Two Reports in here today. I've been wanting to run this list for awhile now.

Deployment and Objective:

Take the Ridge will focus this battle while Head to Head gives equal footing.

My list:

199/200

'LongShanks'

Deepwood Archers [42] 3x2
Verdant Sorceress [3]
Tempered Steel [3]
Frontline Aymhelin Scion [6]
Hunters Guile [4]
Total Unit Cost: 58

Leonx Riders [18] 2x1
Rank Discipline [4]
Total Unit Cost: 22

Ventala Skirmishers [30] 2x2
Maegan Cyndewin [10]
Tempered Steel [3]
Metered March [2]
Hedge Shroud [2]
Total Unit Cost: 47

Prince Faolan [36] 1x1
Malcornes Bequest [6]
Etharyon of the Ailatar [5]
Total Unit Cost: 47

Darnati Warriors [19] 2x1
Corruption Rune [4]
Hedge Shroud [2]
Total Unit Cost: 25

This list has a heavy archer damage unit, it can successfully hit above the lord V/deathknight damage threshold. Two light blocker/striker units, mixed with Faolans added mobility from EoA (Etharyon of Ailatar), protect the archers. Meagan fits nicely in a Ventala block, and can support at range or melee effectively.

Church's list:

'V Battalion'

196/200
Ardus IxErebus [37] 1x1
Dimodian Blades [5]
Ardus Fury [1]
Total Unit Cost: 43

Reanimates [64] 4x3
Lord Vorunthul [19]
Cursed Signets [2]
Triumphant Cry [3]
Lingering Dead [3]
Total Unit Cost: 91

Reanimate Archers [18] 2x1
Rank Discipline [4]
Tempered Steel [3]
Total Unit Cost: 25

Carrion Lancers [27] 2x1
Combat Ingenuity [6]
Master-Crafted Weapons [4]
Total Unit Cost: 37

This list was to test Lord V embedded in his humanoid form. Ardus is providing upgrade support to the Archers and Lancers. Ardus also has multiple surge effects available for the taking.

Side note:

For ease of explaining positioning, I'm going to start referring to the board as a compass where north is church's side and south is mine.

Setup:

Church goes with a fairly standard setup, Hammer in the center, support pieces to the sides, and Hero flanking.

I risk Faolan in the center to provide inspiration to everyone. The Darnati and Ventala pair up on the east side. My deepwoods hide behind terrain while trusting the Leonx to protect them from Ardus.

I believe the other objective was in the northwest corner.

Round 1:

Church made a mistake with Ardus, which swayed the game pretty hard from the start. Ardus charged the terrain, but nothing was there. I then used Faolan to turn-shift the Deepwoods, who then put 3 wounds on Ardus. Not a good start for the undead.

The cats stalk what remains of Ardus, ready to make an early breakfast of him next round.

The Ventala send two trays of undead back into the ground. Meagans added lethal consistently gives the Ventala a nasty edge.

Church pulls his archers back, not wanting a shooting war with ventala. They now have clear sights on the Darnati.

The Lancers plow forward and threaten the Deepwoods.

Round 2:

The Leonx charge and kill Ardus.

The Lancers charge the Deepwoods, taking 6 figures. Faolan backs the Deepwoods up with EoA and they fire into the Lancers, scoring 2 wounds.

The Darnati Corruption rune the undead Archers, scoring 3 damage, but then get swept away in a shower of arrows.

The Ventala strike the Reanihammer again but get less lasting damage.

Round 3:

Faolan marches into the Reanimates, and pushes the Deepwoods back with EoA, while stopping a reanimate charge.

The Leonx jump into the terrain.

The Ventala plink a few more Reanimates off.

The undead Archers move in to threaten the Ventala.

Round 4:

Faolan takes a chunk out of the Reanimates, and gets lucky when they swing back, only taking 2 wounds.

I try to be clever and march the Deepwoods into the Lancer to block a charge, but Church knows and dials a melee.

The Ventala lose one cow to the undead archers, then plink the Reanimates some more. Lingering dead and regen really hold up to chip damage.

Round 5:

Faolan takes a large swathe of reanimates down with him, the Leonx charge in on a flank and decimate the Reanihammer. The Ventala lose a tray to the Archers but close in and drop them to 1 tray. The Deepwoods finish off the final Lancer.... and I missed the Picture!

