be hurting for Focus, and an extra Hex Blast at the right time can be game-changing, given its ability to strip enemy upkeep spells.
JUST FOR FUN: Let’s look at Iron Lich Asphyxious’s spell Scything Touch. This is a rare buff spell in Cryx that grants +2 STR and Critical Corrosion to a unit or model.
Start the round by upkeeping Scything Touch on Unit 1, activate Unit 1 and get the most out of the buff. Next, activate the Skarlock and cast Scything Touch on Unit 2. Activate Unit 2 and do some damage. Now activate Asphyxious and cast this spell on Unit 3. Activate Unit 3 and tear it up.
That’s three units benefiting from +2 STR in a single round for only 3 Focus and a Skarlock. Not too bad.
And remember, this tactic can also be used on debuffs against enemy units. Who wouldn’t like to smash three warjacks in a row, each afflicted with Parasite’s -3 ARM penality?
SUMMARY: The Skarlock has a place in almost every Cryx list. If in doubt, take one. Seriously, just take it. You won’t regret it.
Check out the complete list of Warmachine and Hordes articles here.
Warmachine Tactics – Cryx: Pistol Wraith
Solos in Warmachine may not have the raw power and durability of warjacks or the sheer numbers enjoyed by infantry. But don’t discount them. For so few points, no models can tip the balance of a game quite like solos can. Today, I’m taking a look at the Pistol Wraith.
IN SHORT: These ghostly duelists are experts at reaching their targets, striking first, and striking hard. But watch out! They are glass cannons.
STRENGTHS: First, the Pistol Wraith lives up to its name. It shoots well, which is something of a novelty in Cryx. With RAT 7, the Pistol Wraith’s twin POW 12 pistols are accurate and can do some decent damage. Good speed on the solo and range on the weapons also lends the Pistol Wraith a high threat range of 16”.
But what’s better than POW 12? Boosted POW 12! Thanks to its Body Count rule, the Pistol Wraith can collect souls of living enemy models it kills. Those souls can then be used to boost attack or damage rolls, making the Pistol Wraith one deadly customer.
But there’s more! If the Pistol Wraith connects on the same target with both pistols, it fires a third non-damaging Chain Attack at that target. This Death Chill attack forces the target to give up either its movement or its action during its next activation. This gives the Pistol Wraith the ability to hinder targets it has trouble damaging, such as high ARM warrior models, heavy warjacks, and even Colossals!
To keep the Pistol Wraith safe, it has Incorporeal, which grants it immunity to normal attacks until it opens fire.
WEAKNESSES: At 3 points, the Pistol Wraith is a mildly pricey solo. With DEF 14, ARM 12, it’s also vulnerable. This can lead to the Pistol Wraith becoming a one-hit wonder by getting flattened immediately after opening fire the first time.
This problem also makes it difficult to use souls because the Pistol Wraith has to collect them first through attacks. And when it attacks, it loses Incorporeal for a round, leaving it very vulnerable.
Finally, besides our impressive selection of debuffs (which go great with Pistol Wraiths), Cryx has very little support for enhancing ranged attacks.
SYNERGIES: Skarre, Queen of the Broken Coast and Pistol Wraiths go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Not only does Epic Skarre enhance shooting to ridiculous levels with Black Spot, her Fate Weaver feat can be used to protect the Pistol Wraith. First Black Spot a unit, then have a Pistol Wraith or two attack the unit, gobbling up the soul tokens and getting free shots. After this, use Fate Weaver to make the Pistol Wraiths invalid targets. With the Pistol Wraiths gorged on souls and protected from reprisal, they’re ready to do some real damage next round!
And, of course, debuffs make anything better, not just melee attacks. The Pistol Wraith’s ranged attacks can benefit greatly from the wide selection of Cryx debuffs. Why not team up with Warwitch Deneghra for an assassination run. Combining Parasite with her feat, The Withering, on the same target can turn the Pistol Wraith’s RAT 7 POW 12 attacks into effective RAT 9 POW 17, which can be boosted further with souls!
JUST FOR FUN: You know the saying, boosted 12’s win games. Hey, check it out. Pistol Wraiths have two POW 12 attacks that can be boosted. Huh.
Just saying. Might be worth a look.
SUMMARY: Pistol Wraiths are dangerous solos, and with Incorporeal, they can normally get the drop on their target. Just don’t expect them to last long after that first strike if you haven’t planned accordingly. That said, make no mistake. With the right list and a solid battle plan, Pistol Wraiths are absolutely deadly!
Check out the complete list of Warmachine and Hordes articles here.
Warmachine Tactics – Cryx: Warwitch Siren
Solos in Warmachine may not have the raw power and durability of warjacks or the sheer numbers enjoyed by infantry. But don’t discount them. For so few points, no models can tip the balance of a game quite like solos can. Today, I’m taking a look at the Warwitch Siren.
IN SHORT: Cheap, fast, and supremely versatile, the Warwitch Siren is one of the premier Cryx solos.
STRENGTHS: The name of the game here is versatility. For only 2 points, the Warwitch Siren brings a large toolbox of interesting abilities. Let’s take a look at them.
First, there’s Power Booster. The Warwitch Siren can clear of warjack of the Disrupted effect and, if it doesn’t have any Focus, she gives it one. Warmachine is a game of resource management, namely Focus, and the Warwitch Siren lets the warcaster keep more. Very nice!
Next, the Warwitch Siren can move into base-to-base with a living enemy warrior model and use Seduction. Take control of the enemy model, make a full advance then make one normal melee attack. There is no roll to hit for Seduction. The ability always works, though warcasters and warlocks are immune.
The applications of this power are many and varied. Need to bring an enemy support solo closer to your warjack? Seduce them! Want to break a unit by moving the leader out of formation? Seduce them! Got a powerful melee solo closing in? Seduce them, turn them around, and attack something!
The Warwitch Siren also come with Venom, a low POW 8” magic spray that causes Corrosion. With a magic attack of 7, Venom is deadly against clumped up groups of enemy infantry. Between the initial spray attack and the Corrosion afterwards, the Siren can clear out surprising numbers of enemy infantry all by herself.
As if that wasn’t enough, the Warwitch Siren can inflict Shadow Bind with her P+S 11 Shadow Blade melee attack. This is great for stopping an enemy warjack or warbeast dead in its tracks, especially if the target doesn’t have Reach. Because, guess what? The Siren does! She can freeze models in place, lower their defense by 3, and they can’t even smack her back. This also gives her the defense bonus for being engaged in melee.
On top of all of this, the Warwitch Siren comes with Stealth to protect her at range and Parry to let her ignore free strikes.
All this for 2 points? Very nice indeed!
WEAKNESSES: ARM 13 and DEF 15 are good, but not great. The Warwitch Siren can be difficult to pin down, but when she is, she gets squished. Even with Stealth protecting her, she has to watch out for blast damage. Never mind that there are plenty of ways to bypass Stealth.
And while Shadow Bind on her melee attack is nice, she’s only MAT 5. Even against the generally low DEF of heavy warjacks, she has a reasonable chance to miss.
Finally, she’s a living model, with all the extra vulnerabilities that brings over our undead models.
SYNERGIES: Just about everything in Cryx. Almost every list I make includes one and sometimes two Warwitch Sirens. However, there are some combinations that can stand out.
Scaverous’s feat boosts the attack rolls of magic attacks. Combined with the Siren’s Venom and her solid magic attack, and suddenly that spell is really, really accurate. Go ahead! Melt their faces right off!
Venethrax also gives the Venom spell’s Corrosion effect a nice boost with his Caustic Presence [Corrosion]. Instead of a two in three chance of basic infantry dying, now they just die.
With the number a warjacks Mortenebra normally fields, she really enjoys the extra Focus two Warwitch Sirens can bring to her battlegroup.
Finally, what’s better than one round of Shadow Bind? TWO rounds of Shadow Bind! Try teaming up some Sirens with Wraith Witch Deneghra’s feat to really paralyze your opponent.
JUST FOR FUN: A little combo I like to use is a Warwitch Siren and a Stalker as a two-part flanking force. Both the Siren and the Stalker swing wide on one flank. Both are SPD 7 and both have Stealth. Plus the Siren can Power Boost the Stalker if Focus is tight. With the Stalker’s Extended Control Range, the warcaster is free to load it with Focus when the moment is right. Together, the two can cause a lot of chaos for only 6 points.
