Many players find plenty of reasons to 'splash' units within their forces. Tyrannix players usually find a place for a Repair Vehicle to heal the vehicular morphers of a gigantic herbivore. Meatshield usually has a very good assortment, including G-Tanks, Mobile Ops and Spintop (His favourite mis-matched Rocket Chopper) from his GUARD force, and then Fire Kami's, Earth Avatars and the occasional Water Avatar to cover the remainder of the numbers.
Biggins usually has a very sporadic army composition for his Empire of the Apes force, taking a few Terrasaur figures such as Raptix and Spikodons, and taking a good selection of Bomber Apes, Howitzer Apes, Stealth Apes and a Command Ape.
I personally have a particular way of organising my troop choices which offers an even spread of good units available, occasionally specialising certain cases.
Lords of Cthul
4x Spitter Grunts
2x Spitter Elites
2x Snatcher Grunts
2x Shadow Snatcher Grunts
1x Snatcher Elite
2x Meat Slave
2x Cthulubite
Subterran Uprising
3x Mollok Brute Grunts
2x Mollok Brute Elites
2x Mollok Berserkers
2x Mollok Mortar Grunts
1x Glass Mollok Mortar Grunt
2x Mollok Mortar Elites
3x Groundbreakers
These are good force compositions for themed forces. An even spread of options and support their monsters respectively.
So what do we do for mixing and matching these factions units? Well lets see what we have. The Subterrans have a very large theme of Brawling, while the Lords of Cthul have a bigger proficiency with synergy support. Lets focus on a Brawling force.
The list of Brawling figures are as follows
Taskmasters
Snatchers
Corruptors
Tanglix
Mollok Brutes
Mollok Berserkers
and to lesser extents
Cthulubites
Squix
Mollok Mortars
Groundbreakers
Some figures have their similarities. Snatchers and Mollok Brutes and Berserkers both have jump and SPD 5, for example. Their difference lies with their other abilities and stats. The Snatcher has the Manufacture Advantage, while the Mollok Brutes have a slightly better Brawl and much better DEF stat. The Mollok Brute comes out with the Rage Advantage, Red Berserk ability and Riled, a better Brawl stat than the two of them, while averaging out the DEF at a humble 3 and costing 2 A-die to spawn instead of the standard Grunt cost of 1.
So there are good points to splash Mollok Berserkers: They are able to substitute as good Squad leaders. A Snatcher Grunt and a Mollok berserker run forward against another unit, making sure to stand adjacent to each other, and make a brawl attack of up to 4*3. A destroyed unit, coupled with the Rage Advantage gains you 2 P-die and the Manufacture Advantage spawns a Snatcher Elite who, if placed adjacent to the Mollok Berserker, can make a Brawl attack of up to 2*2.
So a Mollok Berserker makes for a great pseudo-leader. Even for Taskmasters, the under appreciated Brawler. They actually make for a good team up, the Taskmaster and Berserker. The Taskmaster has the Fling Brawl trigger and with the Berserkers additions (Rage, Berserk) you gain a lot of profit.
With a brawl attack of up to 5*4, you attack a unit and destroy it, profiting with 2 P-die, then target another figure within 5 spaces with the same die used as before and destroy another unit, gaining 2 more P-die from the destruction and Rage Advantage, or dealing a point of damage to a monster, still gaining a P-die from the Rage Advantage. The downside to the pairing is overall cost, as they both cost 2 a-die each.
Corrupters stand as a disruptive unit with a rather vanilla stat line and can play a similar role to the Berserker but without as much success. Flank is one of the Corrupters two abilities and the ability is red allowing it to spread to adjacent Agenda Figures. This is good, as a lone Corrupter with a Brawl of 2*0 will have a tough time against most units of a reasonable DEF. However, when placed adjacent to a friendly figure the optimism increases. A good figure to combine an attack with him is the Cthulubite. Weakness plus Flank makes for a very vulnerable figure.
But how do I mix them with the Subterrans? They have the Groundbreaker who already has Flank, along with better speed and manoeuvrability with Burrow, and the same brawl stat and the Pathfinder Action, which has a 50/50 chance of killing a unit regardless of DEF and then moving up to another 2 spaces.
So the Corrupter isn't the most tangible figure to be added to your forces. The Elite Corrupter sporting the Red Overload Brawl trigger makes for a substantial situation for your monster, but not particularly for your units. So I'm going to kick out the Corrupter.
The Tanglix. Now, this is a tricky one. The Tanglix is well known for having a strange and rare dental problem, and also having a rather Counter effective brawl trigger: Radial Attack. This causes the figures to spread out a little because if you don't then your attack squad pretty much disappears unless you roll underneath their DEF of 3.
So how can one take advantage of Radial Attack? With the Tanglix's Brawl attack of 3*0, it makes for an expensive brawler without any B-die kickback. And if the attack is successful, all adjacent figures to the leading attacker are destroyed, meaning you have to spread your figures out from your leading attacker.
How do you mix this figure with the Subterrans? The thing about combining an attack with a figure is that the lead figure is the most important since you're using their attack Trigger. The other figures can be the biggest mismatch of troops you can generate, so with the lack of Boost Die that the Tanglix offer is picked up by the others of the combination.
This is where the Mollok Brutes come in. The Mollok Brutes stand in a similar place to the Spitters by having a large amount of boost die available and no Triggers, making them fantastic support figures. The best part is their Elite has the Champion ability, which gives even more boost die from the Elite himself. On top of the Brawling potential, the Mollok Brutes have Jump and a decent SPD, allowing them to position themselves where they won't be affected by the Radial Attack. The combined attacks amount up to 5*5 which hits a G-tank 90% of the time.
The downside? The Tanglix is slow, with no manoeuvrability either. Mind you, climb would make a little sense. He'd be like “I'm Spiderman! Yeah!”
Also, always note that if you're surrounded by flying figures and you target a non-flying unit with the attack, the adjacent flying figures are hit by the Trigger!
This is where I'm going to leave it at for the moment. The next post, when I get around to it, will be focused on the Fiends Choice of Blastards.
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