Warmachine/Hordes – Tharn Ravagers
Now that the Blood Pack is out, Circle Orboros is flush with four available medium-based, multi-wound infantry options. Privateer Press just released plastic Tharn Ravagers at a very reasonable price, and so I’m re-evaluating their viability in the current metagame.
To give a quick overview of the unit, Tharn Ravagers are a rather expensive, fast, SPD 6 melee unit with Pathfinder, Reach, Powerful Charge with MAT 7, and P+S 13. These stats alone give them a strong melee threat range with great accuracy and decent damage output. On top of this, they get the Heart Eater and Tree Walker rules. Heart Eater gives models in the unit a corpse token every time they destroy an enemy model with a melee attack. These tokens can be spent to boost attack and damage rolls as well as to purchase more attacks. This can allow a single Ravager to destroy an entire swath of enemy infantry by destroying their charge target, then continuing on to destroy every other model in its melee range and front arc, picking up and spending a corpse token with each vanquished foe. Alternatively, it lets Ravagers strike with incredible accuracy on the charge, allowing them to hit up to DEF 20 on average rolls. If Ravagers are denied the charge or have two corpse tokens when they purchase an attack, they can use the tokens to boost damage rolls as well.
Tree Walker grants Ravagers a +2 DEF bonus against melee attacks while in a forest as well as the ability to move through other models and ignoring the forest for line of sight purposes. It’s a nice little buff when you can get it, but terrain placement is not always within your control, so taking proper advantage of Tree Walker will most likely depend on luck of placement as well as whether or not your warlock or any other model in your army has an ability to create forests, which fortunately isn’t all that uncommon in Circle Orboros.
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| Tharn Ravager Chieftain |
This unit also has an available unit attachment, the Tharn Ravager Chieftain. He’s a 2-point model that gives the unit another model with increased MAT, Brutal charge for effective P+S 15 on the charge, and Advanced Deployment for forward table placement and a greater ease of avoiding poor match-ups on the opposite side of the table, like models with accurate, high-damage ranged or magic attacks. At two points and for what it offers, the Chieftain is a solid addition to your Ravager unit, since the increased damage output makes the unit a stronger threat against high-ARM targets and Advanced Deploy is just always good.
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| Tharn Ravager Shaman |
The last option for the unit is the Tharn Ravager Shaman. He’s a 2-point weapon weapon attachment that effectively puts another model in the unit with a RNG 10, POW 13 ranged attack that has Electro Leap and Magical Weapon that can be fired at his charge target thanks to the Assault rule. Since the Tharn Ravager unit is already pretty expensive at 6/9, and the 2-point Chieftain is arguably a more desirable addition than the Shaman, finding points to fit him in can be difficult, as it would push the full unit up to PC 13, putting greater stress on the unit to perform while also leaving fewer points for the rest of your build. That said, Morvahna the Dawnshadow can reduce the cost of the Shaman and Chieftain to 1 point via her theme list rules, suddenly making the Shaman an unquestionably more worthy addition to unit.
Their cost aside, Tharn Ravagers look like a pretty strong unit in terms of offensive potential and flexibility, but what’s their weakness? The answer to that is the defensive side of their card, specifically their DEF and ARM stats. At DEF 13 and ARM 14, Ravagers have a real difficult time against high-damage shooting lists despite their eight wounds. A single POW 22 damage roll will put them out of the game, making models that can boost POW 12 ranged or magic attacks or models like Reckoners with Hymn of Battle a serious threat to this unit. Consequently keeping Ravagers well-protected while getting them to their target can be a real challenge. Also, with their high cost, they’re really going to need to leave a dent in the enemy’s army before they get countercharged after getting stuck in, since ARM 14 with eight wounds isn’t going to stand up to charging enemy melee infantry or warbeasts/warjacks with their naturally hard-hitting melee attacks.
Circle provides you with a few avenues for protecting this unit. First is by simply denying line of sight to the unit, which is actually an ability that is fairly prevalent throughout the faction with warlocks like Baldur the Stonecleaver and his ability to place a 4″ forest in his control area. Other methods include Cassius’s feat, which covers the board in an enormous forest, the Woldwarden’s animus, Mohsar’s Pillars of Salt, or Mannikins and their Forest Growth ability.