SUMMARY: The Warwitch Siren is a fantastic, supremely versatile solo that fits great in almost any Cryx army. The sheer number of abilities she brings to the table gives you plenty of options and makes it almost impossible for your opponent to predict her moves. It’s a rare game where I’m not fielding my trusty Siren in the list.
Check out the complete list of Warmachine and Hordes articles here.
Warmachine Tactics – Cryx: Machine Wraith
Solos in Warmachine may not have the raw power and durability of warjacks or the sheer numbers enjoyed by infantry. But don’t discount them. For so few points, no models can tip the balance of a game quite like solos can. Today, I’m taking a look at the Machine Wraith.
IN SHORT: In Cryx, we steal enemy corpses and enemy souls. But what about whole warjacks? Yeah, we do that too.
STRENGTHS: The Machine Wraith is a 1 point solo that TAKES CONTROL OF ENEMY WARJACKS! Granted, there are a number of conditions that have to be met and qualifiers that need to be added. But still. Seriously. I mean seriously, this is so awesome.
The Machine Wraith needs to get within 1” of the target warjack and execute its Machine Meld special action, so it cannot be used if the Machine Wraith charges. The target warjack must have a functioning cortex, cannot be a character warjack, and cannot be a Colossal since they are immune to control of any kind.
To pull this off, the Machine Wraith is fast at SPD 7 and is Incorporeal! This not only protects the Machine Wraith from normal attacks, it also allows it to pass through other models and terrain on its way to taking control of the enemy.
Opponents have a few options for getting the warjack back. Warcasters can spend Focus and attempt to kick the Machine Wraith out. Basically, the warcaster and the Machine Wraith compare CMD and add a D6. The Machine Wraith has a low CMD 7, by the way. Damaging the warjack will also kick the Machine Wraith out, but in your Maintenance Phase. Either way, your opponent is wasting resources.
And even if the Machine Wraith is kicked out, the biggest benefit is preventing any Focus allocation to the enemy warjack. When the Machine Wraith is inside, the warjack is not a part of any battlegroup! No Focus for you!
As a side bonus, the Machine Wraith can also use its speed to harass enemy solos and infantry, setting itself up for free-strikes while remaining protected by Incorporeal.
WEAKNESSES: Except for Incorporeal, the Machine Wraith is a soft target. DEF 14 isn’t too bad, but ARM 12 on a medium base with one hit box is nothing to be excited about. If your opponent wants the Machine Wraith dead, it’s probably dead. Protecting it with smart use of terrain is critical.
Also, while the Machine Wraith is best used against Warmachine armies, those armies tend to have a wider selection of magical weapons. Even worse, Colossals and character-warjacks give Warmachine players plenty of options that are immune to the Machine Meld ability.
And that comment about not allocating Focus to a warjack under Machine Wraith control swings both way, so you can’t allocate Focus to it either, though this isn’t a big deal. The Machine Wraith is more about denying options to your opponent than opening up new ones for you.
And finally there are Hordes armies that don’t care one bit about Machine Meld. Against them, the Machine Wraith is a simple solo harasser … with low P+S and average MAT. It’s not terrible, but it’s not exciting either.
SYNERGIES: The Machine Wraith needs the enemy warjack to be within 8” in order to steal it … unless another model pulling it in! Try teaming up with Reaper or Malice warjacks and using their Drag attacks to bring the enemy warjack into range. Scaverous’s Telekinesis spell can produce a similar effect, either pulling the warjack in or bumping the Machine Wraith closer. Or both.
Also, fielding the Machine Wraith with other Incorporeal models can saturate your opponent’s ability to deal with them effectively. The Wraith Engine can also help the Machine Wraith get to its target by giving it a small ARM buff via its Unhallowed rule. This also makes the Machine Wraith immune to blast damage.
JUST FOR FUN: Against a Gargantuan or a Colossal there’s nothing a Machine Wraith can do, right? Well, not so fast!
Yes, the Machine Wraith is an Incorporeal model, which means enemies can walk right through it too. Except, Large bases normally come with low speed. Sure, that Colossal can walk right through the Machine Wraith, but it has to clear it too! It can’t stop on top of the Machine Wraith!
Run the Machine Wraith up and engage the Colossal. Now the Machine Wraith has DEF 18 to ranged attacks. Shooting the Machine Wraith down with magic is going to be tough. And if your opponent moves in another model to take the Machine Wraith out, now THAT model is blocking the Colossal!
SUMMARY: The Machine Wraith is a fairly situational solo that sometimes shines and sometimes is barely mediocre. Still, for only one point, the ability to take an enemy warjack as your own should not be dismissed. In the right place at the right time, Machine Wraiths can single-handedly swing games in your favor.
Check out the complete list of Warmachine and Hordes articles here.
Dungeon Master Brings the Pain
When I’m running a campaign, I have a script in mind. I think most dungeon masters do. For me, everything is moving towards an epic final confrontation. Throughout the encounters, the villain is established and shown to be a powerful, formidable threat. The motivations are laid out. The stakes are revealed. The encounters are set up so the action crescendos in intensity until it reaches its peak at the Final Battle. Everything is laid out with precision and care.
And then players try to pull stuff like this.
Jacob Holo: Okay, what are you trying to do again?
Twinkie: I want to dodge the robot, grab Shrike, but not where he’s drenched in acid, jump up to the next level, and flip us both over the ledge.
Jacob Holo: <sigh> Acrobatics check.
Twinkie: <rolls D20> Okay … uhh, it’s a one.
Jacob Holo: <blank stare>
Twinkie: This is going to hurt, isn’t it?
Sometimes I wish they would just read the script. Except, yeah … They don’t have my script.
Well, shoot.
That being said, it’s a fun and challenging exercise to guide players towards their goal without letting them feel like they’re being led by the nose. Case in point, Twinkie was supposed to just shoot the robot, which had (what I thought were) conspicuous weak points. Instead, he lathered up with acid, melted his armor, and later asphyxiated on the lunar surface because, you know, no air.
Fortunately, this is science fiction, so the party was able to rescue him as a Futurama style head-in-a-jar and then get him a new body. I particularly enjoyed coming up with that bit.
So, after much coaxing that (I hoped) didn’t seem like coaxing, the players were ready for the Final Battle. And this is where I deviated from the norm. I had a script, and darn it, it was going to be followed. After all, this was it: the end of our campaign. I wanted it to be memorable and exciting, and the players were not going to get in my way, darn it!
Jacob Holo: Perception check.
Agnis Crane: Thirty-one!
Jacob Holo: You see a vague, ghostly silhouette down the ship corridor. It appears humanoid.
Agnis Crane: I shoot it!
Jacob Holo: Go ahead.
Agnis Crane: <rolls D20> Umm … let’s see here …
Jacob Holo: Yes?
Agnis Crane: Hold on. I’m doing math. Twenty-four?
Jacob Holo: Hit.
Agnis Crane: Yay! Ten points of damage.
Jacob Holo: The optical illusion falters, revealing a crusader. He raises his Gatling gun, and he’s not alone. Three more crusaders decloak and raise their weapons. One of them has a thermal lance.
Agnis Crane: Well, crap.
And that was just the start. After that, the foes kept coming, impeding them every step of the way. It was a long, grinding battle as the party fought through obstacle after obstacle, struggling towards their target at the center of the enemy starship.
They chewed through a huge number of gun-spiders, crusaders, and three tank-spiders before I finally wore them down. Those of you who have read my book, The Dragons of Jupiter, will know this is no small feat. In retrospect, I should have given the tank-spiders beefier stats, but oh well. They did their job.
At the very end, three party members had been knocked out. Agnis Crane, with only five hit points left, took out the last tank-spider with a lethal shot. After that, the flow of new enemies stopped. Because, you know, the rules of drama had been satisfied. The party had seized a victory from what could have been a Total Party Kill. Throwing more enemies at them would have served no useful purpose.
Angis revived the team, and they went on to complete their objective. The campaign ended on an emotional high note, with players talking excitedly about what had happened and how close to defeat they had come.
Just as I had intended.
As a dungeon master, I don’t just see myself as the guy running the game and setting up the encounters. I’m a story teller, and if I have to bend the rules to tell a better story, well … yeah, consider those rules bent. There were exactly enough enemies, and their attack rolls were just good enough to make the battle a tense nail biter. No more. No less. The players don’t need to know that, right?
At the end of the day, I had four happy players who enjoyed my campaign and will probably ask for another someday in the future. Now that’s what I call a happy ending.
