Supreme Sorceress with shades

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Auere
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Supreme Sorceress with shades

Post by Auere »

I have never seen anyone putting their supreme sorceress with a unit of shades. I think that they would have a good synergy.

Supreme Sorceress (Focus Familiar/Darkstar Cloak, Seal of Ghrond/PoK, Lifetaker) with 9 Shades with ahw.

All benifit from being able to march and shoot without considerable penalties. The shades also easily take care of any mage-hunters with shooting or attacks, and the ability to move freely means that the supreme sorceress is easy to keep safe but still within range for her spells. The unit size and skirmish formation makes the unit unattractive to shoot at, and the supreme sorceress lds 9 makes it resistant to psycology.

What say ye?
Flash29
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Post by Flash29 »

i use to run a shades bodyguard in seventh al the time, with focus familiar it gave a cheap and strong force which could be hid. in this edition though you can't hide those shades in forests anymore. And 9 shades die very fast if something hits them, especially template weapons. with tougness 3 and no decent armour save you will lose your look out sir first turn and then you will die. and thats if panic tests or magical forrests don't get you first.

skirmish gives some protection but not enough against a heavy to hit shooting army, and that char must die so its worth pumping a turn of shooting in it.

a magic army will only need 1 succesfull spell and it could mean the end of the unit. only have to kill 4 T3 shades to make you lose your look out sir.

templates will just completely destroy the unit with touching count as hit and skirmish rank formations

and any combat force will take something fast and big and go kill it cause as said before your sorceress is important and the shades only have st3 which is nothing against a decent armour save or tougness
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Malus99
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Post by Malus99 »

it could be rewarding, but very risky, one reason shades survive for me is that, in most cases, my opponents are unwilling to divert alot of effort into killing them, add in a lord sorceress and the enemy will instantly look to fry it, a Lv2 might be ignored, but I find shades are just on that threshold between being insignificant enough not to warrant an attack which will wipe them out and being just irritating enough to do damage and divert some attention, I think adding another 100 points minimum to make a unit of 170 with 10 T3 wounds into a 270 point unit with 12 T3 wounds is asking for it to be splatted. But if you are going to do it, do it with a cheap sorceress or you will find several warmachines and a block of knights all heading your way.
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Auere
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Post by Auere »

But if you are going to do it, do it with a cheap sorceress or you will find several warmachines and a block of knights all heading your way.


Really? I would think that cannons/bolt throwers/stone throwers would never bother shooting at shades. The most they can hope to kill per shot is 2-4. Autohit warmachines nearly all have limited range, so you can just stay out of range - especially with a focus familiar.

Why would knights be a problem? You can move 10' per turn. So you can always just stay at safe distance or move around terrain features. I would say that a warrior unit would be worse protection from knights than shades, because they are so cumbersome.

Why would magic be a problem? None of the most popular lores: Life, Shadow, Death have magical missiles, and should someone land a meteor close to the shades, they will be some of the quickest to get away. Apart from that, many offensive spells also have limited range.
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Malus99
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Post by Malus99 »

Fair points, but I think you may find you spend so much time running that you won't be as effective at magic and shooting, you will have to play very evasive to stay out of shooting and charge ranges/arcs. Be interested to hear if anyone has success with this under 8th, I imagine it would be hard to play and need alot of good position play to keep them out of trouble, but could be very difficult for the opponent to pin down and catch without throwing a disproportionate amount of their army at it.
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Meteor
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Post by Meteor »

I know my Shades now always get targeted by enemy war machines at the very least. If they can get charged or shot at, they will receive it, and no matter how flexible your unit is, unless you can fly or at least glide, you can't hope to escape being charged.

I've yet to receive magic as a problem for my Shades. However, if you really do stick a Sorceress in your Shade unit, especially a Supreme Sorceress, you will quickly find that protecting her Shade unit from any form of magical harm, or any form of harm in general, becomes important. Thus you would be wanting to spend DD on trivial spells on a rather trivial unit, whereas if it didn't have a Sorceress in it, it might not had been targeted by spells, and you wouldn't had to care so much about keeping those Shades alive when it doesn't really matter.
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Rkhatzar
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Post by Rkhatzar »

Have you thought about placing 5/6 Shades with Assassin,
and at some point revel assassin than use Smoke n Mirror to get your Supreme Sorcerres behind opponent's line? I wanted to try it, but it's so freeky risky.
Im using 3 shadow mages, Assassin with Cloak of Shadows and BSB-Tank, but as Shades will bring this tactics even higher sorcerres is very fragile, and Shadow don't have enough punch...
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Non sence1
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Post by Non sence1 »

i like the ideaof getting the sorc behind enemy line, i never would have thought of that. I will try that in one of my lists some day just for some fun :P
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Meteor
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Post by Meteor »

If I was an empire general, and I saw a SS with Shades, all my mortars and cannons will be aiming for her from the get go. Shoot the unit enough so that they lose Look out Sir, then in comes the cannonball. gg.
What's mine is mine, What's yours is mine.
Now that we understand each other, lets get down to business.

