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.
Blog
The Friday Society by Adrienne Kress – Book Review
Caution: Contains one spoiler.
Anyone who has ever spoken to me at length about steampunk will know this: While I do love steampunk, I’m a bigger fan of the idea of steampunk than I am of most steampunk books. My main complaint against them is that they tend to treat the pseudo-Victorian aesthetic as a decoration, rather than an integral part of the world of the story. Occasionally, though, I happen upon a steampunk novel that takes that decoration and rocks it.
The Friday Society by Adrienne Kress rocks hard in all the ways that steampunk should.
In the novel, Cora is assistant to a mad scientist, with all the science brains and cool tech knowledge implied; Nellie is assistant to a magician, armed with sparkly dresses, sneak tactics galore, and a parrot sidekick; and Michiko is a Japanese assistant to an English fight instructor, who knows more about katana combat than her present charlatanic master. When heads start rolling in the London streets—the first right at their feet, in fact—they take it upon themselves to solve the mystery with sassy, street-smart girl power and more than a little technological mayhem.
These are combinations that could not exist outside a steampunk novel and still make sense.
At its heart, The Friday Society reads like Kress said, “OK—I’m going to take everything that is awesome about steampunk, trash the rest, put it in a blender with some glitter and Japanese swordplay and see what happens.” Which is why there is almost no affected fake-Victorian language in this thing, and why the novel foregoes the tedious details of Victorian manners and society to toss an explosion at readers in the first sentence. There are also magical gravity-defying minerals and a super fancy gun that can be worn like armor until an electromagnetic pulse calls its pieces into weapon form.
The protagonists, too, are sneakily developed, looking like stereotypes on the surface—the tomboy, the girly girl, the samurai—but revealing some clever variations on their types as the novel progresses. Michiko, for example, is the stoic, silent, samurai sort one would expect—but only because she doesn’t know enough English to use the language and so stays quiet to avoid making herself look foolish. Cora and Nellie take it upon themselves to teach her the language, and ultimately, it is these three characters and their interactions that make the novel worth the read. Stylistically, it aspires to read like a steampunk cousin of sassy fantasies like The Princess Bride or Stardust, a feat largely accomplished through the girls’ banter. Though they never actually reach Princess Bride levels of wit—though, really, what other than The Princess Bride itself can do that?— its sense of humor was close enough and uncommon enough in steampunk novels that it kept me reading.
However, even though the strengths outweighed them for me, the book does have some weaknesses worth mentioning. There’s an attempted romantic storyline that falls absolutely flat—but this is a book about girls kicking butt, so that’s ok. The story also involves a secondary murder mystery that I found completely throwaway once it was solved, and once readers find out the eventual bad guy’s motivation, it is frustratingly feminist (that is, feminist in a negative way). BTW THIS IS THE SPOILER PART. WATCH OUT. This seems odd to say about a book that is unabashedly about girl power, but when the antagonist’s reason for murdering everyone (and then some) comes down to “THE MEN DIDN’T THINK MY IDEAS WERE GOOD BECAUSE I WAS A GIRL SO I’LL SHOW THEM >( ” it’s a bit anticlimactic, and not entirely believable. (A younger me was a tomboyish girl who wanted to excel at boy things like science and blowing things up, but I was never motivated to do such things because people told me I was too girly to succeed at them. I simply wanted to do them because I wanted to do them.) Finally, the novel makes a noble stab at having a diverse cast—Michiko is trained by a local Japanese expatriate, and Nellie works for an exotic Oriental magician—but most of the multicultural characters in the novel ultimately fall into convenient stereotype. Nellie’s magician, though interesting, exists only to be exotic and mysterious, and Michiko’s mentor reads like he popped out of The Karate Kid.
Taken as a whole, though, The Friday Society ranks among the best steampunk novels I’ve encountered in the past year. It’s not flawless, but it’s still the most entertaining piece of steampunk quirk that I’ve read since Phil and Kaja Foglio’s classic Girl Genius.
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Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.
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.
