Skorne: Rasheth 101
Ever since the lovable mass of lard came out, Rasheth has been one of my favorite Skorne warlocks, and I figured I would share a few general tips for playing him.
Rasheth is perhaps the most unconventional Skorne warlock. He is slow, carries no weapons whatsoever, and he is a pure offensive spellcaster with a pretty heavy focus on debuffs. In many ways he feels a lot like a Cryx caster; selfish and focused on hindering the enemy army. Even the single spell he has to buff friendly models has a secondary effect that helps him as well. Let’s take a closer look at him:
Most of his stats are downright abysmal, with the exceptions of fury and health. He is slow and has low DEF, as befitting his enormous girth. His ARM is rather low as well at only 14, and since he is a large base he is a bit harder to hide. The two defensive abilities that really help him out are Steady, which makes him immune to knockdown, and Impervious Flesh, which means that ranged attacks will be getting one less damage die against him. Even still, he isn’t that hard to gun down, and will benefit from models like Swamp Gobbers and Basilisk Kreas being near him at all times. Luckily, he does have a whopping 20 health and multiple ways to heal himself.
His fury stat and Dark Rituals are further proof that you are dealing with a backfield spell slinger. Fury 8 lets him cast several spells per turn while still having some fury left for transfers, while Dark Rituals allows him to treat any warrior model as a pseudo-arc node once per turn, but the model he channels through suffers d3 damage afterwards. If it wasn’t obvious already, Rasheth loves beefy multi-wound infantry like Gatormen, or even models with Tough like Nihilators so he doesn’t outright kill the model he channeled through.
Baron Harkonnen’s feat is called Plague Wind, and gives -2 STR and ARM to all enemy living models in his control area for one round. In addition, Rasheth heals whenever a living model dies in his control area. This feat works best if you can get the alpha strike, with the ARM debuff allowing you to kill stuff easier and the STR debuff hindering your opponent’s counterattack.
Spell-wise, Fatso packs an interesting toolbox of offensive direct damage and debuffs. His real money spells are Blood Mark, Breath of Corruption, and Carnivore. Carnivore is one of those spells you cast first turn and upkeep the whole game. It increases the melee accuracy of a model/unit against living models, while also giving you some remove from play effects and healing any potshots the enemy may have done to Rasheth. Breath of Corruption is a 3 inch AoE that deals POW 12s to everything caught in its radius. As a bonus, it stays in play for one round as a cloud effect that deals a corrosive damage to anything that enters the AoE. Blood Mark is Rasheth’s signature spell, an offensive upkeep that gives a model -2 ARM and allows him to make one transfer to the target before expiring.
Sunder Spirit is your typical POW 12 attack spell, but also makes a damaged warbeast lose its animus for one round. Castigate and Influence are more situational spells. Castigate temporarily disables enemy arc nodes in Rasheth’s control area. It’s a spell that is extremely useful in certain situations, but won’t be relevant every game. Influence is a spell I rarely ever cast. It allows you to force an enemy model to attack something in its melee, but at RNG 10 it’s something that you’ll only be using if the enemy is uncomfortably close, and even then you will probably be better off paying the extra fury for Sunder Spirit or Breath of Corruption. It simply isn’t useful enough to waste your one Dark Rituals channel per turn on.
Next time, I’ll get a bit deeper into list building and tactics for Rasheth.
Any fellow Rasheth fans around here?