Round 6:

This is the final picture.

Lord V is all that is still standing.

Latari win!

Afterthoughts:

Lord V embedded is terrible. I dont remember when it got used, but I think church got it to bump the Ventala around once. The limitations on it just make it very weak.

I think I've found the sweet spot for Ventala. Meagan, Tempered steel, Metered march, and Hedge shroud make this unit a tough, hard damage dealer, with one of the squirrelliest dials in the game. All for less than 50 pts!

Rank Leonx are becoming a favorite of mine. They are low expense, with high yield, what's not to like?

Faolan with EoA continues to tear it up on the field. We'll need to watch this card over a few seasons and collect data, it's really strong. I absolutely love what it does, and hope it doesn't become op, but it has made a concerning impact on Latari combat effectiveness.

The more Church uses Lancers, the more I'm amazed by their performance value. Even while getting jerked around with EoA they kept a Deepwood hammer busy for the whole game.

As always, rank/tempered Reanimate Archers with Ardus buffing did far more damage than they cost.

In retrospect, I wish I had put CQT on the Deepwoods instead of Hunters guile. Cheaper, and more useful.

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Game 2:

I reset my Army, with no changes. Church builds something new.

Church's list:

'Undead Hanukkah'

199/200
Lord Vorunthul [40] 1x1
Fortunas Dice [6]
Thirst of Bilehall [5]
Total Unit Cost: 51

Death Knights [55] 2x3
Shield of Margath [6]
Raven Tabards [2]
Column Tactics [4]
Total Unit Cost: 67

Death Knights [24] 2x1
Dimodian Blades [5]
Total Unit Cost: 29

Carrion Lancers [15] 1x1
Total Unit Cost: 15

Carrion Lancers [15] 1x1
Total Unit Cost: 15

Reanimate Archers [18] 2x1
Rank Discipline [4]
Total Unit Cost: 22

This list is a two pronged heavy striker (Lord V and the 3x2 Death knights) while having enough small units to block counter-charges and catch flanks.

Objective and Deployment:

We wanted something simple, so Bounty and Hammer and Anvil sounded good.

Setup:

Church sets up as his build requires, heavy strikers center and east flank, suppression units center (Lancers and Archers) and deep strike flanker on the west side.

I pack in tightly, relying on Faolan to help unpack the army. I'm most worried about my east flank collapsing too early.

Round 1:

This game starts off fast. The Darnati move into the crumbling wall, ready to start flinging banes and damage. The Lancers slither up to meet the Darnati.

Church's Archers loose a shot at the Darnati, but the hedge cuts the damage to 1 figure.

Faolan pushes the Ventala into the Estate.

The west deathknights move fast, trying to catch the Ventalas terrain, but come up short. They get a face full of javelins for their efforts, losing 3 figures.

The Deepwoods double shift back, giving more time to rain death from above.

The Leonx move to intercept Lord V, which is a fools errand.

Round 2:

Lord V obliterates the Leonx, not too surprisingly.

The Darnati stand and fight against the Lancers, while throwing a lucky stun on Lord V.

The Deepwoods shoot the Death knights, taking 3 figures and stunning their charge.

Faolan uses EoA to push the Ventala out of the terrain after they kill the last death knight.

It should be noted that the solo death knight did bonkers damage before dying. Dimodian blades is real good.

Round 3:

Faolan and the Death Knights trade blows, both taking severe wounds.

The Lancers finally vanquish the Darnati, and push forward.

I settle on killing 1 unit rather than hurting 2, and hit the death knights with the Deepwoods. This gets Faolan reformed the wrong way with a morale test.

The problem now is the Ventala can't get a shot on the Death knights, too much damage dealt.

Lord V is stalled for a turn while he clears the stun.

Round 4:

Faolan doesn't quite kill the death knights, and dies from Magarth. The deepwoods shift/reform, expecting the threat to be neutralized. They get flanked by the last death knight.

The Ventala face off against 2 Lancers and drop the Archers to 1 tray.

Round 5:

The Deepwoods get sandwiched and slaughtered, losing enough threat to no longer pose a threat to either target.

The Ventala get into an equally sandwiched situation, but are actually holding up against 3 enemies.

Round 6:

The Deepwoods get slaughtered.

