In the first part of this article, I started putting together an army based around a Fire Dragonstaff and managed to get as far as putting together an 18 health Home Army, largely comprising Morehl mages, as can be seen here:
It is noticeable that we have yet to include our Dragonstaff, so we will now take a look at the horde army.
As can be seen, the Dragonstaff may be good on Magic but, for a 3-health Item, it generates a pitiful 0.4 Manoeuvre results with a Standard Deviation of 1.2, meaning that 66% of the time, we can expect a contribution of between 0 and 1.6 Manoeuvre results from this item. We need to do something about our mobility. That is where we take a look at the Wyvern rider.
Given that we are constructing a Horde army, we need to take into account the fact that we have no control whatsoever in a 2 player game, and only a limited choice of terrains in multi-player games, of the terrain that this army will occupy at the start of the battle. This means that no racial abilities, such as Volcanic Adaptation, will apply. We are, in effect, looking to maximise Manoeuvres, to give us a chance of the initiative at the start of the battle, whilst simultaneously looking for Saves, as there is no guarantee that we will be able to convert these manoeuvres. Fortunately the Wyvern Rider has both of these in the form of an SAI.
Although the Fly SAI is very good, it must be pointed out that it produces Manoeuvres or Saves, and not Manoeuvres and Saves. This is important because it means that we can’t count 5 Fly and 5 Saves as5 Saves plus another 5 Manoeuvres converted to saves on a fire terrain, we are stuck with only 5 Saves, no what what the terrain. Note that this is not true some SAIs, such as Trample, which gives both Manoeuvres and Melee, particularly useful for Mammoth Riders in Highland Terrain, but that is to be in another article.
We can now take a look at the Wyvern Rider in a bit more detail.
If we include 2 of these in our army, they will contribute 3 saves and 3 manoeuvre results on average at the cost of 6 health, but with a crazy standard deviation, as Morehl are well known for inconsistent results. It is important to notice, too, that these guys have both melee and missile capability which, as we will see in part 3 of this article, will complement our Necromantic Wave strategy very well.
So we have Magic a plenty from the Dragonstaff, Manoeuvres and Saves from the Wyvern Riders, and a bit of Melee and Missile to boot. We have the belt, now we look for our braces. Take a look at this Artefact:
Sortie SAI
With an average result of 2.8 Saves at the cost of 3 health, this looks like it might help this battalion at least survive round 1, even if it loses the battle to gain the initiative due to lack of manoeuvre results.
Even though the Mantlet brings us a few more potential manoeuvre results, I am going to put in one of my old favourites which will help with this, and also, eventually, with a few more saves. I refer, obviously, to my old friends the Eldarim. This time we will call on the services of a Fire Racer, which will allow us to bring in 2 health of dragonkin and, hence, more saves.
To finish the army, I am going to bring in more mages to augment our magic generation. The real reason for this will become clearer in part 3, when we discuss tactical, but keep thinking Necromantic Wave, and you will get where we are going with this.
Our Horde now looks like this:
We appear to have a good chance here with both vital statistics for a horde army, namely manoeuvre and saves. Magic capability is also better than the statistics show, as the Summon Dragon SAI (20% chance) allows us to summon a dragon, normally costing 7 results.
In the 3rd and last part of this article we will take a look at the campaign army, summoning pool and, more importantly, our tactics for using this army.
Once complete, I will be looking forward to trying them out against our first test army which can be found in deep discussion here:-
