Looking at Legion: Blighted Nyss Archers

As part of my one process of becoming accustomed to my new Legion army I thought I would share some thoughts (not always correct :-) on some of the units and solos in the army. These are less tactics articles and more me thinking out loud about how to use these units. First up are the Blighted Nyss Archers.
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Cryx Tier Lists: Terminus

Welcome to the first of what I hope are a series of posts looking at the various Cryx Tier lists. These articles will be written from the perspective of building 35 or 50 point Warmachine army lists using the Tier Lists. We’ll look at the restrictions of each list, the required point costs and some of the options available assuming a force that will use all four Tiers.

The subject of our first examination is Terminus and his Ghost Fleet. Prior to the release of the Cryx I was looking forward to a Pirate themed Skarre force but it turns out that the choice for fans of Revenants isn’t Skarre but the towering Lich Lord Terminus.
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Steelhead Riflemen thoughts

I picked up a unit of Steelhead Riflemen for my Magnus Agenda army. The Magnus the Traitor themed list requires two Steelhead units and while I want to get some cavalry I thought it would be simpler to get a unit of Riflemen and this also means that I have a second small-based Steelhead unit to take advantage of the Advance Move they will get as part of the list.

My aim is to get a 4th tier Magnus list with a 35pt army and the Steelhead Riflemen allow me to do that and also add some more firepower to the list.

The figures actually assembled quite easily. All of the figures have a sword and bedroll that fits into a small peg on their back. five of the models were single piece (except for the sword and bedroll) and the other figures had rifles with hands attached which had pegs that fit into an indentation on the model. Assembly was a breeze.

When the preview for the figures was published in NQ 29 there was a lot of commentary on why you would want to take them in a list that could take Long Gunners or Trenchers. There are several reasons to my mind:

• You can only take Trenchers or Long Gunners. If you want more firepower in a list then these are your best bet
• They give you a second small-based Steelhead unit to take advantage of the benefit of the Magnus the Traitor theme list without requiring that you build more Halberdiers
• Their ability to re-roll failed CRA attack rolls makes them quite powerful

It is this last point that sent me to Numbers to crunch some data and engage in a little bit of Statmachine. The Riflemen have a RAT of 5 which means that they need above-average rolls to hit DEF 13 which most infantry tend to have. This is about a 28% chance to hit and a unit of 10 Riflemen firing at DEF 13 will only, on average, generate three hits.

Clearly these are not models that are going to be accurate on their own and Magnus the Traitor provides no real way to increase their accuracy. All that is left, at least without knowing what is available in the upcoming Mercenary book, then is for the models in the unit to combine fire to increase their effective RAT. The downside is that immediately cuts down on the number of shots the unit fires but, and this is the important thing to remember, with their base RAT they are hitting an abysmal number of times anyway.

So the question is when do we want to use the CRA and just how effective is the ability to re-roll misses?

As we can see, the re-roll is what really powers this unit. The CRA on itself is only marginally more effective than straight shooting. In fact, with the reduced number of shots the CRA on its own is not any more effective than single shots. The re-roll adds an additional hit, on average, to the units fire and this continues as the target’s DEF increases allowing the Riflemen to theoretically hit and damage DEF 17 and 18 models.

On DEF 13 infantry models a Riflemen on its own has a 28% chance of hitting. Using the CRA this increases to 58% and with the re-roll it jumps to an amazing 83%. On infantry with DEF 12, like Exemplar Errants, the re-roll on the CRA means that the shots will hit an incredible 94%.

I’ll be trying the unit out this Friday so we’ll see how this statistical exercise works out.