Which bane do you think is the most painful/punishing to get applied to you? Speaking purely of the bane itself not other uses (as that can shift very suddenly)

Blight: Remove a die. Depending on the unit comp this could be brutal (1 die instead of 2 on a Threat4-5 spearstar...ouch) or mostly annoying (still cuts damage but a small unit losing a die points-wise isnt as painful as a spearstar losing damage)

Stun: Cancel bonus dial. If the target can easily get attack modifiers that do damage or is about to charge, it can be pretty powerful but otherwise is usually just annoying. Cancelling a Morale result modifier for instance is kinda meh, but cancelling a Mortal Strike is pretty dang good.

Immobilize: Cancel a March or Shift action on a revealed dial. Probably the hardest to get applied to something, but can completely stall them for a turn if theyre melee (or situationally range). issue is a lot of units that get it end up dying before it matters anyway (in my experience).

Panic: One panic isnt that big of a deal, two or more can get scary as thats how you fish out those really brutal morale cards. Insane luck if its deadly or not, often i end up causing a Sev3 test and just reapplying 2 panic tokens...but then i get that one where i force the unit to Reform facing the wrong way right before they charged

My vote would go for Stun since while it isnt as effective as Immobilize, it can completely shaft your maneuver by cancelling the turn/wheel/charge/skill.
Obviously if we contribute abilities its probably one of the weakest, since nobody does anything special with stuns and like i said earlier it can still be a completely moot thing (stunned my daqan who were doing an init3 attack anyway...whoopie...).

Depends on what I'm playing. If I'm playing a Daqan spearstar then it's blight. If I'm playing elves most useful is immobilize. But overall I suppose I agree with you it's Stun.

I mean the fact that you can spend multiple blight on a single attack is pretty brutal. Or you were gonna roll 3 dice? Not any more.

Each is situational. Any bane at the right/wrong time can be devastating.

To my mind, any bane or combination of banes that denies you a whole action is the worst one, be it a Stun or Immobilize invalidating a charge, or a pair of Blight tokens cancelling an attack.. Actions are a vital resource, and losing them is almost always a major problem.

If we want to pick one that is the worst across the most circumstances, I'd probably agree that Stun is more of a pain more of the time.

EDIT: This also depends a lot on the Army dealing the banes. Waiqar, for instance not only gives out the most blight (At the moment) but also has the most utility they can pull out of it through synergies and abilities that trigger on the target being blighted. Uthuk looks like it will get stronger the more panic tokens are sitting on you, so Panic might not be as bad if I'm fighting Daqan, but could easily be much worse against Uthuk.

I think as a single token, Stun is the worst. When you stack them, it's a toss-up between Blight and Panic.

Here is my take:

so far the only real sources for Stun and Immobilize have been morale tests. I've never seen someone use a Rune Golem for a stun token, and the Scions are too new for me to give a legitimate opinion on their impact.

Immobilize really only hits once a unit becomes engaged either due to Scions, or a morale test. Being immobilized while engaged doesn't play much of an impact as likely the end result will be one of the units being destroyed. You will likely count that unit as dead before the immobilize, or the other unit will die before you have to deal with the immobilize. I rank this boon as really low value.

Panic I would say is next worst as it is incredibly unreliable. You can have 3 panic tokens stacked up, and the unit dies without being used, or you draw 3 cards and the best you can do is put the tokens back on, or you use a panic 1 or 2 test that fails. Stand alone, they do nothing but draw a random card that may or may not have any usefulness. Most panic tokens get spent for one of the other statuses, or for more panic tokens... or they drop off when the unit dies. That being said, some of the panic 3 tests are the most brutal effects in the game, they just don't always trigger or come up at the right time.

Blight can be good... but playing against humans (most regularly) it just doesn't stick. You have to have perfect timing, perfect alignment of perfect units, and be in control of the initiative for the round for it to be effective. Since there is no down-side for a human player to spend the first couple turns rallying and stacking up a huge supply of inspiration tokens, blight typically has no impact on them. As far as playing against undead, they do fare much better, but the other issue is that the attacking player decides which die they lose.

Stun is by far my favorite. If they thought they were going to turn, or charge, or deal more damage, that stun token completely changes their strategy. If I can remove 12.5% of their game for the unit by placing 1 token, that's a huge impact. They have to decide to rally and waste a turn, or potentially lose a crucial modifier.

One could argue stun/immobilize are pointless since you can just Rally them off if you are afraid of it screwing you over, but thats literally doing the same thing...it stalled you for a turn.

Also funny fact about stun tokens: if your rally is the bonus dial, you can stun it off. It is a modifier if its on the "modifier dial" which is the 2nd dial lol. Which i think only affects heroes and rune golems

I've said this before in another thread, but Blight > Stun > Immobilize, as they're all doing roughly the same thing, stalling an action. Panic is potentially the worst but it's too random

As a single, I would also say stun. I lost a game because of that once since a charge got cancelled and I missed out on a victory token. Immobilize woulda done it too in that case.

I think strategically immobilise is the most powerful, but requires application at range. A unit not getting into melee ain't doing no damage and your units get a free response move to make it even worse.

Tactically I'd say blight over stun. Knowing a unit will push no damage in a turn really opens up your choices.

Right now I'm going with Blight. It's very effective at reducing incoming damage and allowing Waiqar to tank. It's always valuable and can be easy to apply. Stun and immobilize can cause a lot of grief, but a blight always needs to be dealt with?

In seriousness it really depends on how you want to control your opponent.

Do you want to immobilize elves to make them sitting ducks for your ranged units?

Do you want to reduce the pain of incoming attacks with blight so you can hit back harder?

Do you want to prevent units from charging, turning, or adding pain to their attack with stun?

Do you want to roll the dice on random bad effects with panic?

There are going to be army builds to take advantage of each of these situations, and part of the fun of the ever changing game is going to be seeing how people build to take advantage of each of these.

I think stun is the single greatest impact, as it is so very flexible.

Stun made me unable to fire rune on a turn with 4 red runes showing, and then get slaughtered by the unit I would have targeted.

My vote is definitely stun.

darth bane of course.

1 hour ago, thoughttrauma said:

darth bane of course.

This one wins the thread!! [The first Darth Bane book is my favorite novel of all time.]

Just now, Budgernaut said:

This one wins the thread!! [The first Darth Bane book is my favorite novel of all time.]

It doesn't count if you don't include a picture.