Wednesday, July 16, 2008

AT-43 News: the final faction preview for Frostbite and another picture of the Cogs

Hey everyone,

Rackham has released the final faction preview for Operation: Frostbite, the Arceo for the Karmans. So what are they like? Let's take a closer look...

One of the most notable things is their advantage; their vehicles can use the "Take Cover" combat drill. This is a pretty serious advantage, especially with the new rules regarding the crystals. Thankfully, they can not field the King Mammoth as that would just be sick. "Okay, my Mammoth with its 16 armor is taking cover."

On the other side of things is the disadvantage, which is that all type 1 and 2 infantry units have one fewer member for the same cost. Pretty harsh when you consider that this means that their minimum units would be facing Morale checks right from the start since they now only contain three troops. You can buy the missing troop back at no penalty (except the point cost of course...) but ultimately this drives up the cost of the already expensive Karman infantry units by anywhere from 60 to 70 points per unit. With one infantry unit being mandatory, this sounds like it should nicely counterbalance the advantage but we will have to see how it plays out on the battlefield.

What about the pattern itself? Well, it is somewhat flexible as you can actually field one of each type of infanty unit if you wanted to though type I is the most commonly available, followed by type 2 and finally a single type 3 option. The vehicles are another story as there are two fixed type 1 or 2 slots while there is a third slot with the type 1 or 2 vehicle option. Another thing that I just noticed is that all of the infantry slots are literally infantry slots which means that with the support unit rules finally coming out this faction could actually field three vehcile choices along with two support units which seems like it could be a pretty nasty combination.

The Karmans also have access to a new piece of "equipment", the Karmic warrior ability. A unit with this ability can either re-roll or force another player to re-roll any test taken by that the unit or a unit targeting it. Potentially a very powerful ability which is why it can only be used once per game. Coming in at a mere +5 APs per fighter (which means that both infantry and vehicles can use it), I can see this ability becoming pretty commonplace. What's an extra 40 points to be able to re-roll that critical cover save?

Last but not least, Rackham has also released another preview picture of the Cog miniatures. These are very similar to the last ones except that they don't have the sword thingee (like my technical terms?) going for twin pistols instead.

This usually means that the unit will have two identical stat lines for their weapons giving them the ability to potentially fire at two different units in the same turn. I say "usually" because the Wendigos changed that as most people probably remember. In this case, I am thinking that they will go with the two stat line approach again but only time will tell.

Well, that is all for now but be sure to come back again soon for more. Until then, may all of your dice come up Dragons!

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