After finally picking up the Elves army expansion the other day, I was really Stunned at how awesome the Aymhelin Scion sculpt is (except for some tricky mould lines). With all the neat little details they added like the vines and mushrooms, it might be my favorite Runewars sculpt right now.

But after putting it on the table for a quick Skirmish... they seem, eh, lackluster

How is everyone running the trees right now? Do they need a large unit to get results? Certain upgrades to unlock their potential?

I'm just about to glue mine. Took a quick look and can't decide if I'm gonna run 2 singlely or as a 2X1. Can't wait to get a couple games in to see how they play

2 hours ago, Click5 said:

After finally picking up the Elves army expansion the other day, I was really Stunned at how awesome the Aymhelin Scion sculpt is (except for some tricky mould lines). With all the neat little details they added like the vines and mushrooms, it might be my favorite Runewars sculpt right now.

But after putting it on the table for a quick Skirmish... they seem, eh, lackluster

How is everyone running the trees right now? Do they need a large unit to get results? Certain upgrades to unlock their potential?

@Wraithist put them as Support (Backline) in a 3x2 of Archers and it was pretty cool. You have to get through the Scion before you can interrupt the threat. Otherwise trying to get as many Stun or Immobilize out as possible, I don't remember which one they do. They're great blockers as their defense can be quite good.

9 minutes ago, Curlycross said:

@Wraithist put them as Support (Backline) in a 3x2 of Archers and it was pretty cool. You have to get through the Scion before you can interrupt the threat. Otherwise trying to get as many Stun or Immobilize out as possible, I don't remember which one they do. They're great blockers as their defense can be quite good.

3x2 with Support does seem pretty good. They spread out Immobilize if you touch them, and Stun if you get two surges, problem is they don't have a way to add surges. At range they only throw red and blue so odds are not great, better in Melee, but Stun is less good in melee

1 minute ago, Click5 said:

3x2 with Support does seem pretty good. They spread out Immobilize if you touch them, and Stun if you get two surges, problem is they don't have a way to add surges. At range they only throw red and blue so odds are not great, better in Melee, but Stun is less good in melee

Neither are really great in melee, as immobilize only stops movements not left dial. So maybe Scion with CI would be good? single surge is a much higher odd.

Just now, Curlycross said:

Neither are really great in melee, as immobilize only stops movements not left dial. So maybe Scion with CI would be good? single surge is a much higher odd.

Yep, I wish they could take it

It probably will be upgrades that unlock their potential. They do have a Unique slot, so that could be interesting.

My main issue right now is their dial, it seems to lack focus

Just now, Click5 said:

Yep, I wish they could take it

It probably will be upgrades that unlock their potential. They do have a Unique slot, so that could be interesting.

My main issue right now is their dial, it seems to lack focus

I've never played them so I can't picture the dial off the top of my head, but I know that @Wraithist used a 2x1 of them against me and they tied up my Reanimate block (3x4 w/ FLCL) long enough for his 3x2 of archers and 2x1 of archers to whittle me down quite a ways. His Scions obviously gained a bunch of panic tokens but it was worth it for him.

6 minutes ago, Curlycross said:

I've never played them so I can't picture the dial off the top of my head, but I know that @Wraithist used a 2x1 of them against me and they tied up my Reanimate block (3x4 w/ FLCL) long enough for his 3x2 of archers and 2x1 of archers to whittle me down quite a ways. His Scions obviously gained a bunch of panic tokens but it was worth it for him.

I hate to be that guy but I just realized this the other day, but you don't even actually get Panic tokens when you shoot into Melee. It's just a one card Morale test. Even less of deterrent

12 minutes ago, Click5 said:

I hate to be that guy but I just realized this the other day, but you don't even actually get Panic tokens when you shoot into Melee. It's just a one card Morale test. Even less of deterrent

To clarify, that's what we do, I just said tokens accidentally.

