Having Fun with the Spawning Vessel.

People seem to not all love the spawning vessel.

Its a great piece and often not appreciated.

I'd like to make a few things clear to how it can be played.

First of all you need to know your lesser warbeasts.

1) Shredder is very powerful.  Flank means it can deal a lot of damage.

2) Stingers have Spray 6 Rat4. Assault.   These guys can spray along way.  Boosted Rat4 hits Def14 10% of the time.

3) Harriers are fast and can get over your other stuff because of flying.  I think they are the worst lesser, but they are easy to deploy.

They also have useful animus.   Relentless charge, Counterblast and Elusive are all worth 1 fury when you need them.

Lessers like to charge for free.  
Lylth1,   Abby2,   Sorceress on Hellion and the star of the lesser warbeast - The Beast Mistress.

Lesser Warbeasts like global buffs that don't target just them:

Thag1,  Valy1, Kryssa1, Abby2 have great buffs for them.   Thag2 can't buff their damage and let them charge for free - but his hyper aggressive spell and proposed sac pawn are a fun looking combo.

Second the Spawning vessel gives you great threat range.
A 6 man spawning vessel,  moves 6, places with 3,  then the beast can be enegisered by the Beast mistress,  giving 11" of movement before it activates (which could be a charge assult spray for 15"  that's 26" of threat.   That's very far for about a 50% chance of killing a Def14 solo on say a flag.  2" more in Oracles.

Third.   Now we are cooking.
Keeping the pot full is easy.  3 things need to die near to the pot.    The easiest way to do this is to keep a unit near by and kill it yourself.   I've most successfully used archers at 13 points for 10,  they are quite cheap,  but in Oracles you could take the Shamblers minions - who fill the pot at very low cost.  With the archers I could move them,  shoot them,  then kill some of them to make sure I get a free beast each turn.  Or you can take the Gatorman cooking pot too - and generate D3 corpses that way.     The final way to fill the pot it to kill its own people - but only do that as a last resort - because you reduce the threat range (for next turn) and you lower the collection range for future turns.   Still the pot ladies killing each other rolls are pretty fun (and so annoying if they miss too much).  

incubi are also good to put in the pot.   So the archers unit near a pot - if your opponent kills some - but you think might not kill enough - give them an incubi to kill - they might kill that too - or if they don't you can charge/run it forwards.


Strategies to use against the pot.

Say I take:   Double Pot, Archers+UA and Incubi.

My opponent has the following choices:

1) Ignore these models.  (Archers shoot,  Pot kills archers/each other.)  No incubi spawn.
2) Shoot the pots  The pots are arm 18 8 boxes, and far back.  It takes quality shooting to kill them and brings things forwards.

3) Shoot the archers giving me free Shredders/Harriers/Stingers.

This level of recursion can take a lot of practice to do quickly.  The clock is a big enemy for these mechanics so it can take a bit of practice to get it up to speed - but its very effective.

I've yet to run the Shamblers with it - but I think because the Gator man can collect only living corpses and the pot can collect living or undead corpses - they will work very well together.