With the release of the CID rules, I wanted to explore some of the less popular items. In this instance, I wanted to focus on the Daemon, who received a cost decrease. The Daemon is not a jack I had really ever paid attention to since Mk2, so it seemed like a good time to explore with it.
In dojoing it, I decided that it was a jack that really wanted to see use on a jack marshal. Like all Retribution jacks, it does work both in melee and at range, and the Daemon’s gun is rather unique in that it operates similarly to the spell Hellmouth. The list theory became thus: does a marshal’d Daemon do enough infantry clearing that the Sentinels can focus on more important targets? Does it clear out infantry that would be a danger to the Sentinels?
Above and beyond loving the mechanics of jack marshalling, I wanted to jack marshal it for a number of specific reasons: the Daemon’s gun does not do blast damage in the normal sense, rather it gathers models underneath AoE and delivers a Pow 12. If you use the Take Aim! drive, then everyone gets a friendly Pow 14. Taken with a caster who debuffs armor (i.e. Goreshade4) things get even better.
One of the weaknesses of the Daemon’s gun is the range 10 (making aiming even harder to use), so I ended up focusing on the Sentinel Scyir, as the Righteous Vengeance he provides allows the jack to get into a better position at the start of the turn. Additionally, the theme grants flank, helping to make up for the less than jaw dropping base pow 16 (access to Power Booster, Flank, Crush, and Concentrated Power as is needed). In this way I hoped to utilize the jack to work into all manner of targets from light infantry to heavier armor.
For these reasons, the list I settled on was:
Goreshade4, Legions of Dawn
-Chimera
-Imperatus
-Sylys Wyshnalyrr
Arcanist Mechanik
Arcanist Mechanik
Arcanist Mechanik
Sentinel Scyir
-Daemon
Sentinel Scyir
-Daemon
Sentinels (max)
-Soulless Escort
Sentinels (max)
-Soulless Escort
Additional dojo notes going into the build of this list is that with a cloud wall, Dauntless Resolve, and Ghost Walk, the Sentinel Officer and Banner are effectively redundant and wasted points.
I met up with
isotope , and he obligingly met my request of not playing Vyros or Issyria so that I could actually utilize my cloudwall.
Rahn, Legions of Dawn
-Chimera
-Imperatus
Arcanist Mechanik
Arcanist Mechanik
Arcanist Mechanik
Soulless Voidtracer
Sentinel Scyir
-Harpy
Sentinels (max)
-Officer and Standard
-Soulless Escort
Sentinels (max)
-Officer and Standard
-Soulless Escort
Dawnguard Trident
He won the roll and elected to go first.
Rahn Turn 1: Pretty much everything runs up, Rahn does TK the BE for a little extra distance and puts Polarity Field on it. It manages to roll 2 Trident Snacks.
Goreshade Turn 1: I already regret not getting to go first! Goreshade lays down 2 clouds, puts Dauntless Resolve on the right side Sentinels. Everything runs up, Arcanists Power Boost to top off my access to Arcane Vortex.
Rahn Turn 2: We proxy out an assassination run. The Chimera runs into the clouds, Rahn feats and puts 4 TK’s into Goreshade, but I can only cancel 3 of them. Goreshade gets turned around, the Trident moves up and kills him, 7’s to hit, dice off 3 damage, with 3 tokens.
We rewind and he goes a more conservative route. The Trident moves to the side and kills 3 of the right side Sentinels. The Harpy moves up and kills 2 of the left side Sentinels. His Sentinels both pop their minifeats. Voidtracer grabs his flag.
