Circle-Druid Mist Riders – Ride the Lightning
Circle’s new cavalry is out. Come and see all the lightnings. ZZAP!
What Is It?
Circle has a new light cavalry unit to deploy on the battlefield. They have 5 life boxes. They serve as a mobile support and troop killing squad. You can take 3 of them for 12points of 5 for a pricey 20. They are field allowance 2.
What Does It Do?
The Druid Mist Riders have the cavalry and pathfinder special rules. With SPD8 they are a very mobile unit on the field. They are armed with a 2″ melee range weapon but, since they are light cav, it is only POW10. This does go up to POW12 on the charge thanks to the brutal charge special rule.
Like in real life the mount is stronger than the rider and is armed with POW12 mount attacks. With only MAT5 they will need to get the cavalry charge bonus to really reliably hit with the melee weapons. They have a decent stat line of DEF14 ARM15 so they can survive most non boosted attacks.
These are caster cavalry after all so lets dive into what magical abilities they have and why you would really take these guys. Armed with the battle wizard special rule these mobile casters can get spells off after they kill an enemy model.
On the lower end of most casting models the Druids have Magic Ability:6. This will make them struggle to hit average defenses.
The Druid Mist Riders have 2 spells:
Chain Lightning= POW 10 to target and bounces to next d3 closest targets. Cygnar’s Nemo is so jealous.
Summon Vortex= 3″ AOE cloud that is -2 attack rolls for enemies within it. It goes away if the caster dies.
Having chain lightning on super mobile unit is pretty crazy. One of the classic lightning bounce tricks is to hit one of your lower defense models to hit the high defense ones near it with lightning bounces. Circle has some random models like Shifting Stones and Wolds that can be used to get close to the enemy and be used as that lightning rod. If this was MKII I would say these guys are an auto include in most lists. However, MKIII is usually seeing 3+ heavy models on the field with low armor infantry taking a back seat. Chain Lightning is a great spell when you can boost that damage but, the Druid Mist Riders don’t have any boosting tech so more POW10s.
Summon Vortex makes the Druid Mist Riders ranged/magic defense exceptional. If you can crowd these guys on a hill only some cygnar level RAT shenanigans will really have any chance to hit them. The high base DEF14 with the vortex makes them really annoying to kill with low MAT/RAT. For max annoyance group these guys near your beast with the vortex up, any melee threats will be lower to hit rolls should increase Circles higher base defense beast.
List Idea for Druid Mist Riders:
The Druid Mist Riders can generate 20 hits on models with chain lightning if you roll perfect. However, POW10s usually don’t kill things. But, this can be fixed with Tanith. She has Affliction which does a point of damage if the damage roll doesn’t exceed a models armor. So, even high armor infantry like retribution’s sentinels will struggle to live through the volleys of lightning the below list will throw. Add in the WoldWrath to boost the Druid Mist Riders magic attack rolls with the Animus and now you have a Nemo worthy lightning force.
Circle Army – 75 / 75 points
(Tanith 1) Tanith the Feral Song [+31]
– Woldwrath [37]
– Megalith [20]
Druid Mist Riders (max) [20]
Druid Mist Riders (max) [20]
Blackclad Stoneshaper [3]
Blackclad Stoneshaper [3]
Blackclad Stoneshaper [3]
Revenant’s Opinion:
I guess riding and casting spells is hard because Magic Ability 6 is not going to hit higher defense models. I think the Druid Mist Riders are a good sideboard unit. If you are playing some ADR casters you might consider having these guys in that extra point pool to sub in. I think it will be hard to field these guys in the heavy meta as it is. The infantry they can kill are seeing the field less and less these days, leaving them to just bounce off heavies. I find it hard to include any unit that can’t at least scratch the paint of a Khador jack and outside some high spiked charge attacks these won’t do much. C-
What do you think of the new Circle cavalry? Please share in the BoLS comments below.
