Saturday 16 July 2016

Style Over Function

My writing on this blog has been sorely lax lately, though I will admit I've simply been waiting for the release of the Jung Pirates next month.  Minato and Yuji have been added to the model and profile previews, so it's just the korusea and kohanin profiles and the entire Rise of the Kage range of Jung models will be there at the faction release.

I've been drawing up various warbands for the Jung Pirates - they have the luxurious position of having a better (or more varied) set of early releases than the Tengu Decension.  I think it's at the low end of rice costs that warband variation really starts.  The faction also has a slightly more balanced mid-high cost profiles - Minato is 11 rice, Mari is 10.  I don't quite know what cross-faction profiles the Jung Pirates have access to either, but I expect the water kami in some form will be available (hopefully the Kami of the Suiden variation or something similar).

The main difference in Jung Pirate warbands is whether you want any of the weird stuff or you just want to punch people in the face with normal humans.  Minato likes normal people, Mari likes weird things.  You don't need to take either member of the Jung family, but they're the best you can get with the release profiles.  I feel that the Jung Pirates function in a similar fashion to the Silvermoon Trade Syndicate: higher model count and using a number of special cards in ideal circumstances.

I'm of the opinion that high model count warbands are simply easier to play than smaller, more aggressive warbands that don't have access to a lot of tireless.  All you have to do it wear down the enemy models while you roll full defence dice.  Once they're all exhausted, then you can start swapping in attack dice.  I can play this style, but I find it shockingly tedious when it's possible to do something more aggressive and flashier.  You don't want to just win, you want to win with style!