Post by unded on Jul 24, 2017 9:45:22 GMT
So this was requested in the resources thread, and I finally found it to re-upload. I'm making a couple of edits based on previous feedback and some lessons I've learned since originally posting this, but the core of it is still here. Enjoy.
Tao of the Twins
Introduction
I have been absolutely loving the twins lately. What I initially picked up as a mess-around warlock has swiftly turned into my favourite Legion caster. I have eaten through the butcher, through Ossyan, cut the head off Severius and Kaelessa and out-attritioned almost every opponent they have faced. I have also stumbled and fallen, over and over again. Over the span of 3 factions and close on 40 casters, I have never encountered a caster with as much complexity and difficulty as the twins, and yet they are just as rewarding to play as they are painful to learn. The purpose of this guide is to try help ease the learning curve of these nightmares so you, the Legion community, can get to the chewy goodness inside. Master the twins, and they bring versatility, a strong long-game attrition factor, great resilience against assassinations as well as some nasty assassination potential as well. Interested? Let’s dive in!
The Twins
The first thing to look at is obviously the twins themselves. Looking at them together, they bring the following spells to help their army:
- Occultation
An amazing spell. With MKIII having a huge amount of single-target stealth removal, this doesn’t do much to protect heavies and is situational at protecting your caster. What it is amazing for is protecting warriors, so use as needed.
- Onslaught
In a faction with pathfinder beasts, we have very few casters that offer pathfinder to our army. Rhyas brings it as an upkeep, which enables Nyss Swordsmen and pushes up Typhon’s value in most cases, as well as lets Rhyas herself charge past walls / through terrain.
- Banishing Ward
Again situational, but fantastic for protecting units from unpleasant spells, or protecting your caster(s) from the likes of Rahn / Zerkova2. Pretty useful against Haley2 as well who loves to TK casters around.
- Psychic Vampire
Highly situational, but again nice to have when you need it.
- Marked for Death
Oh hell yes! +2 MAT / RAT / MA, remove stealth, remove incorporeal. Raptors see this and just start salivating, as does Rhyas, and pretty much anything else in your army.
- Razor wind
Surprisingly useful. While a 2-FURY POW 12 nuke is usually a wasted spell, the twins can make great use of this due to their big FURY pool. Do not underestimate.
- Blood Rain
More expensive, AoE option of razor wind. Useful if your opponent is clumping up infantry, especially since the continuous corrosion makes it really hurt single-wound infantry.
- Flashing blades
The bread-and-butter of what makes Rhyas tick. This spell is the key to getting the most out of the twins. I’ll speak in more detail about getting full value out of flashing blades in the play tactics section.
So at first glance, the twins look like a poor man’s eVayl. Both bring occultation, both bring a DEF debuff (icy grip vs Marked for death), both bring nukes, although Vayl wins this heartily with the power of Chasten, both bring a means to gain pathfinder (Vayl’s being a single-target, but has the added boon of pushing up threat range), and Vayl brings what looks like a much stronger feat, being a strong offensive feat. So the obvious question becomes: “why bother with the twins?” What else do they bring?
The answer is: “Rhyas”. Rhyas brings personal killing power like few other models in the game. She has a respectable POW 13, MAT 8 weaponmaster attack with a nightmarish crit. Recognising this, their game clearly needs to be centred around delivering and getting value out of Rhyas. So with that in mind, let’s look more closely at each of the twins:
Saeryn
Saeryn is a spellslinger with typical squishy Legion caster stats. What is surprising is her stick, with a 2” reach and dispel, which is situationally useful. I have dreamed up scenarios in which it is useful, but honestly I have very rarely used it in a game. She is the leader of the unit, with a limiting CMD value of 8, one of the bigger drawbacks of the twins. The fact that Saeryn is the leader also hurts, as there would be many cases I would be happy to charge up Rhyas, letting her die afterwards and promoting a safe Saeryn.
