Makings of an Army part 4: The Final Classes and 1st Game Results

With a slight delay we are wrapping up our Norkraag Mountain Dwarves. What we have left to do is finalize our Leader and Unique classes. With the delay, I actually took this army to the tabletop in a 500pts game as well, and I will let you know the results below.... It was quite fun, and I think a follow up game is coming next weekend.

Lets take a look at our leader classes. Recall that we were building faction based on Miniatures we already have, some beautiful Dwarven miniatures from Atlantis Miniatures, including a couple of their Giant/ Trolls and a giant eagle miniature.

Leader Classes
First off, I want to reveal my secret trick here to getting such big guys into the list. The Legendary Heroes trait allows for us to take two additional traits for our Leader classes. This is essential for this Faction, as it really helps us get some additional cool things into our lists.

Mountain Giant

I need to make the Mountain Giant a big nasty creature that will eventually in the second age be able to take on tanks, and literally take the place of them for this faction.

So building off of Rock Giants I gave them Massive size, Titan, Aberration, and Souless for new traits. This does some very interesting things, besides making him just a Huge size mode. It takes his toughness up to a very high level, and makes him soulless, protecting him from Willpowered attacks. While his strength and martial need some increases still, we would be working on that after leveling up in some games.

Now knowing what lies ahead in the release version of the Humanoid Primarius, I know that there is a trait that allows me to pick up enemy models and throw them as a weapon...... so I will be wanting this. This guy is tall enough to swat flying miniatures out of the sky, or as I will be leveling him with the new traits..... grabbing them out of the sky and throwing them at their friends.

Aberration also works differently with the release set of rules, but for now I have it listed here as a rather pointless trait just to reach some additional aberration abilities using the beta rules. Aberrations in the release version of the rules will allow for Increase stacking in other evolutionary branches. Of course the penalty is higher and restrictive, but hey, its a big fricken Giant.

Tempest Mage

Next we wanted to include powerful spellcasters and thus really needed a leader class for it. The Tempest Mage is the ultimate caster for this faction, able to cast Strength 5 Lightning Bolts. Down the road it would be nice to add a new power to the Tempest mage, but that will take a game or two.

The Eagle Master

This guy picks up a very sore spot in our faction..... command. Better yet, he covers it from the sky atop his flying Giant Eagle Mount. yea I know I need to pick up a seat for the Dwarf rider to sit on, but hey, its always fun to be able to expand your model collection in the near future.

I added some speed to him, exotic beasts, etc to not only create our Giant Eagle to make him more durable in combat. It would be wise to add armor to him, but at the moment I don't have a plan to customize this miniature beyond a seat for the rider.

Unique Classes
Watch of the Mountain

OK, this guy when it comes out will need to be our Unique Class. With some additional powerful traits, we are building off of our already very strong and powerful leader class; Mountain Giant. So this guy is incredible... but hey, he wont be in any small point games.

What is nice here is that this guy can see Ethereal, has Night sight, an incredible Martial characteristic and decent strength. He will be a force to be reckoned with on bigger point games.

So you can see easily I accomplished the task and challenge of creating this army within the current beta ruleset, but would love to alter it slightly with the release set of the rules. To be honest, doing this takes some time, but in the end really makes Faction Creation a ton of fun to really be able to see what the rules will handle.

As I get these models painted... working on the Mountain Giant now, I will post up some pics here and for What's On Your Table over on Faeit 212.

500pt Game Results........

The first game was in.... Against a nasty Reptilia Faction that has been making appearances here during playtest nights. They had fast moving Raptors.... these guys.... from Verge of War (proxied models for the game, as the physical models are coming next week). These dinosaurs are fast and hit very hard, along with the rest of their Tuatara and Caudata Lineages being very tough to hit warriors.

All in all the game came down to very few losses after 6 Game rounds, we both lost 3 or 4 models only (out of 12 or so on each side), with my Bear Rider holding up combat and allowing me to win the secondary objective with an impossible to hit crossbow shot in Game Round 5. So while both of us achieved our Primary Objective, I was able to pull ahead and get some extra progression for this newly created faction.

Oh yea..... I took the Bear Rider and Turned him into a Hero Model from the game! He will be leading my next battle should we encounter those nasty Reptilia again.

Definitely in the near future you will see these guys in a full battle report.

While my Defenders did well, they still had a hard time hitting heavily concealed opponents in ruins, and the fast moving Velicoraptors coming my way.

The Mountaineers were brillant, equipped with melee weapon and shield. They were hard to hit and hard to kill, and the perfect back up for the Bear rider who was probably the all-star of the game. They held up a very powerful attack force of reptilia specializing in melee combat. They were strong and very skilled, so the match up was a nail biter near the center of the board.

If you have missed either part 1 or part 2 of this series here are the links
The Making of an Army Part 1: The Challenge
The Makings of an Army Part 2: Creating the Faction

The Makings of an Army Part 3: Creating Your Unit Classes