Warmachine: Alexia and the Risen

With the finishing of the Thrall recently I had finally finished up another of my Warmachine units, Alexia and her Risen.

The Risen have only the most basic of paint jobs as they are placed and removed from the table faster than poker chips but look sufficent from a distance. This is a shame as they are really nice casts and thankfully I got to grips with these before the turds that were the Long Gunners.

Alexia has had more attention with the brush as she normally ends up in the thick of the action sooner or later.

At 25 points I will reach for Alexia if I am going against an opponent with lots of living models. At 30 points I normally take her with the Devil Dogs. She will either be a 'meat shield' for the Dogs to let them get into action or follow on behind, to collect their corpses before crashing into the enemy.

I try to get Alexia into the thick of the action as soon as possible. This is for two reasons. One, with most of my force being a shooty army, she needs to be in among the enemy to collect corpses. The second reason is her 'Arcane disjunction' which results in the enemy Caster having to pay double the focus of Fury to cast and upkeep spells. This can be crippling for your focus six opponents. "Sorry pal, it will cost you eight focus to cast obliteration. Oh, you only have six focus, unlucky mate!"

 

One thing I have never pulled off is a Caster assassination with Alexia. Alexia can burn off her Risen to buy and boost attacks. Fully tanked up on Risen she has twenty 'focus' with which to whale away with. I rarely get close enough to the opposing caster to pull this off as the Caster is constantly running from Alexia's Disjunction, but one day I do hope to crash her into a unit or light Warbeast and have her go to town.

One great synergy for Alexia is Rhupert. His 'Heroic call' gives the Risen 'tough' which means a 1 in 3 chance of surviving being 'burnt off' and makes them a great tarpit unit.

One trick I constantly miss out on is creating a Thrall AFTER all the Risen make their attacks. This means missing out on clearing a channel with the Risen before converting one into a Thrall and charging it into a model 9" further on.