Hordes/Tactics/Legion of Everblight

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This page is pretty much a placeholder at the moment, and will be added to eventually. Note that it will contain units from Primal Mk. 2, Forces of Hordes: Legion of Everblight, Hordes: Domination, Hordes: Gargantuans, and compatible units from Forces of Hordes: Minions.

Why Play Legion of Everblight?

Fuck you, I'm an army of dragons!

The Legion of Everblight consists of elves and ogrun who have been corrupted and beholden to the will of the army's eponymous dragon (who is currently a hunk of rock occupying some of said elves' chests: IK dragons are weird), as well as the monsters that said dragon has created from the flesh of his army's victims and the blood of his chosen generals. Said dragon is also the scrappy underdog (whelp?) of the dragon world, and unlike the other army led by a dragon he thinks that kaiju movies totally shit over zombie movies.

In many respects the Legion is a typical glass-cannon army: it wants to use its speed and ranged ability to its advantage, forcing the opponent into bad positions and trades that allow the Legion player to gain a strong lead before the relative fragility of their models becomes a factor. Aiding in this are ample access to Eyeless Sight, Pathfinder and Flight, allowing the Legion to more easily set up its attacks by using the terrain on the board as a shield from its foes. You may lack the tricksiness of the Circle and the raw balls-out melee power of the Skorne but fuck that shit, you have Ravagores.

TL:DR; They are what the Dark Eldar would be if they were in a wargame which actually favoured melee glass cannon gameplay. And that's awesome.

General Strategy

Legion plays as a bit of a glass cannon army, but is fully capable of tanking with numerous warbeasts. Speaking of which, Legion of Everblight is one of the best factions to run warbeasts in the game.Your lesser warbeasts can be spammed quite easily, especially with eThagrosh. I always take at least one shredder in my lists, as they make great utility "missiles". Likewise, your Heavies can tear apart whole formations. Carniveans can chew through infantry and heavies alike on the charge, Ravagores sport one of the most devestating AoE attacks in the game, and Angelii are devastating. Fury management for you is likewise cheap. Shepards are amazing one point solos for fury handling, and forsaken couple fury management abilities with awesome anti-caster AoEs and even combat prowess in a pinch. with their Armor Piercing tails. It can be quite shooty, depending on how your warlock and how many raptors/ravagores/seraphim you bring. With Eyeless sight, you can be devastating against armies that require certain protective effects.Between the pathfinder and flight that are common among your units, you will have little trouble navigating the board. Many Circle armies can do nothing but sit down and cry as you wade through their forests and stealth and eat their druids.

Unit Analysis

Warlocks

• Absylonia, Terror of Everblight: The freaky mutant Absylonia is a great warlock for the newbies, but isn't performing that well in tournament play because she suffers from some very nasty hard counters. Stat-wise she's very solid, if a little on the fragile side, and well-lent to assassination gameplay. She has four spells, three of which are awesome-but-cheap upkeepable buffs, and she doesn't pay for upkeeps on her personal warbeasts. Her feat fully recharges her health, and then lets her fully heal her warbeasts if she takes one point of damage per warbeast. Her tier list basically consists of nothing but warbeasts and beast support, and provides lots of Advance Deployment and Advance Move as well as a points cost improvement for warbeasts. This all leads to a lot of people playing her as a simple buff-then-charge warlock with the feat as backup if the game becomes a battle of attrition, but this strategy is easily countered by anti-beast or anti-magic armies (both of which are fairly common these days). If you want to play Absylonia in a more nuanced way, forget about the tier list and look to the Ogryn units to bring some extra bodies into play. Remember, you can cast Carnivore on Ogryns, but you'll have to pay for the upkeep.
• Bethayne, Voice of Everblight & Belphagor: Coming soon.
• Lylyth, Herald of Everblight (Lylyth1): The starter warlock in the Legion's Battlebox, Lylyth is not entirely typical of the Everblight playstyle, but still very much supports assassination-driven gameplay. When she tags an enemy with her bow, her warbeasts can charge that enemy without gaining fury, and she can automatically hit it with offensive spells. Ideally, she wants to shoot a key target, cast Parasite, run away, have her Raptors harry it for a while, and then send a couple of warbeasts charging in to finish the job. Her FURY stat is absolutely terrible, so bring Shepherds and Forsaken. Both she and her epic version favor shooty armies, so bring Bolt Throwers and Ravagores.
• Lylyth, Shadow of Everblight (Lylyth2): Coming soon.
• Lylyth, Reckoning of Everblight (Lylyth3): Coming soon.
• Rhyas, Sigil of Everblight: Ninja twin #1. She makes a good infantry supporter, then can swoop in to finish off wounded targets. Despite this, she is often considered the worst warlock available to legion. That said, if you do take her, take her with Saeryn. The two of them have some amazing synergies, as befitting twins.
• Saeryn, Omen of Everblight: One of the better warlocks we have. A great all-around supporting caster, with an absolutely incredible feat. Blight bringer lets her bring down tougher models, and respawn is an awesome psychological tool. Her high FURY allows her to run a warbeast-heavy list as well. Deathspurs are trolltastic against trollbloods. (see what i did there?)
• Thagrosh, Prophet of Everblight (Thagrosh1): Coming soon.
• Thagrosh, The Messiah (Thagrosh2): Coming soon.
• Vayl, Disciple of Everblight (Vayl1): Coming soon.
• Vayl, Consul of Everblight (Vayl2): A very magic-heavy caster who loves to play hit-and-run shenanigans. She has the Purification spell, which rips off all upkeeps within 14" of her (including her own). Her feat lets her cast each spell on her list once for free in that turn, which negates the downside of Purification by letting you put the upkeeps back where they were for free.
• Kallus, Wrath of Everblight: Coming soon.