Rhyas
Wow. Flashing blades opens up a whole world of possibilities for this girl. She has acrobatics and a big SPD value, letting her get into optimal, tight places to thresh down masses of opponents. Even better, if she has enemies around her she can flashing blades before moving, then move and kill the next group of victims. While crit-fishing is usually a low-return prospect, if you can get her into 2-3 warjacks / warbeasts, she is suddenly pumping out 16 or similar attacks, which means you reasonably expect 2-3 crits. The damage output is truly spectacular. She also has (and hilariously grants to Saeryn) Riposte, which can be as powerful in board control as her raw damage output. Rhyas is the secret weapon tat makes the twins tick, learn to respect everything she can do.
Feat
The twins have two modes of feat. The first is an unassuming ability, swapping places with each other. This could be used for some clutch assassinations (and one janky long-ranged assassination), but is something you’re very seldom going to use. Far more prevalent is the second use of their feat, which enables you to bring a dead twin back to life. This again at first glance seems fairly weak, but in game terms it enables something no other caster can do. Your beatstick caster (Rhyas) can blow her entire stack to murder heavies / a big chunk of valuable infantry, and then die without losing you the game. In essence, you can trade your feat for 1-3 heavies’-worth of kills. (arguably butcher3 can, but even he needs to be more cautious than Rhyas does). Once you realise that the feat enables this much work from Rhyas, their playstyle starts to emerge.
Tools of War
So here’s the bad stuff. The twins want a lot, and don’t leave much room for variety. Lets start with the big one – the blightbringer. Many have stated that the twins are a caster that has to choose to go blightbringer or not. I disagree entirely – I consider the blightbringer absolutely essential to the twins. Take a quick recap of the previous section – the twins live and die by trading up with their feat. This is achieved by Rhyas hitting multiple enemies with flashing blades. Often this is underwhelming at POW 13, even with weaponmaster (especially facing armour buffs if you don’t have a Naga). The blackfrost shard are great when facing a single hard target, but Rhyas needs to be a threat to multiple hard targets at once, meaning she needs the strength buff against all her victims. It also requires no hit roll against high-def targets, just shoot something nearby and use the AoE, again just much easier to apply. The other thing he brings is Withering Ash, which is an amazing buff to Legion infantry and Legion casters, making swordies / raptors DEF 16, and the twins DEF 18 vs shooting. So yes, Blighty’s inclusion is not debatable, it’s essential. Next in the recipe is a Seraph, giving flare which is obviously great, but more importantly giving you slipstream which should need no explanation since you’re trying to get further value out of Rhyas. The next ingredient is a Nephilim protector – your front-line caster is quite easy to murder with half a caster’s hitboxes and really appreciates the shield guard. Even more importantly, he brings guard dog. DEF 16 with riposte is annoying, but DEF 18 with riposte is downright terrifying. Even boosting MAT 7, your opponent only has a 50/50 to hit Rhyas, and every time he misses he’s catching a riposte to the face. The board control this enables is absolutely one of the strongest tools the twins can bring. Lastly on the auto-include list is a full unit of Raptors. Lets take a look at all the buffs the army currently has for the raptors:
- Occultation
- Marked for Death
- Banishing Ward if need be
- Blighty STR buff for the charge
- Concealment from blighty if you play them close (not likely, but it’s an option)
Simply too good to ignore. After all this, here’s what’s been spent:
- Blighty (38)
- Seraph (14)
- Neph Prot (10)
- Raptor (18)
That’s 80 points already. In a typical (75-pt) game, you have 19 points left, which really isn’t much to work with. From here the following are all worthy inclusions, and you really need to season to taste:
- Nyss Swordsmen
These guys provide a front line that takes some of the pressure off of Rhyas to initiate the fight. I highly recommend at least a min unit in order to help Rhyas avoid walking into knockdown shenanigans. Onslaught really makes these much more viable, while Withering Ash from blighty pushes them to DEF 16 vs shooting, or alternatively dragon’s blood gives them the ARM boost to survive most template spamming
- Naga Nightlurker
Excellent value, and having a fourth beast is very welcome with the big FURY requirements of the twins (more on this later, it’s deceptive). More importantly, having Wraithbane is priceless on Rhyas, as it’s really important that she gets maximum value out of her swordsmanship. The downside is you’ve already spent 52 points on beasts supporting Rhyas, so you’ve already got big support bloat and it’s pretty hard to justify doing it even further.