12 minutes ago, Click5 said:

I hate to be that guy but I just realized this the other day, but you don't even actually get Panic tokens when you shoot into Melee. It's just a one card Morale test. Even less of deterrent

You just trigger a severity one test. If you already have panic tokens on you (from other effects, or say a Rising Panic morale result) those tokens can be spent to make the test more severe.

So it's exactly as much of a deterrent as any morale test trigger.

12 minutes ago, Tvayumat said:

You just trigger a severity one test. If you already have panic tokens on you (from other effects, or say a Rising Panic morale result) those tokens can be spent to make the test more severe.

So it's exactly as much of a deterrent as any morale test trigger.

Except you don't receive panic tokens from shooting into melee, so it's never a cumulative effect unless they get panic tokens from a different source.

It's not exactly the same

1 minute ago, Click5 said:

Except you don't receive panic tokens from shooting into melee, so it's never a cumulative effect unless they get panic tokens from a different source.

It's not exactly the same

It is *exactly* the same as any other ability that triggers a panic test.

The severity will depend on how many other sources of panic the unit is enduring, be that Terrifying Heraldry, Spined Threshers, etc. etc.

I've had friendly units with no panic tokens suffer a test for ranged fire, getting Rising Panic on the first and suffering Flee in Terror on the second, all at no cost to the enemy.

Ignore at your peril.

1 minute ago, Tvayumat said:

It is *exactly* the same as any other ability that triggers a panic test.

The severity will depend on how many other sources of panic the unit is enduring, be that Terrifying Heraldry, Spined Threshers, etc. etc.

I've had friendly units with no panic tokens suffer a test for ranged fire, getting Rising Panic on the first and suffering Flee in Terror on the second, all at no cost to the enemy.

Ignore at your peril.

Receiving a Panic token and taking a Morale 1 test are not the same thing

Do you go out of your way to argue with every post I make?

5 minutes ago, Click5 said:

Receiving a Panic token and taking a Morale 1 test are not the same thing

Do you go out of your way to argue with every post I make?

I never said it was.

You claimed it wasn't much of a deterrent. I responded that it is precisely as much of a deterrent as any ability that triggers panic tests rather than giving tokens. For the sake of argument, I'll place a melee attack featuring a combination of red dice and panic modifiers higher than a raw test trigger.

If you don't feel deterred by that, more power to you, but I believe your nonchalant dismissal to be somewhat reductive.

Any panic test is potentially destructive, and has a high probability of leading to a more severe one in the near future, particularly if the unit in question lacks the Steadfast keyword.

Stop saying things I disagree with and I'll stop arguing with you.

55 minutes ago, Tvayumat said:

I never said it was.

You claimed it wasn't much of a deterrent. I responded that it is precisely as much of a deterrent as any ability that triggers panic tests rather than giving tokens. For the sake of argument, I'll place a melee attack featuring a combination of red dice and panic modifiers higher than a raw test trigger.

If you don't feel deterred by that, more power to you, but I believe your nonchalant dismissal to be somewhat reductive.

Any panic test is potentially destructive, and has a high probability of leading to a more severe one in the near future, particularly if the unit in question lacks the Steadfast keyword.

Stop saying things I disagree with and I'll stop arguing with you.

Instead of contributing anything to this thread you decide to extract minutia from a post of mine and criticize how I should feel about morale tests. And I'm the one who's pedantic?

If you think a 17% chance of receiving more panic tokens (or situationally 27% if they have no boons, as I'm sure you'd be quick to point out) is a high probability than more power to you.

How about I just ignore you from now on

When we see a flame war on a forum I think we can safely say a particular wargame is secure for the near future because the community has clearly matured

Back to Scions. I've gotten 7 games with 2 starter boxes under my belt now. I've tried them as support, frontline, two 1x1(raven tabards) and finally as a 2x1(wind runes & raven tabards). I think from this in my opinion that scions are not the same as the other siege units. Their role seems to be an early disruption unit. The immobilize is nice but the stun is hard to get consistently, certainly not easy to get from the shooting attack.

