A New Beginning: Life & Death Struggle
In September 2024 we released a new Starter Set, where the forest fauns of the Leshavult and the undead legions of the risen Shades clash to secure moonstones before the rising of the sun.
Similar to the Commonwealth and Dominion starter set, the Life and Death Struggle set contains everything you need for your first Moonstone game: tokens, dice, miniatures, and more!
An Overview of the Set
For the miniatures, the Leshavult half of the set is comprised of the 'Hunting Horns' box with a little muscle provided by the Jackalope. For the Shades, 'Never Ending Knights' and the brute strength of Angerboda provide the other half of this starter set.
In terms of how these troupes play though, the difference is night and day. The fauns play the game of a hit and run strategy, attacking specific models with pinpoint precision or swooping in to snatch moonstones under their adversaries’ noses. The Risen have a strategy based on blunt force and attrition.
A Summary of the Shades
"I don't know what they are but there are loads of them!"
With their ability to shrug off large amounts of damage and put it out themselves, the Shades blunt force approach should be clear. However, their attrition side comes from two aspects of their troupe:
One, reanimation means that the Shades will keep coming back, no matter how many times they are slain - unless their models with reanimate are slain.
Two, their ability to take advantage of deaths, such as characters getting bonuses like free attacks when their friends are slain. This can become even more deadly when the Shades summon Psychopomps who will often die quickly, empowering their undead friends to greater power!
Leaders and Heavy Hitters
Negroli and Hoff both lead their troupes, granting their nearby allies some incredibly useful bonuses. Where Negroli is able to wade into combat and get stuck into the melee, Hoff will normally hold back a little and position his troupe with his 'Hunting Horn' before anyone moves in for the kill. Angerboda and Jackalope follow similarly, with Angerboda happy to wade into any combat, shrugging off huge damage and dealing it back in spades. Meanwhile, the Jackalope is able to hop exactly where she wants and attack whatever she needs to at the time, letting it threaten anything on the board with her incredible mobility.
Ranged Characters
Serif and Jayda are the ranged character of each troupe. Whilst both can deal a healthy amount of damage at range, there are some differences between the two characters indicative of how their while troupe plays. Serif has his very useful 'Pavise' ability, reducing the incoming damage of anyone shooting at him!
So how can Jayda, the faun ranged equivalent, match up to this? – Speed! Whilst Serif can shrug off most things shot his way, he's very slow whilst he does it. Jayda by comparison is lightning quick. With this she could simply fling herself up the board and engage Serif in melee where he really struggles. However, she's probably more likely to end up harvesting a stone and then manoeuvre round him, letting him slowly plod towards her as she easily stays out of harms way.
Support Characters
But what about the more support orientated characters? Well Greymair and Mr Toodles are the characters for that. Much in keeping with the rest of the characters in their troupe, Greymair mainly does one thing: make his troupe tougher. With reanimate, Greymair is allowed to bring one of his slain comrades back to life! This incredible ability comes at the steep cost of not having access to healing abilities, an incredibly useful ability in Moonstone.
Which leads onto Mr Toodles! While he can't bring the dead back to life he can heal his friends to ensure they won't be slain in the first place. Additionally, Mr Toodles carries a plethora of utility abilities to slow down your opponent and speed up your own troupe, allowing the fauns to play into hit and run strategy even more.
Expanding This Starter Set
After your first few games, you may want to expand on the starter set to try some new characters and playstyles.
For the Shades half of the starter set, there are two main directions you could go. If you fancied continuing with the blunt force and attrition like playstyle, Eternal Servitude could be a great choice to build on these strengths. Otherwise, if you wanted to go a different direction, Freaky Fugday is an excellent choice for anyone wanting to focus more on Psychopomps. In either case, Charge of the Fright Brigade will also be a great box, providing some great miniatures for all your Psychopomp needs.
The Fauns similarly have two directions they could go too. For a Leshavult player desiring more movement and energy manipulation, the Wild Things could be an excellent boon to your Faun and Animal characters. For a slightly different direction with more combat punch and some Cultists, Malachite Mystics could be a great start. Of course for both the Shades and Leshavult halves of the set, these are just some thematic suggestions. Lots of other boxes could work alongside these starting troupes, if anything else catches your eye or looks fun then go for it, or check out our other tactics articles if you’d like more advice!
