The Eastern Push, Part 4

Technically parts 4 and 5, as the extra bases arrived last week (along with some steps to reduce the cost of buying more bases in the future - some rollers from Greenstuff World).

The baseless minis were cleaned up and based..

..and over the weekend there was some gap filling with milliput. 

Also took the opportunity to push a few of my other Warzone minis past the 'get ready for priming' stage, including my converted Emancipator and a suitable Iron Mastiff model that came from Chronopia of all places.

Tonight, we prime!

The Eastern Push, Part 3

Over the weekend I had a few hours to sit down and get to work on the models I will need for this list.. and to watch The Thing.

Mostly I watched The Thing, and ended up carrying on with the assembly the following day. Everything in the picture above was assembled (with some part swapping on the Necromutants and Necromutant Leaders for more variety) but eventually I ran out of bases.

Of course, I am also 5 space zombies short. I found my old kickstarter stuff in a box and helpfully I had left it all on the resin frames. Everything, that is, but the Undead Legionnaires. For some reason I had cut them all off and tossed the parts loose into the box. I think I will leave the assembly of the last five for another day..

The Eastern Push, Part 2

One of the great things about a 500 point list is that they are relatively inexpensive to do, with many starter boxes coming in at around 400 points, with a single purchase (a character or a support squad) easily taking you across that 500 point line.

The Eastern Push is no exception, and can be built from the Dark Legion starter box, with the addition of a Nepharite of Algeroth, a box of 5 Undead Legionnaires and a box of 5 Necromutants. If you do that, I'd recommend using the spare Necromutant Leader model from the starter as the Squad Commander for the Necromutant squad - just remember to put him on a 30mm base! That then frees up a single regular Necromutant to act as the Squad Commander upgrade for the Undead Legionnaires.

Speaking of the troop squads, how will they work in this list?

The Necromutants are relatively straight forward - an 'elite' troop type squad that comes in at 19 points per model - almost double that of an Undead Legionnaire! They are decent in close combat, better at range (Ranged Skill 14 with an assault rifle that can get 2 shots, both at strength 12), and have good durability with tough armour (24) and a built in 1 in 4 chance to survive a wound thanks to Heal (5). They don't have a lot of abilities, unfortunately, but they should do a good job of protecting Quinzel while she's hanging out with them.
.

The Undead Legionnaire squad, however, is the workhorse of this list with a massive 17 models to manage during their activation. On paper they are shooty but slow, with a speed of 4 and the inability to Run, Rapid Fire or go on Sentry. They aren't fantastic shots either, with a Ranged Skill of 11 but they ARE cheap, and are allowed to field a lot more special weapons per 5 models in the squad than the basic troops of other armies. However, with the correct support, Undead Legionnaires can be extremely resource card efficient and are able to move across the table with surprising speed.

For starters, we have the basic Necromutant who is an addition to the squad and can act as the squad commander. Simply by having him the in the squad, we push the base speed of the space zombies up to 5. Next we have the Necromutant Leader attached to the squad. His passive ability Whip says that Undead Legionnaires beginning their activation within 6" (which should be the whole squad as long as he is in the middle) gain an extra point of speed, bringing them up to 6. He also has two Dark Symmetry powers - one to curse the squad the Legionnaires will shoot at (so that up to 3 casualties in that squad that turn will immediately rise again as Undead Legionnaires) and another to buff the strength of all weapons in the squad, making it easier to achieve those casualties in the first place.

Finally we have the By My Will ability possessed by Quinzel. For the cost of 3 resource cards, nearby Undead Legionnaire squads can make perform a free Walk action. Thus a typical turn will involve activating Quinzel and her retinue first, casting Cleansing of the Void onto the Undead Legionnaire swarm, then using By My Will to make them advance 5". Then when the Undead Legionnaire squad get their own activation, they can Walk again - this time 6" - and all fire. This is equivalent to all models in the squad running (normally 2 AP) and then shooting (1 AP), which would require the use of 17 resource cards under normal circumstances. This is why we want as many HMGs in the squad as possible. Quantity will surely win the day!

