Concept
"He's Butcher, but madder. RAAARGH!"
But for real though:
Butcher2 is incidentally, not intentionally, as dangerous to his own army as to the enemy army. He accidentally and casually slips into ultraviolence, the slightest provocation setting him off. Unhinged and unstoppable, he's the kind of guy who could plausibly charge a fortress alone and survive. His insanity affects his control over magic, which surges and simmers and lashes out unpredictably.
B1 is a support caster. B3 is an assassin, pure and simple: point, click, it's dead. B2 represents a midpoint between the two.
Stat card
In-Depth Discussion About Why
But, why did you choose these specific abilities?
ARCANE DEMENTIA
Unchanged from current. This is word-of-God non-negotiable.
ARCANE POWER
All previous iterations of Butcher2 rarely, if ever, cast spells. This could be because he had nothing useful to cast (no good targets or reasons to cast Fury, Boundless Charge, or Ravager) or because it was LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE for him to cast his spells (a focus roll of 1 prevents him from casting Eliminator entirely).
Arcane Power lets this version of B2 play a little support, by AT WORST being able to drop combinations of two of his COST 2 spells, or gives him the ability to cast Unnatural Disaster at any point. This very mildly lessens B2's bad matchups by allowing him to play some measure of support even if he's hampered by pathetic focus rolls or playing against bad matchup armies.
For fluff considerations, I imagined this as his magic itself, rather than his connection to his magic (focus stat) flaring up incidentally during battle.
Why Arcane Power instead of Blood Boon? Because Blood Boon and other "kill something to get the benefit" rules even more heavily front-load Butcher's "I kill things and get benefits" shtick; it's no fun after a while. Plus, Blood Boon would leave him unable to cast Unnatural Disaster, and also rarely leaves him in a good position to put Fury, Boundless Charge, or Ravager on a meaningful target.
This really helps smooth out his early game, as he can cast a Boundless Charge or Fury and still get up the table camping something. He's still gotta be the one to prime the pump on his feat turn, after all.
CONFERRED RAGEUnchanged from current. It's only in a different font on the card because of my mighty MS Paint skills.
HOMICIDAL MANIACHomicidal Maniac received a major rework. This has changed pretty dramatically from edition to edition. This is one of the two rules (the other being Murder Spree on Lola) that combine to give this iteration of Butcher2 that "accidental utraviolence" feel that I desperately miss from previous editions.
First up: "This model can charge friendly models." Who else in the game is crazy enough to charge his own models? This guy! Of all the abilities presented here, I would understand most if this had to go. This was intentionally added as 50% fluff (Butcher's just that nuts) and 50% "allows smart players leeway with dirty tricks." I could understand if this had to go for balance considerations. Thus far it hasn't had a real impact, either positive or negative. But, I like options...
"When this model destroys one or more models with a melee attack, immediately after the attack is resolved it must make one additional melee attack against another model in its melee range."
Reading comprehension is key here.
Yes, this is old-school berserk. Why? Partly because I love the combo with this and Retaliatory Strike, and partly because it does open up some interesting decisions for both players, such as: risk free strikes from Butcher? He might end up killing his stuff.
IMPERVIOUS FLESHThis is the rule that will cause the biggest freak outs. I know. I watched it happen to otherwise rational players who I tested against, heh.
Impervious Flesh meets a number of Butcher2's needs:
1) Impervious Flesh allows Butcher2 to play more safely from the front, with the knowledge that focus camp will be wildly unreliable. This delivers that feeling of "impossibly tough giant man bearing down on you; your death is imminent".
2) Impervious Flesh prevents Butcher2 from being oneshot by an assassination run,
by design.
3) Impervious Flesh restricts the list of things that can reliably damage him to "models that can boost" and "weaponmasters".
Too many times I have been forced to play Butcher2
HIGHLY conservatively, due to an inopportune low focus roll, knowing that one or two attacks will put him on the back foot for the entire game. This is a jarring disconnect from his fluff. Why is the unrestrained, bloodthirsty maniac carefully positioning and ensuring he's safe? I mean, c'mon.
