Scion?

[ierthling]

So, who can sell me on the Scion? I hadn't started playing Tara yet during the beta, so I'm just now learning her and thinking of adding him into the crew. As a sometimes-Arcanist player, this guy looks to me like a sort of Firestarter: a cheap henchman (cheap relative to other henches, I mean) with a lot of mobility: between blink and his bury/unbury trick he can move around the board pretty effectively.

 

Other useful synergies I'm immediately seeing: using a Death Marshal while the Scion is buried to first hit a model with Empty Lessons triggering Forgotten to Time, and then burying it with the Pine Box, giving it four damage. If you've got the Nothing Beast with his 0-upgrade in range, you could do the same thing with everybody who has the Glimpse the Void trigger, but otherwise since you've already got the Scion buried no Glimpsing the Void for you.

 

Hungry Emptiness, while it's buried, adds a decent ranged attack to all your non-peon models, if you've already managed to put damage on the enemy. I particularly like the idea of, say, using Lazarus to blast 3 damage onto a bunch of models, and then letting your Void Wretches steal the attack to pile on more. As long as you make sure a Wretch heals the Scion periodically, you're ok to keep doing this.

 

I guess occasionally borrowing Blink could be pretty sweet: it gives a sort of leap to all your models, as a 0 action, meaning something like Deliver the Message gets a whole lot easier. A Fast model could leap, walk, and still have 2 ap to deliver, attack, or whatever. Now that I think about it, this actually seems like one of the most useful things the Scion can do.

 

But then you've got to remember to heal it after you've done all that damage by borrowing its attacks, and then use somebody else to unbury it, probably by borrowing its 0 action. It seems to me like having him on the board would threaten to take over my brain, particularly given that Tara already eats up a lot of brain power making sure everything activates in the right order, figuring out which things can and can't still be buried, maneuvering to deploy the fast bubble correctly, and all that.

 

Have people run the Scion to their satisfaction? What other tricks am I missing? What happened that made you glad you took him? Is he really your Henchman for Tara now, or would you still pick Hannah most of the time?

[Jordon]

Well personally I haven't used it yet, nor am I overly experienced with Tara but I do see some good reasons in taking this model. Do I think he's going to overthrow Hannah as Tara's go to henchmen? Probably not, but I believe it'll open up some more diversity in typical Tara lists. As you mentioned, he's relatively cheap for a henchmen so you still shouldn't have a big issue squeezing this model in with another big model.

 

Provided he doesn't change, there are a few things worth pointing out that really makes the scion an interesting option. If I had to pick the single best reason for the scion, then I think the big winners are the void wretches. Not only are they basically mandatory to have around to heal up the scion, but they also seem to benefit more than other models from stealing the scions abilities. Giving a 4ss model a Ca6 attack with a 1/4/7 is huge. Then factor in that they can still benefit from "time is meaningless" even while using the scions attack, giving that Ca6 a    . 

 

Of coarse the same can be said about any low SS model and especially when you can focus to try and guarantee that great moderate or severe damage. It helps Katrina giving her something better than her abysmal bash attack. Even Tara herself would probably use the scions attack over her own Ml action, especially since Tara can get 6ap a turn, which can be 3 focused "Empty Lessons" if you have nothing better to do. The synergy goes even further when you factor in "the price of haste" and on the last attack, use a stone to add a and remove fast, giving her another free action. 

 

Bishop can add a   to all of his duel totals, enabling him to use Empty Lessons and have a       to the action. He can target Wp with his attacks to make use of the price of haste, use Empty Lessons to steal fast. Use the scions (0) Blink to move to another fast target to rinse and repeat. 

 

While I don't particularly like running the emissary with Tara, one of it's trinket upgrades can give "companion". You can place companion on some big henchmen using the emissary, bury it, and then the scion can do a very similar ability to Tara's "Faces in the Void" using his (0) "The Hollowing" to unburry a henchmen and because it now has "companion" it may activate immediately. Again, I don't think it's something that will really make the emissary a must have inclusion, but if you like it, it can do some neat tricks if your willing to build a list around it. 

 

Other than that, the scion makes a decent target for Hannah's "Make a new Entry" or Tara's "Whispers in the Darkness" if you want to use the scions attacks without hurting him.

 

Hope that helps!

[Bengt]

Bishop can add a   to all of his duel totals, enabling him to use Empty Lessons and have a       to the action. He can target Wp with his attacks to make use of the price of haste, use Empty Lessons to steal fast. Use the scions (0) Blink to move to another fast target to rinse and repeat. 

You can only steal Fast once per turn.

[daniello_s]

Once released Scion will find his place among my Tara's crew.

[SpiralngCadavr]

I think the scion's bury mechanic was overrated in the beta, and think that canny opponents won't be caught with their pants down, and will either out-activate or ignore it.

 

Forgotten to Time is a really fun condition, and its ranged spell thing does some very nice reliable damage for not a dedicated ranged piece. Other than that, it's mostly speed and bury mechanics, and I've actually rarely had the defensive bury stuff come up. I could see how it would get 8 SS of work out if your opponent screwed up, but you could say that sort of thing in many circumstances (if your opponent screws up, you'll get more mileage out of it). I've never had it perform spectacularly, though.

 

I think it's a 7SS model with a gimmick that'll mess up players who don't understand it, and then occasionally be useful against experienced players. While I appreciate the effort, I think the result was pretty "meh." It feels like it was trying to be everything bury-themed so it didn't get the focus it needed.