Another project? Sure, why not

So today, one of my colleagues on the Warzone playtesting team said something blasphemous like "Undead Legionnaires are rubbish*" and I took that as a challenge to prove him wrong.

Mich Cie and I are currently running a small contest over on the Warzone Facebook group, and I figure what better way to prove my colleague wrong - who is, in fact, Mich Cie - than by doing it publicly? So here we go with my own 'entry' into the contest. The challenge is to complete a thematic 500 point force and when it comes to the Mutant Chronicles setting, what's more thematic than an endless horde of space zombies marching on a beleaguered defensive line?

Giant shoulder pads you say?

Well, okay, apart from that.

Yeah, that's right, space zombies.

Now, the rules of the competition say that the list must be legal (for standard OOC - I should add that part) but it does not have to be competitive. However, I don't see why we can't do both! After punching a few numbers into a calculator, this is what I came up with: The Eastern Push!

Characters:

Nepharite of Algeroth (90pts)
--Devouring Darkness (5pts)
--Cleansing of the Void (15pts)
--Total: 110pts

Necromutant Leader (50pts)**
--Bringer of Dark Tools (Free)**
--Portal of Undeath (20pts)
--Total: 70pts

Troop Squads:

Undead Legionnaire Squad
--15x Undead Legionnaires (150pts)
--1x Necromutant Squad Commander (19pts)
--6x Valcheck HMGs (48pts)

--Total: 217pts

Necromutant Squad
--5x Necromutants (95pts)
--Total: 95pts

Army Total: 492pts

That's right. Not a single Razide!

Now, I will be honest. I started out with two max sized Undead Legionnaire squads but although I could *just* about fit in the Nepharite, the addition of the Dark Symmetry powers really started to chip away at those squads, with compromises in weapons (fewer HMGs) or zombies (10 per squad would still be okay.. right?). But while I loved the idea of fitting up to 33 models into a 500 point list, I could see that it wasn't going to work very well on the tabletop.

The point Mich made was that Undead Legionnaires need a lot of other models in the list to really make them work and they rely heavily on Dark Symmetry buffs to make them more effective. As a Bauhaus player I know all about this because the same thing is often said about Hussars.

So, I dropped the second squad in favour of some bodyguards for my Nepharite, who I am calling "Quinzel".

Quinzel has three jobs in the game.

1) Don't die.
2) Push the space zombies forwards and keep them on their feet.
3) Stab vehicles until they stop shooting.

One of the problems this list will have is a low number of activations, so Cleansing of the Void is an early game spell to give the Undead Legionnaire squad some resiliency to all that fire they are going to have to soak up. Once the zombies have mostly fallen to pieces in the late game it can be cast on her and her retinue instead.

Devouring Darkness ticks the box for "Always be debuffing" - a mantra every Dark Legion player should live by. Casting D type powers doesn't cost DL spell casters any action points so even a cheap one like this is worth taking. If Quinzel is engaged by one or more capable CC enemies or worse yet, a character, you can get this pseudo attack in for free - potentially stunning your opponent - before you make your own CC attack.. and stunned models are hit in CC automatically. Nice.

Next we have the Necromutant Leader, who will be attached to the Undead Legionnaire squad, with both Bringer of Dark Tools and Portal of Undeath. The latter is a mechanism to help replace space zombie casualties by raising the enemy models from the grave, while the former will be essential if we actually want to kill some enemy models in order to turn them into space zombies.

32 shots in one activation sounds great (like.. Kodiak great) until you remember that 27 of them are at RS 11, and will almost certainly be over half range. By boosting the strength of the squads weapons, we are at least minimising the number of shots that hit but fail to penetrate the target's armour.

ST 12 on the 9 Kratach ARs
ST 13 on the 6 Valcheck HMGs
ST 14 on the 2 Belzarach ARs.

Not too shabby!

Next time I will briefly cover the two squads and start the task of gathering up all the miniatures I need for The Eastern Push!

* He may not have actually said that.
** The wrong points cost you say? Hm..