For a sample of our misadventures, click here.
Warmachine Tactics – Cryx: Blackbane’s Ghost Raiders
Infantry may not be the stars of Warmachine, but that doesn’t make them any less important. From screening high priority targets to overwhelming a foe with sheer numbers, infantry plays a critical role, especially in the armies of Cryx. Today, I’m taking a look at Blackbane’s Ghost Raiders.
IN SHORT: Who doesn’t like zombie pirates? Well, these are GHOST zombie pirates! On FIRE!
STRENGTHS: Blackbane’s Ghost Raiders are Incorporeal! This isn’t a lone solo like the Pistol Wraith, but an entire unit of up to 10 bodies that are immune to non-magical damage and can walk through walls or even enemy troops. Granted, they lose their Incorporeal status for one round when they attack, but this is still a terrifying ability to deal with.
If that wasn’t enough, their attacks set enemy models on fire. Not critical fire, mind you. Continuous Fire! Even if they don’t kill their target, there’s a chance the enemy will just burn to death. Fire is a powerful and dangerous continuous effect that a lot of models do not want to get hit with. Many warcasters are especially vulnerable to continuous fire, because fire does its damage before they replenish their Focus. As an added bonus, their attacks are also magical.
Blackbane, the unit leader, also grants Reanimation to the unit. If they kill a living model, a new Ghost Raider gets added within 3” of the model doing the killing.
Finally, because of these abilities, the Ghost Raiders are a huge free strike threat. Often the best move is to run them forward and engage as many enemy models as possible (though watch out for enemies with magical weapons). Many models simply aren’t equipped to handle Incorporeal units, nor risk a MAT 8 or 9 free strike with P+S 10 and boosted damage.
In response, your opponent may: (A) Move away, risking the free strike and the new Ghost Raider. (B) Move in models capable of dealing with the Ghost Raider, taking them from other parts of the battle. (C)Spend valuable Focus to blast the Ghost Raider with magic. (D) Glare at the Ghost Raider in frustration and do nothing.
Any of these results can be useful, making the Ghost Raiders premier disruption units.
WEAKNESSES: With MAT 6 (except for Blackbane, who has MAT 7) and a single P+S 10 attack, Ghost Raiders can struggle to do damage. This is why using free strikes is my favorite strategy with them, since the +2 MAT and boosted damage roll helps bring them up to respectable levels. They’re also pricey at 9 points for a full unit, which puts them in competition with many other excellent Cryx infantry units that are harder hitting and easier to use for a similar price.
And while Reanimation is a great ability, it goes away as soon as Blackbane is taken out. Smart opponents will target Blackbane first, so watch out and try to protect him.
Finally, magic and magical weapons bypass Incorporeal. Without Incorporeal for protection, the Ghost Raiders are easy targets with only DEF 13 and ARM 12. Magical ranged attacks are especially painful! Incorporeal grants them superb mobility. Use it to keep them safe!
SYNERGIES: The Ghost Raiders can walk through walls and enemy troops. Why not use them with Epic Deneghra’s Marked for Death spell? Not only does Marked for Death drop enemy DEF by 2, it also allows them to be targeted regardless of line of sight. Nice!
The Wraith Engine can provide a welcome boost to the Ghost Raiders while they’re Incorporeal and in its generous command range. Between the Wraith Engine’s clouds and its Unhallowed ability, it can mean the difference between DEF 13 ARM 12 Raiders and DEF 15 ARM 14 Raiders immune to blast damage. Not too bad.
Finally, Captain Rengrave is a solid addition with his Veteran Leader [Revenant] ability, giving a +2 bonus to Revenant model attack rolls if they can see Rengrave. With smart positioning, those free strikes suddenly became a terrifying MAT 10!
JUST FOR FUN: If you’re taking Ghost Raiders, why not load up on Incorporeal models to saturate your opponent’s ability to handle them? Taking Ghost Raiders with Machine Wraiths, Pistol Wraiths, Wraith Engines, Epic Deneghra, and Blood Witches with Blood Hag can overwhelm your opponent’s ability to cope. This can lead to a somewhat unbalanced army list, but also a fun one.
SUMMARY: Normally, Blackbane’s Ghost Raiders aren’t going to deal a ton of damage. What they excel at is charging into the enemy ranks and causing absolute chaos. They’re nowhere near as straightforward to use as most Cryx infantry, but their ability to disrupt the enemy’s plans is a powerful and welcome addition.
Check out the complete list of Warmachine and Hordes articles here.
Warmachine Tactics – Cryx: Revenant Crew
Infantry may not be the stars of Warmachine, but that doesn’t make them any less important. From screening high priority targets to overwhelming a foe with sheer numbers, infantry plays a critical role, especially in the armies of Cryx. Today, I’m taking a look at the Revenant Crew of the Atramentous
IN SHORT: Zombie pirates! They may not hit hard or shoot straight, but these rotting corpses JUST WON’T DIE!
STRENGTHS: The Revenant Crew won’t frickin’ die! Their ability, Deathbound, restores all lost grunts in the Maintenance Phase within 3” of the leader. All of them! The only catch is if the leader dies. When that happens, all grunts that were killed before the leader are removed from play, so opponents will try to kill some of the Revenant Crew and then off the leader. Even with that exception, Deathbound makes them a real pain to get rid of. Their support solo, Captain Rengrave, can even add new crew with Death Toll [Revenant Crew of the Atramentous] by killing living models. Because, you know, Deathbound isn’t sick enough on its own.
The Revenant Crew also benefit from Point Blank and Gang. Point Blank allows them to use their pistols in melee, giving the Revenant Crew two melee attacks per model. Gang gives the +2 to attack and +2 to damage rolls in melee when another crewmember is engaging that target.
On top of that, Captain Rengrave can provide an additional +2 to all attack rolls if the Revenant Crew have line of sight to him. With all of these bonuses in play, their base MAT 5 and RAT 4 can become very respectable MAT 9 and RAT 6! This can, of course, be combined with the huge selection Cryx warcaster debuffs for even greater accuracy.
With multiple attacks per model and plenty of way to get attack roll bonuses, Revenant Crew can surprisingly accurate in melee.
Revenant Crew also have an excellent unit attachment in the Revenant Crew Rifleman. For 1 point a model, Riflemen bring a Range 14 POW 10 shot with Combined Ranged Attack, and 3 can be added to each Revenant Crew. That may not seem like much with RAT 4, but with all 3 riflemen combining their attacks, this suddenly becomes RAT 7 POW 13. Add in Rengrave, and that’s RAT 9 POW 13! There are a lot of juicy solos and even warcasters that will not enjoy being on the other end of their shots!
And yes, Revenant Crew Riflemen benefit from their own version of Deathbound called Death Ties, which is basically the same, but worded for the unit attachment.
WEAKNESSES: Revenant Crew have poor base stats, both offensive and defensive. DEF 13 ARM 12 doesn’t scare anyone. They’re easy to put down. It’s getting them to stay down that’s the hard part.
They’re also expensive. We’re talking roughly a point per model expensive. That’s Bane Thrall/Knight expensive. They also don’t hit very hard. Even with Gang, they’re melee attacks are only P+S 11 and POW 12 for the pistol shot to the face. Revenant Crew are damage sponges, not damage dealers.
Protecting the leader can be difficult at times, and you want to protect the leader. Their durability comes from a gimmick, which a smart player can bypass completely by killing the leader last. This makes their durability harder to use than, say, a unit that relies on high base stats.
Finally, these pirates do not like remove from play effects, which completely bypass Deathbound. Watch out!
SYNERGIES: Revenant Crew work well as a pure damage sponge, shielding the squishier parts of the Cryx army, but there are two warcasters that stand out above the rest: Terminus and Epic Skarre.
Terminus loves a posse of undead, and he makes them better by giving them Tough while in his command range. What’s worse than a big blob of Revenant Crew? That’s right. Revenant Crew with Tough! Terminus also likes to sacrifice Revenant Crew to incoming fire because, well, they get back up! I personally like to hide the leader behind Terminus while sacrificing other Revenant models around him.
Epic Skarre can use her feat to prevent the Revenant Crew leader from being targeted, which effectively protects the entire unit. Just be aware that her feat prevents models from being target, but they can still be damaged by other means such as slammed models or deviating blast templates.
JUST FOR FUN: Take a max squad of Revenant Crew, add 3 Riflemen, and bring Rengrave along for the ride. Now team them up the Scaverous and a pet Skarlock.
