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Old November 23rd, 2014, 02:28 AM
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Re: Soldiers of Valhalla - nominations and discussion

Asterios by the French Community

There’s a lot of heavy hitters at 120 points, a lot of diverse races, a lot of anti-squad heroes, and a lot of melee stand-alone heroes. But Asterios aims to put those all together and become the first 120 point anti-squad melee minotaur that ‘Scape has ever seen. We’ll see how he stacks up.

Balance

A helpful comparison for Asterios is the Fen Hydra, a beefy multi-attacking hero at the 120 point slot. Asterios is faster, can move after attacking, has more life, and can keep his attacks up after taking hits. The Fen Hydra has higher attack, more maximum attacks per turn, and gets 6 defense against everybody. Certainly different, but they have enough similarities to say Asterios fits in at 120. He fits comfortably above figures at 110 such as Brunak or Moriko, but probably not as powerful as some figures at 130 (although many of those figures are underpowered).

Theme

I love minotaurs. And the clip that came with the submission was exactly how Asterios was designed to be played, rushing through the small opponents and killing them was he goes. Feylund is the right planet, I’m glad that was picked over Earth. Marauder and Dauntless really work well to portray a solitary beast that will kill anything in its path.

Creativity

Legendary Creature 3 is one of my favorite powers that I’ve seen on an SoV submission. It’s simple, but effective. It translates the theme mechanically very well, as does the ignoring of LEA’s from small and medium squaddies while moving with Furious Charge. Although Furious Charge is based off of existing powers, it is tweaked perfectly to fit the minotaur’s theme.

Playability

Asterios is designed to counter squads. That’s a welcome sight in the metagame that is sometimes called SquadScape. The trick is that he has to have weaknesses as well as his obvious strengths. Against an army that is dominated with Squad figures, say all 4th Mass, Asterios absolutely dominates. 6 defense is long enough to hold out for a while, especially when you can kill 2-3 opponent’s figures in a single turn. Asterios is fast enough that even ranged squads have trouble getting attacks in before they’re killed off. But if you throw a hero against Asterios, the story changes. Traditional squad+bonding hero armies still do fine, as long as our opponent can keep the hero alive to reach Asterios.

Asterios can be used at any point in the game, including cleanup, because he’s so versatile. It all depends on the army you’re facing. If your opponent is leading with squad figures like M-43 Resistance Fighters, he can go and start doing major damage before your opponent can bring in hero backup. It’s unwise to try to use Asterios to counter heroes, because with only 3 defense, he doesn’t hold up long, and his single attack likely won’t through much.

The value that you get out of Asterios depends on your opponent’s army composition. Not in a limiting way, but actually a way that encourages different army strategies. I would be very comfortable bringing Asterios to a tournament, as long as I had at least one other big attack in my army in case of strong heroes. But if I was lined up against Asterios with an army of Vipers or Greenscales or Microcorp Agents, I would be pretty scared (unless I also had Charos ).

The one squad that does well against Asterios is the Axegrinders. With their stat boost against large figures, it goes a long way to help them out against 6 defense, and they can generally block his attacks of 3, at least better than many other squad.

The ability to move before or after attacking really helped Asterios be able to get out of some dicey situations onto higher ground, or to be able to deny height advantage to several defending figures on the same turn.

Summary

I really loved playing Asterios and I think he brings something new and different and fresh to the metagame. He’s really fun to play, and his mechanics bring across his theme perfectly. It doesn’t hurt that the miniature is gorgeous as well.

I vote to induct Asterios into the Soldiers of Valhalla
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