- Hellmouth
Not only great board control, but you have the option for the truly obnoxious stealthed hellmouth via occultation. It’s also really great to be able to run Rhyas up behind the Hellmouth, using it to prevent slam-knockdowns while she can charge over it with acrobatics. Really useful, versatile piece.
- Shepards
Keeping down a little bit of FURY is great, but even better is the healing. You are going to be transferring damage off Rhyas, usually to the blightbringer. You absolutely want to keep him healthy and fighting fit.
- Spell martyrs
Extend the threats of Saeryn without exposing her. Great.
I do not currently run the twins in any of the themes, as the inability to include raptors, blightbringer and a Seraph in the same list is too big a hit to them imo. Pick and choose to fit your flavour, these are my recommendations. Hexies are also possible, but I think swordies edge them out.
Tricks of the trade
The first thing to realise is just how versatile the army really is. Here is a sample list I took a while ago to a steamroller:
Twins
Blighty
Seraph
Neph Prot
Min swordies
Max Raptors
Hellmouth
2 shepherds
2 spell martyrs
So, when facing single-target shooting I choose withering ash on the advance with blighty, protecting the swordsmen. If I really want, I can use dragon’s blood to push the Hellmouth to ARM 20, and if needed I can give it stealth. Speaking of stealth, I have a choice of the twins, swordsmen, raptors and the hellmouth for occultation, choosing whichever is needed. This versatility lets you create favourable fights on various sections of the board. Any sort of counterpunch is very strong, since I have three different sources of weaponmasters. You have +6 hit buffs available between flare, withering ash and marked for death, and +2 STR / ARM when needed as well. So, let’s examine some of the tactics that pull it all together:
Respect the leash
Most people look at the twins, see the CMD 8 and claim they need to keep the twins within 8” of each other. This is incorrect. As long as your Seraph is alive, you need to keep the twins within 6” of each other, since you need to keep the threat of the slipstream constant (in theory you can double-slipstream by first slipstreaming Saeryn with the Seraph, then using Saeryn to slipstream Rhyas, but this often causes order-of-activation problems and can also limit your application of flare on a crucial turn). At the far edge of the CMD bubble, you can easily slipstream out of CMD, and only tears ensue (I lost one game to the butcher like this, slipstreaming out of CMD and no longer able to have Rhyas cut off his arrogant head). The leash is 6”, respect it!
You Shall Not Pass!
The greatest, and ballsiest move they have. Rhyas runs out in front of a target, protecting her army with a Neph Prot 3” behind her. She camps 2-4 FURY, depending on what is behind her. If you’re feeling really cheeky, throw up the Nephilim’s animus on her as well. I like to keep her in Withering Ash range as well when doing this, since you are putting her in harm’s way. Now she is a DEF 18 roadblock that kills anything that misses her in melee (and one guy who hits her if you use the animus). Anything that survives gets killed next turn with a flashing blade before even moving the twins. The board control of this move is probably their signature move. Be very aware of enemy knockdown / stationary tech that can hit Rhyas. If this is a risk, it becomes the only time I move occultation on to the twins, since even KD she can survive if she cannot be shot.
Smoke bombs!
Rhyas appears out of nowhere, and cuts the head off of a caster 18” away from Saeryn. This one is a bit situational, since Rhyas has to have a charge target in order to make this work. The recipe is fairly simple. The Seraph slipstreams Saeryn forward 2. Twins get a press forward order, Rhyas charges something, Saeryn runs 14” to within 2” of the enemy caster, then Rhyas feats to swap places, then cuts off the enemy caster’s head.
It's a very risky move, usually on the low success percentage for my liking (often around 70%), but it's flashy enough that it can be worth it just for bragging rights alone.
