I've noticed that no one has posted a tactia or discussion weighing the pros and cons of our special characters. Has anyone here ever used Borgio the Besieger, Lucrezzia Belladona, Mydas the Mean, Lorenzo Lupo, Leonardo Whatshisname, or Marco Colombo?
don't forget Ghazak Khan.
(07-26-2009 09:26 PM)Braden Campbell Wrote: [ -> ]I've noticed that no one has posted a tactia or discussion weighing the pros and cons of our special characters. Has anyone here ever used Borgio the Besieger, Lucrezzia Belladona, Mydas the Mean, Lorenzo Lupo, Leonardo Whatshisname, or Marco Colombo?
All in due time Braden.
I haven't fielded any of them, although Lucrezzia is tempting...
Sure play them then write down your impressions.
Personally I don't regularly use special characters in any of my armies.
A weakness of Dogs of War special characters is that they all use more than one slot. However each has things they bring to the battlefield that we can't get other ways.
I have all four human special characters and although I'm still working on getting them onto the field I'll give you my first impressions for free.
Lucrezzia. If you have the points and slots to spare then use her. Use her I say. She does more damage to the enemy heroes before the battle than your average Captain will do during it. She can pump up the stats of your characters to superhuman levels (although the one in six wound is a bummer) and the thought of Beorg with bear's anger and +D6 stat points makes me drool. She's a level 4 wizard, and though I don't know that Shadows or Death are the best magic schools they have their strengths. Any fleeing unit within 8 inches of her automatically rallies 'cause she's so pretty. None of those elves can say as much.
Borgio. He's the man. 18 inch command range (now your entire army will think they're Dwarves) tough with 2+ armour and 5+ ward and he's a Necron. He'll be back. If you're lucky you can get strength 10 hits in combat too. Pity he comes with a lance but according to the BRB if you have a magical weapon you can't use your mundane one. He also allows one of your regular pike or cavalry units to take a magic banner, pity there's only one.
Lorenzo. Although he's not as hard to kill as Borgio, and he's much dearer, he is even more killy under normal circumstances. See that Empire knight of the inner circle with his full plate armour? He gets no save when Lorenzo starts carving him up. Moreover every model in base to base with Lorenzo loses an attack. Meaning that generally there'll be two or three less attacks hitting your boys. He has a bound spell that means he's just as pretty as Lucrezzia, in fact I can see the two of them holding an entire line together when everything hits the fan. Like Borgio one unit can carry a magic banner costing up to 50 points. Pity we can't take them from someone else's book. Also he's so inspiring that the unit he's with gets +1 combat resolution. Throw in a paymaster and war banner and that's +3 before they even kill anything.
Mydas the Mean. To be honest I'm not that crazy about him. Okay built into his cost you get a paymaster's bodyguard with strength 4 and a small chariot but for a model that's going to cause panic every time he dies he's pretty easy to kill. Toughness 4 with 2 wounds and a 3+ save in combat. However he and his men do count as having magical weapons. Possibly good if Deamons still lost their save againt magic, but if I recall correctly they don't. I'll probably take him on occasion though. I just painted up the Sulaman le Saracen model last night and for 79 points I think he'd make a much better Paymaster.
Some good points, thanks for sharing. You did forget about Leonardo da Miragliano and Marco Columbo though
I didn't know they even made models for them.
Although I did pick up some sort of explorer guy at GW a while back.
(07-29-2009 06:57 AM)Freman Bloodglaive Wrote: [ -> ]I didn't know they even made models for them.
Although I did pick up some sort of explorer guy at GW a while back.
That's
Marco Columbo... but I cannot find any rules for him more recent than 5th edition.
Marco Columbo rules were in a White Dwarf when the Lustria stuff came out. It's between like 305-310 I think, 308 being my guess.
I thought he was in the Lustria book.
(07-29-2009 09:04 AM)Braden Campbell Wrote: [ -> ] (07-29-2009 06:57 AM)Freman Bloodglaive Wrote: [ -> ]I didn't know they even made models for them.
Although I did pick up some sort of explorer guy at GW a while back.
That's Marco Columbo... but I cannot find any rules for him more recent than 5th edition.
Yup Braden, ya got me. E-burned. Ouch.
I have to say, even though Dogs of War are an old list, our Special Characters are still awesome.
Borgio is just a beast and a true general with 18 inch leadership, able to die.. Then get back up again, strike with strength 10, a ward save and he causes fear!
When I read the rules for Lorenzo, I thought I was seeing things. Ignores armour saves, a shield that makes people lose attacks, the improvement of either an extra point in strength, attack or toughness and a lvl 5 bound spell that rallies all friendly troops within 8" automatically? Christ!
And then we have Belladonna, she can actually wound an enemy character before the battle even starts.
Indeed, we certainly have some excellent Special Characters.
Some good points there, although I don't think Borgio or Lorenzo would really last long against some of the regular characters from recent books. Borgio's potential S10 would make him good at smashing through chariot heavy armies.
(08-13-2009 04:10 PM)Slick Wrote: [ -> ]Some good points there, although I don't think Borgio or Lorenzo would really last long against some of the regular characters from recent books. Borgio's potential S10 would make him good at smashing through chariot heavy armies.
Oh I don't know, I think Borgio could last for a fair while against Karl Franz or Louen Leoncour. Though I'd use him basically for the leadership and extra punch against RnF.
Lorenzo is just an excellent TVI-esque character, able to hold the line single handedly, and easily able to cut a swathe through even heavily armed troops.
I did mention "recent" books. Borgio would likely fold against tooled up VC, WoC, DE etc lords.
TVI style play worked great in 6th edition, not so much anymore in 7th.