Post by osiris on Mar 24, 2020 10:05:01 GMT -5
V1.091 updated
While this is a popular posse, let me preface this by saying it is NOT beginner friendly. There are not only intricacies in posse design, but each individual unit depends on some solid knowledge of the rules in order to be used properly.
This IS an excellent secondary or support posse though, because you do not need to fill the slots in order to gain the posse bonus. which is admittedly a bit weak, but the slots make up for any posse bonus weakness.
Looking at the slots:
SLOT 1: Megan Wild AND/OR up to two hex hands units
SLOT 2:Hex Hands unit AND/OR Non-vehicle Hex Support
SLOT 3 and SLOT 4: Any unit with Dark Council AND/OR a Hex Hands unit
SLOT 5: Any Hex Face (sort of) AND/OR a non-vehicle Hex Support
SLOT 6: up to two Hex Hands Units AND/OR Hex Support units.
We see that we can absolutely swarm Hex Hands units if we wanted to. Although they would be much better off used as points filler, in this posse, after taking your other units. Hands will likely end up being your workhorses if you build this list in a certain way, however, they need the support of the multi-special skilled characters to really be effective. There are ways to play this list that doesn't even use hands units too, so that's an option available to the player as well.
Keep in mind, while at first glance there does appear to be large numbers of units to choose from in Hex, in this posse, you may NOT include any DARK NATION, CARCOSA, or NAZOMBU units at all. In return for this massive restriction, you gain shrouded on ALL of your units as long as they are within 6" of a hexalith. (you will have alot of hexaliths in this posse, so that should not be too concerning) Some of your unit choices already come with Shrouded though, so certain ways of building this list, you'd be better off just using the generic Hex posse, so that you can choose units from the three restricted sub-factions.
One of the most important things to note is that the strategic design of this list will likely revolve around the choice for the one and only true Face slot. (As you can see, you'll only have up to Megan Wild, Two more Dark Council units, and one other face) Defensively you have two obvious choices to fill that slot, Skip McKidney, for sawbones on your various units. or Viktor Beitel using Team Player, if you want to run mutants (like Juiced Hex Beasts, Kreechur, Castor and Pollux) sadly, as there's only one face slot, you can't bring him with marcus cunningham or Fratelli in this posse.
Using the solo face slot offensively, its hard to pass up Annie Mozee, as she is a nightmare to deal with from anywhere on the board.
SLOT 1: Megan Wild AND/OR up to two hex hands units
Definitely bring Megan Wild here. Her Dark council helps set up your network of Hexaliths. She has Savant, which is incredibly powerful as it can literally take VPs out of your opponent's hand. Hexbolt is also decent, she's not particularly resilient, but not overly fragile either, a good all arounder with a steady supply of fortune.
For the Hex Hands, you are only allowed to choose from Hex Cutthroats, Hex Gunmen, Hex Beast Pack, and K9 Attack Dogs:
The Hex Cutthroats are generally going to perform the best from all of these due to their higher RoA per model. I would probably not bother buying anything from the armoury for them, as it starts making them more expensive than they'd otherwise be worth. They're cheap enough to have decent sized squads that can dish out alot of shots (150 points brings 6 guys, shooting 12 shots per attack action, and they can be compelled by dark council to do that... much more often.)
The Gunmen have slightly increased stats, but lose melee range, pierce, and parry, as well as dropping from 2 shots per model to only 1, although at a slightly increased range. I wouldn't trade that much off in this posse, and would stick with the cutthroats, but the choice between these two units is more of a playstyle thing, so either could potentially work.
If you want to increase your swarm, Hex Beast Packs are obviously very inexpensive to bulk up your forces, and can be effective area-denial units. taking some of these can be a good help in this posse.
While K9 attack dogs are fast and can be useful in melee, you likely wont have any synergies with the automata, and they're not tainted so can't be compelled with dark council. these aren't good in this posse.
SLOT 2:Hex Hands unit AND/OR Non-vehicle Hex Support
Non vehicle Hex Supports include: Juiced Hex Beast Packs, Kreechur, K9 Gun Dogs, Bandit Outriders, Bandit Blackjacks, Bandit Interceptors, Castor and Pollux, Hex Sharpshooters, and Spirit Apparitions.
Juiced Hex Beasts- While not terrible, they're probably not worth taking in this posse, if you want to swarm them, look at Tituba's posse.
Kreechur - Worth bringing, he's not that expensive, dangerous in melee, and very easy to Dark Council, while remaining somewhat difficult to kill. Keep him near your boss.
K9 Gun Dogs - not tainted, so can't be Dark Council-ed, generally not that useful in this posse.