Between Rengrave’s Death Toll and Excarnate attacks from Scaverous and the Skarlock, the Revenant Crew could easily end the game bigger than it started! How’s that for a tar pit unit?
SUMMARY: Seriously, who doesn’t like zombie pirates that simply refuse to die? The Revenant Crew aren’t going to steal the show by themselves. What they will do is soak up a ridiculous amount of damage that would otherwise pound the squishier parts of your army, and that is an addition I welcome in my Cryx armies.
Check out the complete list of Warmachine and Hordes articles here.
Black Dragons
PROLOGUE to The Dragons of Jupiter
Of the seven thousand coalition soldiers attacking Bunker Zero, only two penetrated the upper defenses. Kaneda and Ryu Kusanagi sprinted down the narrow steel corridor. Sonic cancellers in their boots turned booming metallic footfalls into whispers. Form-fitting smartskin shrouded their bodies in active camouflage. Not even shadows marked their passing.
Kaneda glanced at the utility trench underneath the grated floor. He followed three thick liquid nitrogen lines and a cluster of purple ultrahigh voltage cables. Whatever they fed took a lot of juice and needed constant cooling. It had to be their target.
“There’s a four way junction ahead!” Ryu said over his comm-collar. Low-power laser receptors and emitters lined both their necks, allowing secure tight-beam communication as long as they shared line-of-sight contact.
“The lines go to the right,” Kaneda said.
“They’re gaining on us!”
“I know. Stay focused.”
Kaneda planted his feet in the junction and turned sharply. His suit’s smartskin struggled to keep up, revealing him with a brief, slender outline. He dashed down the right hand corridor.
Ryu crouched as soon as he rounded the corner. He pulled a grenade out of his bandolier, armed its micromind for proximity detonation, and forced it through the floor’s grating. It landed on top of the liquid nitrogen lines. The grenade’s smartskin activated, obscuring it from view. Ryu stood and ran after Kaneda.
“Security door,” Kaneda said, stopping a hundred meters after the junction. He placed his hand on the door. Passive contact scanners in his glove evaluated the obstacle. “Reinforced diamoplast half a meter thick.”
Ryu stopped next to him. “There’s the security terminal. I’ve got this one!”
“Covering.” Kaneda turned, snapped up his JD-50 assault rifle and dropped to a crouch. He mentally keyed the rifle to full auto.
Ryu placed his hand on the security terminal. Microscopic filaments extruded from his hacking glove and penetrated the terminal’s casing. The filaments uncoiled into the terminal, expanding and exploring at Ryu’s command, looking for ways to bypass its protocols through direct intervention.
A distant clicking noise echoed down the corridor, exactly the kind of sound a hundred narrow metal legs would make.
Kaneda placed a hand against the cold steel wall. He felt the subsonic vibrations of explosive ordnance, maybe fifty levels above them. Help isn’t close, he thought. We’re all alone down here.
The rapid clicking grew louder.
“They’re close,” Kaneda said, gripping his rifle with both hands.
“Just a few more seconds!”
The rapid clicking thundered in his ears.
“Almost there!” Ryu said.
“We don’t have much time,” Kaneda said, speaking softly despite the on-edge pounding in his chest. A quick glance at his biometrics showed a heart rate of 312 pulses per minute, and that was without a fresh shot of adrenalmax.
The proximity grenade at the junction detonated in a flash of light and shrapnel. Two nitrogen lines ruptured, spewing jets of cryogenic fluid into the corridor. The liquid nitrogen expanded into gas with explosive force.
A concussion wave shot down the corridor. The wave threw Kaneda and Ryu into the security door. Kaneda slammed his head against the door, but the thin layer of impact gel in his helmet absorbed most of the shock.
“Damn it!” Ryu shouted.
Stars danced across Kaneda’s vision. He shook his head and brought his rifle back up.
“You okay?” Ryu asked.
“Just get the door open.”
“Right. Almost there.”
Kaneda toggled through his visor’s tracking modes, overlaying thermal atop the visual spectrum. The corridor was a black, billowing cloud.
“Almost!” Ryu said.
Two six-legged outlines came into view, one on the wall, the other on the ceiling. They stood half as tall as a man with internal power plants glowing rusty red despite the rapid cooling.
Gun-spiders.
Kaneda fired. Forty diamond-tipped shatterbacks spewed out of his rifle in two seconds. The synthetic, shatterproof diamonds tore through gun-spider armor like paper. Once inside, the explosive shatterbacks blew them apart. Shots that missed tore chunks out of the walls and ceiling. Lights in the corridor flickered and died. Detonations ripped steel panels off. A secondary blast boomed from an unseen enemy in the junction, splattering the walls and floor with what his visor identified as napalm. The thick gel burned and fought the leaking jets of nitrogen in a swirling thermal dance.
Kaneda ejected the spent clip and slapped in a fresh one.
“Got it!” Ryu said.
The security door slid open. Ryu rushed through and placed his hacking glove against the terminal on the far side.
Kaneda backpedaled through the door in a low crouch. He mentally keyed two grenades in his JD-50’s underslung launcher for timed detonations and fired both into the corridor. The security door slid shut after he cleared it. Two more explosions echoed through the bunker.
“Now,” Kaneda said, standing and turning. “Where are we?”
The wide room stood two stories tall. Harsh overhead lighting washed out most color. The white tiled walls and floors added a sense of sterility. Pods filled the room in neat rows like an artificial forest, each with a man or woman lying inside.
“This doesn’t look like it,” Ryu said.
“The lines lead here,” Kaneda said. “How long will the door hold?”
“Ten to fifteen minutes. More if we’re lucky. I fried the controls pretty good. They’ll have to burn their way through.”
Kaneda walked to the closest pod and looked at the woman inside.
“Careful,” Ryu said. “These people could be implanted with chest-devils.”
“Nothing is showing up on my tracker,” Kaneda said.
He looked inside the pod. The woman’s head was recently shaven, leaving a brunette fringe. Kaneda could make out tight circular scars along her scalp. Her chest rose and fell with slow breaths. Bones stood out at her neck and joints, and her cheeks were horribly sunken.
A tremor ran through her body. She opened her eyes and looked around the room with a vacuous gaze. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Saliva trickled from the edge.
“What is Caesar doing with these people?” Ryu asked. “Is this where he makes his thralls?”
“We should keep moving,” Kaneda said. “This isn’t it.”
“All right, but where do we go from here?”
Kaneda looked around. “The power lines are probably routed deeper. There, to the left. That looks like a power distribution panel. Most of the cables coming out of it go down.”
“Okay. So?”
“We’ll head down. There’s a flight of stairs on the far side.”
Kaneda detected a heat spike from a holographic emitter on the ceiling. A pillar of light coalesced into a tall, fit man with a buzz of white hair. He straightened his crisp black suit and adjusted a blood red tie before walking towards them. The man stood a head shorter than Ryu and Kaneda, the simulation of his former body compressed by Earth’s heavy gravity.
“Caesar,” Kaneda breathed.
“Well, isn’t this the absolute opposite of a surprise,” Caesar said. “Kaneda and Ryu Kusanagi. It would have to be you two freaks that breached my defenses. I certainly never expected the regular Federacy fodder to make it this far.”
“He can’t see us, can he?” Ryu asked. “I mean, he’s walking right towards us.”
“Keep moving,” Kaneda said. “He’s trying to distract us. Head for the next level.”
Caesar walked past them and stopped at the security door. “Now I know you gentlemen just arrived, but I have to break some bad news to you. My quantum core is not here. You took a wrong turn. The power lines you were following are for a little experiment I’ve been playing with. So sorry, but it just has to be said.”
“Kaneda?”
“Don’t let him get to you.”
“But—”
“Don’t listen to him,” Kaneda said. “We have a job to do.”
“In fact, it’s even worse than that,” Caesar said. “There’s only one way out of these sublevels. Back the way you came. You both expended a lot of ammo getting here. Right now, I have over fifty robots amassing on the other side. I’ve even arranged for a few prototypes to join them. It’ll be fun to see how long you last.”
Kaneda and Ryu reached the stairs. Caesar’s hologram flashed into existence on the landing halfway down the steps. He didn’t make eye contact.
“I know this may sound a little odd given our current situation,” Caesar said. “But when my robots reach you, I would appreciate it if you kept the collateral damage to a minimum. Some of these fine Federacy citizens were very hard to obtain, and I have not finished even a quarter of their neural extractions and persona-intrusions.”
