I've given some more thought about those Daqan heraldry figures. I'm starting to like the Lion Standard Bearer, which gives your Spearmen "Steadfast: Fear." There's one particular scenario where I really like it. Let's say you have a unit of 6 trays of Spearmen, and they're in the frontlines battling the enemy. Meanwhile, you have a 3-tray unit of Heavy Crossbowmen giving ranged support. Normally, every time they shoot the unit that is engaged with your Spearmen, the Spearmen suffer a severity-1 morale test. If they have no panic tokens on them, that simply means they are dealt 1 morale card. Not a big deal - unless it's Rising Panic, giving them another 2 panic tokens. Now when they suffer the next morale test as the Heavy Crossbowmen fire into melee, it can be a severity-3 morale test.

Lion Standard Bearer nips that in the bud, because when you have no panic tokens, you are essentially immune to Rising Panic. Why is that important? Because according to Josh's blog post on the Morale Deck , we learn that 5 out of the 15 single-icon Morale cards are Rising Panic, with an additional 3 copies of Frozen with Dread, a 1-cost Fear card. So in total, when suffering the effects of a friendly unit firing into melee, and you have no panic tokens, your Spearmen are immune to 76.6% of the morale deck! If you have no inspiration tokens, you could still receive a panic token from Wavering Resolve (Confusion), of which there are 3 copies in the deck, and you can still receive Stun tokens from Disarray (Confusion). But that's it.

I don't think Lion Standard Bearer is going to suddenly become a meta staple, but I can see a situation where if you have a strong force of Spearmen contending with the enemy, with multiple ranged units firing into melee, Lion Standard Bearer becomes a pretty sweet buy. The figure also has a defense of 3, for added survivability, and it looks amazing on the table, so bonus points there.

Good point! Latari have a Warsong Herald that directly deals with that scenario and for 3 points! And he's a 4/1. LSB is 5 points and he's a 3/1.

I think overall LSB has more versatility, but 2 points and 1 less armor worth of versatility? I'll find out at league on Monday and get back to you!

I think people really need to consider that in a lot of circumstances they pay 4-5 points per extra tray of infantry.

Berserkers: 2 trays (8/tray)

6 trays (6.1 per tray)

9 trays(4.5 per tray or so)

So just buying a 4/1 figure upgrade for 4 points is nearly worth it just for the HP

18 minutes ago, Church14 said:

I think people really need to consider that in a lot of circumstances they pay 4-5 points per extra tray of infantry.

Berserkers: 2 trays (8/tray)

6 trays (6.1 per tray)

9 trays(4.5 per tray or so)

So just buying a 4/1 figure upgrade for 4 points is nearly worth it just for the HP

That is a great point @Church14 ! The economics of the game do make more room for upgrades in both slots and cost per tray!

I don’t usually use that logic, but it does explain some upgrades to me. Tactical Drummer is an upgrade I don’t understand how to plan around. The only way I have planned to use it is:

-Reanimates (12 trays): File Leader, Raven Standard, Lingering Dead

An aggresive drummer isn’t really aligned with the point of that unit. So for 2 points, I would take tactical drummer. Sure, I don’t ever expect to use their ability, but it is a great 4 armor figure to put on one end of the front row to maybe make some damage bounce

1 hour ago, Church14 said:

Reanimates (12 trays): File Leader, Raven Standard, Lingering Dead, Tactical Drummer

That's pretty good. If you could shift away before they attacked, it would be even better, but I appreciate what you're saying about not actually planning to use the drummer's ability.

My best use for Tactical Drummer:

Reanimates (4 trays): Tactical Drummer, Blighted Vexillum Bearer

This is a unit your opponent doesn't want to fight, but it can harass with blight again and again. Best use is to send it on the flank when two large units are locked in combat, alternating between charging and disengaging to weaken the enemy. If you make it a bigger unit, you can make it a pretty tough-to-kill bounty unit maybe. Again, not a whole lot of utility, but it's something.