On the opposite side, this forces the opponent to play smart in order to pull off the assassination. Butcher2 is hardly invulnerable or unkillable. Heck, it forces smart play from the B2
player in order to mitigate his own assassination risk.
So, how do you beat this Butcher2?
Smart play, and a focus on fundamentals.
Knockdown and stationary really screw him over. A huge portion of his defensive kit is predicated upon him being upright. Barring multi-caster games (and let's be honest, I'm the only person who plays those), Butcher2 has no access to anti-knockdown tech beyond the Battle Mechanik Officer. In practical application, the Battle Mechanik Officer is going to have a tremendously difficult time keeping up with B2 on the battlefield.
B2 is going to be up front, meaning he's going to be vulnerable to power attack slams. Negate his DEF, and suddenly assassination becomes much more likely.
Control effects (Telekinesis, rough terrain, throws, and similar) really hurt him. Give him cause to have to shake, and he's sad. Shaking really, really gets dicey when we remember Arcane Dementia.
Butcher2 on average camp (4 focus, for argument's sake) will absolutely require multiple attacks, likely two fully-loaded heavies, to kill. This is by design.
The enemy player will need to position his models well in order to avoid Butcher2's persistent 12" melee threat (Arcane Power --> Boundless Charge). The opponent will have to use terrain, or body block important models with highly durable models such as heavies, in order to negate the threat. He'll REALLY have to think about how he spaces his models. He will have to consider how to put heavies and durable models in the correct places to break Butcher2's Berserk + Overtake chain.
Bear in mind that Butcher2 is likely telegraphing his intent. He's got exactly one game plan, most of the time. It's a good game plan! But...
OVERTAKEBog standard overtake, instead of "very bad Overtake" that he has now.
RETALIATORY STRIKEHomicidal Maniac + Retaliatory Strike + Murder Spree on Lola.
Think about that for a minute.
Isn't that awesome?
My favorite hidden perk is that this adds in another chance to trigger Arcane Dementia's benefit.
Remember earlier, when I said that the B2 player has to be smart when using this ability, because it can lead to B2 getting assassinated? Here's a true game situation to illustrate:
B2 is charged by 4 Knights Exemplar during their minifeat turn. Because of positioning, these 4 Knights Exemplar are the only enemy models that can reach Butcher2, because they end up blocking all the landing zones for the Protectorate player's other models. Between the available options, the Protectorate player's best bet is the 4 KE with Battle Driven; they actually have very good odds to deal major and quite possibly lethal damage to Butcher thanks to dice-5 effective 4d6 drop the lowest charges. (It's just about enough to kill him on average, especially if you can negate his defense or especially if he's taken damage already.)
The first KE comes in and swings, hits, puts a few points of damage onto Butcher after he reinforces the power field, and Butcher triggers Retaliatory Strike.
The Retaliatory Strike kills all the KE and therefore avoids 3 more weaponmaster damage rolls. Hurrah! However, in doing so, the Butcher player has cleared a landing zone for the heavy warjack waiting behind them, opening up a new option on the Protectorate player's turn.
My opponent repeatedly insisted no good could ever come from me killing his models during his turn. I showed him otherwise.
But, anyway...the inspiration for Retaliatory Strike was pulled straight from the fluff, way back in "Not Everyone Dies" in No Quarter 28, when Butcher was surrounded by Sword Knights. Man, that was a good story.
MURDER SPREE This plus Homicidal Maniac help differentiate B2's feeling from the other Butchers and other casters in Khador. This brings that feeling of "*accidentally* as dangerous to his own army as to the enemy army" that is sorely missing from the current iteration.
This helps smooth out, but not completely eliminate, B2's spree from being completely screwed over by a single whiffed attack or a tough roll. Simultaneously, it also works to keep his Overtake spree in check. Single attack Berserk + Overtake would potentially let him daisy chain his way through an entire enemy army on his feat turn. We don't want that. By killing all models in his immediate vicinity at once, instead of individually, we lessen the chances of this occurring.
