Legion of Everblight: Beast Mistress
The Beast Mistress, a new solo addition for the army of Everblight. The new solo will look similar to the above picture. Essentially what she is, is a Lesser Warlock. Let’s go over some of her details and I will talk about how you can use her in your games.
Stats:
She has speed 6, the same speed as most of our beasts so she can keep up. On top of that she comes with pathfinder. She is fearless which comes in super handy on a solo of this nature. Offensively, she has a MAT of 5 like our lessers and a FURY stat of 4. Boasting the same Defense and Arm of a swordsman(14/13) she isn’t super easy to kill. Most things will need 7+ to hit her and arm 13 means random blast damage doesn’t instantly kill her. At 5 boxes of health, she can take a couple random blast damage rolls as long as they don’t spike too high. Her weapon is a standard nyss claymore.
Spells:
This is where she gets interesting I think.
Blood Rain – An aoe spell that causes corrosion. Nice for flinging at high arm single wound infantry.
Energizer – Like the bunny, she makes things go fast! For up to 3 fury she can advanced models in her battlegroup up to that far in inches. This means her too!
Abilities:
Flank: Lesser warbeast – Basically this means that while fighting an enemy model while a lesser is also fighting that model, the beast mistress will be swinging at MAT 7 and weaponmaster. Not bad, she can totally threaten a solo or light or even the last few boxes on a Heavy.
Field Marshal: Aggressive – Lessers in her control area can run or charge for free. Makes lessers effectively fury 3 beasts!!! very nice ability to have.
Draconic Consort – She has all the abilities of a warlock but is specfically called out as not a warlock for certain rule interactions. Also, she is limited to only having lesser warbeasts in her battlegroup.
Pulling it all together:
At the cost of 3 pts, and however many Lessers you want to add to her her total cost is really the cost of a whole unit. I would think of her and the lessers as basically just a unit that works differently and doesn’t have as many bodies. Comparatively I would equate her to a unit of 10 legionaires maybe. It’s apples and oranges though as they fill different roles. One a tarpit and the other solo/light hunters. The cost is compareable too. With two lessers it comes in at 7pts, 1 more than full legos. Not bad. I believe the general consensus, at least for the moment, is that this configuration is optimal for her as it doesn’t cost you a whole 9pts which is a Heavy Warbeast that can probably do more and isn’t 5pts that couldn’t be better spent on a Light.
Some of the things I have learned while playing with her are the crazy angles for charge lanes and threat range from the use of her Energizer spell. Increasing a harriers threat range to 13 and 1/2in is sweet! A shredder’s threat is a full on 14 1/2in!!!! A stinger can threaten a pretty good 12inches out. The solo herself can threaten 12 1/2in.
Here is the snag though. I see the Beast Mistress playing in two different roles, maybe both roles during the same game allowing for some flexibility. One, you can play her as a threat increaser for the lessers you brought along with her. Not a bad plan at all. The other method is to get her in the mix along with the lessers. The only problem with this arises from order of activation. You need a lesser(doesn’t have to be her battlegroup lesser) already in melee combat with what she is swinging at to get the benefit of Flank. What this means is, your going to have to send in a lesser first without the benefit of energizer. I believe this to be ok though because if you want her in the mix she will need her fury for boosting and more attacks anyway. You just have to be ok with not getting the bigger threat ranges from energizer to get the flank bonus. She is very flexible in that regard and I like that as an option.
So overall the Beast Mistress isn’t something we have been longing for or really needed in our faction but I think she is a very interesting and useful piece. Many people are going to find her fun and useful.