But how about the army itself? Luckily, I had a spare Dark Legion starter box laying around, plus a Necromutant blister I hadn't opened yet. I have a Nepharite of Algeroth model too (because he's a great looking model that really matches with his art work) but sadly he is already built and painted. So instead, I will be using my Kerheela model. Granted she's a Nepharite of Illian, but there's nothing wrong with a little variety! Finally, I'll need some more Undead Legionnaires as you only get 10 in the starter. I have about a million of them from the Warzone kickstarter but I have no clue where they are (and besides, the newer ones are MUCH cleaner sculpts and look far less fiddly to assemble). I'll have to order them in, along with some extra Secret Weapon bases for them all. But this is what I have so far..

Another project? Sure, why not

So today, one of my colleagues on the Warzone playtesting team said something blasphemous like "Undead Legionnaires are rubbish*" and I took that as a challenge to prove him wrong.

Mich Cie and I are currently running a small contest over on the Warzone Facebook group, and I figure what better way to prove my colleague wrong - who is, in fact, Mich Cie - than by doing it publicly? So here we go with my own 'entry' into the contest. The challenge is to complete a thematic 500 point force and when it comes to the Mutant Chronicles setting, what's more thematic than an endless horde of space zombies marching on a beleaguered defensive line?

Giant shoulder pads you say?

Well, okay, apart from that.

Yeah, that's right, space zombies.

Now, the rules of the competition say that the list must be legal (for standard OOC - I should add that part) but it does not have to be competitive. However, I don't see why we can't do both! After punching a few numbers into a calculator, this is what I came up with: The Eastern Push!

Characters:

Nepharite of Algeroth (90pts)
--Devouring Darkness (5pts)
--Cleansing of the Void (15pts)
--Total: 110pts

Necromutant Leader (50pts)**
--Bringer of Dark Tools (Free)**
--Portal of Undeath (20pts)
--Total: 70pts

Troop Squads:

Undead Legionnaire Squad
--15x Undead Legionnaires (150pts)
--1x Necromutant Squad Commander (19pts)
--6x Valcheck HMGs (48pts)

--Total: 217pts

Necromutant Squad
--5x Necromutants (95pts)
--Total: 95pts

Army Total: 492pts

That's right. Not a single Razide!

Now, I will be honest. I started out with two max sized Undead Legionnaire squads but although I could *just* about fit in the Nepharite, the addition of the Dark Symmetry powers really started to chip away at those squads, with compromises in weapons (fewer HMGs) or zombies (10 per squad would still be okay.. right?). But while I loved the idea of fitting up to 33 models into a 500 point list, I could see that it wasn't going to work very well on the tabletop.

The point Mich made was that Undead Legionnaires need a lot of other models in the list to really make them work and they rely heavily on Dark Symmetry buffs to make them more effective. As a Bauhaus player I know all about this because the same thing is often said about Hussars.

So, I dropped the second squad in favour of some bodyguards for my Nepharite, who I am calling "Quinzel".

Quinzel has three jobs in the game.

1) Don't die.
2) Push the space zombies forwards and keep them on their feet.
3) Stab vehicles until they stop shooting.

One of the problems this list will have is a low number of activations, so Cleansing of the Void is an early game spell to give the Undead Legionnaire squad some resiliency to all that fire they are going to have to soak up. Once the zombies have mostly fallen to pieces in the late game it can be cast on her and her retinue instead.

Devouring Darkness ticks the box for "Always be debuffing" - a mantra every Dark Legion player should live by. Casting D type powers doesn't cost DL spell casters any action points so even a cheap one like this is worth taking. If Quinzel is engaged by one or more capable CC enemies or worse yet, a character, you can get this pseudo attack in for free - potentially stunning your opponent - before you make your own CC attack.. and stunned models are hit in CC automatically. Nice.

Next we have the Necromutant Leader, who will be attached to the Undead Legionnaire squad, with both Bringer of Dark Tools and Portal of Undeath. The latter is a mechanism to help replace space zombie casualties by raising the enemy models from the grave, while the former will be essential if we actually want to kill some enemy models in order to turn them into space zombies.

32 shots in one activation sounds great (like.. Kodiak great) until you remember that 27 of them are at RS 11, and will almost certainly be over half range. By boosting the strength of the squads weapons, we are at least minimising the number of shots that hit but fail to penetrate the target's armour.

ST 12 on the 9 Kratach ARs
ST 13 on the 6 Valcheck HMGs
ST 14 on the 2 Belzarach ARs.

Not too shabby!

Next time I will briefly cover the two squads and start the task of gathering up all the miniatures I need for The Eastern Push!

* He may not have actually said that.
** The wrong points cost you say? Hm..