He needs to be dangerous, but not completely over-the-top dangerous in such a manner that even stellar positioning would make it difficult or impossible to negate his Berserk walk through the opponent's army.
UNNATURAL DISASTER "Warrior models gain an additional die on attack rolls against models in this model's command range."
Truth -- there is no typo here. This affects ALL warrior models, friendly and enemy.
Unnatural Disaster, despite being another nice callback in name to one of his Mark I rules, helps differentiate Butcher2 from all other Khador casters. Also, it is another instance of a rule supporting the "*accidentally* as dangerous to his own army as to the enemy army" concept. Butcher2's magic is so unstable that he spreads his ultraviolence around, even when it is actively detrimental to his own troops.
The sum total of all infantry to-hit bonuses in all of Khador boil down to Irusk1's feat, the Vlads, and the very costly Strakhov2 Last Stand. Here we have an ability that can significantly raise those to-hit chances, but with elements of risk involved.
Thanks to Arcane Power, B2 always has the option to cast this spell. If he's back in his force, playing in a support role, and Murder Spree + Homicidal Maniac would be too large a detriment, he can cast Unnatural Disaster and help his forces in his immediate vicinity clear out jamming units or whatnot. However, he pays for that when his own models become significantly more likely to get hit in the process.
He can also try for high-risk high-reward plays such as "cast U.D. and charge into range of some high-value enemy target", so that his own models gain additional dice when attempting to shoot or melee said target.
I'm still trying to 100% nail down the wording here, and of everything, this is probably the most flexible rule I present. This is restricted to warrior models only because, on the friendly side, it prevents abuse with the Gun Carriage and warjacks double-dipping with Conferred Rage. We don't need MAT 11 Khador heavies). On the enemy side, allowing warjacks/warbeasts to more easily hit Butcher really significantly devalued Impervious Flesh.
In the same vein, I considered restricting this to "melee attacks" only. Right now, this affects ALL attack rolls made by warrior models: melee, ranged, magic. I kind of figured...eh, what the heck? The carnage that follows Butcher leaks subconsciously to everyone around him anyway, and his magic is faulty enough that it affects enemies and friends alike. If Butcher1 can be so angry that he makes guns SHOOT HARDER, then B2 can be so unstable that he makes everyone more eager to hurt everybody else.
In practical terms, restricting this to melee didn't make much of a real difference when I tested, so it stayed "all attacks."
Further testing would need to show some solid reason for changing this, but honestly, I like it a lot. It grants some flexibility but at a real cost. He can slot into pretty much every current theme comfortably.
Now let's talk about Eliminator!
Absolute BEST CASE EVER -- you roll 7 focus and it's going to be Butcher's feat turn! You have absolute best odds to hit. The theoretical maximum allows for 3 uses of Eliminator, with 1 focus remaining to boost a roll somewhere or buy attacks. In practice, the best I have been able to achieve is 2 uses of Eliminator, both with boosted attack rolls, because I REALLY needed to hit so I wasn't hung out to dry in the middle of my killing spree.
Let's face it: how many times have you used Eliminator before? IF you even had the focus to cast it, were you using it? A FOC roll of 3 made it technically usable but effectively unusable; what are you going to hit with a FOC 3+2d6 roll? Are you going to gamble 50/50 odds to hit even the most basic of infantry? FOC 4 is the bare minimum threshold required to use this spell, but it's still a pretty hard sell at that, as you're spending 3 to cast and 1 to boost, with not great odds of hitting DEF 13-14-15 models. Are you going to gamble the game on hitting and killing something so Butcher can move? Since when was the foaming mad dog Butcher2 so cautious...?
(CID Makeda3 could pull off this same thing, with better to-hit and to-damage odds thanks to Incite, and nobody reported it breaking the world.)
There are so many times I have WISHED I could cast Eliminator and make meaningful use of it.
Wrap upSo, anyway...