Blood and Fury
Managing FURY with the twins is not simple. They seem like a 12-fury caster, but while most casters camp 2-3 FURY, they’re going to each camp that, so realistically you need 5-7 FURY on the table. Intriguingly enough, they double-dip into dead warbeasts with spirit tap, salvaging a lot of FURY even when beasts die. Under no circumstances should your Neph Prot ever be on full FURY (this is my most common mistake) – a large part of the twins’ learning curve is when to transfer damage to which beast, and not having options will leave you in trouble. Since the shepherd(s) should be following the blightbringer, he should never be on full FURY.
Suicide is painless
One twin can die. I don't mean to be brought back to life via the feat, I mean irreversibly, uncontestably dead (yes, usually rhyas). This is an almost unique situation in Warmachine (glances over at the coven) - you can sacrifice a caster if need be. This can be exceptionally useful - sometimes a ruthless bruiser caster thinks he can bully you out of a zone, but you know that even if he murders (or RFPs) your caster, you can make him spend so many resources that the surviving twin plus army will kill him. Consider butcher 3 - he can kill Rhyas, and with his upkeep even RVP her, but if she's camping a bit and is behind her Prot (don't let him drag her away from him) then he's gonna have to burn his feat plus most of his focus to kill her. Come next turn, he is in the open with no protection, and Saeryn plus blighty and whatever else will end him. Same goes for Terminus, Stryker2 and a whole host of melee bullies. If you can sacrifice a twin (RFP or dying post-feat) for a significant material benefit, then don't be scared to do it - you always have another one.
Teamwork
Remember that seldom-used portion of the feat? Every now and then your opponent will forget about it as well. Sometimes you'll face a very tanky caster that camps a bit a just doesn't respect Rhyas, staying in her direct charge range. I had someone do this with Ragnor, camping 2 and feating in Rhyas' range. In this case, we both knew Rhyas herself could never kill him. However, with one beast shot tagging a transfer, the twins both charged in (Saeryn charging a bullying mountain king), and then after Rhyas finished all her FURY leaving Ragnor on 1 health, the twins feated and Ragnor now had to face a full-FURY Saeryn who cleaned up his remaining 1 life. This is a bit of a last-ditch manouver, only to be pulled if things are going pear-shaped, but always remember that if your opponent has played too aggressively that you have a second, weaker beater that still has 7 FURY to play with.
Switching Gears
Every now and then you'll come up against something that really cripples rhyas' ability to be the front line. This can be spell hate like Lamentations or a tortured elephant. It could be absurdly accurate troops like Hand-of-Fated vengers, or anything under Kreoss2. Whatever it is, at times you just can't pull the favoured "You Shall not Pass!" manouvre. Don't fret. If you look at most of the essential parts of their list, you'll find almost everything has a ranged attack. The beauty of the twins is that you can, at the drop of a hat, switch over to a ranged defensive mode. In this mode you hang further back with Rhyas, out of direct harm's way, arcing spells for Saeryn who hides behind the blightbringer and spends most / all of her FURY each turn slinging offensive spells. The raptors play a ranged attrition game as do the beasts, while you skirmish a bit with swordies if you have them. You whittle down the opponent until such a time as you wish to switch it up and go into the more standard, offensive melee mode. The ability to completely change up playstyle turn-on-turn is highly unusual in WM, and is something that can throw a lot of opponents off their game.
Foul magics
What do you do with Saeryn while all this is going on? The first step is obviously to keep her alive. 2-3 FURY camped should be obvious every turn, and within the blightbringer’s radius. She has a number of options every turn:
1) Marked for death – highest priority, make something die. Great for sealing the deal on an assassination run if you don’t have to run with Saeryn
2) Razor wind – pick a heavy and get to work hurting it. You often don’t need to burn a martyr if you channel through Rhyas who is pulling her “you shall not pass!” manouver
3) Blood rain on a juicy clump of infantry
4) heal a wounded beast – this is one of the few times you could heal 4-5 health happily on a transfer target. Consider the example list – one transfer will do 10+ damage to my blightbringer. With the two shepards and 4 FURY, I can heal up 8 of those points.