Warbeasts

Lesser Warbeasts

Okay, so Legion is no longer the special pony princess: now Skorne and the Farrow (of all fucking factions) have lessers too. That being said, Legion lessers are still the standard by which all others are judged, as they generally combine a useful role, good animus (that they can use effectively themselves, unlike say a Reptile Hound whose animus is mostly a wash on itself), and have the advantage of flexibility when you bring a Spawning Vessel.

Despite what the fluff (and Legion battlebox) would have you believe, the Legion can generally not run herds upon herds of lessers effectively. Legion fury control is designed to pull large amounts of fury off of a few large targets, not several smaller ones, and so running a herd of Shredders often means you are running an army that has the chance to frenzy and go full retard just by running up the field turn one. Additionally, while each lesser has 13 health boxes, this is a deceptive amount for a warbeast with base ARM 12: lowly POW 10s have a good chance of taking off an aspect, and most elite melee troopers worth their salt can kill a Shredder outright with little fuss. Bring lessers as seasoning for your army, not as the main course itself (The one exception to this is eThagrosh Shredder Spam lists, but that is a special case).

Things change when the Spawning Vessel gets involved. Since you can spawn a lesser after moving the Vessel effectively acts as a launchpad, dropping a Harrier or Stinger in just the right place at the right time instead of bringing one in your main list to have it slog up the field before ignominously taking a Defender shell to the face and dying. The vessel tends to be the preferred way of bringing Harriers and Stingers into a battle, since their ideal targets tend to be more situational and they lack the Shredder's all-purpose animus.

• Harrier: The tactical drone strike of the Legion lessers, the Harrier is essentially a flying POW 10 with the best base defensive stats of all Legion lessers (don't get too excited, as anything that hits it will still probably instagib the thing). What sets it apart is its animus:

Animus(True Strike): This is why you take/spawn a Harrier. True Strike causes the next melee attack made by the model to hit automatically, so not even Iron Flesh-DEF infinity Kayazy fuckheads are safe. While generally not terribly useful on most Legion warlocks (who are either backline casters, have no melee ability worth mentioning or are Rhyas and desperately need to roll for that crit Decap), this animus makes the Harrier an ideal solo hunter: many priority solos (Eiryss and Gorman, to name just two) cannot reliably survive a POW 10+3d6 attack, and with True Strike their only real defense is to stay as far from the little flying bastard as is practical. Avoiding a Harrier to the face is more complicated when it's being launched from a Spawning Vessel: with the vessel moving up to 6", a 3" place and a ~1" base, AND the Harrier's SPD 7 there are few places for most solos to hide and still be able to contribute to the battle. Remember that this is an animus, not a boost, so be sure to cast it before charging if you're trying to attack something outside of your warlock's control area.

• The Harrier also gets Sprint, which gives it a significant mobility advantage over its counterparts: you can True Strike charge a model outside of control, kill them and Sprint back so that your warlock can reave their fury next round. You can also kill models contesting/controlling flags and then use the Sprint move to position your Harrier so it is contesting/controlling the flag itself.
• Beyond its use as a flying, toothy sniper, the Harrier is the cheapest warbeast in Legion with Flight so keep this in mind when trying to meet certain tier requirements.

