Cloak of Hag Graef - possible use?

[Dalamar]

Here's one more from the rare series of "possible use?" where yours truly Dalamar tries to bend logic and make some of our least used (or completely worthless) magic items or other silly things somewhat useful.

Here's two previous threads on weird things:
Sorceress on a Cold One - possible use?
Dagger of Hotek - possible use?

So here's the thing.
Cloak of Hag Graef.
Sounds great on paper doesn't it? Halves strength of all ranged attacks? Say hello S3 Bolt Throwers! or S2 regular shooting. Things are actually wounding our little frail elves on 5+!
But when we look at other Armour options the cloak kinda pales when compared to Armour of Eternal Servitude or Armour of Darkness.
Lets see what we can do about that shall we?

Example hero:
Master
Cloak of Hag Graef
Lance, Full Mundane Armour (bar the SDC, he already has it)
Dark Steed

For a small total of 127 points! we have the perfect warmachine and small missile unit hunter.
The remaining 25 points on magic item allowance can be used to specialise him a little.
Ring of Hotek - sticks around wizards and is horribly annoying to shoot down.
Null Talisman - not only lowers the S of spells cast at him, they're also harder to cast!
Sword of Might - possible ethereal hunter

He can also be made a BSB if needed, but I believe the Pendant BSB of unkillable doom is better suited for the standard. More on it later

Why Dark Steed and not Dark Pegasus if he's supposed to be warmachine hunter you ask me? Well, the cloak can't protect the pegasus while it can protect the steed (as the hits are not randomised) so by losing 2" off the charge we gain a lot of survivability there!

So to sum up, for 127 points we get a model that:
1. Has 1+ armour save against ranged attacks and 2+ armour save against close combat attacks.
2. Halves S value of all incoming ranged attacks and spells (meaning the attack has to either completely ignore AS, or be S10 to begin with to actually modify his armour to worse than 2+!)
3. Has 3 S6 attacks on the charge + horse (which we all know kills more than the rider)
4. Can be given another magic item to specialise more.
5. Can be made BSB to counter outnumbering bonus of certain possible targets.

So how does this make him better than Pendant BSB?
Well, I believe they have two different and distinct roles.
Pendant BSB takes on the hardest of enemy units, or one that the rest of the army is not suited to deal with (ethereals, greater daemons, monsters) and holds them in place for a very very long time.
While Cloak Master (lets call him the new Hunter Noble) is tasked with picking off light, yet dangerous enemy units with little danger to himself.
Also, sometimes we want the Pendant on our Lord to keep them safe, and Cloak of Hag Graef remains mostly unused and forgotten.

For the unbelievers, here's some statistics. Both heroes (Cloak Master - 127 points, Pendant BSB - 177 points) charge a unit of 10 dwarf handgunners and need to survive the stand and shoot reaction.

10 shots, hit on 5+ (long range and charging target)
3.3 hits.
Here's where it splits.

Cloak Master:
Wounded on 5+, 1.1 wounds.
Saving on 2+ (S2 and AP for total of -1 to AS), 0.18 of a wound gets through.

Pendant BSB
Wounded on 3+, 2.2 wounds.
Saving on 3+ (S4 and AP for a total of -2 to AS), 0.73 of a wound gets through the armour.
Pendant saving on 4 or less, 0.48 of a wound in total.

Sure, they both survived, but they also got shot by only 10 handgunner. Notice though how the "unkillable BSB" took 2.6 times more damage than the cloaked one.

I have a feeling I'll be testing this little guy soon.

Discuss.

[Calisson]

Sounds interesting.
Thanks for your "possible use" researches.

Next, did you compute the result of the melee against said handgunners? Dwarfs are tough, a BSB could be useful indeed.

how would it go as a monster killer?

[Dalamar]

Well, for melee results
Pendant BSB usually has SoM, thus S5
Cloak Master has Lance, thus S6

result - Cloak wins on the charge, Pendant is better in prolonged combats (can be made the same if we buy SoM for the Cloak Master)

It would *not* go as a monster killer.
Even Pendant BSB can't really kill monsters, just hold them up for long.

To kill monsters you need many high strength hits, something our Masters are incapable of (but Bolt Throwers do just fine )

[Demetrius]

I have thought about using a build simular to this. Think, S5 cannons. Think again. It still wounds on 2+, still ignores the armour, and still causes D6 wounds.

I might use it in bigger games, but for the smaller ones there are better ways to protect your Masters/ Dreadlords.

[Rabidnid]

I have thought about using a build simular to this. Think, S5 cannons. Think again. It still wounds on 2+, still ignores the armour, and still causes D6 wounds.

I might use it in bigger games, but for the smaller ones there are better ways to protect your Masters/ Dreadlords.

Yeah, its fine until it meets artillery, though it does handle bolt throwers pretty well.

[Red...]

I really like it - the mixture of high armour, reduced strength of enemy attacks, manoeuvrability, low cost makes it very cool. But its particularly awesome that you can get all of this WITHOUT using up one of the other armour/talisman choices that you would like to use for your other heroes.

