Introducing Lady J

It has been an age since I have added some content to our blog which is pretty shocking considering that while it was Insidious' brain child I did partner up to get it going.

My excuses are pretty straight forward, I'm now a dad, work is busy and have been gaming and painting instead of writing.

So, on with the post. Introducing Lady J is today's topic. She was the second Guild master I purchased, after Sonnia and I have really taken to her and run with her in the last two comps I have attended winning 4 and 3 losing, so while not stellar the loses were close (one due to a silly mistake by allowing a Flesh Golem to reactivate) and generally against masters I had never seen before which always shakes things up.
Keeping to my previous format here are 5 Points for those interested in Lady J.

1) The Initial Box

So what's in the box? Well Lady J of course and she is accompanied by The Judge, 3 Death Marshalls and her Totem The Scales of Justice.

Without upgrades this gives you 30ss straight out of the box which is a pretty good starting point. That said I am yet to run 3 Death Marshalls in a single game but it's not beyond possibility. The Judge is your tank, he is Hard to Kill and Hard to Wound and throwing a Lead Lined Cost on him for 2ss isn't the worst thing you could do although it does take him up to 11ss but he is seriously tough and something pretty drastic would need to happen for him to die. Queue the Red Joker in your face!!

The Death Marshall's main thing is their boxing (Bury) of other models, get yourself in HTH and with Ca5 v WP you attempt to bury your target, which quite frankly is awesome. Of course getting in HTH can be tricky as they aren't the sturdiest of models however they are Hard to Wound and have decent stats, A little cover works wonders however as they are immune to terrain so can still charge out of that forest and box that target. Last up is the totem Sales of Justice who moves about staked to a cross (not a good day for him). The main draw (pun coming up) of this guy is giving you card draw if your opponent has more cards than you and at 3ss is an additional activation is helpful as well.

2) Lady J - Front of Card

Ok, so what's on the front of her card? Her descriptors are Master, Guild Marshall, Living and has a healthy Soul Stone cache of 4.

Her stats, going from left to right, we get defence 5 (DF)  which isn't great by any stretch but she does have 14 (yes 14) wounds and a brilliant anti MI trigger that does fairly solid damage back to whomever is unfortunate enough not to hit her. You do need a Mask to pull this off however so keep a stone and a high card, or of course 13 Masks does the job just fine :-)

WP 7 is next excellent, high Will Power is a trend you will find on a lot of Guild models, very focused at cleansing those heathens.

As I mentioned above she has 14 wounds (WD), pretty beefy by any standard and a walk (WK) of 5, which is pretty standard. Her charge (CG) is 7 and MI threat range of 2" so therefore has a very respectable threat range of 14". Her height (HT) is 2 and therefore standard for a human model.

Also on the front of her card is Blind Fighter that allows her to ignore LOS when charging which is great, you can so often set up a change to someone out of sight but finishing up in her 2" MI range.

Final Reposte stops models from placing markers when they die, very handy for keeping dead things dead.

Finally she has Inspiring Swordplay that gives models within a pulse of 8 plus flips on all MI and Sh actions when she kills someone with an MI action ... which is pretty often :-)

3) Lady J - Back of Card

The Lady is not overly complicated when it comes to Attack Actions, she has one ... and it delivers some serious hurt. She also has 3 Tactical Actions

So her MI action is a (1) Greatsword attack, this is a very good attack with an MI7 so you'll hit just about anyone you want with a 13 in your hand, a 2 inch range and a damage spread of 3/4/6. Furthermore if she didn't charge she gets a plus flip on damage, all of which is very similar to Lilith my favourite Neverborn master ...  She does have a built in trigger of a Ram that like most Guild models gives +1 Damage so really her spread is 4/5/7 to start with, add a Ram on a card and a Soul Stone if you are feeling mean and you get a minimum damage if 6!

Tactical Actions are quite straight forward, two (0)'s and a (1).

(0) Juggernaught allows her to discard a card and heal 1/2/4 which is massive when combined with her 14 wounds.

(0) Covering Fire gives her soft cover against shooting Attacks by models with 12". It does need a 5 of Crows though so can be awkward to get off and therefore I haven't used it a lot.

(1) Restore Natural Order can be devastating, with a 12 of anything, so it does take a bit, she removes ALL Conditions within 8 inches. This can really turn the tide, when you need to kill someone sitting there all Defensive or similar, remove and apply sword to face or maybe to save your crew from debilitating Conditions, paralyse, slow, burning, poison etc. etc. all gone.

One little caveat and why I always take a Witchling Stalker, she can't cast Restore Natural Order when she is Paralysed herself!! Very frustrating I assure you.

4) Venturing into the upgrades

So this is very subjective based on schemes, strategies, models selected and of course your personal play style but I will briefly touch on a few I have used to success or not!

First there are two main upgrades that I enjoy using with Lady J, they are Badge of Office and Justice Unleashed which has a specific role against Resurrectionists and other undead affiliated masters.

Badge of Office is 2ss and reduces all damage to 1 once (pre soul stone save) so this is excellent to save against the Red Joker and also to stop attack that paralyse the model with damage, pop this and reduce the damage 1, soul stone to remove that (unless you Black Joker) but as if that would happen .... *mutter*

Justice Unleashed has a (0) pulse that removes all Corpse and Scrap Counters within 6" and a (1) Justice Unleashed cast that forces all Undead and Spirit models to take Wp13 duel or take 3 damage ignoring Armour and Hard to Kill, so a handy finisher against a pack of the walking dead.

She has other upgrades on offer of course that would shine against particular crews or boards with particular setups but she is, at her core, fairly straight forward and I haven't really found the need to gear her up too much preferring to save those ss for other things

5) The first expansion to her crew

The very first model I would add after the initial box is a Witchling Stalker, they are just too handy and go in basically every Guild crew I make. The ability to remove a condition up to 12" away with just the 5 or more is so, so valuable.

After that, personally, I like my Guild Riflemen and their trusty Sergeant. I've have got this little posse into a mean, lean firing squad of doom however I think I might do a short article on my adventures with these guys soon.

So Witchling, Riflemen and Sergeant is what I often use however there is a world of choice with Guild. I would say to have a think and match your schemes, obvious I know, but I have found most Guild models to be very specialised and niche.