Bandit Outriders / Bandit Interceptors - I'm grouping these together because they're basically the same unit, different weapons options. The Interceptors give up sure foot, but are quite a bit faster, with 1 more quick and rapid. They have longer range harder hitting guns, but with slightly less Rate of Attack. Outriders can be equipped with various loadouts as needed. Flamethrowers (for torrent engulf hazardous), Grenade Launchers (for blast and/or indirect), and never take the electrocarbines, as the gatlings are far superior on this unit. These units can fill the fast moving firepower needs, but they're not tainted, expensive, and somewhat fragile.
Bandit Blackjacks - a tad more expensive, but quite a bit tougher, gaining 1 grit, durable, and losing ancillary over the 'bikes'. Fast and lots of shots is their thing, but winch lassos can also be useful for tangle (and blast?) as well.
Castor and Pollux - These are melee dogs with tainted, they can be a cheap way to help protect your boss if you have slots to spare.
Hex Sharpshooters - These guys are misnamed... they're TERRIBLE shots. the worst in the game actually. they only have an aim of 2 when shooting. They are at least cheap, and the 22" range is nice for a pierce -3 rifle with overcharged. but odds are, they'll mostly miss. This posse DOES have the fortune to burn for focus and rerolls though, so it's up to you.
Spirit Apparitions - despite their powerful attack abilities, I still hate these things... They're just too unreliable and WAY too fragile. if you can get a surprise first strike in with them they'll do some damage, but dont expect them to be on the table for more than 1 turn, and they're too expensive to be throw away units.
SLOT 3 and SLOT 4: Any unit with Dark Council AND/OR a Hex Hands unit
Garatt Morden, John Hunter Bennett, Maria Torres-Villa, AND Francis Tumbelty.
In Slots three and 4, you basically get to pick 2 of the 4 to join. While all 4 are quite good, and it's a hard decision. I have to go with Garatt Morden (for Rapport, and true Compel), and Francis Tumbelty (for SAWBONES!)
Dont forget these slots also allow you to bring up to 2 more hex hands in addition to the two characters if you want to spend some more points to bulk up your posse.
SLOT 5: Any Hex Face (sort of) AND/OR a non-vehicle Hex Support
While you COULD get another sawbones with Skip McKidney. Anne Mozee is the obvious choice here. She can simply execute single model units from virtually anywhere on the board. We could go through all the Hex Faces available here, but there's no point. She's far and above the best choice. the ONLY other consideration would be to bring one more of the Dark Council faces, but I still think Annie will give you more bang for your buck.
SLOT 6: up to two Hex Hands Units AND/OR Hex Support units.
Although this slot allows you to take 'any' hex support unit, including vehicles, you are actually quite limited in your selection due to your posse restriction. You can't take either buggy, nor the flame truck, because they have the Dark Nation trait. So in addition to the non-vehicle ones mentioned above, you only gain access to the Ironhide (reconditioned), the Bandit Dustcutter, and the Haupt Heavy Borer. Each provides significantly different battlefield roles. The Ironhide can be used to deploy many of your units very quickly (in order to attempt to steal initiative) and allows all of those units to get a quick move up the board before disembarking. But most importantly, it provides mobile LoS blockage on a tough-ish unit with a high rate of fire. The shooting doesn't actually bring much that this posse can't already do, so it's probably not the best choice. The Dustcutter is the discount option here. It can bring a decent amount of extra firepower on a nice XL base (again for mobile cover for your other units) it isn't quite as resilient though. And it still can provide early transport for a unit or two perhaps in order to help establish forward portals for your network?. If you have points to spare, this can be an effective choice for the tactical benefits it provides. Finally the Haupt Heavy borer. Its a great unit on paper, providing an armoured transport that can pop up almost anywhere, and hard to kill with some modest weapon options. However, it is EXTREMELY large, and finding room for it to pop up on the board without it destroying itself could be very difficult. especially if your opponent is very mobile and knows this...
HOW WOULD I PLAY THIS POSSE?
I would take Megan Wild, Garatt Morden, andwhichever you prefer of John Hunter Benett or Maria Torez Villa (I'd lean towards Benett because I suck at undercover rolls) and then, although Mozee is hard to pass up, I'd take Skip McKidney because I love rerolls. Francis Tumblety in your dark council slots. Then for the face, Bring Anne Mozee. Bring Kreechur,(that's 790 points so far) then a squad or two of hex-beasts (a four beast pack is only 60 points), and then as many cutthroats as I had points left to spend. (two squads of 7 would take you to 1200). if you want to squeeze it in, maybe either an outriders or a interceptors unit for mobile skirmisher type firepower instead of the cutthroats, but I probably wouldn't, you can teleport for mobility in this posse. The only extra thing I would consider is trimming out a few points to fit in a small three man civilian squad to use with Morden, but it would cost you at least one cuthroat and a hex beast.
