More statues are incoming for one of the most visually striking Skorne theme force. It will bring a bit of variety in one of the less varied theme force, open a bunch of new options and toys to try out, and find new and exciting way to paint basalt statues. Also, giant statues with swords the size of a skyscrapper are pretty cool. Sadly, still no construct warbeasts for the skornes, but I guess we’ll manage to live without Tiberion 2, the first titan ancestral guardian.

The news !

The Immortal Vessel

So, a channeler with Telemetry for an additional +2 to hit. The rest is speculative, but it’s reasonable to expect it to be speed 4, 10/17 or better with 8-10 HP, and accessible in Exalted, Master of War, and Wind of Death because of the Extoller subtype. Note that it’s very possible that the abilities might be conditional (need to spend a soul, or is a star action, for example).

That’s the only spoiled model that I am afrad would be possibly too strong. Skorne casters tend to start with stronger offensive spell, especially nukes, than most, like for example Sunder Spirit, who is above average in POW and with a relevant secondary effect. Let’s list what need to be seriously tested in my mind :

• Makeda 2 have a blast that KD on hit. With Telemetry and Puppet Master, we talk of ~75% odds of KDing a caster who is in a trench with two casts. And cats can be rather savage on a KD target.
• Mordikaar don’t really have use for a channeler, but he do have a use for Telemetry for his spray. With it, his spray can hit decently without boostings things like Satyxis Raiders, casters, blurred trenchers, etc, which suddenly mean very few infantry is resistant to his spray.
• Lord Assassin Morghoul have mortality and a blast that prevent charging. Enough said.
• Zaal 1 will have access to a LOT of boostable, ghost shot, high strength shots. While the short range help keep it under control, 2 extollers, 2 Immortals Vessel, and Zaal 1 is enough to reasonably kill a Mountain King under the stone bonus. That’s on top of Zaal having, you know, a pretty good blast spell in Sunder Spirit.
• Zaal 2 with channeler mean that giving him a lot of soul is really dangerous to the other caster. And he have vision against free strikes…

Now, I do think there is also a lot of good and balanced things coming out of it, so it’s not all bad either. Sunder Spirit is really an awesome spell to channel in a lot of matchups ; and while skorne spellsingers tend to have good arcing ability on average, a lot who aren’t straight spellslingers have various strong spells to cast. Examples include Makeda 1 and The Lash, Morghoul 3 for Night’s Reflection, and Xerxis 2 for Stranglehold. And while Zaadesh 1 can’t cast through one, he will enjoy Telemetry for First Blood shenanigans.

The Supreme Guardian

Now, that’s a model that get me pumped up. It’s probably extremely slow, but he seem perfect to actually use the feat of Zaal 2, and pretty good at using armor bonii in general. There’s a lot of uncertainty toward its rule interaction (will the rules be changed so that he benefit from soul converter or Spirit Guide ? Will it be closer to an heavy jack in stats, or to a colossal with a 25-30 price tag ? Will he have something to help with mobility like Righteous Vengeance or Spirit Driven ?). But the most important part is that it will be a seriously resilient model to help anchor the armies ; the regular immortals die rather fast, and having something hard to remove will help quite a bit.

Arcane Vortex can also be a big thing. A lot of factions use spells to control or debuff high armor stuff ; that’s why Orin is pretty big in Imperial Warhost, and here it can be useful too, both to make it survive and to make a wall of high armor things.

Abidan the Keeper

It seem to be the most straightforward of the lot. Hakaar with WM instead of Veteran Leader, so a good beatstick, who help with damage output issues. He do introduce a dilemna between maxing on AGs to ensure resonance buff, or using him as a beatstick. The video say he is part support, but I won’t get my hope up that he actually do good support, insofar as “killing an heavy” isn’t support.

There is a small possibility that as an exalted companion he won’t collect soul and the rest. In which case, I think he will have trouble getting a place into competitive lists without something seriously awesome in exchange. But I think it’s pretty unlikely.

Other stuff ?

The presentation from last year did not present every new models from every CID. Soles apparently confirmed at least another unit or solo, and I guess a surprise in addition to that is possible - doubly so if it’s production who is slowing the releases. Not counting on it, of course, but something to remember.

What I expect to test

While I suspect Zaal 1 and 2 will be very interesting with all thoses goodies, I will probably try a less obvious choice : Xerxis 1. I already have done some testings, to overall good success. Which make sense : Xerxis bring huge damage buffs and a decent amount of utility, the immortals bring excellent accuracy and take buffs very well. The current list look like that :

[Theme] The Exalted

• Tyrant Xerxis [+28]
  • Archidon [10]
  • Tiberion [22]
  • Titan Gladiator [15]
• Ancestral Guardian [0(5)]
• Ancestral Guardian [5]
• Ancestral Guardian [5]
• Extoller Soulward [3]
• Hakaar the Destroyer [0(7)]
• Void Spirit [4]
• Immortals (max) [15]
• Extoller Advocate [4]
• Immortals (max) [15]
• Paingiver Beast Handlers (min) [5]

The two obvious improvement here would be replacing one ancestral Guardian by Abidan, and replace the Archidon and a bunch of solos by the new Battle Engine. Depending on its cost, the second immortal unit might go to 6 members instead of the full 10. Something like that :

• Tyrant Xerxis [+28]
  • Tiberion [22]
  • Titan Gladiator [15]
• Supreme Guardian [??]
• Abidan [0(?)]
• Ancestral Guardian [5]
• Ancestral Guardian [5]
• Extoller Soulward [3]
• Hakaar the Destroyer [0(7)]
• Immortals (max) [15]
• Extoller Advocate [4]
• Immortals (max) [15]
• Paingiver Beast Handlers (min) [5]

On paper, Abidan look extremely interesting for Xerxis, because with help from the feat he can one-round most heavies in the game. Which is a lot for a free solo.

