2K of Eshin Goodness

[Vorchild]

Changed the name to get away from the conversion ideas to get into the eshin side.

I have a new project in mind that I'd like to get people's opinions on. Its a psudo-Druchii consept in that it will use converted Druchii models, but will use them in an Eshin list.

The list I'm looking at is a 2K list and is what I need most advise about:

Master Assassin with smoke bombs, weeping blade, twisted crown of the horned rat

Assassin with warpstone stars
2 Eshin Sorcerers at level 2 and each with a scroll

4 units of 6 night runners with 2 weapons and champions
2 units of 9 night runners with 2 weapons
2 rat swarm bases
2 units of 6 gutter runners with tunnelling, poison and champion
1 unit of 6 gutter runners with poison, champion, and throwing stars
1 unit of 5 jezzails
2 triads

I think that's legal...

I kind of wanted to use it for tourney purposes too, and was wondering if I still get the benefits of the night fight rules.

The background idea is that they are a group of Druchii who refused to fight for Malekith in a losing battle, and thus were cursed forever to feel shame for their cowardice (hence the lower Ld). They are outcast thieves and bandits that live in the far reaches of the forests and call home a dark tower in the wastes of Naggaroth. I call them the Forsaken. The jezzails are hard to explain, but I think I can do it by saying that they stole the home of an outcast sorcerer and used his magic items to create sniper crossbows for themselves as well as other weapons that they have (warpstone stars for instance). Its what I think a bunch of Druchii highwaymen would do.

The idea is to have 2 DE assassin models for the assassins (no shadowblade model as I don't feel right calling that guy a skaven ). The triads will be 5th ed assassin models. The night runners are corsairs and the gutter runners witches. Both of these units will be converted to wear cloaks so as to keep the hidden theme going. So that's lots of green stuff, but otherwise nothing significant in terms of converting. The rat swarms will be a spider swarm (they live ina forest after all - and I have the denizen spider models). The jezzails will be RXBmen lying down on the ground in a sniper like pose with cloaks (again) on their backs and even with hoods on their heads. The RXBs will rest on rocks to get the leverage right. Again, nothing extensive as I can just use the current models, lie them flat, and drape them with green stuff cloaks.

The colour scheme I'm looking at is the obvious black cloaks and dark green cloth - so a very dark forest camo look with lots og highlighting black to do.

For a display tray/board/whatever you want to call it, I'm thinking a Druchii tower (as per the monthly article) in a decaying forest (so just using the skelletons for trees and maybe some fall leaf stuff use sparingly) on a darren black earth base with rocks and stuff everywhere. A place for the spider swarm would have webs between the trees. All in all, I want it to looks seriously dark and creepy.

So, is the idea any good? Is the list any good? And I just going to waste time and money?

[Drakken]

You actually did the math behind that crazy idea of your huh?

And remember, it takes a lot to waste money....just think back to last weekend....

As I understand it, you would still get Cover of Night since its all Skirmish, which is the only requirement. As far as an all skirmish army, it looks okay. Admittedly, I have no idea how it work...but it would sure be fun to try.

[Malekith]

Fluff-wise I like that idea but there are still some "buts". THe idea of sniper crossbows is somewhat nice but I feel that here it's too much. That does not explain S5 and -3 AS (am I right?). Maybe something like mobile bolt thrower (like machine gun) would do the trick.

Another thing is the Witches acting as tunelling team - sorry I do not see that. I'd rather go for shades - they seem more capable being tunelling team IMO. On the other hand the idea of spiders is very nice and fluffy IMO.