Whew, that’s a lot of chatter. Enjoy the twins, and claim some heads!
-und_ed
Tao of the Twins
Introduction
I have been absolutely loving the twins lately. What I initially picked up as a mess-around warlock has swiftly turned into my favourite Legion caster. I have eaten through the butcher, through Ossyan, cut the head off Severius and Kaelessa and out-attritioned almost every opponent they have faced. I have also stumbled and fallen, over and over again. Over the span of 3 factions and close on 40 casters, I have never encountered a caster with as much complexity and difficulty as the twins, and yet they are just as rewarding to play as they are painful to learn. The purpose of this guide is to try help ease the learning curve of these nightmares so you, the Legion community, can get to the chewy goodness inside. Master the twins, and they bring versatility, a strong long-game attrition factor, great resilience against assassinations as well as some nasty assassination potential as well. Interested? Let’s dive in!
The Twins
The first thing to look at is obviously the twins themselves. Looking at them together, they bring the following spells to help their army:
- Occultation
An amazing spell. With MKIII having a huge amount of single-target stealth removal, this doesn’t do much to protect heavies and is situational at protecting your caster. What it is amazing for is protecting warriors, so use as needed.
- Onslaught
In a faction with pathfinder beasts, we have very few casters that offer pathfinder to our army. Rhyas brings it as an upkeep, which enables Nyss Swordsmen and pushes up Typhon’s value in most cases, as well as lets Rhyas herself charge past walls / through terrain.
- Banishing Ward
Again situational, but fantastic for protecting units from unpleasant spells, or protecting your caster(s) from the likes of Rahn / Zerkova2. Pretty useful against Haley2 as well who loves to TK casters around.
- Psychic Vampire
Highly situational, but again nice to have when you need it.
- Marked for Death
Oh hell yes! +2 MAT / RAT / MA, remove stealth, remove incorporeal. Raptors see this and just start salivating, as does Rhyas, and pretty much anything else in your army.
- Razor wind
Surprisingly useful. While a 2-FURY POW 12 nuke is usually a wasted spell, the twins can make great use of this due to their big FURY pool. Do not underestimate.
- Blood Rain
More expensive, AoE option of razor wind. Useful if your opponent is clumping up infantry, especially since the continuous corrosion makes it really hurt single-wound infantry.
- Flashing blades
The bread-and-butter of what makes Rhyas tick. This spell is the key to getting the most out of the twins. I’ll speak in more detail about getting full value out of flashing blades in the play tactics section.
So at first glance, the twins look like a poor man’s eVayl. Both bring occultation, both bring a DEF debuff (icy grip vs Marked for death), both bring nukes, although Vayl wins this heartily with the power of Chasten, both bring a means to gain pathfinder (Vayl’s being a single-target, but has the added boon of pushing up threat range), and Vayl brings what looks like a much stronger feat, being a strong offensive feat. So the obvious question becomes: “why bother with the twins?” What else do they bring?
The answer is: “Rhyas”. Rhyas brings personal killing power like few other models in the game. She has a respectable POW 13, MAT 8 weaponmaster attack with a nightmarish crit. Recognising this, their game clearly needs to be centred around delivering and getting value out of Rhyas. So with that in mind, let’s look more closely at each of the twins:
Saeryn
Saeryn is a spellslinger with typical squishy Legion caster stats. What is surprising is her stick, with a 2” reach and dispel, which is situationally useful. I have dreamed up scenarios in which it is useful, but honestly I have very rarely used it in a game. She is the leader of the unit, with a limiting CMD value of 8, one of the bigger drawbacks of the twins. The fact that Saeryn is the leader also hurts, as there would be many cases I would be happy to charge up Rhyas, letting her die afterwards and promoting a safe Saeryn.
