Warmachine: Khador Greylord Outriders
Khador is in serious need of a good non-character shooting unit. Do the new Greylord Outriders fit the bill?
Not only can he move 9″ and spray 8″, he can light cav move 5″ back out of harm’s way: the dark blue circle indicates the edge of the area he can retreat to after attacking. Compare this to a Ternion:
The Ternion can reach considerably less of the board, and is a lot less safe after doing so.
Light cav moves are good for more than just retreating, as well. Sending one rider forward to jam up enemy lines while the rest retreat can disrupt order of activation. If necessary, 5 large bases with that kind of speed can form a very effective wall to prevent easy access to a zone. The outriders’ defensive stats won’t withstand any kind of concerted melee effort, but if they force the opponent to bunch up outside of a zone, they may have done their job.
If speed is the second most important thing in the game, ability to hit is probably the next most important, and it’s here that the Outriders falter somewhat. A magic stat of 6 is about as low as it gets, and unlike the WGI, they have no warcaster-independent way of increasing their chances to hit (aside from their Winter’s Wind spell, more on that later).
Warcaster spells like Hand of Fate or Signs and Portents go a long way towards fixing their ability to hit. But even those just shift the probability curve; they don’t increase the upper range of a possible roll the way boosting does. If you want them to replace the WGI for pure high-def infantry mulching, you’re going to need to pair them with pSorscha for the feat (or eSorscha + Wyshnalyrr for Freezing Grip, although that can be risky).
What the Outriders do bring on offense is a high-damage magic spray, which is amazing for dealing with a variety of problems. They absolutely murderize any single-wound infantry that relies on moderately high armor, stealth and/or incorporeal instead of defense. Think of things like Sentinels, Bane Thralls, Blood Witches. Yes, Aiyana can patch the armor problem or the magic problem for WGI, but she can’t do both on the same turn (and she can’t be in every list). Additionally, spells have advantages over ranged weapons, even magic ones. Being able to spray from melee means better choice of angles and more coverage. Things like Force Barrier affect ranged attacks, not spells, so they actually have a chance of hitting Satyxis Raiders, and they have the speed to threaten them. Even Greater Destiny’ed Zealots aren’t safe from the Outriders, since they can just target themselves if need be to get around the targeting restrictions, and are immune to cold so won’t be injured by each others’ sprays.
Their other spell, Winter’s Wind, has been considerably trickier for me to get good use out of. Convincing an opponent to end a model’s activation within 2″ of an Outrider without killing it, in order to get frozen for his troubles, has been pretty situational. The only time it’s been actually useful (as opposed to just something to do when there aren’t spray targets) is putting an Outrider next to a higher-value target such as a jack. Opponents usually go after the more valuable target as opposed to a 1.5 point Outrider, and with enough (but not all) charge lanes blocked, the jack survived, leaving an enemy unit with a frozen model. Khador doesn’t have a lot of model/unit debuffs, but the couple it does have (see Freezing Grip above) are pretty nasty when you’re almost guaranteed to land it on one model and thus affect the whole unit.
After a handful of games using the Outriders, I’m still of the belief that they could have cost one more point in exchange for having one more point of magic ability and/or Battle Wizard, without being game-breaking. Of course, opponents who had to play against them with Dash + Hand of Fate might disagree about the balance of that extra point. I’ve certainly never regretted taking them, and their speed makes them an interesting alternative to other options. Which in the end, means Privateer seems to have done a good job on this release.
For the Motherland!