Goreshade Turn 2: Nearly literally everything in my army has a form of Vengeance this turn, both units, both Scyirs, and both jacks. Left Sentinels move up and kill a Sentinel. Right Sentinels do the same. Both Daemons move forward with Righteous Vengeance to align the most impactful shots. Chimera teleports and runs to position. Goreshade moves back, feats. He puts Hand of Ice on the left side enemy Sentinels, Ghost Walk on my friendly right side Sentinels, and makes a cloud to block LoS to himself. An Arcanist gives a Daemon a point of focus, he uses Take Aim! and boosts into the left side enemy Sentinels, pulling in 5 models (4 Sentinels and Voidtracer) and killing all but the Officer due to 5 boxes. My left side Sentinels then kill the rest of his unit except for the Banner and Soulless Escort. The next Daemon Take Aim!s and shoots the right side enemy Sentinels, pulling in another 5 models. These are harder to kill, so 2 survive due to failure to break armor. Imperatus kills 1 Sentinel over a wall, gets an additional focus from an Arcanist for Arcane Vortex. My right side Sentinels finish off all but his banner, Soulless Escort, and a Sentinel that they missed due to dice. CP: 0-0
Rahn Turn 3: The Trident comes on in and kills off 5 Sentinels with various shots and melee (even sans UA, mine are Arm 20 and tough with the upkeep in play). The Chimera moves in and Rahn feats, burning through 3 Arcane Vortexes to try to TK Imperatus (he missed that Goreshade was in range to use it too). Due to feat, Lanyssa is able to Hunter’s Mark Imperatus. The Trident did free up his lone surviving Sentinel to charge in and engage Imperatus. His Scyir moves up and kills a Sentinel that would have free struck the Harpy. The Harpy gets buffed up with Concentrated Power, Crush, and Power Boost, charges in on Imperatus and gets him to Phoenix Protocol. A mechanik grabs his flag. CP: 0-1
Goreshade Turn 3: All the Vengeances again, except for 1 Scyir in the back field. Sentinels kill off the Scyir, left Banner, and left Soulless Escort. Right side kill of the Banner and dent Imperatus. Both jacks advance and beat on the Harpy. Goreshade is sitting pretty happy with a nice pile of focus, allocates 2 to Imperatus. The Sentinel Scyir charges the Mechanik on the flag and kills him. The left Sentinels run/charge and kill his objective. The Chimera runs into position. Goreshade puts a boosted, Arcane Assisted Hand of Ice into Imperatus, he hits (base Def 13 + 4 Cover + 4 Engaged -2 Back Arc vs. Focus 7 + 4D6 drop lowest). He puts Ghost Walk on Imperatus, walks back, and drops 2 clouds. Daemon gets Crush and finishes off the Harpy. Other Scyir charges and kills the final Sentinel. Right Sentinels beat on Imperatus some more. Imperatus gets Concentrated Power, walks in and Imperatus kills Imperatus with 2 focus to spare (attacks go onto the Trident). Other Daemon walks over to the wall, shoots the Chimera and pulls in Lanyssa, killing her. CP: 2-1
Rahn Turn 4: Another assassination run! The Chimera runs behind the clouds. Rahn TK’s the Trident away from Imperatus and the Sentinels. Many additional TK’s later Goreshade is no longer protected by clouds and is backwards. The Trident charges my Scyir, only rolls 1 token, and 5 shots. Miss, miss, miss, hit, 5-5-6 damage, hit, snake eyes, miss. Goreshade makes it out somehow, Rahn concedes.
Red: Nothing
Orange: Nothing
Yellow:
Trident: It concerns me still for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, pretty much everything that it did this game was very reasonable, dice and statistically speaking. However, I do remain concerned about the speed stacking that is available in this faction, once you start adding caster speed buffs (TK) and Hunters Mark and the Trident you have managed a +6 swing on the speed of a fairly scary jack like Imperatus. There is nothing in this battle report that highlights this, it is merely an ongoing concern.
The volume of fire is a concern as well, and this was a fairly hard thing to nail down when discussing the game with my opponent. Again, nothing it did was crazy, killed 3 Sentinels, then another 5 Sentinels; that is well within the performance curve of any BE. However, any time this game that it was able to get a bead on my caster I was in serious trouble (Turn 2 kill and the Turn 4 attempt). Once I was able to think things over, I think this is in part related to the volume of shots that it generates, the fact that it can move very far forward to apply these shots, the fact that it can do so while engaged, and the fact that these are ranged weapons and have a further impact than melee weapons. My opponent’s list was not especially designed to support the ranged output of the Trident and yet he was able to put my caster on pretty serious notice twice with merely a +2 to hit (3 power tokens the first time, only 1 the second time). I put this in Yellow because it is a concern, not because it is necessarily broken per se.
The final part I would label Yellow on the Trident is the amount of turn by turn bookkeeping that is required. You have the D3 power tokens, and then another 3D3 that you must roll and explicitly track because each arc is semi-independent as well for LoS purposes. I can literally actually see someone making a dry erase token just to keep track of the dice rolls for this model. It feels like it adds unneeded complexity.
Green:
Imperatus: It was some hot Imperatus on Imperatus action and we both came out of the game feeling like our Imperatii were fine at Mat 8, 20 pts.
Goreshade4: A really fun, interesting caster to play and dojo for with the changes. He does run into some order of activation issues and some focus management issues, most of this can probably be mitigated with practice and list design.
Sentinels: Nice cost decrease to have, unsure that it was needed--dropping a point really just feels like they gained a free Soulless Escort. The way the points work out in the theme you are rewarded for having even number point costs in the units, and that “free” WA is precisely what both me and my opponent did.
Daemons: Good news is that they did exactly what I built the list for. With 2 shots on a very important turn they managed to grab 10 models and kill 7, at Arm 20 no less. The gun does still feel very shaky in that it could either use a +2” Rng or 3” enemy model only pull, there were probably another 3-4 additional models that were just outside of 2” and that would bring it further in line with the spell Hellmouth. I thought Sentinels would be a very good match up challenge for the Daemons due to their high armor and the jacks did shine, but I do wonder that a) I was able to get perfect circumstances with Righteous Vengeance being triggered for positioning and b) I am not sure I would include them in lists beyond this list, where I designed it specifically to try to maximize these jacks. Labeled it green, but it does feel like there should be additional considerations regarding them.