The Shambling Soldiers of Moonreach

Recently we looked at the Shade Spirits and all their tricks and tactics. Though these ghosts only make up roughly half of the Shade faction, who makes up roughly the other half? The Risen!

The Risen are the various ghouls, skeletons and other such unfortunate folks who have been buried in Moonreach for the past 500-ish years. But now they are ready to walk Tauber again, bringing their unique playstyle and abilities to the tabletop.

*“How dare you! I’m nothing like those boney knuckle-draggers!”*

Sadistic Soldiers

If you had to give a succinct initial description of the Risen, they could be described as sadistic soldiers. Like Poppycock and his troupe of soldiers, the Risen have a leader who provides an aura of Stat bonuses including Melee. Unlike Poppycock, however, this bonus is only turned on when these Shades are dealing with wounded enemies: they prefer to kick ‘em while they're down! Another dissimilarity when compared to Poppycock is that this bonus also extends to Arcane, allowing experts at range (like Serif) a bonus in addition to his more Melee-focused comrades.

Negroli: The Leader

*“Listen to me and you’ll be a more efficient soldier!”*

This leader is none other than Negroli, who provides this buff to his Risen & Soldier friends with 'A Bone to Pick with You'. With this, Risen and Soldiers hit both harder and more reliably in melee and at range. This is further aided by a lot of abilities on Risen and their supporting characters, who have Arcane attacks to reliably deal a few wounds at range. This can let them soften up enemies by simply dealing 1 or 2 wounds so that they’re ‘Wounded’. This allows other Risen to utilise Negroli’s 'A Bone to Pick with You' on the wounded model, giving them a Melee bonus to help deal massive damage in Melee!

Viktor Petty for example can 'Sink Hole' prospective targets, dealing a mighty X Wds with an Arcane stat of 4. Obviously, this is unlikely to finish off any characters, but putting the first wound on characters to buff his Risen allies is easily achievable.

*“Woah! That nearly got past the shield!”*

Something else on Negroli's card, which is present amongst the vast majority of Risen characters, is some simple bonuses to damage on his Passives. ‘Longsword’ will be familiar to most, certainly Commonwealth players, as a boost to Slicing and Piercing Melee damage. ‘Ancient Armour’, however, is new but provides a simple reduction to all damage suffered by -1. Characters such as Viscount, Angerboda, Serif and even Greymair (on his signature) all pose various levels of damage boosts and reduction.

Serif in particular is perhaps the most unique, reducing all damage by a massive -2... so long as it's not melee, keep him back and away from characters like Fancyhat! This trend helps encourage a playstyle of getting into the thick of things and just using your superior damage to overwhelm your opponent. Sure, some troupes may hit slightly harder than you: for example, the Risen’s previously mentioned Commonwealth equivalent the Soldiers. These generally possess slightly higher stats and damage, but can they keep up with how much reanimating the Risen can do?

Viktor Petty and Greymair

*“Give me a minute and I’ll get you out of there…”*

Whilst most Shade troupes have access to reanimate, the Risen take it a step further in how they can utilise and plan around it. Viktor, whilst not Risen himself, is a perfect example of this. Between 'Keep em Fresh' and 'Guiding Lantern', Viktor can manipulate where reanimated models appear and heal them just by being on the table! This can Combo amazingly with Greymair, whose approach to reanimation is a little more proactive than most reanimators. Instead of waiting rounds for his friends to be Slain, Greymair gets the job done himself and can mercy kill friendlies with 'Drain Life'! But why on Tauber would he want to do that?!

*“I’ll help you! Now stay still while I stab you…”*

Firstly, a common strategy to play around the Shades is to badly injure, but not slay their characters. With the general lack of effective healing in the Shades Faction, this means the injured characters may spend the rest of the game stumbling around with only one energy. Greymair remedies this by finishing off anyone badly wounded like this and reanimating them back. Furthermore, he's rewarded for striking the finishing blow himself, allowing him to use reanimate for less energy overall and with a nice Arcane boost. This can be further helped with 'Necrotic Salve', potentially restoring more Wds and gaining a little energy. When combined these bonuses to reanimate can start to get very scary. Angerboda for example, can go from re-entering play on 6 Wds, to 9 Wds and an Energy with the help of Viktor and Greymair!

Summoning and Triggers

But back to Negroli's card. We can see the final typical theme of the Risen in his arcane abilities, Psychopomp summons! Unlike the Spirits who generally summon via passive abilities, the Shades instead opt for arcane abilities to summon. Thus far, this includes Negroli and Greymair, plus Nanny also brings her unique array of Psychopomps.

In all these summons, the Psychopomps are brought in on 1's which gives these summons good reliability, even if the Psychopomps aren't that impressive. They are however characters with a melee zone, so can help with penalising enemies in melee whilst the rest of the troupe make their melee attacks. They're also great at well... being slain, which helps a huge selection of Risen characters who have abilities which fire off when friendlies are slain. Greymair for example can gift his friends energy if a character has been slain earlier in the turn. Serif takes a free shot whenever a friend is slain. Angerboda gains the ability to slice through all passive damage-reducing abilities like butter and Igor gains a nice arcane boost to name a few.

*“I only live to serve, Sirs… Yes, I am aware that I’m dead. Will that be all?”*

Igor may seem an odd mention, but the Spirit character does a lot to help the Risen, alongside the other characters in his box, Viktor and Viscount. A reliable Reanimate, due to easily slain friendlies, is hugely appreciated by Risen troupes already but his Arcane ability 'Eternal Servitude' is also great too. Although not necessarily great for most Risen characters, 'Eternal Servitude' is great for Nobles as each colour helps them. This is brilliant for some specific Risen characters though as both Negroli and Viscount are nobles, meaning that Igor can also serve as a healer and energy manipulator as well as a reanimator in the Risen. Of course, if things go awry he has his own summon he can do, but this is usually saved for later or as a last resort!

With all this in mind, we have a tough hard-hitting troupe that can keep coming back and back again due to an abundance of reanimate and some bonuses to it. It can take these shambling denizens of Moonreach a while to get to their targets, but when they do get there, they're sure to stick around and put the boot in against tired and injured enemies who'll have to fight them over and over again!