BZRK by Michael Grant – Book Review
Conjoined twins Charles and Benjamin Armstrong have a vision of a utopian future—a future in which war, hunger, even minor conflict is nonexistent. They wish to see human society perfected. Which sounds pretty sweet, except that they hope to achieve it by sending brain-manipulating nanobots into the minds of the most powerful leaders on the planet, and then rewiring their brains to serve their cause. Which involves doing the same to the rest of the world. BZRK is not about to let that happen. Armed with sets of biots—microscopic bug-like creatures that can alter brains as well as the nanobots—this guerilla organization is ready to fight for the free will of the human race.
I like to picture Michael Grant’s BZRK as the summer action movie of YA books. It’s noisy and fast-paced with colorful characters and just a tiny hint of deeper substance, asking questions like “Is world peace worth the cost of free will?” A tiny, tiny hint. After all, The Matrix asked deep questions like “What is reality?” but no one watches The Matrix solely to have their intellect teased. BZRK is the same kind of entertainment.
That said, BZRK would make a ridiculously fun action movie (and, in fact, has already been optioned). Look at the very premise: The battle for humanity’s freedom is being fought, secretly, INSIDE PEOPLE’S BRAINS by MICROSCOPIC GENETICALLY ENGINEERED BUGS against ARMIES OF NANOBOTS and the uniquely skilled people who control them LIKE THEY’RE PLAYING A VIDEO GAME. On top of that, the leader of the bad guy camp is a set of twins conjoined at the face, who run a massive technology corporation disguised as a line of gift shops. The whole cast of “twitchers”—that is, the people who control the biots and nanobots—is made of characters with definite action-movie eccentricities. One, for example, is physically unable to feel pleasure due to the makeup of his brain. Another has a QR code tattooed in a snarky place that leads to a snarky video. Another rewired the brain of a hot girl so she’d be his girlfriend. Oh, there’s a normal guy, among them, too, for readers to relate to, but he is also really attractive and therefore separate from us, in his own fantastic action movie world.
Though the technology of the story is cool (and terrifying—Never again, after reading this, will you have a headache and not think “OMG THERE MIGHT BE BIOTS BATTLING IN MY BRAIN RIGHT NOW”), the characters are a mixed bag of epicness and mediocrity. What the novel has in abundant character distinctness, it absolutely lacks in character development. When I tried to recall any major transformations that happened in this book, the only one I could come up with was this: One character gets her legs blown off. Which does not a dynamic character make, at least in terms of characterization. (The scene itself is certainly a dynamic one, what with pieces of characters flying everywhere.) An attempt at development is made between Noah and Sadie, two protagonists new to BZRK who have been paired together, had biots grown from their DNA, and told to keep each other’s biots alive—to help out when the other’s brain is under attack. Their inevitable physical closeness—they’re crawling all over each other’s brain meat, after all—suggests to both that physical closeness of a more intimate, hormonal, and emotional sort is bound to occur, and both are conflicted about this idea. They’re hesitant about romance, but at the same time, have already been placed close by technological necessity. The conflict here was interesting to read about, but in this novel, it never develops beyond mere uneasiness. BZRK is going to be a series, so I imagine that their relationship will be better developed over the course of the larger story (which is what I anticipate of the character development in general). However, it was disappointing that this interaction was no better developed than any of the other character interactions. This will be a difficult hurdle for some readers to jump; if you’re looking for characters to relate to and care for, you’re probably going to find it hard to care about this book. But you’re also probably not the audience this book is aiming for, either.
Mediocre characterization aside, one of my favorite elements of the book was the incredible diversity of its cast. Nearly every globally significant culture is represented amongst the characters, good and bad. Granted, at the beginning of the novel, character introductions came so quickly and ferociously that the diversity seemed almost pandering, especially when the book reaches the American character who looks Chinese but has a Russian name. And who, you find out later, is also a gay model. So maybe it is pandering. But in a book like this, a diverse cast makes logical sense. When the threat being combated is a global one, it’s only natural that the team assembled to fight it would consist of something other than a bunch of white guys and one random other race thrown in for flavor. So kudos to Michael Grant for acknowledging that.
Ultimately, there’s little more to BZRK than cool technological action and ridiculous characters, which is fine by me. I wasn’t expecting intellectual stimulation from a book that sells itself on brain bugs. My only genuine complaint about the book, then, relates to its ending. It’s not a bad ending. In fact, it definitely satisfies on the action level. But, like many series books these days, it doesn’t conclude the story so much as suggest that there’s more to come. This makes sense for a series book, but I do miss the days when novels—even series novels—were complete self-contained units. I can’t complain too much, though, because when BZRK Reloaded arrives at the library, I’ll be the first to check it out.