• Shredder: If you're bringing a lesser warbeast in your list straight-up, this is probably the one. Best known for:

Rabid: The Shredder's bread. For one fury you get +2 SPD, Pathfinder and boosted attack AND damage rolls for one turn. This ability is as powerful as it sounds, limited only by the Shredder's FURY 2 and dinky single POW 10 bite attack. Since all rolls are boosted, you ideally want to walk into combat with your target(s) instead of charging so that you can get two attacks instead of one. A Shredder generally isn't as good against single target solos as the Harrier or as good at going against heavy living targets as a Stinger, but Rabid allows it to attack a wide range of targets with at least some effectiveness. For many Legion warlocks using the Shredder as a Tenacity caddy this also makes it their de facto melee weapon.

Animus(Tenacity): The Shredder's butter. A 1-fury animus that gives the target +1 DEF and +1 ARM. Not a massive boost, but cheap and spammable compared to most defensive animi (and unlike Spiny Growth, comes in a 2-point package rather than an 11-point one). Generally best used on models who have a defensive stat that just needs a slight nudge over the bell curve: you'll get more milage out of Tenacity on an Angelius (which becomes DEF 15, a dicey proposition for even some elite infantry to reliably hit) versus a Scythean or Carnivean (where going from 11/18 to 12/19 does not generally shift things very far in their favor, although it's still better than nothing). This is also a cheap way to shore up the somewhat-mediocre defensive stats of most Legion warlocks, and seeing a Shredder hanging out in the back spamming Tenacity on its warlock is not uncommon.

• It also has Snacking. A Shredder rarely lives long enough to actually use the rule, but sometimes the do stars align so don't forget about it.

• Stinger: Is there a heavy warbeast that needs to get taken down a peg? Is some low defense, high-ARM caster like the Butcher camping his focus and being a douche? Spawn a Stinger and give them a face full of POW 12 poison (further boostable, allowing you to roll 4d6 on the damage roll!) dragon wing-wong. You also get a cute little 6" POW 10 spray, but no one has ever used that in an actual game so you can pretend it doesn't exist for all intents and purposes.

Of all the lessers, this is the one you're least likely to bring in a list: it has a narrower range of ideal targets compared to its bretheren, and the Suicidal Attack rule on its tail (mark all boxes in the Stinger's Body aspect if it damages a target with the attack) means it has a hilariously low life expectancy even by the low standards of most lessers. On the other hand, against its ideal targets it's VERY good, so it makes ideal pot fodder for those times where you need to wipe the last half dozen boxes off a Titan but don't want to commit a 9-point warbeast's activation to do it. Buy a blister with your Spawning Vessel, and keep them on hand when you play against armies with lots of livng multiwound models (e.g. most Hordes factions) or against beefy warcasters who rely more on their ARM than their DEF stats.

Animus(Lurker): Friendly target gains Bushwhack (can take its combat action before its movement, and then move afterwards) for one round. Potentially useful (one example: start a turn stuck in with someone, kill them, Bushwhack out of realation range from the rest of the enemy army), but generally not often enough to justify spending the points compared to many other 2-point options in Legion.

Light Warbeasts

• Afflictor: A flying warbeast with the ability to spawn Incubi when it stabs things. So that's fun.
• Naga Nightlurker: Exists solely to boost the Legion's access to non-elemental ranged weapons and ability to overcome magical defences. No other reason.
• Nephilim Bloodseer:
• Nephilim Bolt Thrower: One of our best ranged 'beasties, equipped with a FUCKHUEG ballista that knocks enemies backwards.
• Nephilim Protector: A defensive light warbeast with Shield Guard, allowing it to pull attacks off enemy models. Kind of runs antithesis to the Legion's balls-out offensive playstyle, so overall not very popular.
• Nephilim Soldier: A dedicated melee light in a game that doesn't favor this sort of warjack/warbeast design: guess how this is going to go? The Soldier is good with his sword (POW 14, reach) but doesn't have much of a role due to lacking the volume of attacks to take on hordes of infantry, the raw power to scare heavy targets or the durability to tank. For 5 points you're taking him for his animus if you're taking him at all.

Animus(Massacre): Allows the target to charge without being forced, and if the affected model destroys an enemy model with a charge attack they can advance 1" and make an additional melee attack. A decent animus, mostly hampered by the fact that it's on a warbeast that otherwise won't be contributing much. This does enhance some of Rhyas' feat turn shenanigans though, and it's worth considering if you're playing her.

