Enough pouting, time for playing.
This morning's game was my chance to try out a few of the new mechanics Cryx have been give. Most interesting to me were:
- Bane Knights and Vengeance vs Shadow Shift
- The Necrosurgeon
- The Seether
Bane Knights: Shadow shift was quintessential to my game play. A huge section of my "cryx tryx" arsenal dealt with bane knights (BK) and Tartarus. Unfortunately because so many players couldn't wrap their head around shadow shift and their out of turn activation that PP found it necessary to stream line them a bit. So now instead of Shadow shift we have Vengeance.
Vengeance works as such: "During your maintenance phase, if one or more models in this unit were destroyed or removed from play by enemy attacks during your opponent's last turn, each model can advance 3" and make one normal melee attack."
So basically instead of one shift for each hit BK during your turn, I now get to "shift" my entire unit at the beginning of my turn AND then activate them normally. Seems like a good gig to me. Here's what worked and what didn't.
Pro's: Did I mention that the ENTIRE unit gets to advance and make a regular attack? Yeah, that's terrific.
Con's: My opponent still gets to attempt to eliminate the entire unit sans retaliatory shifts. No screwing with their charges etc.
Running them with epic Asphyxious worked out rather well. The BK's laid the beat-down on his exemplars but were summarily butchered on my opponents activation. That being said the two remaining BK's did a number on them thanks to vengeance. eGspy then casts excarnate, killing a choir boy and I then get to add a BK to the unit. BK's activate again and leave only two exemplars standing.
The NecroSurgeon: Arguably Cryx's worst fig ever in MKI. This unit attachment was way over priced and worst yet, when you did pop out some mechanithralls they couldn't even activate. MKII has fixed that. They are super cheap, multi wound with sacrificial pawn allowing them to stave off any potential snipers. Best yet is that the mechanithralls get to activate the turn they are brought into play. MKII tips do state that they cannot move but may attack. WOOT.
Against the Mennite they suffered what seemed a devastating blow when the Castigator vented killing five mechanithralls. No worries on my part, next turn the surgeon advances and places five new mechanithralls into melee with both the castigator and the crusader. The castigator has a pretty bad day and both jacks are tied up in melee yet again with a unit which only cost 7 points total. Fantastic!
The Seether: I honestly didn't have too much experience with the original version, thanks in part to the fact that I didn't like Terminus and that my other character jacks were so much better. Seems a lot has changed in MKII.
Seether has terrific mat and pow+str attacks. It's going to hit you and often. If both initial attacks connect you're also looking at a free power attack from a limited list. On that short list is the little used "head butt." What's terrific about this is that with a successful head-butt you may now buy extra attack which auto-hit! That's pretty awesome. The fire of salvation found out first hand how deadly a seether can be once it was properly turned to scrap.
In all it was a good game. We had to call it quits prior to completion thanks to an Easter-egg hunt and BBQ I was committed to. So for the sake of the game we called it a draw. If you're interested though all I'd lost were some bane knights and bile thralls and Tartarus. He was down a Dervish, FoS, a unit of exemplars, most his choir, Vilmon and the Castigator was nearing "scrap" status, plus Gaspy still had his feat too.
As of now MKII is looking loads better than before from a core rules standpoint. I'm still upset that the bloodgorgers, which are a fantastic unit in MKI, were relegated to the shelf thanks to MKII and an incredible nerf bat.
-Cheers-
Don't underestimate Amon in melee. I had lost most of my army to Dallas with Amon and he still won due to his combination of Perfect Balance, Pathfinder, Reach, and Mobility. That's a 13" threat range with 6 focus. There is every reason to believe that given how things were laid out, you could have eaten a mouthfull of Oblivion. Never underestimate the Flying Monk.
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