[MKSentinel]

Hey all,

I've been VERY busy lately, but plan to make occasional stops in to say hey. Hopefully the pearl of wisdom I'm about to drop isn't OLD news yet.

I used to play Mage Knight. I used to write about Mage Knight in InQuest Magazine. I lived and breathed it until it went under. Then I started playing Heroscape.

In Mage Knight, one of the most powerful combos in the game was called YoYo. It combined two figures. One needed to be a powerful range figure with an ability called BOUND (ala Amazon Draconum). Bound allowed a figure to move and shoot in the same turn. The other figure needed Magic Levitation (any number of little buggers). Magic Levitation allowed you to move any one figure who had been in base with the levitator at the start of the turn up to 10 inches.

Now there are some very special differences between Mage Knight and Heroscape regarding this combo. First, ALL figures in Heroscape can move and shoot/attack in the same turn. Second, you may only move one squad/unit in Heroscape a turn, where in Mage Knight you had a certain number of activations, usually 3. So, based on further playing with Yo Yo in Heroscape it could be rather decent, or it could be not worth it (VERY specialized at this point). It was so broken in MK though that they errated the ability of ML to only work on figures that were in base with the levitator at the beginning of the turn.

BUT, I'm getting WAY ahead of myself. SO, in Mage Knight the Bounder would start the turn in base with the levitator, move and shoot and THEN the owning player would activate the ML ability to bring the figure back to base with the levitator. What this does is give you a very hearty range advantage over your opponent. I can spring out and whack you and move back where you can't hit me on your next turn. It was an amazing combo.

So, how do we make this work for Heroscape, if we even want to? The answer is ELF WIZARDS!!! You need three of them. First, the 150 point Ulginesh. His ability to mind link is what you are paying for, not to mention that he is the ONLY flying ranged figure in the game and THAT is cool in its own right, but for this combo you need the link. Basically, Ulginesh gives you the MK ability to activate both bounder and levitator in a single turn.

So, who is my levitator? Emirroon. For 80 points you get Elf Summoning, which on a roll of 5 or higher will get your bounder back in base every turn. The rest of the figure isn't bad. 3 Att, 3 Def and five life for 80 is okay. He can hold his own if attacked.

Finally, I need a bounder and to fit with Ulginesh it must be an Elf Wizard like Emirroon. That leaves us with my favorite of the Elf Wizards, Arkmer. This 50 point powerhouse is a bad ass. His range is okay at 5, but mix that with a 5 move and the ability to sneak 5 spaces or so back the opposite direction and you've done something potentially nasty. Also, while in base with Ulginesh and Emirroon, he gets benefits to defense from Staff of Lerkintin AND Engagement Strike means that only your opponents range figures should think about screwing with him. His 4 attack is decent by any standards as well. All that for 50 points!!!

That's 280 points of an army, which in 500 gives you 220 points left to play with. You can go the Elf Wizard route with Jorhndawn at 100 points with the ability to tear up attacking clusters. She needs to stay close to the other elves to do any real damage though so she may be too specialized.

Kytela Gwyn is a cheap, 20 point solution to bumping up defense for your support. Chardis, at 90 points also requires other Elves to be a billy badass, though you could set that up with Ulginesh pretty quickly by placing a few Wizards forward and then bouncing Chardis back and forth, but you only get one more range than Arkmer...though it would be a special attack and bypass some defenses against range. SO, maybe use Kytela and Chardis for a combined 110.

With 110 left and an Elven Wizard theme...doesn't Acolarh finally make sense? He can defend your Elves a bit better than before AND lets Arkmer or who ever is bouncing move an additional 2 spaces.

I would go with:

Elf Wizard YO YO
Ulginesh 150
Arkmer 50
Emrioon 80
Kyntela Gwyn 20
Chardis 90
Acolarh 110

FINALLY an Elf army that may be worth playing.