Profane Banner Bearer. I'm scratching my head over this one.

When would you use it? I've used it in a unit that also had Ankaur Maro figure upgrade. Bad idea. In my head, I thought, "Necromancer will get sniped out of my block of Reanimates, so using Profane Banner Bearer, I can make them spend accuracy results on Ankaur Maro, who has a wound threshold of three. That will give my big block of Reanimates enough time to engage the ranged attacker."

In reality, they just take away all the Reanimates in Ankaur's unit, limiting the amount of trays he can add. And sometimes, ranged attackers have Close-Quarters Targeting, so the Necromancer can get removed by Accuracy even when engaged. (Melee attacks can do it, too, but Deepwood Archers and Reanimate Archers don't have blue dice in melee)

So I'm just not seeing it. Range 1-2 is really small. This upgrade would be so good if it also prevented any other figures in your unit from being targeted. Ah well.

Right now, the only thing I can think of is a 2x2 of Reanimates flanked by Ardus Ix'Erebus and Ankaur Maro. That's a lot of heavy hitting that you don't want to get destroyed. That's also over half your army constrained to the size of a circle roughly the diameter of a range ruler. Not great for objectives. Does anybody have any crazy ideas or valuable insights?

EDIT: Elliphino has an interesting idea. Now that we've played the game a lot, what do we think?

I don't think it’s a good upgrade. It’s primary use that I can see is if you have a fragile unit that hands out banes or has some other strategic purpose who will inevitably be targeted by opposing archers.

But five is too high a price for the effect.

Actually should be used to protect the unit with Ankaur Maro IMO.

I use this banner to keep Ankaur Maro alive, when he's not in a unit. Heavy Crossbowmen on an average shot leave Maro on 1 wound. This is scary. Profane Banner Bearer allows me to "bodyguard" Maro against range attacks to let him shoot back at init 6. A list that capitalizes on this:

Ankaur Maro

Violent forces

2x2 Carrion Lancers

Masterwork+CI

2x2 Spined Threshers

3x2 Reanimates

Dispatch Runner

Profane Banner Bearer

The list conceit is simple, the Reanimates are there to protect Maro from ranged attacks, and provide Dispatch Runner to either of the large siege blocks which are aggressively moving forward.

I think it's future-proofing for wraiths. If you can keep your opponent busy with a profane will the wraiths slip over and behind them and reform, you can get a beastly double attack from flank. It's the only way I'm seeing wraiths working well actually.

I've been playing with Profane Banner as a way of keeping the heat off Ardus when he is doing his flanking wetwork.

The problem, really, is that the heraldry slot has such a huge opportunity cost. If I'm taking Profane Banner, I'm not taking Blighted Vexillum, or Raven Standard, or Raven Tabards, all three upgrades I almost universally prefer.

The effect of the Profane Banner can be simulated by simply playing clever (Eliminating trays on the flank and refusing to disengage or simply body-blocking LoS) so I'd rather buy new abilities than a crutch most of the time.

As someone mentionned in another thread maby try to use it on 2x2 unit of reanimates to draw ranged fire?