Starting Out: Enlightened

 So you’ve decided to join up in the pursuit of science, progress, and turning whales into research assistants. Below I’ll be doing a quick overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the faction, followed by going through the various options available for starting with the Enlightened.

I’m going to be suggesting what I think is a strong 1000 point list with the contents of the box. I don’t believe in dumbing down anything for new players, but I’ll list how complex I think it is, from a new player’s perspective and ease of understanding. Enlightened to tend to be on the complicated end overall though. I’ll try to keep things simple, but no promises.

This was written for the 3.03 Orbat, and updated for 3.04. Lists have not been updated, though point costs have stayed relatively close, so there shouldn’t be any huge issues.

Overview

Shooting: Enlightened have some of the strongest ranged weapons in the game. The Particle Beamer has you covered for pretty much everything, and our heavy cruiser has a blast template weapon.
Defences: Somewhat squishy on raw stats, but unless your opponent has counters to your abilities they end up above average in survivability.
Movement: Average Cruisers, Slow Flagships. If you want to get somewhere fast, there’s tricks for that
Point Cost: High, but you are paying for good weapons and a lot of defensive tricks
Models: Amazing. I’m a huge fan on the frontline cruisers and the Archimedes, and where else are you going to get flying steampunk saucer UFO's?
40k Equivalent: Necrons. Right down to requiring your opponent to focus fire one target at a time.

Magnetizing

The Blackhoof Saloon shows how magnetize the frontline cruisers to allow for any of variants, with relatively little work. The support cruisers could probably also be magnetized in a relatively simple fashion. As for the resin flagships, the weapon options are fairly easy to magnetize.

If you are uninterested in magnetizing, the Enlightened are the faction for you! If you just put Particle Beamers and Heavy Particle Cannons on everything, you’ll be just fine (As of the current 3.04 Orbat). I go into more detail on this in my Enlightened Overview article here. Generators, however, should always be magnetized or at least blue tac’d, and you have little excuse there, it’s quite simple.

Options

Enlightened Starter Set

Enlightened Starter Set by Warcradle Studios

This box asks the very important question “Do you like whales?”. If the answer is yes, this is the place for you. Comes with all the dice, templates, tokens, and cards you need to play, as well as a physical rulebook. This is a complex list rules wise though, you can’t really get around that with this flagship.

Cetacean Operations Battlefleet

• Descartes Control Ship (Orca Tokens)
• Vesalius Cetacean Surgical Ship x2
• Tacitus Assault Cruiser x2 Shield or Fury Generators
• Diogenes Torpedo Submarine x5
• Extra Physeter Tokens x2

        1000 pts

The Tacitus are there to provide a brawler to keep your opponent at bay, which is otherwise hard to come by with these sprues. The Claudius could also serve instead, and you could then drop a sub to add a Colossus.

Expanding: Adding the Colossi takes you to just a bit over 1300 points out of the box, though I don’t think that’s a strong option. What you really want is some Frontline Sprues, to give you some reasonably tough hulls that your opponent doesn’t want to come too close to. If you go with the cheapest option of an Enlightened Frontline Squadron Box, I’d suggest 2 Antarcticas and 6 Merians or Germains, if you don’t want to magnetize.

Hunt for the Prometheus Two Player Starter Set

The Enlightened half of the two player starter is a great deal, especially if you’re looking to pick up the Hypatia and Descartes. The box provides everything for two players, except the templates, of which it contains only 1. You only need one set of templates to play, but if you’re splitting the box and going your separate ways, it’s worth keeping in mind. Also, the Generators you need for the Hypatia are on the Commonwealth sprues, so make sure you hash out beforehand that you’ll get one of each. Otherwise, the Generators are on the Enlightened Support Sprue.

Enlightened Frontline Battlefleet

• Hypatia Generator Ship (Magnetic, Shield, Chrono)
• Stiletto Fast Cruiser x3

Cetacean Operations Battlefleet

• Descartes Control Ship (Orca Tokens)
• Merian Automata Frigate (Germain/Particle Beamer) x5
• Extra Physeter Token

    992 pts

I’d say that’s a fairly balanced list with what you get in the box. Chrono Generator doesn’t have a model yet, so you could use Atomic or Repulsion to ease maneuvering, or Fury for some extra Assault punch. If you’re trying to go hard, you could do Hypatia, 3 Antarcticas and Germains, but that’s a very eggs in one basket approach. You could also convert some Amo Carrier Frigates out of a Merian and the SRS bit from the Frontline Cruiser, and run a Copernicus unit.

Expanding this depends very much on what direction you want to go in. If you like the Whales, then you should probably pick up the one player starter. If the Hypatia and it’s buffs appeal, more Frontline or Support cruisers are the way to go.

Archimedes Battlefleet

 

This builds my favorite fleet right out of the box, so I’m probably biased. Does not come with any Tokens, Dice, Templates, or Cards, so you’ll need another source there. But if you’re already playing Dystopian Wars, this is a perfect start to the Enlightened, since you get 2 of each of the current plastic sprues.

The Archimedes/Nansen is quite easy to magnetize, so you can switch between them.

Enlightened Frontline Battlefleet

• Nansen Explorer (2 Escorts)
• Copernicus Heavy Cruiser x2
• Plinius Support Carrier
• Merian Automata Frigate (Germain/Particle Beamer) x6

      1000 pts

Out of the box, you can expand this to 1500 points

Enlightened Frontline Battlefleet 

• Nansen Explorer (1 Escort)
• Copernicus Heavy Cruiser x2
• Plinius Support Carrier x2
• Merian Automata Frigate (Germain/Particle Beamer) x6
• Lotan Myriapoda Colossus Automata
• Diogenes Torpedo Submarine x6
  

    1493 pts

The Lotan is currently ahead of the Ketos in output and useability. For the Advanced Cruisers, I’d suggest building the Zumeena Capacitor Ship and an Origen Lathe Ship. The Zumeena can be slotted into this list as an offensive buff piece, the Origen as a defensive one for mass 1’s.

Expanding from this, I’d look to pick up a second flagship. Both the Hypatia and the Daedelus (From the Icarus Battlefleet) would pair well with the Nansen. I prefer the Daedelus, and it does come with more Frontline Sprues to fill out the Copernicus unit and add more Automata Frigates. If you can split a Hunt for the Prometheus starter, that gets you the Hypatia, Frontline Sprues, and the game materials if you need that.

Thule Battlefleet

Your aerial support, this box currently cannot build a full battlefleet on its own since it is lacking a required surface choice. That said, a Frontline or Support Squadron will fix that and round out your capabilities nicely (And the Icarus box comes with 2 frontline sprues, so that should probably be considered the default combination if you want to start here).

Enlightened Support Battlefleet

• Thule Sky Fortress

• Copernicus Heavy Cruiser

• Merian Automata Frigate (Germain/Particle Beamer) x6

• Haunebu Battle Saucer (Sturginium Atomizer)

• Pytheus Recon Saucer x2

  992 pts

This is probably on the meaner end here, bringing 3 solid blasts, 12 SRS Tokens, and 5 Activations for 1000 points. In exchange, all of your choices are quite fragile for their cost and class, though with a variety of tricks that make engaging them with the wrong tools punishing. This could be a feels bad list against an inexperienced player, or for the pilot if hitting the wrong matchup.

Expanding: First priority is a second flagship and some surface ships. The Icarus Battlefleet gives you that, plus a great flagship that pairs well with your saucers, the Daedelus. After that I would look at rounding out your fleet with frontline or support squadrons, as needed. Another Thule box would get you an almost full complement of saucers to use, though I’m not sure whether they still contain 3 bases for building the Thule as two separate saucers instead.

Note that the Saucer sprue comes with all the new “artillery turret” options except the original Heavy Particle Cannon, which is generally the best choice (though the Atomizer is acceptable, especially on a more unsupported Haunebu). If you’re a WYSIWYG purist, then you’ll have a small issue there. However, the turrets are mounted on the bottom and won’t generally be visible anyway.

 

Updated 2023-11-20