In which the author plays around with a couple of cases of new D&D minis…

[Note to my readers – with holiday travels, I haven’t had the time to finish playing NWN2.  Give me another week or two for the final word on that one]

Just before Christmas, I received a present (from myself) that consisted of a case of D&D “War of the Dragon Queen” minis and a case of D&D “Blood War” minis.  These were added into my pre-existing collection.  While visiting relatives over Christmas I completed an extensive re-organization and re-alphabetization of all the stat cards that go with my minis.  I have a 3–ring binder that is absolutely full with card sleeves containing hundreds and hundreds of little stat cards.  I still haven’t figured out what to do with the actual minis – many of the new pieces are still sitting unsorted in some large plastic bins.  Every new set of these minis increases the complexity and size of the storage problems related to these things.

The good news is that these new sets really open up the possibilities for warband construction.  I don’t think that there is one obvious piece in these newer sets that will totally dominate constructed play in the way that the “Ogre Ravager” or “Chraal” did for previous sets.  With the revised rules since the “War Drums” set came out, the skirmish game continues to shine, and I think that warband building now has more creative potential than ever before.  Mind you, it still takes a pretty big investment in the product line before you can really do everything that might be possible with an unlimited number of minis.  Unlike fellow d21 contributor Rhelik, I only buy a single case from any given expansion set (if that) so I don’t have every piece, and I don’t have doubles of rares to play around with.

Anyway, I present below some warbands that I have been tinkering with at home.  Yes, testing these warbands means that I am playing games against myself.  See my article about such matters here.  The D&D skirmish game has no concealed information, so I can play each team’s turn in good faith and try my hardest to make the best move for each side at each point in the battle.

“Team Mezzo-Naga”

• Dark Naga (41)
• 2 x Mezzoloth (88)
• Duergar Champion (33)
• Skullcrusher Ogre (31)
• Greenspawn Sneak (6)

 The Concept: I happen to think that Mezzoloths (Neutral Evil Extraplanar bug dudes) are pretty cool.  They have a neat cloudkill spell ability which can soften up tight packs of creatures.  The Duergar Champion is an obvious fit because it is immune to poison in addition to being a solid fighter.  The Dark Naga has the ability to cast slapping hand spells which help to compensate for the single attack of the mezzoloths.  The band has four solid beaters and a little bit of area effect damage.

Weaknesses: Only six activations.  Morale saves might be an issue.  Poison damage doesn’t work against constructs or undead.

“Team Chaos Hammer”

• Death Slaad (53)
• Blue Slaad (50)
• Green Slaad (41)
• Ogre Skirmisher (38)
• 3x Abyssal Maw (15)
• Gnoll (3)

The Concept: Ever since I acquired the Death Slaad, I wanted to build a Slaad-based warband.  The new minis on this team are the Green Slaad and the Ogre Skirmisher.  The team packs several instances of the chaos hammer spell, which could really mess up a tight pack of lawful good or lawful evil creatures.  The Death Slaad runs into the thick of the action and tries to use his deadly rend ability to take out another team’s big hitter.

Weaknesses: Serious lack of magic damage on the green slaad and blue slaad – not acceptable for big hitters at this level.  Low command rating (only a 1 CR on the Death Slaad).  Green Slaad has good spells, but you have to make a die roll to see what spell you get on any given round.  Three large-base creatures might have trouble feeding into a constricted battlefield area.

“Team Blademonger”

• Lord of Blades (77)
• Cadaver Collector (103)
• Dread Guard (14)
• 2x Warrior Skeleton (6)

The Concept: The Cadaver Collector is a super-titan that should basically never miss an attack roll against the creatures it will face on the 200 point battlefield.  The Lord of Blades backs it up by giving it a “bane weapon augmentation” that gives the cadaver collector an extra 10 points of damage against your opponent’s most popular creature type.  The Lord of Blades also has a spell that will repair 30 points of damage on the collector.  As the collector eats things, it adds to its armor class.  You are paying 180 points for two massive pieces.  The other 20 points on this team is almost superfluous.  I think I might drop the two skeletons (there only for activations) in favor of a greenspawn sneak, to give this team a better chance of gathering some early VPs through the sneak’s scouting ability.

Weaknesses: The Cadaver Collector might be a little vulnerable against range attacks, or against spells that can ignore spell resistance.  The team only has two real pieces, and there is a good chance that your enemy here will take out the Lord of Blades first, hopefully before he has a chance to repair the collector.  The Lord of Blades only has a command rating of 1, but that doesn’t matter much since all pieces are fearless anyway.

“Team Elfstorm”

• Storm Silverhand (57)
• Elf Warmage (42)
• Elf Dragonkith (38)
• Storm Archer (33)
• Steelheart Archer (15)
• 2 x Elf Spearguard (12)
• Man at Arms (3)

The Concept: This team is built around its commander.  Storm Silverhand allows a CG warband to bring in lawful good humans and elves.  All humans and elves on the team are fearless within 6 squares of the commander, offsetting a traditional weakness of CG teams.  The Dragonkith is a rare, and so I dropped him in on principle to try him out – he’s a solid beater with a stout AC, if a little slow getting onto the battlefield.  The warmage and the Storm Archer give this team some great ability to deliver damage at range.  With careful targeting, this team can bring a lot of firepower to bear against the enemy’s best pieces.  The spearguards and the man-at-arms exist to either grab victory areas or to act as “speed bumps” to buy time for the warmage and others to get into position and fire off spells and arrows.

Weaknesses: Commander needs to be on the front line to protect other pieces.  Probably not enough blockers to protect the warmage and keep the archers out of melee.  Player skill and maneuver ability will be very important with this warband.

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The Early Verdict: In test battle number one, the Slaad Team went up against the Cadaver Collector and the Lord of Blades.  The super-titan seriously outclassed the Slaad force.  Key moment was when the Death Slaad moved in to base contact with the Cadaver Collector.  The Slaad Team lost initiative, and the Death Slaad took 80 points of damage (instant death, in his case) from the Collector.  Had the slaad won initiative, the Death Slaad had about a 50% to hit with his second melee attack, and then a little less than 50% chance to make his instant death attack work on the Collector.  That’s the only way his team could have won the match.

Test battle number two pitted the elf team against the mezzoloth team.  This one was a very tight battle.  The mezzoloth team was ahead on points for most of the way, in part because the greenspawn sneak was collecting victory points while the elves were too busy fighting to collect vps.  The Elves had a run of four or five combat rounds where they narrowly won initiative, and managed to fight their way back.  Storm Silverhand and the Elf Dragonkith were eventually able to lay claim to the battlefield and win the match for the elves.  I need to try this battle again on a different map, and see if it works out any differently.  Both teams seem fairly competent right now.  I think the elves have enough ranged damage to take on the cadaver collector, but the mezzoloths might not match up very well against the super-titan.