Kaneda stepped off the stairs into a room identical to the one above and found the power distribution panel for the second level. Most of the cables disappeared through the floor.
“Keep heading down,” Kaneda said.
“I don’t think it’s here.”
“He’s lying. He’s trying to trick us.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Caesar’s hologram appeared in the center of the room. Kaneda and Ryu ran past it.
A deep subsonic boom reverberated through the bunker.
Caesar looked up. “My, they are getting rowdy up there. It’s amazing this coalition has lasted this long. Soldiers from Earth and Luna and Mars and Jupiter all walking to their deaths in lockstep. Very stirring. I suppose they hate me more than each other. By the way, how is your ice ball of a home? After this is over, I’m going to send a fleet to Jupiter and rain about a thousand nukes down on that frozen moon. It’ll be like the fireworks on Federacy Day, only hotter. What do you think of that?”
Kaneda entered the third identical level. Rows of interrogation pods stretched out before him.
“How many people are in here?” Ryu asked.
“About two hundred so far,” Kaneda said, running for the next set of stairs.
Caesar materialized ahead of them. “You know, while you’ve been meandering about, I’ve subverted the weapon systems of a Martian cruiser in geosynchronous orbit. Firewalls, ha! It was like punching through wet paper.” He smiled and looked up. “Three … two … one …”
A massive shockwave rocked the bunker. The lights flickered. Kaneda lowered his stance and put a hand against an interrogation pod to steady himself.
Caesar clasped his hands together. “Well, that is that. The surface has been reduced to a glowing sheet of glass along with all the Federacy troops still up there. Shame about New Shanghai. I was rather fond of the city.”
“Damn it!” Ryu said. “What now?”
“There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Kaneda, we’re going to die down here if we don’t find it soon!”
“I know. Keep moving.”
Caesar materialized by the stairs to the fourth level. He picked at some imaginary lint on his sleeve.
“Now that I have you thoroughly trapped, I’d like to note something,” Caesar said. “As one of only two quantum minds in existence, I’m a little offended Matriarch sent you to kill me. I’m sure the irony of this situation is not lost on you. Two people, designed and created, manufactured if you will by one quantum mind, sent to kill the other quantum mind. It really is quite offensive. And I promise you, I will punish her for this insult.”
They entered the fourth interrogation level. Caesar was already standing at the foot of the stairs to greet them. Kaneda ran past him, but stopped halfway to the next set of stairs.
“What is it?” Ryu asked.
“Something’s not right with this level.”
Ryu looked around. “It is? It’s the same as the … wait, what the hell? That wall is closer than on the other levels.”
“Exactly. This level has smaller dimensions. Shouldn’t it be the same?”
Kaneda and Ryu ran to the wall and stopped in front of it.
“It looks … new,” Ryu said.
“And rushed. The welds where the wall meets the floor and ceiling are sloppy.”
“Back up,” Ryu said. He raised his rifle. “Let’s see what’s on the other side.”
Kaneda backed out of the blast radius.
Ryu fired a grenade from his rifle’s launcher. The explosion cracked the air and sent twisted, glowing-edged metal flying into the obscured room. Dust exhaled from the opening and spread into a low-hanging cloud at their ankles.
“That was my last grenade,” Ryu said. “You?”
“Only two left,” Kaneda said.
“We’ll have to make them count.”
Ryu put one leg through the glowing oval, swept his aim over the interior, and stepped in.
“There’s some kind of machinery in here. Take a look.”
Kaneda overlaid his visor’s visuals with Ryu’s viewpoint. A bank of electrical panels radiated intense heat on the far wall. Thick cables ran between the machines and a cluster of twelve interrogation pods in the center of the room. The pods sat in supportive cradles and looked removable.
“Is this it?” Ryu asked.
“No. Matriarch was very specific about what the quantum core looks like.”
“Hold on. There’s a concealed hatch behind the pods.”
Kaneda turned around. Nothing moved amongst the forest of interrogation pods. Smoke from the explosion settled into a thin cloud at his feet.
“What is it?” Ryu asked.
“I’m picking up some weird subsonics above and below us,” Kaneda said. “I’m not sure what they are. Also, Caesar is gone.”
“Good riddance,” Ryu said. He slung his rifle and crouched down. “I think we might be on to something. The hatch is shielded. Dual diamoplast layers with thermal and radar masking sandwiched in between. I can’t see what’s on the other side.”
“Don’t worry about that. Can you get it open?”
“I think so. I don’t see any terminals, but this isn’t a security door. The hatch is tough but the floor around it isn’t. We can probably rip it out.”
Ryu drew his ultrasonic knife and stabbed it into the floor panel next to the hatch. He used the knife’s handle for leverage and peeled the panel up until he got his fingers underneath the edge. With a short grunt, he ripped the panel free and flung it aside. He stabbed his knife into a second panel on the opposite side of the hatch and repeated the process.
Ryu sheathed his knife and placed his fingertips underneath the newly-exposed lip on the hatch’s sides. He planted his feet and lifted.
“Come on, Kaneda! This thing’s got to weigh half a ton in this damn gravity!”
“Right.” Kaneda slung his rifle and stepped in. He grabbed the hatch from the other side.
“And LIFT!”
Kaneda’s adrenal implant pumped hot, scalding fluid through his body. His muscles tightened and burned with exertion. His heart pounded furiously. He gritted his teeth and lifted.
“Gah! Earth’s gravity sucks!” Ryu said.
Kaneda felt the enhanced muscles in his arms strain to their breaking point, ready to tear free of his diamoplast-reinforced bones.
“Now slide it to the left!” Ryu shout. “Come on!”
Kaneda lifted and pulled until a corner of the hatch slid across the floor. He let out a long, slow sigh.
“Okay! Just hold it there!” Ryu said. He craned his neck to the side and looked past the hatch.
Twenty needle grenades underneath the hatch detonated. A solid shower of diamond splinters blossomed towards Ryu’s face. He pushed back from the hatch, blurring with speed.
Five needles struck his right hand where the ballistic armor was thinnest. Three shot through his flesh and sent small streamers of blood and gore upward. Two impacted against his bones and ricocheted off.
Confused patterns of crimson and flesh-tone danced up Ryu’s arm before his smartskin’s micromind crashed. His form-fitting suit reverted to a pattern of small, black hexagons edged in silver. He pushed away from the hatch, cradling his injured hand.
“Fuck!” Ryu shouted.
Through their shared network, Kaneda triggered a localized painkiller injection from Ryu’s smartsuit. Ryu’s blood congealed almost instantly over the wounds, so Kaneda didn’t have to activate the tourniquet at the wrist.
Caesar materialized outside the hidden room. “My my. Quite impressive. No normal human would have reacted that fast. Bravo!”
Ryu picked his rifle off the floor and fired a three-round burst through Caesar’s face. The hologram shimmered from the interruption. Explosive rounds detonated against the ceiling, sending broken tiles and light fixtures raining down on the interrogation pods.
Caesar shook his head and sighed. “So childish.”
Kaneda raised his rifle and aimed it past Caesar. With his visor, he magnified the two staircases leading out of the level.
“Ryu, get up.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Just get up. Someone’s coming.”
“Damn it!” Ryu pushed off the floor with his good hand and stood up. His smartskin tried to reboot. Patterns danced over his body, but failed to sustain the illusion.
Kaneda stepped through Caesar’s hologram and the hole in the wall. The edges had cooled to a dull orange. Ryu followed him out.
A solid mob of people shambled down the stairs from the upper level. Another group approached from the level below.
“Some of them have grenades,” Kaneda said.
“Oh, that’s just perfect!”
Every interrogation pod on the level opened with a pneumatic hiss. The occupants slowly climbed out. Kaneda stepped away from the nearest pod. He aimed his rifle at a black man in a white jumpsuit with a shaved head and a grenade in his hand.
Kaneda fired a warning shot over his head. The man looked vacantly at Ryu.
“Let me ask you something,” Caesar said. “Have you ever killed another human being? It’s not the same as gunning down machines, is it? I wonder how long it will take before you begin murdering these helpless innocents. Not that it matters. I have more thralls than you have bullets.”
“Kaneda?”
“Back away from them. Don’t let them near us.”
“Back away to where?”
“Stay in the open. Follow me!”
