Unchaining the Cresters

Nautican Warhammer Battle Playtest Findings

This won't be a full battle report just a summary of the "findings" from the Nauticans last outing against the Lizardmen.

This was a 2250 point battle. The Lizards didn't bring a Stegadon much to my suprise.

Instead there was a rock hard unit of Cold One riders which included a nasty Oldblood on a rather angry Carnosaur.

There were more Saurus rank and file this time and some temple guard, 3 razrdons, 3 terradons and a bunch of those ever annoying pesky skink skirmishers and cameleon skinks.

I fell back on the Trident Guard again after suffering a seious bloody nose in the previous encounter.

I had one well tooled up Trident Guard unit with battle standard bearer holding aloft the Millenial Fathom (making them unbreakable) .

I took another Trident Guard unit with my army general. They had the Bullshark banner making them subject to frenzy.

I also had the ever reliable Tripoon, a Leviathan and the ever unreliable Weresharks. Plus a few units of sandgangers, coral hunters and 2 units of crest riders.

I actually broke the army list rules by taking the crest riders because I should have had at least a level 2 siren. However, I had already decided that this army restriction needed to change and my opponent "J" wasn't at all bothered - we're just playtesting so playtest we did.

Right, thus is where I cut things short.

The overall outcome was a draw but it was leaning heacily in the Lizardmen's favour.

The Weresharks copped out yet again and ran - cowards, the Trident Guard showed how excellent they are in offensive and defensive combat again, the tripoon failed to score a single wound (I think) and leviathan was slauthered by the Oldblood.

Now, onto the important stuff. None of the units tested or the army selection proved to be in anyway "broken" or badly unbalanced. There did however emerge a general consensus on army composition.

Two things:-

1) The army really needs to include Crest Riders and
2) The army is too reliant on the Trident Guard

Crest Riders

As the draft 3.7 rules currently stand you can only take one unit of crest riders per magic level of the most powerful magic user in the army.

Because we feel that crest riders are so important for getting to grips with enemy flyers, missile troops and delaying the advance of cavalry this rule seems to restrictive.

In our opinion most armies will want to include crest riders against missile heavy enemies and the current rule means that these armies would have to take at least one magic user of probably level 2.

This means the army is forced to become more magic oriented that the Nautican player might want.

In addition, if the player only takes a single siren for the sole purpose of including the crest riders then the crest riders become too costly to deploy given how vulnerable they are to missile fire and how weak they are in combat.

The crest riders might be deployed like rank and file but they are really utility troops whose purpose is to quickly take on enemy missile troops and to generally get in the enemy's way and disrupt their plans.

The crest riders are in effect the Nauticans version of fast cavalry although they are very much a "one-use" unit because each unit can only summon a single wave throughout the course of a battle.

The Rule Change
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As a result the Nautican player will no longer be forced to take a magic use to be able to include crest riders in their army.

The crest riders will not be counted as a core unit for the minimu number of core units that must be selected.

Finally, to ensure there is some limit on the use of this tactically excellent unit, one power dice must be expended when a unit makes it's Breaking Wave charge. Note, each crest rider unit is still restricted to only one Breaking Wave charge per battle.

We feel the above changes will make the unit's more accessible and broaden the Nautican army's tactical options while keeping some limits and reasonable "cost" on the unit's use.

Oceanic Trident Guard

To very quickly summarise:-

We're happy with the Trident Guard rules. They are very good combat troops with some nice options and will remain the corner stone of a Nautican force.

They are limited to one unit per Nautican Lord or hero (not mermaid, siren or special character) which we think is reasonable. With a toughness of 3 they are by no means invulnerable.

The problem lies with the army having nothing inbetween the much weaker rank and file and the Trident Guard. There are the Interceptors but they are more special use utility troops rather than combat res rank and file.

So the plan is to fill that gap.

This post has become quite long and I'm out of time right now so we'll return to Trident Guard later.

Thanks for reading,
Sigmar