The next method is the application of Stealth to the unit, which can be found in two places: Kaya the Wildbourne’s Occultation spell and Grayle the Farstrider’s feat. Stealth is really handy on a unit like Ravagers, since it really only leaves them vulnerable to extremely high-POW blast damage, like a Vanquisher under Hymn of Battle and Eye of Menoth, or strong ranged attacks that ignore Stealth, like Legion of Everblight heavy warbeasts. Sure, Gun Mages get to ignore Stealth, but with average rolling, it’s going to take three attacks to take down a single Ravager, which should allow you to trade nicely in your favor on later turns.
The third method is through ARM buffing, which unfortunately won’t deliver the best returns since their ARM values are already so low for a unit on medium bases, but it is an option that can be found with Baldur1’s Stone Skin, Baldur2’s feat, and Kromac’s Inviolable Resolve.
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| Kaya the Wildborne |
While its use might be somewhat restricted based on enemy list options, my favorite method for protecting Ravagers is Stealth, specifically Kaya1’s Occultation. It’s a fire-and-forget buff that will last me the entire game unlike Grayle’s feat, which will merely provide a single turn of reprieve from ranged or magic attacks. So, let’s build a list and play some games:
I’ll start with a Warpwolf Stalker and a Gorax. If you’re building a list with furry beasts, I feel like this is the most optimum place to start since it gives you the ability to hit-and-run via the Stalker’s animus, Lightning Strike, as well as threat against both swarms of infantry with the Stalker’s Berserk warping and against high-ARM with Strength warping combined with the Gorax’s animus, Primal, which increases a model’s attack and damage rolls by 2 at the expense of the target model frenzying next turn. I’d like another heavy, but I’m stuck between a second Stalker or Ghetorix. I’ll hold off on that final decision until I see how the rest of the list shapes up.
Next I’ll add the normal Shifting Stone battery of two units and a single Stone Keeper unit attachment. Anyone with any familiarity with Circle Orboros should understand this choice, if not, check out their Battle College entry for more information.
In my experience with Kaya, I’ve found that I often have to send my beasts forward before she activates if I want to take proper advantage of Spirit Door, which will either teleport Kaya to another model in her battlegroup or vice versa with the caveat that model that is teleported via Spirit Door may not make attacks or advance after it is cast. In order to best take advantage of Spirit Door while also giving me some breathing room with Kaya’s placement and my activation order, I’ll add a Druid Wilder, which can force warbeasts inside her command area while also being able to cast the animi of friendly Faction warbeasts, namely Lightning Strike and Primal.
With the full unit of Ravagers with the Chieftain, the Stalker, Gorax, Shifting Stone battery and the Druid Wilder, that leaves me with 24 points to play around, leaving at least ten for a Stalker or Ghetorix, so let’s drop that to 14. Since I already have a good chunk of my army taking advantage of Stealth, I’ll add Tharn Bloodtrackers with Nuala. This will grant me another Advance Deploy unit that has several applications and impressive mobility, leaving me with 4 points.
In order to increase the threat of my Ravagers and heavies, I’m going to add a Blackclad Wayfarer for his Hunters Mark spell. With their SPD 6 and Reach, Hunters Mark will boost their melee threat range up to 13″, which cannot be taken lightly.
With the last two remaining points, I’ll add in a unit of Swamp Gobbers to help protect Kaya and to create a cloud for the Stalker to trigger Prowl in and leave the last point to bump up the reserved ten points to eleven, making my final heavy warbeast Ghetorix. While he doesn’t have Stealth, his ability to Warp for Hyper Aggressive will make my opponents think twice before shooting at him.
Kaya the Wildborne (*6pts)
* Gorax (4pts)
* Ghetorix (11pts)
* Warpwolf Stalker (10pts)
Shifting Stones (2pts)
* Stone keeper (1pts)
Shifting Stones (2pts)
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew (Leader and 1 Grunt) (1pts)
Tharn Bloodtrackers (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
* Nuala the Huntress (2pts)
Tharn Ravagers (Leader and 5 Grunts) (9pts)
* Tharn Ravager Chieftain (2pts)
Blackclad Wayfarer (2pts)
Druid Wilder (2pts)
While I’m not often excited to put Kaya1 on the table since her epic version feels a bit more compelling to me, I’m actually pretty happy with this list. It brings several options for tearing through both heavy armor and hordes of light infantry and has a lot of Stealth, which can throw a lot of ranged lists on tilt. Legion of Everblight strikes me as an unwelcome match up for this list, but Legion is often a problem for Circle regardless, so if I build another list to pair with this one, I’d want to make sure that it isn’t as weak to Legion.
Expect a battle report on this list soon!
Anyone else looking at the Tharn Ravager with new eyes now that we have them in nice, affordable plastic? Sound off!