Rhyas
Wow. Flashing blades opens up a whole world of possibilities for this girl. She has acrobatics and a big SPD value, letting her get into optimal, tight places to thresh down masses of opponents. Even better, if she has enemies around her she can flashing blades before moving, then move and kill the next group of victims. While crit-fishing is usually a low-return prospect, if you can get her into 2-3 warjacks / warbeasts, she is suddenly pumping out 16 or similar attacks, which means you reasonably expect 2-3 crits. The damage output is truly spectacular. She also has (and hilariously grants to Saeryn) Riposte, which can be as powerful in board control as her raw damage output. Rhyas is the secret weapon tat makes the twins tick, learn to respect everything she can do.
Feat
The twins have two modes of feat. The first is an unassuming ability, swapping places with each other. This could be used for some clutch assassinations (and one janky long-ranged assassination), but is something you’re very seldom going to use. Far more prevalent is the second use of their feat, which enables you to bring a dead twin back to life. This again at first glance seems fairly weak, but in game terms it enables something no other caster can do. Your beatstick caster (Rhyas) can blow her entire stack to murder heavies / a big chunk of valuable infantry, and then die without losing you the game. In essence, you can trade your feat for 1-3 heavies’-worth of kills. (arguably butcher3 can, but even he needs to be more cautious than Rhyas does). Once you realise that the feat enables this much work from Rhyas, their playstyle starts to emerge.
Tools of War
So here’s the bad stuff. The twins want a lot, and don’t leave much room for variety. Lets start with the big one – the blightbringer. Many have stated that the twins are a caster that has to choose to go blightbringer or not. I disagree entirely – I consider the blightbringer absolutely essential to the twins. Take a quick recap of the previous section – the twins live and die by trading up with their feat. This is achieved by Rhyas hitting multiple enemies with flashing blades. Often this is underwhelming at POW 13, even with weaponmaster (especially facing armour buffs if you don’t have a Naga). The blackfrost shard are great when facing a single hard target, but Rhyas needs to be a threat to multiple hard targets at once, meaning she needs the strength buff against all her victims. It also requires no hit roll against high-def targets, just shoot something nearby and use the AoE, again just much easier to apply. The other thing he brings is Withering Ash, which is an amazing buff to Legion infantry and Legion casters, making swordies / raptors DEF 16, and the twins DEF 18 vs shooting. So yes, Blighty’s inclusion is not debatable, it’s essential. Next in the recipe is a Seraph, giving flare which is obviously great, but more importantly giving you slipstream which should need no explanation since you’re trying to get further value out of Rhyas. The next ingredient is a Nephilim protector – your front-line caster is quite easy to murder with half a caster’s hitboxes and really appreciates the shield guard. Even more importantly, he brings guard dog. DEF 16 with riposte is annoying, but DEF 18 with riposte is downright terrifying. Even boosting MAT 7, your opponent only has a 50/50 to hit Rhyas, and every time he misses he’s catching a riposte to the face. The board control this enables is absolutely one of the strongest tools the twins can bring. Lastly on the auto-include list is a full unit of Raptors. Lets take a look at all the buffs the army currently has for the raptors:
- Occultation
- Marked for Death
- Banishing Ward if need be
- Blighty STR buff for the charge
- Concealment from blighty if you play them close (not likely, but it’s an option)
Simply too good to ignore. After all this, here’s what’s been spent:
- Blighty (38)
- Seraph (14)
- Neph Prot (10)
- Raptor (18)
That’s 80 points already. In a typical (75-pt) game, you have 19 points left, which really isn’t much to work with. From here the following are all worthy inclusions, and you really need to season to taste:
- Nyss Swordsmen
These guys provide a front line that takes some of the pressure off of Rhyas to initiate the fight. I highly recommend at least a min unit in order to help Rhyas avoid walking into knockdown shenanigans. Onslaught really makes these much more viable, while Withering Ash from blighty pushes them to DEF 16 vs shooting, or alternatively dragon’s blood gives them the ARM boost to survive most template spamming
- Naga Nightlurker
Excellent value, and having a fourth beast is very welcome with the big FURY requirements of the twins (more on this later, it’s deceptive). More importantly, having Wraithbane is priceless on Rhyas, as it’s really important that she gets maximum value out of her swordsmanship. The downside is you’ve already spent 52 points on beasts supporting Rhyas, so you’ve already got big support bloat and it’s pretty hard to justify doing it even further.
