| Spearmen (3x3) | 59 |
| Frontline Rune Golem | 7 |
| Shield Wall | 5 |
| Lance Corporal | 6 |
| Heraldic Surcoats | 5 |
| Oathsworn Cavalry (2x2) | 34 |
| Tempered Steel | 3 |
| Terrifying Heraldry | 5 |
| Moment of Inspiration | 5 |
| Rune Golem (2x1) | 28 |
| Wind Rune | 6 |
| Kari Wraithstalker | 32 |
| Wraith Step | 1 |
| Reaping Blade | 4 |
| TOTAL: | 200 |
I built my first 200-point army this week. I was sticking to upgrades we knew the cost for and trying to keep a relatively small army. This one uses 1x core, 1x Oathsworn Cavalry expansion, 1x Rune Golems expansion, 1x Spearmen expansion, 1x Daqan Infantry Command expansion, and 1x Reanimate Archers expansion. Total: $225 msrp. And yet, it doesn't seem like a great army. I mean, it's like a core army, but bigger. Part of this is because I was trying not to buy the same expansion twice and we don't know all the upgrades in each expansion. For example, Frontline Rune Golem + Tempered Steel sounds like a terrifying combo, but with only one copy of that and one copy of Shield Wall, I felt Shield Wall needed to go on the Spearmen since they were the biggest formation and could get the most use out of it. Plus, I wasn't building this list to do anything, just wanting to see what a 200-point army might look like.
SPEARMEN
As I said above, I didn't put Tempered Steel on here, though it would be awesome. Frontline Rune Golem increases your threat by the amount of stable energy on the battlefield. Lance Corporal lets you make a modifier white. For example, you could make a melee attack at initiative 3 instead of 7 and still get a bonus damage.
If
you chose Tempered Steel over Shield Wall, you could get another bonus damage from that. In the lower turns, there would be 1 stable energy which would make your threat 4. That means that you are automatically dealing 8 damage, regardless of your roll! But 50% of the time you could have 5 threat from Frontline Rune Golem, making your damage 10! And if you happened to get two damage results on your dice (and why wouldn't you, with 2 rerolls in this formation), you could deal a whopping 20 damage during your first attack! (Excluding the charge attack.) Granted, after that strike, you'd have to refresh both Lance Corporal and Tempered Steel. Besides, I didn't equip Tempered Steel, so let's talk about Shield Wall.
Shield Wall is still interesting. With Lance Corporal, you still have an option to make a huge strike at initiative 3 with a bonus damage from your action modifier and could still do up to 20 damage if you got lucky and rolled double-hits on red and a single hit on blue. Attacking that early gives you the chance to thin out trays from the enemy unit you are engaged with, making it more likely you can trigger Shield Wall. Shield Wall won't work if you both have the same number of trays, and a few units seem to be able to do the 3x3 formation (Spearmen, Oathsworn Cavalry, and Reanimates). If you're not in a mirror-match (Daqan vs. Daqan), you pretty much only have to worry about Reanimates having more trays than you, but they cold have 12, so wiping them out quickly is important. Heraldic Surcoats can help out with defense by preventing some of the worse morale effects early on. You could even use Lance Corporal to further buff your defense by giving you an initiative-3 defense bonus while attacking! These guys seem to be able to play offense and defense pretty well.
Oathsworn Cavalry
These guys are totally going for the alpha strike. Unfortunately, they only have the 2x2 formation instead of 3x3 for the added threat, but 2 red and 1 blue dice is still respectable offense. And they are adding a hit with Tempered Steel and a white die with Moment of Inspiration. These guys also pile on the panic with Impact 1 (adding a panic token when they collide with an enemy during a charge) and Terrifying Heraldry (which adds a panic token to each enemy unit they are touching at the start of the end phase). I'm not sure what to do after that initial charge, though. I suppose you attack at initiative 3 with a defense bonus until the target is dead.
Rune Golem
What's scarier than a Rune Golem? Two Rune Golems! At 2x1, they are attacking with 3-4 threat, but no rerolls. One of the most difficult things about Rune Golems is that they can't turn during a march. They have to go straight, reform, and then go straight again. Wind Rune gives them some added flexibility to maneuvering. With a skill action at initiative 3, Wind Rune could allow you to block an enemy that did not anticipate you moving and marched forward without a charge modifier.
Kari Wraithstalker
Kari's great because she is basically always treated as a 2x2 unit (she gets +1 threat from Brutal 1 and can reroll as if she had an extra row with Precise 1). Wraithstep allows Kari to to move around behind an enemy to flank it as a skill action. Problem is, if you're moving behind an enemy unit, you aren't attacking. Is it worth taking a turn to do that? With a skill action initiative of 2, I think so. It allows you to do two things that I can think of. 1) If engaged with an enemy unit, another enemy may decide to charge Kari and pin her between the two units. By moving to the other side of the engaged unit at initiatve 2, the other enemy could whiff their charge and get a panic token. 2) You can move Kari out of the way before one of your own units charges into the face that she originally occupied. It's not an ability to use all the time, but at 1 point, I think it's worth it. Kari also gets access to Reaping Blade, which is just amazing. It turns every blank die face into Mortal Strike. Basically, Kari can't miss. I don't remember, though, if white dice have blanks, and if they don't, this upgrade is kind of wasted on her. Still, there aren't many units that can equip this type of upgrade yet, so I figured I throw it on her.
Thanks for reading!