Jacks -Shade
- WS 5 - - S 3 - - T 2 - - D 6 - - I 5 -

Equipment
Short Sword, MC Long Sword*, Dagger, RxB & RHB [20/10] MC Shade Cloak, 4 Throwing Daggers, 3x Healing Vials, 451C, [3]Dark Venom, [4]Unseen Chains, Food, Dark Steed- Spike

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Basic Stealth, Awareness, TWF, Suithenlu Khythan, Ride

Magic Item
Eye of the Jabberwock

*Magical properties possibly imbued
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Rkhatzar
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Post by Rkhatzar »

You do it like this, shades - assassin, cast any spell from Shadow, swap with assassin, cast big spell, swap with other character/use steed of shadows, or do any other combo,
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Tethlis
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Post by Tethlis »

It's certainly a matchup that would be effective against some opponents, and less effective against others. As has been mentioned, anyone with template shooting and/or cannons has an advantage. I would also look out for any units that can field chariots or inexpensive heavy cavalry in abundance, because those units are quick enough to pull off a charge on Shades and durable enough to resist their shooting and Strength 3 attacks.

If I were up against something like this, it would become the tasty target of choice for my War Hydra, though reasonably any player fielding a flying Pegasus-type Hero could hunt this unit setup down pretty quickly unless you kept it very safe.

So not impossible, and potentially functional, but you'll have to be very smart with it in order to keep it safe. Spearmen have the advantage of being an ablative wounds buffer, as well as Steadfast. Spearmen also tend to be in the middle of a battle line, which means BSB re-rolls and the support of friendly units. Shades won't have most of those advantages.
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Carolus
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Re: Supreme Sorceress with shades

Post by Carolus »

Auere wrote:I have never seen anyone putting their supreme sorceress with a unit of shades. I think that they would have a good synergy.

Supreme Sorceress (Focus Familiar/Darkstar Cloak, Seal of Ghrond/PoK, Lifetaker) with 9 Shades with ahw.

All benifit from being able to march and shoot without considerable penalties. The shades also easily take care of any mage-hunters with shooting or attacks, and the ability to move freely means that the supreme sorceress is easy to keep safe but still within range for her spells. The unit size and skirmish formation makes the unit unattractive to shoot at, and the supreme sorceress lds 9 makes it resistant to psycology.

What say ye?


Can't march and shoot with the lifetaker though? Since it doesn't turn the SS into a skirmisher.
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Rkhatzar
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Post by Rkhatzar »

it do.
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Rkhatzar
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Post by Rkhatzar »

it do. and SS will be there for 1 phase of 5phase turn. So you would try and fry assassin/shades not SS/shades.
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Re: Supreme Sorceress with shades

Post by Zenith »

Carolus wrote:
Auere wrote:I have never seen anyone putting their supreme sorceress with a unit of shades. I think that they would have a good synergy.

Supreme Sorceress (Focus Familiar/Darkstar Cloak, Seal of Ghrond/PoK, Lifetaker) with 9 Shades with ahw.

All benifit from being able to march and shoot without considerable penalties. The shades also easily take care of any mage-hunters with shooting or attacks, and the ability to move freely means that the supreme sorceress is easy to keep safe but still within range for her spells. The unit size and skirmish formation makes the unit unattractive to shoot at, and the supreme sorceress lds 9 makes it resistant to psycology.

What say ye?


Can't march and shoot with the lifetaker though? Since it doesn't turn the SS into a skirmisher.



He right, its not the skirmisher part that allows shades to march and shoot, its their scout rule that lets them do that. ANd the Supreme S doesnt not become a scout. even if she remains with the shades.

Shame though, we once had an cloack that allows a charackter to become a scout, really nice.
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Ichiyo1821
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Post by Ichiyo1821 »

It has its advantages and disadvantages depending on what you face say for example you face Chaos Warriors and don't have any shooting or won't blast them with spells but otherwise the risk is great. While you are gaining the advantage of having a good fire support team with Shades and a Sorceress near his lines, you are also removing from the Shades their ability to do damage and remain mostly untouched for a good part of the game. The moment you put your Sorceress there, you are presenting to your opponent a hefty point sink that he'll consider taking out. Not only do you risk losing your warmachine hunters/firebase, you also risk losing your magic defense/offense in one basket.
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