Guerrilla Warfare with Vampires Demons - Lilith

First things first – this is going to be my attempt to shorten these blog posts so that 1. I can get to the meat of the discussion and 2. I don’t spend hours writing each post when I could be painting instead! To be honest Lilith is probably going to be an easy one to start with (I’ve already written about her in a previous blog), but here goes…

So for this game I was bringing Lilith out for a game against Andrew and his Jakob Lynch (10-Thunders) crew. We were playing as part of a local campaign which required 30SS games for this week, so 30SS it was!

Lilith's starter crew, complete with scheme markers

The Paint Job

I painted my original Lilith crew some years ago, and it’s certainly started to show it’s age. So when Gencon 2013 rolled around I took the opportunity to buy her new plastic starter box, along with some nice resin skull bases to help give them a unique feel. When I decided to take on this Rainbow Challenge this year my assembled, yet unpainted Lilith crew looked to remain unfinished for at least this year, until I found myself with some free time and no other crews to paint when I had that week in March when I was radioactive and isolated from everyone else. So they finally got some paint, at least to the point at which I can put them on the table and have a game with!

To be honest I’m pretty luke warm with the paint job so far. It ticks all the boxes (Pink as the primary colour, evil white skin etc), but it just lacks something to really make them pop. That said, I still consider them unfinished, so maybe some extra basing and a bit (or a lot) of blood will spruce them up. That is, when I get some time to put more work into them!

The table. I've already deployed my crew, in the bottom left (plus Tuco up near the graveyard)

The Game

30SS, Corner Deployment     

Strategy: Reckoning

Schemes:
- Line in the Sand
- Protect Territory
- Bodyguard
- Entourage
- Make them Suffer

The List

Lilith
- Living Blade
- Wicked Mistress
- Beckon Malifaux
Tuco
- Obsidian Talons
3x Terror Tots
Waldgeist

At such a small sized game I figured Reckoning was going to be too difficult to achieve, so instead I thought I’d go for a more evasive style of crew and just focus on schemes. I therefore went with numbers, taking 3 Tots and then Obsidian Talons on Tuco to give those Tots some punch if needed. The Waldgeist was there to hold the line and hopefully give my opponent something to focus on while the rest of my crew did their thing.

For schemes I went for the two most evasive schemes I could – Line in the Sand and Entourage.

Opponent’s List

Jakob Lynch
- Endless Hunger
- Wanna See a Trick
Hungering Darkness
- Addict
2x Illuminated
Beckoner
Rail Worker

Lynch’s crew tends to be so expensive, that you can almost predict what will be in a crew at a given game size! Anyway, it was a solid, Brilliance focussed crew. I hear you can do Lynch without the focus on Brilliance, so I might actually see what that would look like before I give him a try myself!

Unfortunately I can’t remember what Andrew took for schemes.

End of Turn 1 - The Hungering Darkness finds himself pushed uncomfortably close to Lilith...

Result

Basically, the Waldgeist and Lilith moved up quickly to the centre and built a nice defensive position with both models outside LoS thanks to a nearby forest and Illusionary forest. Gaining intative on the second turn, Lilith used Wicked Vines to pull in and kill the Hungering Darkness, then (I think) an Illuminated. Jakob and the second Illuminated attemped to kill Lilith themselves and in fact very nearly did, before Lilith disengaged and spent the last two turns hiding and running into the Illusionary forest. Tuco gave his life fending off both Lynch and an Illuminated while the Waldgeist held it’s ground against the same for the rest of the game. The Rail worker chased down and eventually killed a Terror Tot, but it was not enough to prevent my Tots from placing at least four scheme markers across the centre line for Line in the Sand. The game ended in my favour.

An Illuminated soon follows the Hungering Darkness, falling prey to Lilith's Illusionary Forest/Transfixing Gaze Trap. 