Deploy your four hexaliths across the middle of the board, 12" apart from each other, so you can teleport as needed and have shrouded almost everywhere. then just POUR out fire with hex bolts and 12-14 shots from the cutthroat squads. Keep Francis behind but near the fighting to get rerolls, and toss compels and dark councils on your own tainted units to bring the amount of shooting up to truly absurd levels. Annie can teleport and stay out of line of sight and just keep killing from behind things. and the hex beasts can advance to deny an area of the board, or just even hold objectives while your opponent has to choose between shooting at cheap hex beasts or the more dangerous units facing them down.
While this is a popular posse, let me preface this by saying it is NOT beginner friendly. There are not only intricacies in posse design, but each individual unit depends on some solid knowledge of the rules in order to be used properly.
This IS an excellent secondary or support posse though, because you do not need to fill the slots in order to gain the posse bonus. which is admittedly a bit weak, but the slots make up for any posse bonus weakness.
Looking at the slots:
SLOT 1: Megan Wild AND/OR up to two hex hands units
SLOT 2:Hex Hands unit AND/OR Non-vehicle Hex Support
SLOT 3 and SLOT 4: Any unit with Dark Council AND/OR a Hex Hands unit
SLOT 5: Any Hex Face (sort of) AND/OR a non-vehicle Hex Support
SLOT 6: up to two Hex Hands Units AND/OR Hex Support units.
We see that we can absolutely swarm Hex Hands units if we wanted to. Although they would be much better off used as points filler, in this posse, after taking your other units. Hands will likely end up being your workhorses if you build this list in a certain way, however, they need the support of the multi-special skilled characters to really be effective. There are ways to play this list that doesn't even use hands units too, so that's an option available to the player as well.
Keep in mind, while at first glance there does appear to be large numbers of units to choose from in Hex, in this posse, you may NOT include any DARK NATION, CARCOSA, or NAZOMBU units at all. In return for this massive restriction, you gain shrouded on ALL of your units as long as they are within 6" of a hexalith. (you will have alot of hexaliths in this posse, so that should not be too concerning) Some of your unit choices already come with Shrouded though, so certain ways of building this list, you'd be better off just using the generic Hex posse, so that you can choose units from the three restricted sub-factions.
One of the most important things to note is that the strategic design of this list will likely revolve around the choice for the one and only true Face slot. (As you can see, you'll only have up to Megan Wild, Two more Dark Council units, and one other face) Defensively you have two obvious choices to fill that slot, Skip McKidney, for sawbones on your various units. or Viktor Beitel using Team Player, if you want to run mutants (like Juiced Hex Beasts, Kreechur, Castor and Pollux) sadly, as there's only one face slot, you can't bring him with marcus cunningham or Fratelli in this posse.
Using the solo face slot offensively, its hard to pass up Annie Mozee, as she is a nightmare to deal with from anywhere on the board.
SLOT 1: Megan Wild AND/OR up to two hex hands units
Definitely bring Megan Wild here. Her Dark council helps set up your network of Hexaliths. She has Savant, which is incredibly powerful as it can literally take VPs out of your opponent's hand. Hexbolt is also decent, she's not particularly resilient, but not overly fragile either, a good all arounder with a steady supply of fortune.
For the Hex Hands, you are only allowed to choose from Hex Cutthroats, Hex Gunmen, Hex Beast Pack, and K9 Attack Dogs:
The Hex Cutthroats are generally going to perform the best from all of these due to their higher RoA per model. I would probably not bother buying anything from the armoury for them, as it starts making them more expensive than they'd otherwise be worth. They're cheap enough to have decent sized squads that can dish out alot of shots (150 points brings 6 guys, shooting 12 shots per attack action, and they can be compelled by dark council to do that... much more often.)
The Gunmen have slightly increased stats, but lose melee range, pierce, and parry, as well as dropping from 2 shots per model to only 1, although at a slightly increased range. I wouldn't trade that much off in this posse, and would stick with the cutthroats, but the choice between these two units is more of a playstyle thing, so either could potentially work.
If you want to increase your swarm, Hex Beast Packs are obviously very inexpensive to bulk up your forces, and can be effective area-denial units. taking some of these can be a good help in this posse.
While K9 attack dogs are fast and can be useful in melee, you likely wont have any synergies with the automata, and they're not tainted so can't be compelled with dark council. these aren't good in this posse.
SLOT 2:Hex Hands unit AND/OR Non-vehicle Hex Support
Non vehicle Hex Supports include: Juiced Hex Beast Packs, Kreechur, K9 Gun Dogs, Bandit Outriders, Bandit Blackjacks, Bandit Interceptors, Castor and Pollux, Hex Sharpshooters, and Spirit Apparitions.
Juiced Hex Beasts- While not terrible, they're probably not worth taking in this posse, if you want to swarm them, look at Tituba's posse.
