[Lazy Orang]

I'd like to nominate Commander Kwazar by Sir Dendrik.



Balance

Spoiler Alert!

Commander Kwazar looks like a fairly niche unit - he obviously works best with Empress Kiova and the Einar Imperium. Kwazar, Kiova, and two squads of Imperium come in at 490 Points, almost your whole army most of the time. That said, Kwazar should be able to make an army presently made up of some of the least competitive units in the game somewhat competitive, at least enough for casual play. His first power, Kwazar's Command, both provides Order Marker flexibility and an extra ranged shot from Kwazar himself when you actually move Kiova up to support. This makes the Imperium much more useful, and actually gives you a reason to use Kiova over Raelin, even if only in one army. Heroic Sacrifice also fills a role, allowing you to use him as a meat shield to protect the Imperium against range and, more importantly, to use him to keep Kiova alive to provide her aura. Technically, you could pair him with another kyrie, such as Raelin, to provide them extra lives, but honestly, 120 Points just to give Raelin four extra lives seems steep. Therefore, his point cost seems fair.

Playability

Spoiler Alert!

His powers seem perfectly understandable, and Heroic Sacrifice was workshopped in the Pre-SOV thread so that there were no sticky corner cases, and its present wording appears to be modeled on Purple Heart from Capt. John Varan. The stats were all originally higher, but were tweaked down in testing after he proved too powerful, so they should be about right now - there are certainly no glaring issues that I can see. As for being visually distinctive form other units, he is as visually distinctive as Tyrian or any of the exclusives.

Creativity

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The Kwazar, Kiova and Imperium army looks like a fun addition to the game, being markedly different from any other presently existing army.

Theme

Spoiler Alert!

The theme of a military commander for Einar's kyrie seems to fit right in, and I can vouch for the fact that the sculpt in question repainted as shown has a strong Einar feel - just the right Protector was chosen for this hero. The question of why he is armed with one of Ullar's arbalests would need to be explained in a future bio I feel, but that should be easy enough to do.

Availability

Spoiler Alert!

As you can tell, the figure is a repainted Protector of Ullar. Using a repainted Heroscape figure from a difficult to obtain wave, I will admit that the availability for this guy is dire. However, his availability is greatly helped by the fact that anyone who picked up an extra set of Protectors for Tyrian will already have this figure, and all the proxying suggestions made for Tyrian also work for Kwazar. I can also personally vouch for the fact that this is a very simple, easy and satisfying repaint, as I did one very much like it on a whim when I got the set for Tyrian, long before I saw this design.