10. Themepocalypse: Dawn of the Dawnguard

I’m back in the states and won’t be traveling again until WMW in November.  Will be resuming a normal update schedule for the foreseeable future.  WTC Recap will be coming after the weekend, let’s look at our new theme force for now!

Legions of the Dawn focuses on our Dawnguard units, and gives a teaser of Nyarr models to be introduced in the future.  The benefits give out the free points that are all but mandatory to stay competitive as Mk3 matures, extend our deployment zone which is useful no matter what your list looks like, and gives flank to myrmidons marshalled to our Scyir which we’ll talk about towards the end.

I built a list using Magister Helynna who loves to have the weaponmaster infantry supporting her battlegroup.

Magister Helynna

- Sylys Wyshnalyrr, The Seeker

- Manticore

- Manticore

- Phoenix

max Dawnguard Sentinels

- Officer and Standard

- Soulless Escort

Max Dawnguard Sentinels

- Officer and Standard

Arcanist Mechanik

Arcanist Mechanik

Arcanist Mechanik

Dawnguard Scyir

- Griffon (later Siren)

Compared to one of my earliest Mk3 lists, Legions of Dawn asks you to leave Discordia behind in order to unlock the benefits.  This combined with the nature of 2017 scenarios allowed me to break up her battlegroup a little bit.

We dropped Disco entirely and upgraded a Manticore to the Phoenix.  This lets us marshall a light onto the Scyir to create a really potent flag fighting and holding team.  The Scyir package is very much a “set it and forget it” module.  They’re going to be operating on the far flanks, independent of the rest of your force.  They can hold and protect a friendly flag to score forever, or go deep behind enemy lines and draw away the significant resources needed to remove them.

The double Sentinels packages is pretty locked in with Helynna to get the most out of her playstyle.  She likes to lead with her battlegroup and brick up using her feat.  Manticores allow you to help funnel enemy troops even with the loss of your third covering fire.  The Sentinels will want to hang back behind your myrmidon wall and counterpunch against whatever they send in under feat.  A full suite of mechaniks combined with Helynna’s damage removal on her feat will keep everyone happy and healthy well into the late game.

The Phoenix makes it a little more difficult to tag something with Hand of Destruction vs the Chimera, but having a reach heavy is worth the exchange.  If something happens to Destors to make them worthwhile in the future you could happily run with a single unit of Sentinels.  Unfortunately, the Invictors will continue to guard our shelves for the foreseeable future.  No love for them to be found here.

The Dawnguard Scyir is definitely a style choice in this list and a clear example of the problem with jack marshalls within the Retribution.  Removing the light from Helynna’s battlegroup also removes the benefits of Rhythm of War and Hand of Destruction.  The vast majority of Retribution warcasters have really important battlegroup-only abilities that make it twice as painful to pass them off onto our marshalls.  You need to make a conscious decision to lose these benefits before you decide the marshall would be worth it.

Touching quickly on the rest of our themes: fantastic changes!!  If you’re unimpressed by the inclusion of mercs, then you need to go back and take another look and where our meta has been settling.  A large part of Ghost Fleet’s strength was the lack of workable counters within themes.  Issyria in Shadows of the Retribution will eventually get overrun by Blackbane’s Ghost Raiders, but Aiyana and Holt lets a unit of Strikers delete them off the table.  Nyss introduce a much needed unit presence into Forges of War.  Defenders of Ios saw an even greater number of models introduced which might make you think about dropping down to a measly two units of Halberdiers to make room for something tasty.

Now back to fiddling with my lists… hope you enjoyed!

Also, please no comments about why the second unit of Sentinels is missing a Soulless Escort.  It’s bothering me immensely, but there’s nothing I can do to maintain symmetry in the list :[

EDIT:  Adding this last bit in!  I’m looking through Facebook and everyone is disappointed with the changes to Defenders of Ios so let’s talk about that really fast.  I’ll let everyone in on a big secret about the success of my Defenders of Ios build: The Advance Move isn’t actually that important.  Half the time you’re backpedaling anyway to set up for a better alpha.  The free points are the important thing in all of the Themes.  Running with 2 Halberdiers and 1 Ryssovas for example gives you a really strong anchor to hold down your late game with.  This is a YUGE benefit for Issyria in Defenders who really struggles to close games out with live scenarios.  Electromancers are less exciting, but could be tech’d in to fight infantry a little better without committing all of your Halberdiers at once.

The ability to take Sylys in every Theme is also a game changer for some of the builds.  The changes we saw were subtle and not these flashy, in your face improvements, but they fix a lot of minor frustrations within list building and correcting for the current meta.  I promise you everyone, everything is going to be OK.  Start tinkering around with your lists and watch how dramatically matchups can swing into your favor with a small change.