The Ventala continue going toe to toe while being flanked and showered with arrows. Protected and hedge shroud work great.

Round 7:

Too much blight spoiled the broth, the Lancers get enough mortal strikes from archer blight to knock out meagan.

The last Cow falls to the dreaded Lord V.

Waiqar wins!

Afterthoughts:

I have largely the same reactions to my list as last time. Everything performed as well as it could, with a few exceptions.

I think CQT will give the Deepwoods much longer lasting damage output.

Not sure I'm getting mileage from Malcornes. Spirit sword makes Faolan so much harder to deal with.

Might try some scions in place of the darnati, but not sure they'd do better.

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Thanks for Reading!

I'm pretty much drawn to CQT on 3x2s always. You've got enough footprint that something is bound to get up in your face. If it isn't fully 3 wide, you likely have LOS to something else on the field, which can sometimes prove a more appetizing target (I lost Ravos that way once).

Malcornes is probably necessary to make your Hedge Shroud trigger more reliably. Yes, you'll have games where the runes dud out on you. But Runewars has higher variance to it than some games, so the best we can do is accept that fact.

Scions for Darnati: If you're just looking to block, they'd probably do very slightly better. You've got the I3 armor-up, which means you should pretty much always up your life expectancy, even if we aren't making any assumptions on the runes. (2x1 Darnati is base 8 damage. Hedge Shroud will save 2-4 figures typically for each trigger, so you're really needing a couple of triggers to push the Darnati to 16 damage. You've got a 2.5 x 3 x2 out of the Scions for 15, or 3.5 x3 x2 for 21. The rest of the list is really the core, and given the range damage output, the Scions might synchronize just a tiny bit better.

Hunter's Guile: I like it a tiny bit better on the 2x1s, but its primary function is to reduce variance. Its raw damage output leaves it a bit overpriced, but if one can think of it as improving damage consistency, especially on the units with fewer rerolls, it can be subtly powerful.

I had a lot of thoughts from this one. In no particular order:

Ardus

Yeah. I keep getting too aggressive with Ardus. I should have let him just ram the terrain and not enter it. He continues to be an easy to play badly hero for me that delivers ~50% of the time in combat. When he delivers he is amazing though.

MCW+CI Lancers

i wouldn’t normally pay 10 in upgrades on a 2 tray unit, but they were there for Ardus. It does deliver a lot of damage when it hits though. Both Jukey and I were floored by how much damage they did.

RD/TS archers

Yeah, 2 of these guys in an army easily justifies solo Ardus to me. Every time I don’t do something truly mind-numbingly stupid with them, they deal disproportionate damage for their cost. Waiqar don’t get a good rally mechanic, but the shift 2 + rally provides a reliable way to get the critical 1-2 inspiration tokens before a fight.

Embedded LordV

Jesus tap dancing Christ, what a turd. It is not that his ability isn’t powerful. It’s the opportunity cost, actual cost, and practical application that make it bad.

The opportunity cost is LordV solo, CursedV adding brutal, and/or any of Waiqar’s more entertaining and useful champions. A reanimate star without an additional die or Brutal just doesn’t do enough damage. Bringing LordV in a big block just makes it a big HP pool for your opponent to try and chew through

The actual cost... 19 for a 3/2 that doesn’t add a die. Let’s pull some other upgrades in for cost compare. A 3/2 champion figure costs you 4 or less (Artifact Bearer, Fallen Hero). Swapping a die for a white is 4-ish (Hunter’s Guile). So that leaves LordV’s skill costing this upgrade around 11 points. Maybe we just want to run the smallest Reanimate lock with LordV in it that we can. With Ardus, you can bring a 4 tray with LordV for 45 points... or just bring LordV with Entrancing Gaze for 44. I have absolutely no clue why this was costed the way it was. Though it fits a weird pattern where most (all?) heroes can’t be fielded as an embedded upgrade for less than the original cost of the hero.

Practical Application is also a problem. A SkellyStar (any DeathStar) needs to be able to do things like bank, charge, armor up, etc. I can’t rely on having the luxury of a skill to use until I’m engaged. So any skill based champion really wants to be used opportunistically and a 19 point upgrade should be a use-most-turns quality upgrade.

Im not sure I’m going to ever put the time in to make that card effective.