IMO as long as you modell everything on the models and explain what's the fluff behind that army it would be legal. Anyway great concept IMO

maybe the lower Ld value could be expalined by the use of and constatn exposure to warpstone - you know hazardous environment

[Vorchild]

The math? Hells no. I never do the math - the results are always far too depressing to actually make me want to go through with my crazy plans. Since you asked though... I can get the 5th ed assassin pretty cheap on eBay. No one wants them and they go for cheap. It'll take time, but I think I can find 6 of them for about about $30 (saw one where a guy was actually selling 3 for 10 USD about a year ago). The swarm bases are easy as I have the plastic spiders and the bases already. same with the jezzails. Its just 6 plastics on cav bases. 42 corsairs won't come cheap mind you and neither will 18 witches, but it could be worse. The modelling stuff for the cloaks will be crazy expensive though I think seeing as I'll need an absolute ton of the stuff. The dispaly board will also be quite costly. But $500 for an army, though on the expensive side, isn't unheard of. The one I brought to Baltimore would cost about 500 CAD, which is about the same as this would cost I think. All that being said, I'll playtest the list first before I go and start anything. Its not even the first project on the list either. I still have my Chaos army to finish painting, and the undead to make ready, and the Druchii to continue to expand upon in terms of painting.

@Malekith: Jezzails are S6 and AP if I'm not mistaken, which makes it even harder to explain. That being said, jezzails currenlty can't really be explained. My guess is they simply find some cool junk in a wizard's tower. That works right? Right?

As for the witches, try to keep in mind that they will be almsot completely wrapped up in their cloaks, so they should look completely different that real witches. Corsairs will looks very familiar, but the witches should be something much different. As for tunnellers, I like to think that they will instead be hiding in wait in the night rather than tunnelling. They place themselves there before the battle and then pop up at the opportune moment right out of the darkness. Elven cloaks and all that. The shades are too difficul to show that they have two hand weapons and no RXBs I think. Thanks for the encouragement too. Its a project I am most keen on.

[Malekith]

@Malekith: Jezzails are S6 and AP if I'm not mistaken, which makes it even harder to explain. That being said, jezzails currenlty can't really be explained. My guess is they simply find some cool junk in a wizard's tower. That works right? Right?

Hmmm... let's say so Well maybe they have found mini RBTs at the attic or in lab - the lost technology you know...

As for the witches, try to keep in mind that they will be almsot completely wrapped up in their cloaks, so they should look completely different that real witches. Corsairs will looks very familiar, but the witches should be something much different. As for tunnellers, I like to think that they will instead be hiding in wait in the night rather than tunnelling. They place themselves there before the battle and then pop up at the opportune moment right out of the darkness. Elven cloaks and all that. The shades are too difficul to show that they have two hand weapons and no RXBs I think. Thanks for the encouragement too. Its a project I am most keen on.

Well I can hardly see these Witches - maybe beacause they hide in the dark - seriously that's quite good explanation for me and if they get lost in the tu... erm forrest that's certainly because they overused warpstone based drugs - thus lower Ld.

Anyway I like it

[Vorchild]

I'm going to try to playtest the list sometime either this weekend or next week in order to get a feel for it and see if its just as much fun to play as it would be a modelling project. I also need to check some rules for weeping blades and assassins in general and most importantly skitterleap. Seems like an absurdly powerful spell if you can get it to go off. Turn 1: Skitterleap the assassin into hierophant and kills it. Gets VPs for hierophant, VPs for killing character, and army begins to crumble... I like the night fight rules though. *rolls 2* OK, so your gun line can only see 6", have fun finding a target...

[Noble korhedron]

Sorry. Can't help you.

[Lord k]

Sorry. Can't help you.

lmao. is this a contender for most helpful post of all time?

the army list looks pretty groovy. and 8 assasins... *mouth waters*

for the jezzails what about using 5th edition DE bolt throwers (only the main body and legs) on a cav base with a DE guy crewing it. would look like a portable missile launcher !

[Dark Alliance]

Sorry. Can't help you.

Then why bother to post anything at all? You have been told about this before. This is a friendly warning so be advised to heed it. You know the forum rules.........

[Rork]

You know the forum rules.........

Not so sure about that...