- Hellmouth
Not only great board control, but you have the option for the truly obnoxious stealthed hellmouth via occultation. It’s also really great to be able to run Rhyas up behind the Hellmouth, using it to prevent slam-knockdowns while she can charge over it with acrobatics. Really useful, versatile piece.
- Shepards
Keeping down a little bit of FURY is great, but even better is the healing. You are going to be transferring damage off Rhyas, usually to the blightbringer. You absolutely want to keep him healthy and fighting fit.
- Spell martyrs
Extend the threats of Saeryn without exposing her. Great.
I do not currently run the twins in any of the themes, as the inability to include raptors, blightbringer and a Seraph in the same list is too big a hit to them imo. Pick and choose to fit your flavour, these are my recommendations. Hexies are also possible, but I think swordies edge them out.
Tricks of the trade
The first thing to realise is just how versatile the army really is. Here is a sample list I took a while ago to a steamroller:
Twins
Blighty
Seraph
Neph Prot
Min swordies
Max Raptors
Hellmouth
2 shepherds
2 spell martyrs
So, when facing single-target shooting I choose withering ash on the advance with blighty, protecting the swordsmen. If I really want, I can use dragon’s blood to push the Hellmouth to ARM 20, and if needed I can give it stealth. Speaking of stealth, I have a choice of the twins, swordsmen, raptors and the hellmouth for occultation, choosing whichever is needed. This versatility lets you create favourable fights on various sections of the board. Any sort of counterpunch is very strong, since I have three different sources of weaponmasters. You have +6 hit buffs available between flare, withering ash and marked for death, and +2 STR / ARM when needed as well. So, let’s examine some of the tactics that pull it all together:
Respect the leash
Most people look at the twins, see the CMD 8 and claim they need to keep the twins within 8” of each other. This is incorrect. As long as your Seraph is alive, you need to keep the twins within 6” of each other, since you need to keep the threat of the slipstream constant (in theory you can double-slipstream by first slipstreaming Saeryn with the Seraph, then using Saeryn to slipstream Rhyas, but this often causes order-of-activation problems and can also limit your application of flare on a crucial turn). At the far edge of the CMD bubble, you can easily slipstream out of CMD, and only tears ensue (I lost one game to the butcher like this, slipstreaming out of CMD and no longer able to have Rhyas cut off his arrogant head). The leash is 6”, respect it!
You Shall Not Pass!
The greatest, and ballsiest move they have. Rhyas runs out in front of a target, protecting her army with a Neph Prot 3” behind her. She camps 2-4 FURY, depending on what is behind her. If you’re feeling really cheeky, throw up the Nephilim’s animus on her as well. I like to keep her in Withering Ash range as well when doing this, since you are putting her in harm’s way. Now she is a DEF 18 roadblock that kills anything that misses her in melee (and one guy who hits her if you use the animus). Anything that survives gets killed next turn with a flashing blade before even moving the twins. The board control of this move is probably their signature move. Be very aware of enemy knockdown / stationary tech that can hit Rhyas. If this is a risk, it becomes the only time I move occultation on to the twins, since even KD she can survive if she cannot be shot.
Smoke bombs!
Rhyas appears out of nowhere, and cuts the head off of a caster 18” away from Saeryn. This one is a bit situational, since Rhyas has to have a charge target in order to make this work. The recipe is fairly simple. The Seraph slipstreams Saeryn forward 2. Twins get a press forward order, Rhyas charges something, Saeryn runs 14” to within 2” of the enemy caster, then Rhyas feats to swap places, then cuts off the enemy caster’s head.
It's a very risky move, usually on the low success percentage for my liking (often around 70%), but it's flashy enough that it can be worth it just for bragging rights alone.