• Raek: Very cheap, and comes equipped with Stealth and various other manoeuvrability boosters; makes an excellent flanking model. Also, its animus grants immunity to free strikes, which some warcasters will adore. The main use for Raeks is to run behind enemy lines with its great speed abilities, and two-handed throw a warcaster of choice into the jaws of your local carnivean.
• Teraph: Probably the worst thing in the Legion point-for-point; not so much a bad model as one which is far outshone by the Nephilim Bolt Thrower and the Ravagore. Its animus is rather fun for ranged support, though, and all of Lylyth's incarnations love it for that alone, so it isn't all bad.

Heavy Warbeasts

• Angelius: A crazy-fast flying warbeast with a heavy assassination focus. Armour Piercing is truly brutal, but you can only use it once per turn, so make it count.
• Carnivean: The quintessential Legion heavy, not used so much these days because it is a little on the pricey side. As heavy warbeasts go, it's crazy fast and gets a huge volume of attacks with Assault and three melee weapons; it also has a fairly awesome defensive animus. That said, it's a big target, it's not that hard to kill if you put your mind to it, and it's a lot of points to sink into the one model.
• Ravagore: The artillery version of the Carnivean; shoots AOE attacks with decent range and an animus which grants Continuous Fire, and is no slouch in melee. Commonly regarded as one of the more OP things in the Legion book, although it isn't really -- it's just difficult to hide from its attacks because of Eyeless Sight. Its biggest disadvantage is that its attack has the Fire and Corrosion damage types, meaning that anything which is immune to either of those types won't be hurt.
• Scythean: The Carnivean's slightly underperforming but 2-points-cheaper brother. It comes with one fewer attack base, a weaker animus, and no spray attack. In return, it gets reach and thresher. In general, the Scythean is better at cutting down the masses, while the Carnivean is better with elites. Overall, because of its lower price, it tends to overshadow the Carnivean except with specific casters (Absylonia comes to mind).
• Seraph: Used to be the Legion's chief ranged unit until the Ravagore came along to beat it, but remains our cheapest heavy warbeast. Almost exclusively shooty and can't handle itself in melee, but its ability to teleport other models with its animus adds even further to the Legion's movement shenanigans.

Character Warbeasts

• Proteus: In a lot of ways, Proteus is a warbeast of "buts". It has Herding, but in a faction where Shepherds come in at 1 point each having an 11-point warbeast with this ability is situational. It has a ranged weapon with Drag, but the range is fairly short (with a threat range that is only slightly longer than his charge range). It has 5 fury, but it's extremely pillowfisted for its cost which limits the havoc you can cause. It has Snacking as an animus, but it's in a faction where warbeasts are generally not durable enough to make use of it. For the most part, you're paying a Carnivean price tag for a grab bag of abilities: it still might be worth it for certain lists, but be very sure that you're getting the most of out of him compared to any equivalent heavy you could be taking for its price tag.
• Typhon: A three-headed regenerating hydra-thing which spews fire everywhere and throws things by biting them. Very expensive, and even worse defensive stats than most Legion heavies, but not bad if you can keep it healed up and charge it into combat first. Your enemy will at the very least have to pay attention to this thing too keep it from doing too much damage, its healing makes it hard to kill, having three attacks means its deadly in melee against heavy targets, and tarpits will barely even slow it down since it can use it ranged attack (which are spray weapons) in melee.

Gargantuan

• Archangel: Something of an odd duck, the Archangel caused no end of rage when its stats were announced. It isn't quite so bad as that, although its animus came from the darkest pits of crappy wargame design hell and should be returned there posthaste. It stands among the game's highest SPD stats for a Huge base and has some impressive hit-and-run capabilities to back that up, but as the Legion is very reliant on things which teleport models (and Gargantuans can't be teleported) instead of just buffing their SPD or movement, it actually has a tendency to move a bit slower than other Gargantuans. It goes very well with Lylyth3 if you really desperately feel the urge to have more than one huge-based model on the table at once.

Units

• Blighted Nyss Archers: Blighted Nyss Archers are your basic infantry unit. They are fast, fragile, and accurate enough to be effective. Their bows are low powered, but have longish range. What makes them stand out is their two abilities:combined ranged attack and volley fire. The first allows them to effectively target heavies with a RAT 15 POW 20 shot, or assassinate casters. Suppressing fire is a great anti-infantry tool, and can deny charge lanes. All in all, nothing special, but still a good unit.

