Post by metallicalex on Apr 1, 2017 16:52:23 GMT
Hello all! I wanted to discuss the one caster in Cyriss that gets very little love by most that prefer our faction....Aurora.
Aurora is an infantry caster. As a general rule of thumb, our faction is a jack faction....our infantry are not instantly overpowered like many units from other factions and our faction requires a ton of support. These facts combine to mean that Aurora doesn't shine easily. We currently have a single theme and (not surprisingly) it is a jack centric theme. Aurora is quite bad in this theme as far as I can tell. Having said all of that, I'd like to convince you to give her another chance....
In MK2, she was only seen with maxed out angel hordes hoping to get that tasty assassination run off and often failing when your opponent had decent defensive stats or if your opponent killed enough angels....MK2 aurora was (in my opinion, as with most people) very lackluster. But MK3 saw two major changes...her mobility spell got 110% better and her feat even more so!!
Mk3 aurora gives all warrior models +2" of movement and flight....as a spell...every turn...This means that at any given point you can grab a flag, attack an objective, or contest a zone with any warrior in your army. I basically look at aurora as a 4 focus caster because she will be casting aerogenesis every single turn with very very few exceptions!! MK3 aurora's feat changed from being a corner case assassination in MK2 to something entirely different! in MK3 you can use her feat to ensure that every model in your opponents army is jammed or you can use the feat to make every model in your army attack their caster....so, in other words, it can be a massive scenario feat or a massive assassination feat or it could be both!
Many people look at aurora and assume she is the same old assassination queen from MK2, needing angels to do her shtick....that is completely wrong. I never take angels with aurora and here's why: angels are expensive, few in a unit, not hard hitting and tend to die to a floating AOE from my opponent. for the cost of 3 units of them i could instead have 1 unit of eradicators....9 wounds vs 40 wounds. low arm vs high arm. 9 low rat attacks (or 3 decent shots)vs 10 high mat attacks. low recursion target vs amazing recursion target. eradicators aside, 3 units of angels aren't as good as a single unit of obstructors with aurora!!! obstructors bring 1 more body, reach, cma all in a single unit which means they are the perfect recursion target!
common lists that I run with aurora tend to include exactly 27 points of jacks (as that is what she brings to the table) and then 75 points of infantry and support....this maxes out the use of aerogenesis and her feat. The meta, by and large, is very armor and jack oriented. any list with aurora needs to operate at a complete 180 from that. my lists tend to have upwards of 50 models on the table compared to my opponents 20-30...and i tend to bring back 6 dead dudes per turn. Most of my games are won because my opponents simply run out of attacks. they can kill one of two units worth of men but by that time i have done the same to him and i have also revived another units worth of men....by turn 4 (assuming i didn't kill him in turn 2 or turn 3) he will be out of infantry, his jacks/ beasts will be beat up and all of his models will be engaged. at the same time i will have 2 mostly untouched units left along with my support and my jacks, if there are flags or anything else i can grab i can easily throw models on it....my opponent probably can't say the same...
Many people are probably thinking "why does any of this matter, she is still near the bottom of the list when compared to lucant, synth, axis or mother....why should i care?" the answer is simple. all 4 of the other casters tend to run armor in an armor meta. people show up to tournaments expecting to crack armor and probably have at least 1 list that is INCREDIBLY good at doing that job. if you have 2 of our "good" casters running in tier with a bunch of heavies the choice is easy for your opponent...they'll just drop the armor crack and call it a day....but if you run aurora as one of your lists with 50+ bodies on the table their choice becomes a lot more complicated!
Let me know what you think! I am always interested to hear what other think
Aurora is an infantry caster. As a general rule of thumb, our faction is a jack faction....our infantry are not instantly overpowered like many units from other factions and our faction requires a ton of support. These facts combine to mean that Aurora doesn't shine easily. We currently have a single theme and (not surprisingly) it is a jack centric theme. Aurora is quite bad in this theme as far as I can tell. Having said all of that, I'd like to convince you to give her another chance....
In MK2, she was only seen with maxed out angel hordes hoping to get that tasty assassination run off and often failing when your opponent had decent defensive stats or if your opponent killed enough angels....MK2 aurora was (in my opinion, as with most people) very lackluster. But MK3 saw two major changes...her mobility spell got 110% better and her feat even more so!!
Mk3 aurora gives all warrior models +2" of movement and flight....as a spell...every turn...This means that at any given point you can grab a flag, attack an objective, or contest a zone with any warrior in your army. I basically look at aurora as a 4 focus caster because she will be casting aerogenesis every single turn with very very few exceptions!! MK3 aurora's feat changed from being a corner case assassination in MK2 to something entirely different! in MK3 you can use her feat to ensure that every model in your opponents army is jammed or you can use the feat to make every model in your army attack their caster....so, in other words, it can be a massive scenario feat or a massive assassination feat or it could be both!
Many people look at aurora and assume she is the same old assassination queen from MK2, needing angels to do her shtick....that is completely wrong. I never take angels with aurora and here's why: angels are expensive, few in a unit, not hard hitting and tend to die to a floating AOE from my opponent. for the cost of 3 units of them i could instead have 1 unit of eradicators....9 wounds vs 40 wounds. low arm vs high arm. 9 low rat attacks (or 3 decent shots)vs 10 high mat attacks. low recursion target vs amazing recursion target. eradicators aside, 3 units of angels aren't as good as a single unit of obstructors with aurora!!! obstructors bring 1 more body, reach, cma all in a single unit which means they are the perfect recursion target!
common lists that I run with aurora tend to include exactly 27 points of jacks (as that is what she brings to the table) and then 75 points of infantry and support....this maxes out the use of aerogenesis and her feat. The meta, by and large, is very armor and jack oriented. any list with aurora needs to operate at a complete 180 from that. my lists tend to have upwards of 50 models on the table compared to my opponents 20-30...and i tend to bring back 6 dead dudes per turn. Most of my games are won because my opponents simply run out of attacks. they can kill one of two units worth of men but by that time i have done the same to him and i have also revived another units worth of men....by turn 4 (assuming i didn't kill him in turn 2 or turn 3) he will be out of infantry, his jacks/ beasts will be beat up and all of his models will be engaged. at the same time i will have 2 mostly untouched units left along with my support and my jacks, if there are flags or anything else i can grab i can easily throw models on it....my opponent probably can't say the same...
Many people are probably thinking "why does any of this matter, she is still near the bottom of the list when compared to lucant, synth, axis or mother....why should i care?" the answer is simple. all 4 of the other casters tend to run armor in an armor meta. people show up to tournaments expecting to crack armor and probably have at least 1 list that is INCREDIBLY good at doing that job. if you have 2 of our "good" casters running in tier with a bunch of heavies the choice is easy for your opponent...they'll just drop the armor crack and call it a day....but if you run aurora as one of your lists with 50+ bodies on the table their choice becomes a lot more complicated!
Let me know what you think! I am always interested to hear what other think