I'm still taking them because I need them to make 200pts but I dont know if I will into the future once more units drop. Archers with wind runes are so hard to pin down you dont really need scions as disrupter units, perhaps when I start facing more enemy archers (the way I think people will need to counter elves).

The overgrown mechanic is still not fleshed out so perhaps this will make a difference later in the elven army cycle.

And I'll just add, I think what contributes towards the feeling that scions not being a stellar unit is that to get banes to work the ability to get 2-4 onto a unit is critical. Daqan can build up inspiration banks quite easily so throwing a 14 point away just to get 1 possibly 2 banes is not a great return on investment. If the scion expansion has an upgrade which cranks up the bane generation then that will enhance this unit.

Sure, Daqan can get a lot of inspiration, but that's their faction trait. Anyone else will not have such an easy time.

3 hours ago, Thornoo1 said:

And I'll just add, I think what contributes towards the feeling that scions not being a stellar unit is that to get banes to work the ability to get 2-4 onto a unit is critical. Daqan can build up inspiration banks quite easily so throwing a 14 point away just to get 1 possibly 2 banes is not a great return on investment. If the scion expansion has an upgrade which cranks up the bane generation then that will enhance this unit.

Generally, if Daqan is building inspiration, it's not moving forward, and if it's not moving forward, it could easily be taking heavy casualties from Deepwood Archers, who didn't excite me much on paper but on the table have been surprisingly mean.

And ultimately, that's a particular build of one of four factions.

It will be interesting to see what the unspoiled Scion unique upgrade is, though, for sure. The one we've seen is an Overgrowth based regen ability.

On 9/16/2017 at 1:27 PM, Tvayumat said:

It is *exactly* the same as any other ability that triggers a panic test.

The severity will depend on how many other sources of panic the unit is enduring, be that Terrifying Heraldry, Spined Threshers, etc. etc.

I've had friendly units with no panic tokens suffer a test for ranged fire, getting Rising Panic on the first and suffering Flee in Terror on the second, all at no cost to the enemy.

Ignore at your peril.

Wait. Are you saying you can add panic tokens to the severity of a test from the ranged attack?

4 minutes ago, TallGiraffe said:

Wait. Are you saying you can add panic tokens to the severity of a test from the ranged attack?

Yep.

12.1 "Panic: When a unit that has a panic token suffers a morale test, that token can be spent to increase the severity by one."

Any morale test can have its severity increased by spending panic tokens, including those from shooting at an enemy engaged with allied units.

11 minutes ago, Budgernaut said:

Yep.

12.1 "Panic: When a unit that has a panic token suffers a morale test, that token can be spent to increase the severity by one."

Any morale test can have its severity increased by spending panic tokens, including those from shooting at an enemy engaged with allied units.

Yea I saw. Was just reading the morale section before I went to banes.

It's going to make Uthuk ranged units powerful if the opponent lets the panic tokens stack up. I foresee Terrifying Heraldry being a decent upgrade for them, but sometimes you just draw dumb cards, even if there's three of them.

After 1 game, scions worked well for me. One hit my opponent 6 tray reanimate with lancer with stun, then intercepted it before it could move on my archers no after my Scion died, left reanimate with immobilize and a stun, allowing my archers to continue shooting. It was perfect. The other Scion tied up archers and a lancer. And finished the game with 1 hp.

as blockers, distractions, immobilizing stunners. And archers stunning. It was good times.

I've played about five Skirmish games since making this thread (only have one Latari expansion right now), I think I'm coming around on them, but more in line with what @Ywingscum is talking about above.

Keep them cheap and solo, hopefully get a shot off, and just fling them at the enemy so they can't get to your archers. Their march actions are all relatively low initiative, and they can armor up off of it. The upgrade previewed today will help with the tarpitting.

It's a shame such a cool model might just be relegated to blocking duty though