I have thought about using a build simular to this. Think, S5 cannons. Think again. It still wounds on 2+, still ignores the armour, and still causes D6 wounds.

Yeah, its fine until it meets artillery, though it does handle bolt throwers pretty well.

Both very valid points. That said though, as he's on a cavalry and not a monster base, he may be quite hard to hit. He also looks less threatening (ie your opponent is less likely to target him) and if he does get targetted then it may take a couple of turns to hit him (preventing the cannon from targetting potentially more juicy units).

At 127+ points, he's cheap enough that it would not be a game breaker if he got hit (although a big shame!) and there's a good chance he could withstand several such shots.

[Dalamar]

If he's the only one threatening said cannon, then something went wrong.
I'm pretty sure Cannons prefer shooting at our dragons and/or hydrae than little lonely masters

And cannons are only serious threat.
Even catapults need to hit him with the small hole. Otherwise it's S2!

[Thenick18]

I'm sorry, I'm a noob still, can you elaborate on what the Pendant BSB is? I assume its a BSB with PoK correct? What else would he be equiped with, I thought that the BSB cannot take magic items if he is the BSB with a magic banner, which the SoM would be no? Please correct me because I'm sure that I am wrong.

[Dalamar]

Pendant of Khaeleth and Sword of Might, no magic banners. the Battle Standard is only there to offset the outnumbering bonus the enemy usually has.

But there are many other threads on that matter.

[Gethsemane]

I have thought about using a build simular to this. Think, S5 cannons. Think again. It still wounds on 2+, still ignores the armour, and still causes D6 wounds.

I might use it in bigger games, but for the smaller ones there are better ways to protect your Masters/ Dreadlords.

Well, then you could combine it with the Black Dragon Egg. Then those pesky cannons are only wounding you on 5+, and you're completely impervious to S3/4 shooting.

[Dalamar]

That takes a dreadlord and works only for one turn. Waste for Lord slot.

[Mythic77]

If I can get a dark rider master by Friday i am going to test this out against a dwarf gunline.

[Dalamar]

Let us know how it works out!
Just keep in mind:
1- charging a unit of handgunners, while easy to survive, is not so easy to win a combat against. Especially if they are on a hill (+1) and with a standard (+1)
2 - focus him on war machines, he's perfect for taking down that horribly annoying Organ Gun which suddenly will be hitting at S3 and -1 to save as opposed to S5 and -3 to save.

[Linkinhearts666]

OMG wow!

Thats brilliant! Im just visualing a little lonely master running in and completely shredding the (profanity) out of my mates HE several bolt throwers..

/cackles manically

[No one]

looks very nice, definetly (spell?) going to try this

[Smiler6310]

I concur, excellent idea Dalamar! The missus bought me the Dreadlord on Dark Steed yesterday, now I'll have a reason to use him!

[Dalamar]

Keep in mind Linkinhearts666, that while he'll reduce bolt thrower strength to 2 (when shooting a salvo) he will still have to take his saves at -2.

[Malekith's psychologist]

Are you sure? RBT are armour piercing, that means an initial -1 to AS. With S4 that becomes -2. Yet the cloak reduces that to S2, meaning that you'd only have todeal with the -1.

I might be wrong though....

[Slortor]

I think the RBT entry says 'S4 with a -2 modifier to armour saves' or words to that effect. Its fairly easy to work out that thats -1 for strength and -1 for AP but if the book doesnt explicitely says thats what it is then the -2 modifer stands even if it was S1 shooting.

[@1elbow]

I think the main weakness with this is armies that (this will sound obvious) don't shot much. I've thought of something along this line and he is probably very usefull against a shooting army without something mobile to foil him (either try to lead him astray or a charcter on a powerful mount that would kill him in one turn).

Dwarves would probably find him very annoying, Empire too.

This is probably as good as it gets with the Cloak.

[Dalamar]

*sighs* already said that in another thread.

Reaper Bolt Throwers *do not* have anywhere in their rules, "Armour Piercing" entry.
They are S4, and their total modifier to save is always -2.

[Ebonyphoenix]

Oddly enough, this worked well on Pegasus too in a recent tournament I attended. He had the Cloak, RoH, and a pair of rhbs. Lizardmen player thought he was small-fry until he lobbed a Steg's bolt thrower at him and watched it fail to wound the T3 elf. At which point I believe his exact words were, "Guess I'll just aim at somebody else from now on."

So he had his Slann try to cast Spirit of the Forge to cut right to the heart of the matter, rolled a double 6, and found out the hard way that I had the ring. His poor little frog apparently forgot to shield, and was dragged to Chaos by a flaming hand with double 1's.

I would imagine it would work even better with a DS as you don't have to worry about the skinks popping your mount and causing you to panic, as he did in retaliation.

[Mythic77]

I never got to use him on dwarves, but i used him against Empire and he worked great. Halving the STR against handguns and pistols mean they wound on 5+, and the master still gets a 2+ save. He managed to soak up fire from a unit of pistolliers and get right into the empire lines.

[Dalamar]

Pistoliers are all well and good, but true test would be a hellblaster

[Mythic77]

True... but i have no intention of putting a character of any kind in front of one of those things by himself.