Kaneda dashed between an elderly woman and a teenage boy. He ran down a row of pods and stopped near the center of the level. The crowd of thralls closed in around them. Too many of them had grenades. A young woman with half a head of auburn hair jerked her arm back like a drunken baseball pitcher.
Kaneda snapped his rifle up and fired a single shot at her wrist. The shatterback was designed to penetrate the tough armor of Caesar’s robots and deliver an anti-tank payload inside. Human flesh proved no obstacle.
The shatterback struck her wrist and exploded. Her arm and part of her shoulder ceased to exist. The impact threw her to the ground, breaking bones and traumatizing organs.
The smoking, cylindrical grenade tumbled through the air before landing in a crowd of five thralls. It bloomed into a shower of diamond needles that speared through flesh and bone, sometimes ripping whole limbs off. What was left of the five thralls dropped wetly to the ground.
Kaneda couldn’t believe the carnage in front of him. He’d never seen so much blood.
“Oh ho! Very spectacular!” Caesar said, clapping.
Ryu moved in behind Kaneda, back to back.
“You’re not going to like this,” Ryu said. “But I’m the only one they can see. I can draw them away, give you a chance to … I don’t know. Do something.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“But—”
“You shut up right now and follow me!”
“To where?”
“The only place left! Down!”
Thralls formed a solid line at the stairs leading down. Their vacuous eyes looked past Kaneda to Ryu.
Kaneda put his shoulder down and tackled a tall, skeletal man with a medical patch over one eye. The tackle broke three of the man’s ribs, fractured his sternum, and threw him aside like a rag doll. Kaneda kept running through the crowd, pushing aside anyone in his path.
An incendiary grenade dropped to the ground and ignited behind Kaneda, turning the stairs into a funeral pyre. A dozen burning thralls opened their mouths in silent screams. The green chemical flames spread, consuming flesh and steel with indiscriminate ease.
Ryu held an arm over his face and charged through the fire. He emerged singed but unharmed.
Kaneda reached the fifth interrogation level. A girl rushed forward, arms held straight out with a grenade clutched in her tiny hands. The oily smoke choking the staircase had outlined Kaneda before his smartskin could compensate. She ran straight for him. He dove to the left.
The grenade exploded. Gore and shrapnel scythed through the air. A crimson band splattered against Kaneda’s side. The shock wave sent him flying. He tumbled across the floor, threw out his arms to stop the roll, and pushed off the ground.
“Kaneda!”
His smartsuit reported minor damage to its ballistic and impact gel layers. Crimson patterns swam over his body before the smartskin’s micromind crashed.
Every nearby thrall turned and looked straight at him.
“I’m okay,” Kaneda said.
“There’s nowhere else to go! This is the bottom level!”
Kaneda raised his rifle.
“What do we do now?” Ryu shouted.
“I need to think.”
“We don’t have time to think!”
“Then I’ll stall him.”
“You’ll what?”
“Just watch.” Kaneda deactivated his sonic cancellers. “Hey, Caesar!”
The thralls stopped advancing. Caesar’s hologram materialized in front of him.
“Oh? What do we have here? Have you decided to beg for your lives? That’s rather cliché, don’t you think? I am known for many things, but mercy is sadly not one of them.”
“I was just thinking about where your quantum core is.”
“Yes, I imagine you would be,” Caesar said. “It’s quite safe. You never stood a chance, but congratulations on making it this far. I will have to commend Matriarch on her handiwork. Before I burn Europa from orbit, that is.”
“You’re that confident we can’t find it.”
“Oh, undoubtedly,” Caesar said. “If I may be so bold, a bullet through the head is, I imagine, far less painful than evisceration by massed needle grenades. Perhaps an honorable suicide would suit the two of you? I wouldn’t mind waiting. After all, your bodies hold valuable wetware technology. I’d relish the chance to reverse engineer Matriarch’s inventions.”
“He’s like a cat playing with a mouse,” Ryu said privately over their comm-collars.
Kaneda scanned the room. The only thing different was the lack of stairs down to the next level … the lack of stairs … lack of stairs … the only thing different …
“I was just thinking,” Kaneda said.
“Please don’t strain yourself,” Caesar said. “Thinking should be left to the professionals.”
“Have you ever heard the saying ‘hunting for diamonds in the ice’?”
“Hmrph,” Caesar snorted. “Of course I have. A somewhat common figure of speech among Europans. Similar to the archaic ‘needle in a haystack’ on Earth. I imagine the saying is foremost on your mind right now.”
“It is.”
“Well, if you were looking for advice, I’d suggest burning down the haystack. Or thawing the ice. Whichever is your preferred metaphor. Of course, that doesn’t really apply to my bunker.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Kaneda said.
Some of the playfulness drained out of Caesar’s face. “What do you mean?”
“Caesar, as much as you might be a machine now, you were once human. You’re just smarter. That doesn’t make you perfect. You’re not a glorified number cruncher. You feel as much as you think, and you can be wrong. You never thought anyone would make it this far, and your every action has been a desperate attempt to delay us. Why? Because the diamond isn’t in the ice. It’s buried in the rock underneath the ice.”
Caesar frowned. The thralls started advancing again.
Kaneda activated his sonic cancellers. “Get ready to run for it!”
“Run where?”
Kaneda aimed his rifle at the section of wall where the stairs should have been and fired a grenade. Unlike the obvious false wall on level four, this one on level five was perfectly camouflaged, but that wasn’t enough to fool high explosives.
The grenade detonated with a flash. The wall caved in. Hot-edged ceramic tiles, concrete and steel rebar blew into the staircase beyond. Every thrall in the room threw their grenade. Kaneda and Ryu jumped through the glowing rent in the wall and tumbled down the stairs.
Dozens of staccato explosions erupted behind them, demolishing the wall and part of the floor. Concrete debris rained over Kaneda and Ryu. They rolled to a landing halfway down the stairs where it doubled back, picked themselves up and ran down to the sixth level.
“That’s got to be it!” Ryu shouted.
A black monolith sat in the center of the sterile white level. Four utility trenches converged on Caesar’s quantum core. Kaneda could see purple ultrahigh voltage cables and thick liquid nitrogen lines. The core glowed in brilliant infrared. Dry heat radiated off it.
Twenty thralls stood between him and Caesar’s core in two neat rows. Kaneda loaded a program into his last grenade’s micromind and fired over their heads. The grenade arced through the air. Its micromind engaged small cold-gas jets to align itself with the core’s monolith.
Caesar materialized in front of them. Every thrall raised their arms, ready to throw.
“You—!” he began to say.
The grenade’s high explosive yield detonated in a shaped cone. The impact tore through the monolith and gutted its sensitive systems. Sparks showered out until emergency breakers interrupted power. A single nitrogen leak spewed vaporous clouds out the back. Caesar’s hologram froze in mid-sentence. The thralls dropped to the ground like puppets with their strings cut.
Kaneda and Ryu crouched at the base of the stairs, rifles ready.
Nothing happened. No pursuit or sounds came from the level above.
Ryu stood up and walked to Caesar’s hologram. He passed his gun barrel through it a few times. Caesar’s image remained static.
“I can’t believe we did it,” Ryu said. “We did do it, right? This isn’t some trick, is it?”
Kaneda walked to the monolith and inspected the wreckage. He pulled a twisted panel off and tossed it aside. “It certainly looks that way. See, this stack of torus accelerators feeding what’s left of the column in the center? That’s an exact match for what Matriarch told us to look for.”
“And this thing isn’t very mobile either.” Ryu kicked the side of the monolith.
“No, it isn’t.”
“So we actually did it?” Ryu said. “We killed Caesar. I can’t believe it.”
“We should probably have the wreckage inspected just to be sure,” Kaneda said. He put a hand on Ryu’s shoulder. “But yeah, we did it.”
“Those thralls surprised me,” Ryu said. “I was expecting more robots this close.”
“Like I said, he never expected anyone to make it this far. After we breached that last security door, everything was just smoke and mirrors to delay us. I don’t think we would have survived if Caesar had fortified these levels.”
“Yeah. Lucky us.”
Kaneda heard quiet sobbing behind him. He slung his rifle and walked to the rows of collapsed thralls.
“Careful,” Ryu said. “Those grenades can still go off.”
Kaneda dismissed his brother with a wave and crouched next to a young woman about his age. Tears streaked down her pale face. Unlike most of the captives, she had a full head of lush ginger hair. Perhaps she was a recent addition to Caesar’s collection.