But back on topic, I'm not convinced about the use of jezzails (apart from potentially cool models). I think Under Cover of Darkness could cause them trouble more often than not, so adding in some other close range troops might be worth investigating as an alternative.

[Mormacili]

Really cool theme, but do the rat (spider) swarms skirmish? skip them if not, the cover of night is really important.

If you want things a bit cheaper you could base some conversions on high elf archers. They have robes and would fit in as night runners.

[Nagelmorte]

They skirmish. rat swarms are good! los swarms=yummy

[Vorchild]

As to the jezzails, I just kind of felt like going, why not. I honestly couldn't figure out what else to use since I was getting to my sanity limit on the gutter runners and night runners. About the only other alternative I can think of is to really beef up the rat swarm. The idea of using the 5th ed bolt throwers is an intersting one that I'll have to look into - I didn;t think they'd fit on the cav base, but I'll take a look to see if I can get them to fit somehow.

I've been looking over the rules fo skitterleap and damn is that spell harsh. Expect hierophants to be eliminated turn 1 and against empire their war machines to become paste rather quickly. Yeesh. A triad and a unit of night runners even in the flank should be able to do some serious damage to almost any infantry unit and likely break it too. God forbid a triad and the master assassin...

[Vorchild]

I played a game yesterday with the list but changed the character magic items aronud a little bit. The master assassin picked up the tenebryous cloak and warpstone stars and the assassin took the bands of power.

At any rate, I got to play against an 'Ard Boyz list which showed just how much skitterleap rocks. My opinion of gutter runners also keep going up though, as one unit, after a couple turns of poison shooting and one of combat took out a giant, while in the process march blocked half the orc army. One of the tunneling teams misfired, and that kind of sucked, but it happens. Miscasting with skitterleap is similarly annoying. You really need both of them casting it every time.

Its funny though, the list is notoriously unforgiving and has very little punch to get the job done, and very very little way to obtain some easy combat res. I made the mistake of charging two triads, an assassin, (that's 7 assassins for those of you who didn't know :twsited: ) and some night runner (for numbers) into a unit of 3 trolls, and did some absurd number of wounds (something like 16 to the entire unit). That being said, I could only actually inflict 7 of them! Stupid regeneration... Since the thing passed almost every break test it could find, I was help up in combat for 5 turns (of combat). That's the vast majority of my strike force held up in combat for 3 of its own turns. How do you say mistake. I would have been better if I could maybe have won combat res by more than 2 (1 wound and outnumber) what with the Ld9 general lurking about nearby. Grrr...

Still, the army is surprising in just how many attacks it can unleash. The triads alone are incredible. I didn't realise it myself until I played the game that two triads, and a skitterleaping assassin could quite easily take on an entire ranked unit in the front - and win. That being saidm that's over 500 pts of assassins attacking a unit, so what did I truly expect. 28 poisoned attacks hitting on 3+, wounding normally on 3+...

Night fighting was interesting, but goes both ways. The jezzails really do become half useless, but they are still a good deterrant and can still attract attention. After all, if you misfire or roll 10 (did that twice) that's a whole lot of range they can use. I rolled a 2 once when I was about to do some serious charging, so needless to say, little could be done that turn sadly on either side.

All in all, it looks like I may indeed have to go through with this project.

[Lloyba]

offtopic: my friend just started an eshin list a while ago too, so i know that this list is jumpy!

ontopic: maybe a warpscroll on 1 of the sorcerors. it might help damaging and panicking some horde units like goblins and the like. an interesting idea is to give your master assasin the fellblade and amulet of protection( 6+ against the fellblade wounds... not much but...) and just try to skitterleap him next to the opposing general. cha-ching, and you have gained 200+points cost of the general. usually worth the masters cost, especially against undead. otherwise a pretty solid list, good job!

[Drakken]

Kives, the problem with that tactic is the army need really needs the master for more than just killing. Since its all skirmish, they need his Ld 8, and he's even more important for the ability to tip combats with normal troops. Also, if your oppenant stops your Skitterleaps for a few turns, you've all but killed your General without the enemy doing any damage.