Kreechur - Worth bringing, he's not that expensive, dangerous in melee, and very easy to Dark Council, while remaining somewhat difficult to kill. Keep him near your boss.
K9 Gun Dogs - not tainted, so can't be Dark Council-ed, generally not that useful in this posse.
Bandit Outriders / Bandit Interceptors - I'm grouping these together because they're basically the same unit, different weapons options. The Interceptors give up sure foot, but are quite a bit faster, with 1 more quick and rapid. They have longer range harder hitting guns, but with slightly less Rate of Attack. Outriders can be equipped with various loadouts as needed. Flamethrowers (for torrent engulf hazardous), Grenade Launchers (for blast and/or indirect), and never take the electrocarbines, as the gatlings are far superior on this unit. These units can fill the fast moving firepower needs, but they're not tainted, expensive, and somewhat fragile.
Bandit Blackjacks - a tad more expensive, but quite a bit tougher, gaining 1 grit, durable, and losing ancillary over the 'bikes'. Fast and lots of shots is their thing, but winch lassos can also be useful for tangle (and blast?) as well.
Castor and Pollux - These are melee dogs with tainted, they can be a cheap way to help protect your boss if you have slots to spare.
Hex Sharpshooters - These guys are misnamed... they're TERRIBLE shots. the worst in the game actually. they only have an aim of 2 when shooting. They are at least cheap, and the 22" range is nice for a pierce -3 rifle with overcharged. but odds are, they'll mostly miss. This posse DOES have the fortune to burn for focus and rerolls though, so it's up to you.
Spirit Apparitions - despite their powerful attack abilities, I still hate these things... They're just too unreliable and WAY too fragile. if you can get a surprise first strike in with them they'll do some damage, but dont expect them to be on the table for more than 1 turn, and they're too expensive to be throw away units.
SLOT 3 and SLOT 4: Any unit with Dark Council AND/OR a Hex Hands unit
Garatt Morden, John Hunter Bennett, Maria Torres-Villa, AND Francis Tumbelty.
In Slots three and 4, you basically get to pick 2 of the 4 to join. While all 4 are quite good, and it's a hard decision. I have to go with Garatt Morden (for Rapport, and true Compel), and Francis Tumbelty (for SAWBONES!)
Dont forget these slots also allow you to bring up to 2 more hex hands in addition to the two characters if you want to spend some more points to bulk up your posse.
SLOT 5: Any Hex Face (sort of) AND/OR a non-vehicle Hex Support
While you COULD get another sawbones with Skip McKidney. Anne Mozee is the obvious choice here. She can simply execute single model units from virtually anywhere on the board. We could go through all the Hex Faces available here, but there's no point. She's far and above the best choice. the ONLY other consideration would be to bring one more of the Dark Council faces, but I still think Annie will give you more bang for your buck.
SLOT 6: up to two Hex Hands Units AND/OR Hex Support units.
Although this slot allows you to take 'any' hex support unit, including vehicles, you are actually quite limited in your selection due to your posse restriction. You can't take either buggy, nor the flame truck, because they have the Dark Nation trait. So in addition to the non-vehicle ones mentioned above, you only gain access to the Ironhide (reconditioned), the Bandit Dustcutter, and the Haupt Heavy Borer. Each provides significantly different battlefield roles. The Ironhide can be used to deploy many of your units very quickly (in order to attempt to steal initiative) and allows all of those units to get a quick move up the board before disembarking. But most importantly, it provides mobile LoS blockage on a tough-ish unit with a high rate of fire. The shooting doesn't actually bring much that this posse can't already do, so it's probably not the best choice. The Dustcutter is the discount option here. It can bring a decent amount of extra firepower on a nice XL base (again for mobile cover for your other units) it isn't quite as resilient though. And it still can provide early transport for a unit or two perhaps in order to help establish forward portals for your network?. If you have points to spare, this can be an effective choice for the tactical benefits it provides. Finally the Haupt Heavy borer. Its a great unit on paper, providing an armoured transport that can pop up almost anywhere, and hard to kill with some modest weapon options. However, it is EXTREMELY large, and finding room for it to pop up on the board without it destroying itself could be very difficult. especially if your opponent is very mobile and knows this...
HOW WOULD I PLAY THIS POSSE?
I would take Megan Wild, Garatt Morden, and
Deploy your four hexaliths across the middle of the board, 12" apart from each other, so you can teleport as needed and have shrouded almost everywhere. then just POUR out fire with hex bolts and 12-14 shots from the cutthroat squads. Keep Francis behind but near the fighting to get rerolls, and toss compels and dark councils on your own tainted units to bring the amount of shooting up to truly absurd levels. Annie can teleport and stay out of line of sight and just keep killing from behind things. and the hex beasts can advance to deny an area of the board, or just even hold objectives while your opponent has to choose between shooting at cheap hex beasts or the more dangerous units facing them down.