Kaneda deactivated his sonic cancellers.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
The woman turned her head with visible effort. Her neck muscles twitched and cramped up. She parted her lips but said nothing for almost a minute.
“Is … it over?” she finally asked.
“Yes,” Kaneda said. He placed a gentle hand under her and helped her sit up. “Caesar is dead.”
Fresh tears ran down her soft cheeks. Her eyes darted about, finally resting on his concealed face.
“Who … who are you?”
“Kaneda.” He unlatched the seals around his neck and took his helmet off to reveal a young face with dark eyes and short black hair. He had a stern line for a mouth, and pale skin that had never known the sun.
Kaneda took a deep breath. The room smelled of ozone and human sweat.
“Kaneda Kusanagi,” he said. “And this is my brother, Ryu.”
“Hello,” Ryu said, giving the woman a short wave with his injured hand.
“What’s your name?” Kaneda asked.
“Chri … isten …”
“Christen,” Kaneda said. He brushed a few tangled locks out of her face. “That’s a beautiful name.”
Despite her obvious trauma, Christen smiled. It was one of the loveliest sights Kaneda had ever seen.
“You k-killed Caesar?”
“Yes.”
“But … you’re so young.”
“We’re not that young,” Kaneda said. “I’m already sixteen. My brother will be fifteen in a few weeks.”
“Two young knights in not-very-shiny armor,” Christen said.
Kaneda looked at his blood-splattered chest. It was true enough.
“I didn’t know the F-Federacy had troops that young.”
“We’re not with the Earth Federacy. We’re from Europa.”
Christen’s smile melted into a frown. She looked away. “Another d-damn quantum mind.”
“Hey!” Ryu said. “Matriarch is a great leader. She’s nothing like Caesar.”
“Ryu, would you shut up, please?”
“What? It’s true.”
“Christen and all the others have been through enough. Just let it rest.”
“I … all right. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just … shit, did you hear that?”
Kaneda listened. “Yeah. Those robots finally breached the security door. They’re heading this way.”
“But Caesar’s dead!”
“They must be carrying out their final instructions,” Kaneda said.
“Find and kill us, you mean!”
“We need to get ready.”
Ryu stepped through the captives, grabbing grenades and stuffing them into his bandolier. Kaneda secured his helmet, picked Christen up, and carried her over to the wall so she was no longer between the stairs and the broken quantum core.
“What are you doing?” Ryu asked.
“Getting these people out of the line of fire.”
Kaneda ran over and picked up a man so bony he might not have been fed in weeks.
“We don’t have time, Kaneda! Those robots are on their way!”
“You can either stand around and talk, or you can help me move them,” Kaneda said. “Now which is it going to be?”
“Ah, damn it!”
Kaneda picked up a grizzled man with more shrapnel scars on his arms than interrogation scars on his scalp. Ryu muttered something impolite under his breath, bent down, and grabbed his own captive. The sound of approaching robots grew louder.
It took two minutes to finish moving all the captives.
“All right! That’s it!” Ryu said. “We need to get into cover!”
“Right.”
Kaneda ran to the utility trench next to the monolith. He lifted the grating, tossed it aside and jumped down. Ryu jumped into the trench on the opposite side of the monolith. The two trenches met behind the monolith, giving them direct line of sight to each other.
“Kaneda! Here!” Ryu tossed him three grenades, one at a time.
Kaneda caught and stuffed each grenade into his bandolier. He trained his rifle at the stairwell. The robots were so close even a natural human could hear them.
“Sounds like a lot,” Ryu said.
“Yeah. I don’t think Caesar was bluffing about his backup.”
“This is going to get messy.”
“We’ll make it. I know we will.”
“I wish I had your confidence,” Ryu said. “Here they come!”
Three gun-spiders skittered across the stairwell walls on six spindly legs each. M15 heavy railguns or M7 thermal lances swiveled atop their flat bodies. Slender, cylindrical heads twitched back and forth, seeking targets. Another two gun-spiders skittered down the steps with more on the way.
Kaneda and Ryu opened fire.
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Epic – Movie Review
IN SHORT: A race of miniature tree elves are about to choose their next leader in a really stupid way. Hordes of personified tree rot plan to crash the party.
WHAT IT IS: Fun and visually striking, Epic took me on a ride I genuinely enjoyed from start to finish.
WHAT IT IS NOT: Don’t expect much depth beneath the flash. We’ve seen these characters before by different names in different movies.
WHAT I THOUGHT: With a title like Epic, I was expecting more, I don’t know, epic-ness? Is that even a word? But I suppose it’s better than calling the movie Didn’t Suck.
And that’s generally my feeling towards the movie. The characters were likable. The plot was zany, but entertaining. The action was good. The villain was serviceable. Art direction was very cool. Voice acting was solid. The comedic relief was absolutely hilarious (I loved the slug character)!
Yes, this movie genuinely didn’t suck.
Now, that’s not to say it blew me away. While I liked the characters, there really wasn’t anything exceptional about them. They’re all characters we’ve seen before, familiar and not overly complicated. But that’s okay. They weren’t annoying. They didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment of the movie.
I also appreciated the complete absence of a Hollywood Environmental Message™. I generally don’t like it when movies get preachy at me. It’s something of a pet peeve, and honestly, this was my biggest fear going into the movie. Being an engineer who works in Evil Corporate America™, a lot of movies portray people like me or people I work with in a really bad light.
So kudos this time for not making us out to be the villains! Again. For like the millionth time. Seriously, we’re just normal people trying to get by like everyone else.
So, yeah, fun movie. Not deep. Not really all that epic. But fun.
VERDICT: Recommended.
Warmachine Tactics – Cryx: Withershadow Combine
Infantry may not be the stars of Warmachine, but that doesn’t make them any less important. From screening high priority targets to overwhelming a foe with sheer numbers, infantry plays a critical role, especially in the armies of Cryx. Today, I’m taking a look at our character unit, the Withershadow Combine.
IN SHORT: With solid defensive stats and a slew of special abilities, the Withershadow Combine can tip the balance in Cryx’s favor and even construct whole warjacks during the battle! No, seriously, they can do that!
STRENGTHS: The three Iron Liches of the Withershadow Combine bring a diverse and powerful set of abilities to the tabletop. Let’s step through them.
All three members come with Dismantle. This gives them an extra damage die in melee against warjacks. Combined with a base P+S 13 and their ability to buy new attacks if they have souls, the Withershadow Combine can inflict a tremendous amount of pain on a warjack, which is just awesome because …
The ability Dark Industries allows the Withershadow Combine to build new Cryx warjacks out of enemy warjacks! There are a few conditions to pull this off. All three Iron Liches must be present and be engaging the enemy warjack in melee when one of them destroys it. After that, replace the enemy warjack with an equivalent-sized Cryx warjack of your choice. Note that the new warjack is autonomous, and so does not start in your warcaster’s battlegroup.
Also, Dark Industries does NOT work on Colossi, so no free Krakens, because that would be silly.
The Withershadow Combine also has strong defensive stats. As long as the leader, Maelovus, is alive, the unit has Stealth. Add in DEF 14, ARM 16, and 5 hit boxes each, and the Combine is fairly resilient by Cryx standards, especially at range.
Each Lich can cast Dark Fire, a decent attack spell that collects the soul of destroyed living models, allowing the Combine to inflict damage at range and stock up on souls for a later attack (such as an attempt to pull off Dark Industries). With a respectable magic attack of 7, they can certainly pull this off. Oh, and they also come with Terror.
In addition to these abilities, the other two Iron Liches have their own special abilities. Admonia allows a warcaster to upkeep one spell for free with her Black Arts ability. She can also clear all enemy upkeep spells within 5” with her Unbinding ability. This also inflicts D3 damage to the controlling model, per upkeep cleared, allowing Admonia to inflict some minor damage to the enemy warcaster or warlock.
Tremulus comes with an awe-inspiring ability: Puppet Master. Target a model or unit, friend or foe, and then chose a CMD, attack, or damage roll to reroll. You can even choose which dice to reroll, greatly increasing the odds of a favorable outcome. Seriously, how many uses are there for this ability? It is incredibly potent ability.
Under normal conditions, I put this ability on the warcaster. Cryx depend heavily on debuff spells. Missing a key debuff attack at a critical moment can be disastrous. But with Puppet Master active, you get a free do-over!
