[AoS 2 - Settler's Gain (Broken Realms: Teclis) Discussion]

On 5/4/2021 at 10:45 AM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

One strength of the Luminark is that it has a pretty insane range. You can definitely expect to put 1d3 mortals on anything on the board with it turn 1, likely hitting another unit as well incidentally.

If you think of the Luminark as a buff piece to support your troops that can also incidentally mortal wound snipe heroes, I think you can justify taking two of them. Cities has a lot of other ranged stuff that can help with such a strategy, such as the Freeguild Handgunner champion with the long rifle. In Settler's Gain, you can also bring Sentinels or Starshard Ballistas, which are better at long-range shooting than anything else in Cities.

Maybe if you build a list where the role of the Luminarks is mainly to support your big capturing infantry blocks, but with a side focus on long range damage, that could be pretty cool.

Yeah I really like this idea of a couple of luminarks rolling up the battlefield supporting freeguild guard or similar. Looks like I need to build and paint some luminarks! 

[AoS 2 - Settler's Gain (Broken Realms: Teclis) Discussion]

4 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I think this is one of those cases where you don't really benefit that much from taking multiples of a unit. The Luminark is already kind of a worse version of the Hurricanum in my opinion, because it has the more situational buffs (6+ FNP and +1 to unbind vs. +1 to hit and cast) and harder to use attack (1d3 mortals in a line vs. up to 3d3 mortals on one target).

That said, I think taking one or two Luminarks, while probably not optimal, does not break your list. I think there is not a lot of payoff for it in Settler's Gain, but in Living City you could ambush with them, which makes it easier to set up good shots with their lasers. If your opponent sets up everything in a line, you could potentially tag those 3+ enemy units with it that would you would need to match the damage of the Hurricanum.

Yeah I think you're right that more than one is probably not optimal.  The Living City idea is definitely a good shout for more positional play, but I guess in Settler's Gain it's a bit more of a fluffy option.

[AoS 2 - Settler's Gain (Broken Realms: Teclis) Discussion]

Any thoughts on running several Luminarks?  Really enjoying the narrative for Settler's Gain and the idea of shooting a load of lasers across the battlefield sounds too good to miss.

[How to solve a problem like The Phoenicium]

Some really interesting points! I'm starting to build a new Cities army and wanted to lean into a pseudo Devoted of Sigmar army. Phoenicium seemed like quite a good choice flavour-wise, but there don't seem to be any decent army-wide buffs and as stated above seems more about forcing your opponent's hand. 

 

The smattering of battle reports I've seen online seem to favour running it as a tanky army and any death-related bonuses are just nice to have. Perhaps that's the way its supposed to work?