Played a game (and part of one) last night with Dienekes...
Map: custom jungle heavy, fortress walls and roads.
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...814&height=610
Armies:
Me
Dienekes
Hawthorne
Thorgim (Highlander Champion)
MacDirks *3
500 points
vs
LoveElemental
MDG
Isamu
Otonashi
Imperium x2
Romans x2
500 points
Glyphs: D20+1 and Initiative+8
Game 1 was called after LE's third turn. Dienekes had Tethered MDG adjacent to him, and although MDG's attack was unsuccessful, a Roman Legionnaire had height+MDG's Soldier Attack Bonus to one-shot Dienekes with Thorgrim's Defense Bonus (
vs
). This is important because it shows
its important to think about where you're placing Dienekes. I wasn't able to Tether the offending Roman Legionnaire onto another space simply because the vicinity was quite hilly and there were no valid spots to place him. It also means that you have think about where you are moving bonding adjacency boosting units too.
The second game (with some slight SZ adjustments on both sides), was much more of a reasonable game.
I actively took more turns this time with Dienekes so that he would be a pain in the rear for LoveElemental, using his Combat Challenge to stall her forces on the very tight, obstacle heavy, map. By the time he went down, I was able to control the flow of her attacking Romans and Einar Imperium so that the MackDirks and Hawthorne could cut down the much more scattered Romans (in large part because Dienekes was able to Tether some of them out of Shield Wall formation, exposing their lackluster defense). As LE was bringing in her hard hitting (and dare I say, devilishly fast) Kyrie, I had retreated a 2-wound Thorgrim, and kept 4 of the MacDirks near him for a final siege against whatever LE had left. The game was called after MDG finally died after being attacked by several 4A MacDirks + Hawthorne and was left with a lone EI. Any movements she could reasonably make would have been met by a MacDirk and/or Hawthorne getting the first attack.
Notably, I had control of Lodin and she didn't realize that the Einar Imperium had Double Attack at first. Even if she had, I think the game would have been about the same result. Having that 3rd squad of MacDirks was crucial to their attrition, and I feel that Dienekes preventing them being attacked in the early game played a large part to that.
Survivors: 2 Life Thorgrim, Full Life Hawthorne, 5 MacDirks vs 3 Romans, 1 Imperium, and both Ninjas.
Thoughts on Dienekes:
Although after my last playtests I was somewhat soured on his relatively low life and defense for a
Defender type unit, and would have suggested a life *or* defense bump or simply a price drop, the second game here really shows that Dienekes needs to be played well to get his value. And, unlike Defenders not named
Tandros, you actually want to put OMs on him to get him into increasingly more uncomfortable positions against your opponent. I had deliberately left a double engagement with him in order to get him onto juicy even level spacing, and directly in the middle of the battlefield.
I would highly encourage further testing be done on relatively flatter maps, especially against slow to midspeed melee. While I don't see him as overtaking any other unit roles (despite some similarities to Tandros), I also don't know how great of a niche he will be carving against things other than slow to midspeed melee (and fast units like
Vipers don't care about Tether). However, I didn't test this Tether against units who get moves outside of their own normal one. I could see it being mildly useful against units like
Kumiko or
Quorik Warwitch.