Post-game Thoughts

For the most part this game pretty much confirmed my impression of Lilith from last year’s blog post. She’s a fast, fragile guerrilla fighter who is at her best when she’s isolating and killing enemy models. Df 7 can keep her alive to an extent, but she’s still quite fragile (especially against Wp-based attacks) and she rally lacks the resilience to just wade into the enemy and soak up damage like Lady Justice seems to do.

Lynch attempts to hunt down Lilith, who wisely pulls back to avoid his Wp-based attacks.

For a long time I’ve considered Lilith to be a Neverborn Master who doesn’t utilise Wp-based attacks for her offensive power. She was the girl who broke the meta, who you could take to laugh in the face of all those Wp-buffing models as she and her crew sliced through them with their Df-based melee attacks. To an extent this remains true – her and her Nephilim are still mostly glass cannons with some great melee damage output. But Lilith’s real strength lies in her movement tricks. Wicked Vines, Tangle Shadows and Transfixing Gaze are what makes Lilith stand out as such a great guerrilla fighter, and they’re all attacks that require a Wp resist. Without them she’s a faster, yet much more fragile version of Lady Justice and to be honest, I think she’s much less threatening when she’s not able to use those Wp-based attacks to their fullest extent.

My preference for upgrades on Lilith hasn’t changed. Living Blade for the Pounce effect and Wicked Mistress for the Lure effect have both proven themselves invaluable to the way I play Lilith. Beckon Malifaux (for Illusionary Forest) is hard to pass up, but I would still consider swapping it for Summon the Blood, if I felt like I needed a way of dealing irresistible damage.

At some point I still think I’d like to try Lilith in more of a supportive role, in particular using Wicked Vines for the Rooted condition to hold enemy models in place, and Tangle Shadows as an alternative to Wicked Mistress to move models around. Such an approach would reduce the need for both the Living Blade and Wicked Mistress upgrades, which frees up some space for other upgrades (such as her Avatar, maybe?). The cool thing about such an approach is that it keeps her in the back lines (handy for preventing Deliver a Message or Assassinate) and she’s still got her Greatsword for smashing face, should the need arise.

I thought about bringing Rapid Growth to build my Terror Tots into a fighting force of Young and Mature Nephilim during the game, but honestly this wasn’t the match for it. For this match I needed mobility more than I needed killing power, so I’ll have to try the Rapid Growth list some other time. Of course, it probably isn’t helping that my Mature Nephilim needs some repairs – why would I put my Mature on the table for it to suffer the embarrassment of playing with a missing a wing?! ;)

I’ve previously talked about the Waldgeist (he’s still tough as nails) and the Terror Tots (still great for objectives), but this was the first time I’ve tried Tuco. To be honest, I feel like he was merely okay. For 7SS he felt like a solid, relatively evasive model and he brought some nice shooting to the crew, but nothing about him really wowed me. I do really like the potential with Disillusion though (another push effect!). I guess the main problem with Tuco this game, then, is that he never really got a chance to come into his own!

A Pyrrhic Victory for Lynch - the Rail Worker finally catches, then makes short work of a Terror Tot. 

One last thing – Obsidian Talons. For the second time I decided to take this upgrade to give the Terror Tots some extra punch (a Flay trigger should make a 1/3/4 damage spread much better), and once again it didn’t actually come into play this game. For 1 SS I still think it’s a good upgrade to take, although after two games with no success, it won’t necessarily be my first choice in future games with Lilith.

...And just for posterity, my old Nephilim crew! I still like the original Lilith. ;)

Final Impressions

So I still really enjoy Lilith’s playstyle, particularly her emphasis on movement effects and the fact that her glass cannon nature encourages an evasive approach to how she plays. I often feel as though her playstyle lets you take control of the game. Thanks to Lilith’s push effects, the high damage on her crew and good mobility, you’re the one who tends to dictate where and when your respective crews engage. That sort of control is pretty powerful, but only if it’s used well. After all, the Nephilim and possibly the Neverborn in general tend toward a glass cannon playstyle – high damage, high speed but very limited resiiance!

Till next time,

Adrian