WEAKNESSES: At 5 points, the Withershadow Combine is a bit pricey. They’re almost the cost of three separate solos, though it’s a fair price for what they bring. Stealth can help protect them at range, but there are plenty of ways an enemy can bypass that defense. Plus, if Maelovus goes down, so does Stealth.
That leads to the toughest part of pulling off a successful Dark Industries attack: all three Iron Liches have to be alive. Take out any one of them and your opponent takes out the Dark Industries threat.
And naturally, if there are no warjacks in your opponents army, Dark Industries and Dismantle have no effect. That doesn’t mean the Withershadow Combine is bad against Hordes, just that they’re not quite as versatile.
SYNERGIES: From allowing rerolls of attack spells to upkeeping for free, the Withershadow Combine can help out almost any Cryx warcaster. The one possible exception is Goreshade the Bastard, who lacks upkeep spells. That doesn’t mean the Combine is bad with him, just maybe not an ideal combination.
Warwitch Sirens are great toolkit solos to have around, and their Power Booster can come in handy if the Withershadow Combine pulls off a successful Dark Industries. Remember, the new warjack is not automatically part of the warcaster’s battlegroup, and so cannot be allocated Focus. The Warwitch Siren allows you to bypass this problem by using Power Booster to give the new warjack a Focus token.
Lastly, since Dark Industries requires all three Iron Liches to engage the target warjack in melee, it can be tricky to wear the warjack down AND leave enough room for the Combine. Infantry with Reach, such as Bane Knights, can certainly help deal out damage while keeping space open for the Combine to finish the warjack off.
JUST FOR FUN: Executing Dark Industries on a full strength target is normally not the best idea. Ideally, a warjack should be softened up before the Combine moves in for the kill. But how soft does the target need to be? Let’s assume a charge attack with no extra souls available for additional attacks. Even against a Khador warjack, the Combine will do an average of 21 points of damage.
Obviously, there are a lot of permutations that can affect the outcome. But in general, if a warjack is at roughly half-health, it can be a good opportunity for the Combine to strike. Note that if the target has a defensive upkeep spell, consider having Admonia clear it with Unbinding instead of attacking.
SUMMARY: The Withershadow Combine is a powerful character unit with a diverse set of abilities. While their flashiest abilities are geared towards taking down warjacks, that is nowhere near the extent of their usefulness. From clearing enemy upkeeps, setting up strategic rerolls, and adding some extra Focus efficiency, the Withershadow Combine can find a place in almost any Cryx army.
Check out the complete list of Warmachine and Hordes articles here.
Warmachine Tactics – Cryx: Satyxis Raiders
Infantry may not be the stars of Warmachine, but that doesn’t make them any less important. From screening high priority targets to overwhelming a foe with sheer numbers, infantry plays a critical role, especially in the armies of Cryx. Today, I’m taking a look at the Satyxis Raiders.
IN SHORT: Fast and deadly, Satyxis Raiders will eviscerate enemies hiding behind their shields and fry a warcaster’s brain right through their warjack!
STRENGTHS: Raiders are fast! Smoking fast! With SPD 7 and Advanced Deploy, they can easily be the first line of Cryx infantry to crash into the enemy’s ranks. Reach on their Lacerators gives them a total threat range of 12”, which goes up to 14” with Raider Captain support! Damn!
Raiders are well armed, too. In addition to Reach, their Lacerators come with Chain Weapon, Critical Knockdown, and Feedback. Chain Weapon allows them to ignore Bucklers, Shields, and Shield Wall. Critical Knockdown is a nice bonus if you get lucky, but Feedback is where it’s at.
With Feedback, every time a Raider damages a warjack, its controller suffers 1 point of damage. This is a great tactic for softening up a warcaster for an assassination run or deal the final blow.
Last, but not least, Raiders have Combined Melee for added hitting power and accuracy when they need it. Given that each Raider comes with two attacks, one from the Lacerator and a basic P+S 8 hit from their horns, Raiders can sacrifice non-Lacerator attacks to power-up other Raiders’ Lacerators.
WEAKNESSES: With DEF 14 and ARM 12, Raiders do not take hits well. They have a good chance of hitting first and hitting hard, but that counterattack is going to eat them alive. Add to that their living CMD 8 models, and these girls can break at the worst possible moment.
While fast, Raiders do not have Pathfinder, but their attachment, the Raider Sea Witch, can fix this. In fact, a lot of issues with the Raiders are solved by taking a Raider Sea Witch.
Also, while the Lacerator has great special rules, its hitting power is a mild P+S 9. In order to threaten many warjack targets, Raiders need to use their Combined Melee, get the charge, and/or use Power Swell from their attachment, the Raider Sea Witch.
And speaking of warjacks, Raiders love cutting into warcasters one hit box at a time. Against Hordes armies, the Feedback on their Lacerators is completely useless.
SYNERGIES: Raider. Sea. Witch.
Seriously, this is one awesome unit attachment. For 2 points, the unit gets Pathfinder, Force Barrier (+2 DEF against ranged attack rolls and blast damage immunity), and Power Swell (once per game, get an additional die on melee damage rolls during that activation). For 2 points! Take her. Seriously, just take her. Even the model looks cool.
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The Raider Captain is another option worth considering. Her main synergy is Desperate Pace [Satyxis Raiders]. The Captain targets a Satyxis Raider unit in command range, and that unit gets +2” movement during its activation that turn! Raiders are fast, and the Raider Captain makes them even faster!
Against a Warmachine opponent, Skarre loves taking a group of Satyxis Raiders to double-up the Feedback damage with her spell, Backlash. This can make each damaging hit against a warjack do 2 points instead of 1. With this, even the mightiest warcaster can fall in a hurry!
Lich Lord Asphyxious can use a similar tactic by sending Raiders in to bang up some warjacks. Then, after your opponent has slaughter them, call them back for Feedback seconds!
Asphyxious the Hellbringer also has a neat combo. Raiders with a Sea Witch are DEF 16 against ranged attacks. Add in Ashen Veil, and they’re DEF 18. Now we’re talking!
JUST FOR FUN: Sometimes, just running the Raiders forward can be enough to really mess with an opponent’s plans, engaging their shooters and giving the meat of your army time to close.
So how far into the map can Raiders get right out of the gate?
That’s 6” for Advanced Deploy, 14” from the run, 2” from Reach, and an extra 2” from Desperate Pace. All totaled, that’s 24”! Did I mention Raiders are fast?
SUMMARY: Satyxis Raiders are fast, deadly, and versatile. They’re solid against Hordes and incredible against Warmachine. Raiders are an excellent addition to many Cryx forces. Even better, many of their weaknesses are taken care of with the simple addition of a Raider Sea Witch.
Check out the complete list of Warmachine and Hordes articles here.
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Warhammer 40K: Dark Eldar Army
Presenting my Warhammer 40K Dark Eldar army.
While not being quite as filled with conversions as my other armies, I did enjoy painting this army quite a bit. I’m not a very good painter, but a simple layered drybrush technique served me quite well with this army. I’m particularly happy with how the Incubi capes came out.
As for conversions, I had fun coming up with some substitutes for what was available at the time. Remember this guy?
While a nutty model, it just wasn’t my style. Instead of using the stock model, my kabal had a captured Hive Tyrant and Wraithlord under their command.
The Hive Tyrant used the old-old metal kit. I added some mechanical bits and guns to make it seem like the Dark Eldar had it under control somehow, and also to represent the Talos’ guns. I remember reading a passage in the old codex where Dark Eldar would even capture Tyranid Genestealers, so I figured going a step further made sense. As for why it has screaming faces coming out of it … the old Talos fluff had something in it where victims became a part of it. You can see a guy stuck at the bottom of the turret in the original model. So, yeah, screaming faces on a Hive Tyrant. Not my best idea, but I think it looks cool. 🙂
For the heads, I cut Dark Eldar warrior faces off and molded them to the Hive Tyrant with green stuff. I also added Space Marine missile launcher parts to its legs to give it “thrusters” so it could, with a little imagination, hover around.
The other Talos in my Dark Eldar army is more straightforward. Talos and Eldar Wraithlord stats aren’t too far removed, so I figured a captured and mutilated Wraithlord would work pretty well. I even threw in one of the original Talos arms. The scars are a simple green stuff sculpt.
I also had fun making the sybarites to lead the huge mobs of Warriors. This one is my favorite. The double-blade uses a gun grip with two knife blades glued on to the sides.
Check out the complete list of Warhammer 40K articles here.