Vor...interesting. Did changing the configurations work well (since that was one of the areas still up in the air)? The jezzails are likely worth the effort of staying in, I've even changed my opinion on them after some smaller games today...Still, always nice to hear confirmation of a concept right?

[Vorchild]

Yeah, the changing configuartion worked quite well. I was playing against Ard Boys though, so its hard to say on a few things. Warpstone stars are really kick ass. It allows him to really be a supporting character like he shoul be for ld purposes, but also a real threat to be avoided if possible. I found it likely a good idea to try to skitterleap him first to try to drain dispel dice since its the assassin you really want to skitterleap into a combat. The jezzails are pretty useless, I'll admit, but like I said, they are still a bit of a magnet. People still fear them and will likely send something after tham. If not, well, they can very quickly be moved into range/sight.

My only real concern now is if I still really want to use corsairs as my night runners. There's just so many of them! I think I'm going to start looking into ways to use basic warriors instead. I also have to really figure out how to use the army. Its just so incredibly different than anything else I've ever used. That being said, it confused a lot of people real quick and it plays a lot liek my Druchii armies to a certain degree in that it seems to generally peel away all the support units very quickly.

[Drakken]

You might want to take a gander at Ash's Corsairs, I think there's a pic in the gallery if you can't remember them. They're mostly built from Warrior parts, so that might give you a few ideas. The good news, its gettin smaller. Thats my problem, the more I tinker with my list...the smaller it gets. I started at 123 models...I think I'm at 90 now.

As for playing style, it seems to play very similiar to your DE list actually. It peels support away the concentrates a rather large volume of attacks on a single unit to break it. Bad dice rolling seems to shoot the army in the foot, but since its really hard to earn overwhelming VPs, it might not be a bad Tournament army. The only thing worth squat are characters and Triads.

[Vorchild]

Yeah, copying Ash was exaclty what I had in mind. Just with some nifty greestuff cloaks instead. I don't think I'll need the gallery though - I was quite impressed with them and remember them well.

As for size, I purposely made it small as I really don't think I can do that extensive a series of conversions and such. I still want it to look like a smaller group of Druchii traitors. And I just don't honestly know what to do with 80+ night runners. I just don't know what I'd do with them. I had troubles in my game figuring out what to do with the 50 odd ones I had. I thought of giving them all throwing stars or slings or something, but just gave up on that since I don't think its in the assassin theme. The army would be excessively good at just walking around lauching volley after volley of close ranged S3 missiles into units, but how is that in theme with a group of assassins? Sure, they kill stuff, but it just takes so long.

I think a pair of triads are just totally necessary though. That's about the only "punch" you can get in the army. The fact that they have Ld8 isn't encouraging though. I fail enough of those tests with elves as it is... You'll have to tell me how your tests are going too.

[Drakken]

I see what your saying about the army, and I do agree that having 60 Night Runners running around does tend to get somewhat clogged up...However, I don't envision having too much problem, since I don't expect them to live long at all. Between Ld 6 and No Armor, I figure they'll be vanishing rather quickly. As for what to do with them....I have 3 small shooty units (Throwing Stars) and 3 Melee Units and just swarm a region. The Triads were a no-brainer, they were part of the concept originally...but I do think pyschology will be an issue. Hell, anything thrown at them will be an issue, they're only 6W worth of survival. I've been considering dedicating a unit of Night Runners just to act as Escort for them, and will be trying that out fairly soon, I'll let you know how it works.

....and you remember my Leadership right? I can fail 10s with Re-rolls consistently.

[Lloyba]

Kives, the problem with that tactic is the army need really needs the master for more than just killing. Since its all skirmish, they need his Ld 8, and he's even more important for the ability to tip combats with normal troops. Also, if your oppenant stops your Skitterleaps for a few turns, you've all but killed your General without the enemy doing any damage.

yeah, you're right but it's still entertaining, and maybe worth a try if you just want to have some fun. i agree, the masters ld 8 is great, especially for the eshin.