• UA: Officer and Ammo Porter

Minions in Legion

Like most Hordes factions, the Legion is pretty ambivalent about minions: there aren't any real gaps in the faction that you desperately need to patch over, so unlike some other factions *coughCygnarcough* you can run a minion-free list and still be perfectly effective. On the other hand, since most Legion warlocks are so beast-focused to begin with there isn't necessarily any major benefit to keeping your infantry in-faction, and some minions do bring some unique tricks to the table, and so are still worth considering.

Minion solos

• Croak Hunter:
• Feralgeist: There are two primary uses for this solo. The intended (and crappy) use is for the Feralgeist to take over a warbeast that dies in its command range, allowing you to turn your opponent's Mulg or Warpwolf Stalker against him and see how he likes it. While this is a cool ability, what you get for your trouble isn't much: the possessed warbeast comes with only 3 boxes and no ability to force whatsoever, so most of the time about the best you can expect your new warbeast to do is be a speedbump before dying a second time. There are some situations where you might want to possess a warbeast to deny it to your opponent (e.g. possessing a heavy warbeast from a pThagrosh player so that he can't feat to bring it back until he kills it again), but these are pretty situational uses in the aggregate and not really worth even the 1 point asking price.

The second use (and the reason you'll see it in most Hordes list) is for Steamroller scenarios. As a 1-point solo the Feralgeist can contest and control flags, objectives and zones, and since it's permanently incorporeal some factions have no easy way to get rid of the thing. If you have a free point in your list and no use for a Spell Martyr, this is not a bad solo to take to fill it.

• Gatorman Witch Doctor:
• Gobber Tinker: Are you taking a Throne of Everblight? If yes, take one or two of these guys to help keep it alive (yes, they can repair it thanks to the Battle Engine rules: no, you are not allowed to ask how or why). They have no purpose in a Legion list otherwise.
• Gudrun the Wanderer:
• Rorsh and Brine:
• Thrullg: Hordes' answer to eEiryss, and a pretty crappy one at that. eEiryss struggles to do her job at times, and she benefits from an excellent statline, a 12-inch gun and one of the highest RAT scores in the game along with some other defensive abilities. After taking all that into consideration, you then look at a Thrullg which will be as much of a priority target but suffers from needing to get into melee, with no real defensive tech and no real way to give it any thanks to Spell Ward. Add to this being on a medium base and you have a recipe for disaster. Do not take unless you have 3 points to burn (and how did you manage that?).
• Totem Hunter:
• Wrong Eye and Snapjaw:

Minion units

• Bog Trog Ambushers:
• Farrow Bone Grinders:
• Farrow Brigands: Brigands are in some ways the Hordes equivalent to Trenchers, and suffer from the same problems: you're getting a unit with a hodgepodge of abilities and potential roles, none of which they perform particularly well and ultimately paying dearly for the privilege. Each Brigand comes armed with a decent rifle and a club, and while they're competent enough with both they lack any sort of CMA/CRA rule or equivalent: this means that most heavy targets will not give a shit about the clubs, and Farrow RAT puts them in an awkward place where they have issues hitting what they can hurt and hurting what they can actually hit. Combined with their defensive "victim stats" they will struggle to beat most units of equivalent cost.

However, like the Gatorman Posse the unit comes with a set of prayers, giving them either Fearless+Tough, Pathfinder, or Hog Wild (which is basically the bastard child of the Assault and Bushwhack rules). These rules go a long way towards giving the unit some flexibility and staying power, but generally speaking you'll probably be reaching for your Nyss units before your Farrow in most lists.

• If you're looking for a speedbump unit, these guys do have a unique niche: they're the only unit Legion can take that can innately have Tough. This means you can roll up the field with a Tough jamming unit that still qualifies as living models for the Spawning Vessel to pick up. Worth considering, but unfortunately the full unit comes in at 8 points while a full unit of Legionnaires with Farilor come in at 9 so this tends to be a situational niche at best.

• Farrow Razorback Crew: Look at the rules for the Scather catapult, which pretty much poop all over this thing in all the areas that matter. Further consider that you will almost never take a Scather catapult: how often do you think you'll be playing this thing? It exists for Farrow players, not for you.
• Farrow Slaughterhousers:
• Gatorman Bokor and Swamp Shamblers:
• Gatorman Posse:
• Swamp Gobbers Bellows Crew: