Atlach's Shipyard

  The Scions of Jutland give you almost total access to the Scandinavian Subfaction, only excluding the flagships. They’re an extremely aggressive subfaction, focused on point blank lightning weaponry and assaulting, though the recent support sprue has added support for long range rocket gameplay.   Scions of Jutland by Warcradle Studios Overall, Scions provide a strong point blank punch and general frontline units. Interestingly, all their cruisers share armament that lets them at least passably cover this role, so even more specialized choices can pull combat duty in a pinch. Otherwise, they can bring a quite strong Colossi, the aerial weapons buff, and uniquely among mercenaries Logistical Support. Update 3.05: With the addition of the Skaggerak, the fleet got a lot cheaper, and you can also play aerial M1 spam. Minimum Cost: 400 (Skaggerak + Gefjon Merchantman + 2 Valkyrie Hunt Rotors) Ability: Draugr. An always on ability for the scions, ignoring emergency is nice for...

  There's two things HEC brings to the table: Defensive buffs, and reasonably fast objective takers. Composed almost entirely of the new Airships, you'll be swimming in Flak Barrages and other defensive tricks. Combat wise, their primary strength is point blank knife fighting (Engaging enemies in multiple or even all arcs),with respectable closing output, and with Vanguard on a lot of their units, they can certainly get there. The Sentinel Generator essentially gives all friendly units within 5” a Mass 2 Shield Generator. This could be quite interesting as a protective buff to M1 units, since this is the only “generator ship” that can buff M1. THe 5" range, however, does make this a somewhat complicated arrangement. The Valor effect isn’t particularly strong; you aren’t bringing these for their damage output. The airships in general and the flagships in particular seem to be built around the idea that you can get a target at closing and point blank in the front arc, ano...

  Now that all Mercenaries are released, let’s see what they can give us! This is intended as a primer for someone not previously involved in the faction that the mercenaries come from, a general overview as well as some more nuanced interactions. If there’s any particularly strong choices I intend to call them out, as well as the things you should probably skip. Rules First, let’s go over the shared base rules 1) Pick one of the possible Mercenary Fleets to take 2) Take ONE of those battlefleets The Mercenary Patrons allow you to take multiples of your faction’s Mercenaries, as Main Battlefleets, but you cannot then take a different Mercenary from another faction. All Mercenary lists will not be the focus of these posts, though of course some things will be universally applicable. Several mercenary fleets share buffs that trigger when you are ahead on victory points. These rules check during the Check for Victory Step in the End Phase. This means that these abilities ...

(Alternative Title: Why you’re all playing Commonwealth wrong) The Black Wolves give you access to almost all non-flagship models of the Commonwealth, excluding only the unique units, colossi, and platforms. This is quite a broad set of choices, and the amount of slots you get also lets you bring a variety of options. Black Wolf Battlefleet by Warcradle Studios Overall, the Black Wolf Battlefleet offers you Fortunes of War as well as a variety of strong M1 choices to provide damage output or to shore up weaknesses. Other support options are more limited. While Commonwealth generally leans into attrition based gameplay with tough, cheap options and respawning cruisers/frigates, Black Wolf requires you to take some more fragile subs before getting to the fun stuff and loses the respawning mechanic (which can be a double edged sword on killpoint missions), so it’s definitely more focused on aggression. Since there are quite a few choices to talk about, I'll only be covering what I...

Egyptians look to be a fairly standard naval force, with solid defensive stats, below average speed, and skimming to spice things up. While most ships are focused on the front arc at Closing Range, there’s quite a bit of range variety to add to the challenge, and some side arc focus with the destroyers. Abydos Battlefleet by Warcradle Studios General Overview Elite Subfaction Tough, well armed Cruisers Fast Glass Cannon Destroyers Specialized Flagships Differences in weapon ranges and arcs could be a challenge for some options. What’s interesting is that Egyptians seem to be a fairly complete force. Subfactions are often missing some essential components to making a balanced list, but I’m not really seeing that here. Their weakest aspect is probably point blank brawling, but even that has viable options. I hope they’ll get even further fleshed out with a support sprue and another flagship or two at some point, but what we got is already very good.   Flags...

  Below are my thoughts to the current 3.03 Enlightened Orbat. I’m not going to go deep into the options each unit brings to the table, you have the pdf yourself. Rather, this is aimed at exploring what you can build with the options in front of you, and what choices I think are the way to go. Also vibes. Overall, I’d say Enlightened are an elite generalist faction. Your ships tend to have a lot of firepower in multiple range bands, are tough unless your opponent has the right tools to ignore your defensive tricks, but tend to be expensive.  This was edited a bit for Errata 3.05, which had some changes for the heavy weapons.   Cruiser Armor Just to cover this up front: Armor 5 vs Armor 6 is not a huge deal, due to our low citadel value. Against a single volley, A5 gets crippled at 20 hits and dies at 30, but A6 gets crippled at 22 with the catastrophic explosion, and dies at 36. To reliably cripple, your opponent will in most cases need to invest the same amount of...