Pirate Queen Skarre

YARRRR!!

 

 

Skarre enjoyed feeling planks beneath her feet, gold was for the weak, and together with Deneghra she decided to venture into the Fanatic Showoff to teach all the lesser factions that girl power and a great rack is all that is needed to bring home the victory. She brought with her experience from many successful, and many failed, raids on the cattle races and she knew that it was this knowledge that would be her greatest shield in the coming battles for the golden coin.

Skarre was the second caster that I got and I have played using her in more than 20 games. She is different to Deneghra in play style, and at first might seem more straightforward (= boring). This is however not true once you understand and use all her abilities.

1)      Defensive

Skarre comes with 16 def, 15 arm, 16 damage boxes, 6 focus, and lifedrinker on a dagger but little else in her repertoire is defensive abilities. Her limited control area forces her closer to the enemy then her stats normally would recommend. Just like Deneghra she is protected primarily by her high defense, and therefore she is in danger of becoming knockdown before assassinations. If you can pull of a knockdown and have a ranged unit close by then she will be shot to pieces since she does not have stealth to rely upon. There is however a cure for this, the Satyxis Raider captain.

 

 

Making her and other Satyxis immune to knockdown when within her CMD. There are other ways to made defense count for nothing, but I have not found any way to counter these, so just be aware that stationary is a real threat, and keep you caster back.

The spells available to Skarre are not that protective, but her feat on the other hand is. She can give up to 5 additional arm to all models in her control area by suffering an equal amount of damage. While some of her best friends will still not be able to take a charge from anything, jacks will love this.

I mentioned lifedrinker on her bloodwyrm dagger, but in truth it support her offensive abilities more than anything. Killing a solo or something, a little to close to the queen will increase her survivability after she took some damage from using her feat or an offensive weapon ability(explained below).

2)      Offensive

This is where Skarres spells excel, Backlash makes a well hidden warcaster take some damage from having a jack positioned offensively (each time it takes damage, the caster suffers one damage). This spell only work when playing WarMachine factions, and not hordes.

Blood rain is an AOE with pow 12 and a range of 8. For 3 focus I rarly find this my first go to spell. I have used it several times against one wound infantry with high arm and shieldwall or some other reason for standing around in clumps, since the continues corrosion takes out 2/3 of the models affected. 3 focus does put a limitation to how many times you can cast the spell, but the spell ritual sacrifice (kill a friendly for 2 focus, gain d6 addition next turn) can get Skarre to cast 3 or even 4 of this spell. In my experience swordknights backed up with officer+standard and buffed by a journeyman warcaster usually stand in about 4 clumps and they are relatively easy to hit, so this spell can take out quite a few of those. Otherwise they are darn hard to take out with the units I like to use on no-feat turns with Skarre.

Dark guidance is an aura that effects each model within Skarres control area, and gives them an additional dice to hit in melee. This spell color my armylists quite a lot combined with the feat that offensively grants up to +5 str to all friendly faction models in her command (per damage she takes) as it is the two unit/jack buffs she has. She increases to hit and damage, but only in melee. This made MAT and STR less important and number of attacks more so. Lets take the example of the mechanathrall. With a MAT of five they need help hitting most things, but with Skarres Dark Guidance the hit DEF 16 with half their attacks. With two attacks each that is one hit per mechanathrall against casters such as Skarre. On a charge that is an average of 6,5 damage a model and thus we need 3 thralls to kill her. In case they are effected by her feat on top of that, damage a per model is 11,5 making 2 thralls almost overkill.

Hellfire is  her tool for spell assassination, with range 10 and pow 14 for 3 focus she can easily takeout exposed casters through an archnode but only if she had a good roll on the Ritual Sacrifice since one is rarely enough.

Often I have used Skarre to takeout jacks simply by having her charge them. She does not even need Dark Guidance or her feat to take out most heavy jacks because of life trader on Takkaryx (her sword) and knockdown on her great rack (horns not boobs.. I think). Use the charge attack on the sword if fighting a high ARM target and then use life trade to gain an additional damage dice. This makes her average damage roll 27 giving a headache to even Kadorian Jacks. Then use her great rack to remove having to hit from the equation.

You need more than 6 focus to take out an unharmed ARM 20 Jack. Luckely Skarre can get up to 12 focus.

 

Based on the arm of the jack you are faced with you should boost damage rather than buying more attacks when faced with 20 or more. (if your average damage is below 3,5 per attack, boost. This goes for all casters unless there is another effect to the weapon).

Another trick for killing that damned high DEF caster is to use Sacrificial Strike (action not spell) to hit automatically. You have to remove a friendly model from play and the POW is equal to the models unbuffed ARM. You can boost the damage, and this when combined with some damage from backlash can take out most non-frontline casters without having to get to them. The danger comes from the range on this attack, which is only nine so you have to get close and generally, assassinations that are “win or lose” are rarely worth it. When trying to get rid of Sorcha, running around with DEF 20 against ranged and killing her without rolling to hit even once is a great feeling and you have to try that just once.

Normally DEF 20+ would make you feel safe, but not against Skarre

 

3)      Jacks

At first glance Skarre looks as though she would like self-reliant jacks, but after playing around with her I found that if you use a Skarlock to cast Ritural sacrifice on these guys

Cheap and expendable Scrap Tralls are ideal to kill with Ritual Sacrifice

You often end up with a load more focus then you need. Therefore, I actually think that she is able to have a few (2) jacks with 3 focus each quite often. Due to this, and her feat I know that I will have to try playing her with the Kraken once I get a hold of the model. She is not a greedy caster, and often I only use 4 focus a turn to cast dark guidance. While archnodes are great for casting bloodrain and hellfire while keeping Skarre safe, they are not needed as much with her as with Deneghra and I find that in lower point I would rather have more multi attack infantry.

4)      Conclusion

Skarre is a caster with a punch, that runs a relatively tight formation due to her “low” focus stat and two important auras. She packs a punch in melee, but do not let the fool you, she is spends her health on feat and extra damage in melee, so only use this when there will be no retaliation. She can have more focus to spare then most casters and therefore can keep a few focus hungry jacks running while still having enough to do other things. She benefits from killing her own units so take some “sacrificial lambs” with a low point cost per model. Her strength comes from having several tools, so remember them all, because there will be situation where each of her abilities wins you the game.

To put my money where my mouth is, my next post will be about the Skarre army list I brought to the tournament, reasons behind the choices and show you the models I used.