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Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.
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.
Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve – Book Review
The people of the future no longer live on the ground. In the time between our period, theirs, and the pivotal Sixty Minute War, they’ve moved onto enormous mobile cities known as Traction Cities, which carry them around the world to escape the geological dangers created by the Sixty Minute War…and also away from other cities. For the Traction Cities abide by the code of Municipal Darwinism, in which the bigger, stronger cities keep themselves running by devouring the smaller cities and their resources. As one character says, it’s a “town-eat-town” world.
In the midst of this municipal Survival of the Fittest are our protagonists, Tom Natsworthy, Katherine Valentine, and Hester Shaw. Tom is a third-class apprentice in the Guild of Historians, located on the impressive Traction City of London. Despite the difficulties of his work, he loves London and cheers it on when it chases and captures the smaller city of Salthook. In the course of the following city-wide celebration, he encounters Thaddeus Valentine, the dashing head of the Guild of Historians and a hero among Londoners, Tom included. More importantly, though, he encounters Valentine’s daughter, Katherine, with whom he is immediately smitten. He doesn’t have much time to be smitten, though, for in the flurry of activity, an assassin approaches Valentine with a knife, intending to do exactly what assassins do with knives. However, Tom is not about to let that happen. He rescues Valentine, in the process being knocked off of the London Traction City, and afterward finds that the assassin is actually Hester Shaw, a girl with a hideous scar and a story to tell—one that will change Tom’s impression of his beloved Traction City forever.
There is more plot, but all of it is a spoiler.
Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve is the first in The Mortal Engines Quartet/The Hungry City Chronicles/The Predator Cities series (This is another of those series that gets a new identity every time it’s rereleased), and is among the books that I consider the most perfect examples of steampunk. It has action, adventure, a unique and well-realized setting, political intrigue, character twists and turns galore, and on top of that, a whole city inhabited by airship pilots and all the epicness that ensues when a bunch of airship pilots find something to do battle over (among other awesomeness. There are Traction City pirates, too. And a pet wolf named Dog. And also a thing called MEDUSA which, avoiding spoilers, is terrifying for the characters involved with it, but thrilling to readers who want some exciting steampunk action).
The whole concept of Municipal Darwinism is what gives this novel its strong base. While the idea of a moving city is not original to Mortal Engines, the idea of a city chasing and eating another city is, and brings an interesting level of conflict to the world of the novel. This was one of those settings where, as with many sci-fi settings, my first reaction was “Ooo, I’d totally love to live on a Traction City and travel all over the world and chase other towns!” And then I realized that I live in Spartanburg, which as cities go is not that big, and as Traction Cities go means that it would totally be eaten by one of its many larger surrounding before it could even finish chasing the little towns around it. People who live in Spartanburg are even called Spartanburgers. We sound like food. We’d be doomed from the start. And we’d be doomed while on the run from the earth itself, since one of the results of the pseudo-nuclear Sixty Minute War was unpredictable geological upheaval. You want real stress? Try running from the ground you’re running on.
Of course, to the characters in the novel, all these novelties are old hat. They’re so used to Traction Cities that the whole idea of a static city seems weird and barbaric to them, as does the Anti-Traction League, a group of protected nations determined to maintain their static cities, and who occasionally perpetrate alleged terrorist attacks on Traction Cities…in protest of the activities which the Anti-Traction League finds barbaric. This contributes to what I found to be one of the most satisfying elements of the book. While it has adventure and explosions and everything else that I find entertaining in a novel, it also presents some interesting moral and ethical questions, and explores all sides of every side presented in the novel. Though the story in the novel has a clear set of antagonists, the world of the novel is composed of several different shades of moral gray, many of which change shades over the course of the narrative. Allegiances and animosities that the readers have at the beginning are changed in nearly every chapter when readers happen upon haunting new information. Questions about the world itself arise—how ethical is it, exactly, for a city to eat another city, even when the limited availability of natural resources necessitates it? What are the moral implications of resurrecting the dead as memory-less half-machines (another technology that plays a significant role in the plot)?