The soul conundrum

Playing the Exalted with a caster other than Zaal reveal a real flaw of the Immortal UA : he tend to hog more souls than he can actually use. You would want him to get a single soul per turn, where he often get all five, then don’t have much to do with them, and he can’t even give them to someone else. On the other hands, all sorts of AGs, and presumably the Supreme Guardian too, will easily use all souls they get, every turn. And especially on feat turn. That’s why it’s important to have units without UA to fill the solos.

Xerxis can hand out pathfinder to an unit of immortals, which make the UAs less mandatory. On the other hand, an unit with UA and Defensive Ward can be a formidable tarpit, since we talk of 15/19 defensive stats. But if there were an alternative cheap troop with soul in theme, I would sure be quite happy !

Supreme Guardian, Beacon, and Gladiator

If you add together Beacon, Rush, and Lurch, Tiberion can charge something at 16” from him ! While that look awesome, Xerxis only have a control range of 10”, and Tiberion is often in front of Xerxis, so I suspect it’s not all that useful in practice. Which lead to the option of getting rid of the Gladiator altogether ; it mean no pathfinder for Tiberion at all, but it free enough points to get to 60 points of immortals. That’s probably an interesting option to test.

Beast choice

Unlike what a lot of people seem to think, Tiberion is REALLY awesome. The fact he have excellent synergy with Xerxis do help a lot, but having a beast, even an expensive one, who is able to easily kill two heavy or a colossal is seriously game changing, especially if you want to do silly stuff like killing a mountain king through Doomy 3 feat. Still, you can want to get by something cheaper. Among the options :

• the aradus Soldier is a lot cheaper, and hit just as hard. He however isn’t gonna survive much in melee. Carapace and Advance Deployement make it a decent choice to shave some points
• in the hypothesis that Despoiler is added to Exalted, he is another glass cannon possible addition. A free upkeep is absolutely awesome for a fury 5 caster with 2 upkeep and Lurch, who is awesome but fury intensive.
• the last option is a rhinodon and an archidon. Fury wise, it’s a bit ambitious, but cheap models with a lot of attack is what Xerxis want, and both animus are very useful to Xerxis ; sprint allow him to get the fuck away after pouding something in the ground, while Spiny Growth mean he can be armor 24 on feat turn, which is the point where he can facetank a khador colossal. Which is awesome in theory, even if not that often relevant.

Solo choice - a star wars story

Void spirits are awesome even without Mordikaar, because they very reliably kill solos and UAs that did not respect them enough, and the teleportation make them a lot more resilient than one would expect. They also bring something else to Xerxis 1 : comparatively cheap models that people can’t remove easily to hand out the +2 armor from the feat. While the dream is to alway have Tiberion and the Battle Engine B2B on feat turn, that’s probably not alway doable. The alternative is the Soulward, who is alway awesome, and who mean you start with more souls to hand out, which mean less problem to get all your AGs full to bash heads.

And the other stuff ?

I will look intently at any change to Makeda 3 and Zaal 1, two casters I truly love but don’t pull enough weight compared to other Skorne casters. But it’s hard to speculate exactly at that point ; both can be modified in at least ten different way that would leave them playable. (something that way too many people forget when they say “this caster absolutely need X or he will be unplayable”).

In a less speculative vein, and outside of visibly broken stuff, I will probably at least try that :

[Theme] Winds of Death

• Beast Master Xekaar [+31]
  • Chiron [19]
  • Rhinodon [12]
  • Aptimus Marketh [0(5)]
• Extoller Soulward [3]
• Venator Dakar [4]
• Paingiver Beast Handlers (min) [5]
• Immortal Vessel [0(?)]
• Immortal Vessel [0(?)]
• Venator Flayer Cannon Crew [5]
• Venator Flayer Cannon Crew [5]
• Venator Reivers (max) [15]
• Venator Reiver Officer & Standard [4]
• Siege Animantarax [17]
• Siege Animantarax [17]

That seem a real improvement over the Rasheth list ; once you can channel, Mortality is so much better than Blood Mark that Xekaar become a very tempting option (in fact, I would not be surprised for Rasheth to become the worse Skorne caster after the CID …). Xekaar specifically in Wind of Death seem better than Morghoul due to his feat making the siege animantaraxes mostly unkillable, while Blind is significantly less useful when Reivers already hit def 17 half the time even before Mortality. (plus, Chiron is awesome).

Conclusion

While Skorne have a lot of decent option into Cryx, Morghoul 2 stand up both because he have few weak spots in Cryx and because he cause no end of problem to a lot of other armies (think Anamag, the Harbinger of Menoth, or globally any army with a lot of infantry, or with a lot of Battle Engine). The list is also pretty flexible, with a lot of variation possible to adapt to one taste.