Blood and Fury
Managing FURY with the twins is not simple. They seem like a 12-fury caster, but while most casters camp 2-3 FURY, they’re going to each camp that, so realistically you need 5-7 FURY on the table. Intriguingly enough, they double-dip into dead warbeasts with spirit tap, salvaging a lot of FURY even when beasts die. Under no circumstances should your Neph Prot ever be on full FURY (this is my most common mistake) – a large part of the twins’ learning curve is when to transfer damage to which beast, and not having options will leave you in trouble. Since the shepherd(s) should be following the blightbringer, he should never be on full FURY.
Suicide is painless
One twin can die. I don't mean to be brought back to life via the feat, I mean irreversibly, uncontestably dead (yes, usually rhyas). This is an almost unique situation in Warmachine (glances over at the coven) - you can sacrifice a caster if need be. This can be exceptionally useful - sometimes a ruthless bruiser caster thinks he can bully you out of a zone, but you know that even if he murders (or RFPs) your caster, you can make him spend so many resources that the surviving twin plus army will kill him. Consider butcher 3 - he can kill Rhyas, and with his upkeep even RVP her, but if she's camping a bit and is behind her Prot (don't let him drag her away from him) then he's gonna have to burn his feat plus most of his focus to kill her. Come next turn, he is in the open with no protection, and Saeryn plus blighty and whatever else will end him. Same goes for Terminus, Stryker2 and a whole host of melee bullies. If you can sacrifice a twin (RFP or dying post-feat) for a significant material benefit, then don't be scared to do it - you always have another one.
Teamwork
Remember that seldom-used portion of the feat? Every now and then your opponent will forget about it as well. Sometimes you'll face a very tanky caster that camps a bit a just doesn't respect Rhyas, staying in her direct charge range. I had someone do this with Ragnor, camping 2 and feating in Rhyas' range. In this case, we both knew Rhyas herself could never kill him. However, with one beast shot tagging a transfer, the twins both charged in (Saeryn charging a bullying mountain king), and then after Rhyas finished all her FURY leaving Ragnor on 1 health, the twins feated and Ragnor now had to face a full-FURY Saeryn who cleaned up his remaining 1 life. This is a bit of a last-ditch manouver, only to be pulled if things are going pear-shaped, but always remember that if your opponent has played too aggressively that you have a second, weaker beater that still has 7 FURY to play with.
Switching Gears
Every now and then you'll come up against something that really cripples rhyas' ability to be the front line. This can be spell hate like Lamentations or a tortured elephant. It could be absurdly accurate troops like Hand-of-Fated vengers, or anything under Kreoss2. Whatever it is, at times you just can't pull the favoured "You Shall not Pass!" manouvre. Don't fret. If you look at most of the essential parts of their list, you'll find almost everything has a ranged attack. The beauty of the twins is that you can, at the drop of a hat, switch over to a ranged defensive mode. In this mode you hang further back with Rhyas, out of direct harm's way, arcing spells for Saeryn who hides behind the blightbringer and spends most / all of her FURY each turn slinging offensive spells. The raptors play a ranged attrition game as do the beasts, while you skirmish a bit with swordies if you have them. You whittle down the opponent until such a time as you wish to switch it up and go into the more standard, offensive melee mode. The ability to completely change up playstyle turn-on-turn is highly unusual in WM, and is something that can throw a lot of opponents off their game.
Foul magics
What do you do with Saeryn while all this is going on? The first step is obviously to keep her alive. 2-3 FURY camped should be obvious every turn, and within the blightbringer’s radius. She has a number of options every turn:
1) Marked for death – highest priority, make something die. Great for sealing the deal on an assassination run if you don’t have to run with Saeryn
2) Razor wind – pick a heavy and get to work hurting it. You often don’t need to burn a martyr if you channel through Rhyas who is pulling her “you shall not pass!” manouver
3) Blood rain on a juicy clump of infantry
4) heal a wounded beast – this is one of the few times you could heal 4-5 health happily on a transfer target. Consider the example list – one transfer will do 10+ damage to my blightbringer. With the two shepards and 4 FURY, I can heal up 8 of those points.
Whew, that’s a lot of chatter. Enjoy the twins, and claim some heads!
-und_ed