[Vorchild]

Bringing this back to say I played against Sylvanians and Nurgle legion today. I didn;t win either game, but I expected to do much worse, so I was pleased with the outcome.

Against the undead, things went largely as expected in that I was able to peal away all the wovles (4-5 units of 5) with ease, though mostly owing to how impossible it was for me to fail any psychology checks, even with Ld 6. I made the mistake of being a bit greedy and sitterleaping an assassin into a unit of bats and then whiffing. Don't worry, next turn say the end of those bats and others. The swarm was great, holding up the knights for 4 rounds of combat, and the triads were good too for a little bit before they both got killed by a black coach. The toehr coach was destroyed by gutter runners though. Lesson is, I use my triads too aggressively - stop doing that. He won my 220, but only because in the last turn I managed to ice a unit of zombies with the battle standard bearer in it.

Against Nurgle legion, this was going to be tough. Most things hitting on 5s and wounding on 6s, and I didn't learn my lesson all that weel as I was too aggressive with my assassins. Managed to kill his exhalted daemon general on turn 2 though after having done 3 wounds to it with warpstone stars. Love those things. I also managed to destroy his uit of monsters (whatever they're called) and his nurglings, but the plaguebearers are just impossible to kill. Fear against played a big factor as it let him get my triads (after they fled and such, or failed to rally). If I had been less agressive, I might have had a chance, but ranked units really help, or at least rank breakers.

[Drakken]

Yeah, it my little experience using the list, fully ranked elite units are its bane. Its odd, since its like the only thing fully ranked Elites are the bane of....

With that DL, only thing I would think to try is remove every element outside of the Plaguebearers, make an Assassination run at any character in there, then avoid the those units for the rest of the game, and go home with a minor win. Fear is tough, -1 to Hit, high toughness is worse, and a average armor save on top is really bad. Warpstone stars are indeed great though..

[Vorchild]

Yeah, so I'm reviving my topic, but I'm trying to give it a different focus.

I made a change to the lst to include the brass orb on the master assassin instead of his cloak and a bunch of night runners. He's never needed the cloack, so...

But, my experiences thus far have lead me to believe that the list is indeed rather decent, except for how it relies on magic quite a bit to become truly powerful, and that's not necessarily all that greatwith 6 power dice.

I did have the opportunity to play against one of the armies I'd fear most in a tournament situation - Brets and Dwarfs (we combined so I faced 1K of each at once - not really tournament stuff, but in fact its actually worse ), and they were all knights and heavily armoured infantry. And that was seriously annoying, both for me and them. I made the mistake of getting greedy and went after the ironbreakers, and actually ended up in the end reducing a 20 dwarf unit to 3 guys, but only managed half VPs for the unit.

In the end though, they menaged to collect a grand total of 30 VPs from me. I was disputing all the quarters and the only thing I removed from the table were 5 night runners that failed to rally in the last turn (and some assorted models that didn't count for anything). So, I can see this army doing decently in a tournament given that I can likely pull off victories and draws simply by denying combat and VPs to my opponent.

But my worry is now fair play - no one really likes toplay against an army that so completely owns the movement phase, not to mention how skitterleaping around the table can be seriously vexing. It will also tear all opposing support units to shreds, and its own units are worth squat. Yeah, destroyed some night runners! Waaaait... So, knowing that its not exactly fun to play against, how do people see my soft scores in a tournament? I wouldn't say the army is designed to be overpowered. After all, its got jezzails. And the master doesn't have the fellblade. I am taking 2 triads though, but they'd the only things that hit really, so who woudl do anything else? More importantly is the sports score (I figure with all the conversions I can get high paint scores). Will people mark me low for not engaging? I just feel like such a jerk sometimes when all I do is run around and pick of opposing units.