Stats:
SPD STR MAT RAT DEF ARM FURY HEALTH CMD Base WBP
5 9 8 3 13 18 7 18 10 50mm +23
Stat Thoughts: Overall a pretty tough nut to crack. He boasts high hp, armor, mat and fury ensuring the enemy will need to dedicate a lot of resources trying to assassinate him. He also gained a fury from his previous incarnation. Fairly low WBPs when compared to the other Minion casters, but you gain 3 extra models with sac-pawn and dark shroud to help make up the difference.
Abilities:
Tough: Roll a 5 or 6 and you survive and killing blow, heal 1 hp and are knocked down, unless you have:
Steady: Can’t knock him off his wave of bones!
Minion/Gatorman Warlock: Will work for Legion, Circle, Skorne and Trollbloods. Can only have Gatorman warbeast in his battlegroup.
Amphibious: Treats shallow water as normal terrain, gains concealment and doesn’t block LOS while completely within shallow water.
Warlock Unit: Consists of eBarnabus and up to 3 bone shaker minions.
Bone Pile: When a model in his unit destroys an enemy model, eBarnabus gains the corpse and the enemy model is RFP’ed.
Meat-Fueled: eBarnabus gains +1 str for each corpse on him.
Sac-Pawn [Bone Shaker]: When directly hit by a ranged attack he can shunt off the hit to a bone shaker within 3” of him.
Tide of Skulls: Spend a corpse during the control phase to add 1 bone shaker per corpse spent. Models must be placed in formation and within 3” of another model in the unit and forfeit their combat action. Can only have 3 in play at any time.
Ability thoughts: Corpses, corpses everywhere. eBarnabus is all about keeping himself stacked full of corpses. Doing so keeps him safe from ranged attacks with bone shakers and increases his strength. Speaking of strength, with a full corpse load and a bone shaker in range for dark shroud he can have a +5 damage swing!
Weapons:
Bone Cleaver: Rng 2 pow 6 magical axe, P+S 15.
Bite: Rng 0.5” pow 5 bite, P+S 14. Grievous wounds.
Weapon thoughts: His bone cleaver lost blood boon, which is unfortunate since he wants to be up on the front line getting work done. Between meat fueled and dark shroud from a bone shaker he can reach pow 20 on bone cleaver and pow 19 on his bite!
Spells:
Blood rain: Cost 3 Rng 8 AOE 3 Pow 12. Models hit suffer continuous corrosion.
Execration of Blackest Night: Cost 2 Rng Self. Enemy models suffer -2 to attack rolls while in his CMD range.
Hunter’s Mark: Cost 2 Rng 10: Friendly models can slam/charge the model hit for free and gain +2” of movement.
Onslaught: Cost 2 Rng Self upkeep. FF models beginning their activation in the Barnabus’s control area gain relentless charge.
Rebuke: Cost 2 Rng 10 offensive spell. Target model/unit hit cannot give/receive orders, make special attacks or power attacks.
Spell thoughts: Onslaught and hunter’s mark alleviate the short threat ranges and lack of pathfinder on most minion beasts and GMP. EoBN will greatly help everything survive once the lines meet. With access to the blindwalker and bone shrines, rebuke can be used all over the battlefield to shut down enemy models. Blood rain is a situational nuke, but the fury is probably better spent elsewhere.
Feat - Death Ritual: Immediately RFP one or more friendly living/undead model in Barnabus’s control. For each model removed Barnabus can either gain 1 corpse, gain 1 fury, or heal d3 off a model in his battlegroup.
Thoughts about the feat: Requires you to bring sacrificial models, Bokor and swamp shamblers spring to mind. The timing of the feat can be fairly flexible. It can refill Barnabus to finish killing off an enemy model, heal any damaged systems in his battlegroup, and refill himself on corpses after spawning bone shakers.
eBarnabus’s strengths at first glance: He will be an absolute pain to kill with 3 bone shakers, either swarm or SG, and camping a couple fury. He also will have a potential max threat range of 12” after applying hunter’s mark, swinging at pow 20/19. Whatever he hits should die, and if not he can always feat to get back up to 7 fury to buy more attacks. Rebuke should stymie most infantry and force your opponent to have to consider their model placements carefully. With his bone shakers applying dark shroud, cracking armor should be easier. While most minion units have pathfinder, the beast do not and will benefit greatly from onslaught.
eBarnabus’s weaknesses at first glance: While he will be a pain to kill fully buffed, his large base will make it harder to completely screen him from shooting. A dedicated shooting list (nemo3, sloan, WG rockets) has the potential and enough shots to be of concern. Apart from the Thrullg, he has no way of stripping upkeeps. He also has no way of increasing mat/rat or dice manipulation. His lower WBPs could cause issues with list building, and being forced to take at least 1 unit will also cost him some flexibility in list construction.
Bone Shakers:
SPD STR MAT RAT DEF ARM HEALTH CMD Base
5 6 6 3 13 14 1 5 30mm
Abilities:
Amphibious, undead, dark shroud (-2 arm while in this model's melee range), steady.
Weapons: RNG 1 pow 4. P+S 10
Thoughts: Portable, respawn-able, sac pawns that can hand out -2 arm to anything within 1” of it. Will be useful for keeping Barnabus alive on the way in, and helping crack arm once the lines meet.
Overall thoughts: Open up a lane and deliver Barnabus to whatever needs to die, be it a caster, beast or colossal since he can have potentially 15 P+S 20 attacks (and one P+S 19). He can also weather an alpha and heal any beast back up to full functionality with his feat allowing his army to punch back at full strength. He will need to be closer to the front lines to apply EoBN, but with his high armor and sac pawns he should be relatively safe. Being able to extend threat ranges and hand out pathfinder on charges should allow you to utilize any terrain on the table to your advantage.