This is a novel that makes the reader question everything it presents as awesome in the first few chapters, and for that, I love it. It’s simultaneously a fun adventure novel and a thinking person’s novel. Because of that, I cannot wait to read the remaining three books in The Mortal Engines Quartet(/The Hungry City Chronicles/The Predator Cities).
Top image found here: http://fav.me/d1r6f62
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Beasts of Burden, Volume 1 by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson – Book Review
In Animal Rites, the first volume of graphic novel series Beasts of Burden, Pugsley, Jack, Ace, Whitey, Rex, and the Orphan are 5 dogs and a cat living fairly normal lives…until they encounter a ghost in Jack’s doghouse, a coven of witches, a werewolf, and several other supernatural oddities. Eventually, they combat so many paranormal dangers that they are invited to become apprentices of the Wise Dog Society, a group of dogs (and now one cat) devoted to defending their territory from paranormal threats.
This description might lead one to think that the story illustrated in the pages of this book is a fun little happy-go-lucky read. I mean, it’s got talking animals in it, right?
True, Beasts of Burden is a talking animal story. But it is not a talking animal story that you want to show your little siblings. Not unless you want them to grow up traumatized, anyway. In which case, go for it. You will succeed dramatically.
This series is billed as horror mystery. It fits that genre quite nicely, and with more originality and skill than many entries in the genre. One would expect a story like the one in the description—the adventures of a bunch of canine paranormal investigators—to be illustrated in a rather fun, cartoony style, and possibly to show up as a Nickelodeon series sometime in the near future. Instead of that rather trite approach, readers are instead given lavish watercolor illustrations to gaze at, not of anthropomorphic, but realistically-rendered creatures, with some liberties taken to allow for facial expression. The art in this book is marvelously expressive, and gorgeous to skim.
Whether it remains so upon a closer look is entirely up to the individual reader, as the art of this book puts the “gore” in “gorgeous.” If you are the sort of animal lover who cries when you see cute puppies in sad situations, you may as well steer clear, because this book will leave you traumatized, too. And if you are a curious animal lover, but iffy about the animal horror content, let me present you with this image from the third story: a pack of zombie dogs getting run over by a truck in vivid, splattery detail, then being left in the road because the drivers don’t want to handle the hassle of cleanup and owner contact. If that makes you uncomfortable, you might as well stay away, too, because the horror only gets worse from there. And for horror readers, this is a treat.
Before you think me an absolutely heartless person for saying so, let me say that I’m the sort of animal lover who can’t go to a pet shop without wanting to adopt all the cats, and then coming up with a list of sad things that might happen to those cats should I not adopt them, and then leaving the pet shop sad because I already have enough cats and they don’t want any friends anyway. So I am a fan of animals. However, I am also a fan of well-done horror, and this book is definitely that. Any artist can illustrate lots of blood and gore and call it horror, but only a skilled artist can make the reader care about the characters that it’s happening to, which is the key to the success of this volume. This book is great horror not because it’s disgusting (which it is) but because it has an emotionally wrenching effect on the reader, largely fueled by the art and its careful juxtaposition of the mundane with the horrible, as well as its well-designed, emotionally sensitive panel progressions. This level of artistry is makes the work one worth appreciating, perhaps even admiring.
This isn’t to say that being able to appreciate the work renders it an easy read. There were moments—many, many moments—when I cringed, or had to take a break from reading, or said to myself, “OMG. Did that really happen on that page? I have to look again. Yep. It totally did. It’s a book about talking animals, and that totally happened. This makes Watership Down look like Peter Rabbit.” (By the way, I have not actually read the Watership Down novel. I have seen the animated film, which is significantly less graphic than this comic, but still contains rabbits killing each other and doing otherwise disturbing things that would have messed me up as a child viewer, but thoroughly entertained me as a giddily morbid high schooler.)
Animal Rites, then, is a graphic novel best appreciated by lovers of well-executed horror, and by readers who can stomach animal tragedy. Everyone else will probably find it too sad or gross to read. Due to the genuinely graphic nature of this graphic novel, I don’t recommend it for younger teens, even precocious ones. Older teens and above who are looking for an intelligent and affecting horror experience, though, will find a rewarding read in this.
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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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Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.