Circle of Orboros: Baldur’s New Moves
The Baldur the Stonecleaver rescuplt is here. If you are a fan of rocks come in and check out what makes this guy tick.
What Is It?
This is a new rescuplt from Privateer Press for Baldur the Stonecleaver warlock. He can lead your Circle of Orboros forces with a nice chunk of +31 warbeasts points.
Baldur has been around since the begining of hordes but let’s take a look at what he does for Circle.
What’s He Do?
Baldur is a master of the elemental constructs and his abilities augment them. Like most circle casters he has pathfinder.
He is a little slow at SPD5 but and his defensive stats DEF14/ARM16 are nothing to write home about. He has FURY6 so not to much spell slinging going on.
Baldur has Elemental mastery so his constructs can charge and power attack for free. This is useful because most of the constructs have rather low fury stats. He can also heal constructs where other warlocks cannot.
A nifty rule he has is Forest Walk. It lets you place baldur, if he is in woods, to another woods in his control.
Baldur’s weapon is legit with POW14 and Weight of Stone that lowers SPD and DEF by 3.
Baldur does have a rather ghetto assassination if he is in a woods and you shoot a woods or place one by the caster. He can place using forest walk and start swinging. It really only works vs a caster that isn’t camping much and is already low armor.
Baldur’s feat Broken Earth is a nasty board denial feat removing pathfinder and making everything rough terrain to enemy models. However, ghostly and flight does get around this 🙁
Baldur’s 4 Spells:
Earth Spikes: A 3 cost RNG10 AOE3 POW13. On crit it knocksdown and ignores a lot of defensive thigns like cover,concealment, and elevation.
This is a decent nuke and if you are using Megalith or Woldwardens it can knockdown models if you hit that crit!
Rapid Growth: Cost2 Place a 4″ AOE forest in your control.
A great spell to put models like tharn in forest for defensive buffs or given sentry stones stealth. Try using it offensively to deny line of sight or slow down non pathfinder models
Solid Ground: Cost2 upkeep that prevents knockdown and blast damage.
My favorite spell not only for keeping low armor models safe from blast but, also I love throwing things and it prevents knockdowns. I think a legitimate assassination is porting and throwing a Woldguardian.
Stone Skin: Cost3 upkeep that gives +2STR/+2ARM but suffers -1 SPD/DEF.
It isn’t as bad in MK3 since you can charge with speed debuff’s now. Most of the constructs defense is already so bad that losing a point more isn’t a big deal. It can make the Woldwrath ARM22 which is pretty nice post Lady Aiyana nerf.
Example 75point List:
Baldur the Stonecleaver+31
-Woldwrath 37
-WoldGuardian 17
-Megalith 20
Shifting Stones and Stone Keepr 5
10 Tharn Bloodtrackers 16
Sentry Stone 5
Sentry Stone 5
Gobber Chef 1
This list really tries to use all of Baldurs strengths. The Tharn are pretty safe from non stealth seeing attacks with solid ground up. They can also be stone skinned to make them extra hard. The Sentry Stones can be kept stealth if you place them in rapid growth. And as I mentioned earlier you can do a really dumb throw assassination with the Woldwrath and Megalith or the Woldguardian. Using the shifting stones place the culprit within 8″ to 10″ of the enemy warcaster in a straight line. Have the Woldwrath walk up behind it and throw it 8″ to 10″ forward depending if you have stone skin on him. You knock the caster down, stay standing because of steady/solid ground and start wailing away 🙂
You could change out a Warbeast like the stalker to increase the threat range of this throw 😮
Revenant’s Final Thought:
Baldur has some play and I can see using him as a 3rd caster in champions or masters. He isn’t really in that god tier that Wurmwood and Tanith are. Kaya2 is also pretty popular right now and her assassination run or grind game is a tad stronger then Baldur’s.
What do you think BoLS of the stonecleaver? Please share in the comments below.
