I've been playing around with the army builder with a view to the upcoming Latari Elves release. What is interesting is their ability to remove banes right across their list. So far I have seen the following, some are in the starter box but I've included for completions sake:

1. Verdant Sorceress - Special - range Blue runes remove than many banes
2. War Crier - Special - range 1-3 remove 1 bane
3. Rallying Starling - Special - - range 1-3 each ally may remove 1 bane
4. Tactical Starling - on disengage do not gain a panic token

Put together in certain units the army starts to have the ability to remain bane free. Against the Waiqar and Uthuk this could turn into a big advantage by denying those armies a key mechanism.

With Maegan Cyndewin in the army the following example unit gets to shift upto three times through Wind Rune, surge ability and Support Scion, gets its ranged attack off as it doesn't need to use a move action on the dial thanks to the afore mentioned shifts and also remove banes from itself or an ally.

Deepwood Archers x6 [42]
--Champion: War Crier [5]
--Equipment: Wind Rune [6]
--Heavy: Support Aymhelin Scion [4]
--Music: Rallying Starling [4]
--Training: Simultaneous Orders [2]
--Sorceress: Verdant Sorceress [3]
----------Total Unit Cost: 66

I think you're going to find that to be very situational. Not only will you have games where banes are non-existant, you're going to have times where units are out of position or they have so many banes stacked up that you can't remove enough of them.

Also, since the special action is on the modifier, I think any attacks will go off before the banes can be removed.

6 minutes ago, Sulfurious said:

I think you're going to find that to be very situational. Not only will you have games where banes are non-existant, you're going to have times where units are out of position or they have so many banes stacked up that you can't remove enough of them.

Also, since the special action is on the modifier, I think any attacks will go off before the banes can be removed.

True for sure when playing mirror matches or versus Daqan but not so much Waiqar or Uthuk which are predicated on blight and panic tokens. The range issue is certainly something to keep in mind but I feel the overgrown mechanic the Latari have, and probably will rely upon, will see a game play style very much locked in close to nexus points on the board. This should lead toward focal areas where there are units with interlocking spheres of influence.

In some ways I think the elves are going act to like like space ships using gravity to slingshot around planets. A weird mechanic for a fantasy block infantry game but I'm looking forwards to it. Who would have thought vector movement would come to fantasy.

I think we'll see plenty of viable lists for Waiqar without pushing blight and for the Uthuk Y'llan without pushing panic tokens. For example, if you had Ravos, Berserkers, and Flesh Rippers, the only panic tokens being placed aside from normal means are those from Ravos' setup ability, and I would argue that he is a strong enough unit that he's worth including even if his panic tokens were removed turn-1.

True, builds like the one you posted above will be bad news for bane-focused lists, but I wouldn't count on it completely shutting down entire factions. And if a bane-removal list faces a list that doesn't rely on banes, all that bane-removal is wasted points.

1 hour ago, Budgernaut said:

True, builds like the one you posted above will be bad news for bane-focused lists, but I wouldn't count on it completely shutting down entire factions. And if a bane-removal list faces a list that doesn't rely on banes, all that bane-removal is wasted points.

The joys of list building

A lot will depend on your local meta too.

13 hours ago, Budgernaut said:

And if a bane-removal list faces a list that doesn't rely on banes, all that bane-removal is wasted points.

The points aren't entirely wasted. Even if your opponent never tries to give you banes, you can still remove banes from missed charges and morale tests, or use Rallying Starling to ready exhausted upgrade cards.

That list would bug me once I get my Uthuk. Depending on the upgrade cards, I'm going to be trying to figure out how to cause severity 2+ panic tests on my opponent on turn 1