Cryx Warcaster Review: Captain Aiakos

Hello everyone,

One of the things I want to cover on this blog are my thoughts and analysis on all of the Cryxian warcasters. I was going to go through them in the order they are in War Room, but seeing as we have confirmation of the Journeyman promotion for Aiakos to full blown Warcaster, it seems fitting to start with him.

Captain Jack Sparrow Aiakos

Overall, I love our new captain. He is one of the first casters I have looked at for Cryx and instantly thought 'wow'. Let's be clear though, he is by no means a powerhouse caster, that is not why I like him. I look at his rules, abilities and spells which for me seem like a whole load of fun, and furthermore they seem to embody the 'feel' of Cryx really well. Aiakos is quick, tricky and can hit with a hard alpha given the right tools. He isn't the best caster we have but he certainly has enough about him to cause some major problems for the opponent.

Stats

He is only FOC 6 which is an issue and no way to gather souls to increase though so resources are going to be at a premium with him. He does have good SPD though and a decent enough MAT of 7. His RAT 5 is a little low considering one of his main gimmicks is using his Harpoon to reel the catch in. He has the same DEF and ARM as Aggy which buts him in the 'distinctly average' section of things. CMD is 9 which is fine and he also has Tough which is interesting, but also a very poor trade considering he lost Stealth from his Journeyman incarnation. Overall he is a very average caster in terms of stats, his main strength is SPD which we will get on to in the next section.

Abilities

Jump - after he has done his normal movement but before his combat action it lets him be placed completely within 5", this is great to extend his melee threat to 12" or 15" on feat turn (17" & 20" if you count the Harpoon drag). The best thing about this is that it is non linear threat, so he can move up his 6", jump 5", Harpoon 5" all in different directions, this gives him some janky threat angles.

Spells

His spell list is both very good and full of traps, lets look at them in a bit more detail:

Assail - Target friendly faction warjack and give them +2" to charge and Slam distance, when you consider that the alpha is so important to Cryx given how fragile they are, an extra 2" can make all the difference - or so I'm told. Good spell, great on feat turn.

Carnage - The old Gaspy3 spell back from the grave, except on a much more fragile model with a smaller CTRL range. Carnage is a great spell that adds +2 to melee attack rolls against enemy models in Aiakos' CTRL area. The trap in this spell is having to move Aiakos up to within 12" of the fight, given how far he threats, you never need to do this. Can be great in a bind to clear a zone or certainly worthwhile if facing down a high DEF Starcrossed brick, as seems fairly norm these days. Okay spell but only cast it if you can get very high reward for doing so.

Scything touch - A Cryx staple, helps with his ARM cracking game and can upkeep it on himself to do some real damage with his absurd personal threat range. Solid 7/10 all the time.

Stranglehold - The Wurmwood classic. This is a great spell and really adds to the alpha threat Aiakos can offer, hit the frontlines then Arc Strangleholds onto the retaliatory pieces and you start getting very favourable piece trades. Only downside is POW 11 and it needs to damage the models to take effect so tougher targets will require a boost and even then it might fail. You could end up sinking a lot of focus into a plan that fails. Fantastic potential but choose targets carefully.

White Squall - Aiakos' unique spell, you basically hit the target and throw them d6" - what a fucking brilliant spell. So many options, from throwing tough models out of zones, to throwing jack screens over their caster to knock them down to throwing Scrap Thralls at the enemy to make them blow up. A very versatile spell which always needs to be planned for. Watch out for the casters that like to hide directly behind a jack or beast that isn't immune to throws. You can throw the larger base over the smaller base and knock them down leaving them very. very vulnerable to assassination with the crazy threat ranges Aiakos can hand out on feat turn. The Kraken for example melee threats 17" and can drop an assault shot from 29" away. Boosted POW 14 (minimum) is enough to seriously threaten soft casters that find themselves without a camp.

Feat

Aiakos has a bit of a wonky feat. but it is good. His battlegroup (himself included) get +3SPD and Assault. The +3SPD bit is superb and really lets us threaten a huge alpha with our already quick jacks and really supplements one of the main issues with have with the character jacks, delivery. The Assault bit, isn't so great. We don't really have any stand out shooty jacks and the jacks that would really benefit, Reaper and Malice, don't really get full benefit as you can't Drag then buy more attacks if you didn't end your move already in melee (before you drag). The main use for the feat is cranking up the SPD of his jacks and being able to slingshot a crazy Assault shot from the Kraken. Overall it is pretty good but not great, 5 or 6/10.

Summary

When you breakdown what we have seen, it is clear that Aiakos has a little bit of everything to his game, he can play a control/scenario game quite well between Stranglehold and White Squall and he can facilitate a quite ridiculous assassination game. The trouble is, he is a little bit of a jack of all trades, master of none. He isn't going to punch through a tough caster on full camp and he isn't going to match the control play of a Krueger or Haley.

Overall, he looks like a heap of fun and I am really looking forward to getting him on the table. He will work really well with a Kraken as the threat range he gives it is pretty insane, he also wants infantry that can operate well without support like the Satyxis variants as other than Carnage, (which we discussed earlier as being a bit of a trap spell) he doesn't support infantry at all really. War Witch Sirens and the Withershadow Combine are almost auto includes with him as he is very focus hungry, the latter also offer another cast of Stranglehold (at an increased Magic Ability level) and a Puppet Master reroll for his Harpoon on any given assassination run. Deathjack can also work well, he will always appreciate the extra 5" of threat Aiakos can give him and can also offer another Stranglehold which really ups the control game when taken with the Withershadow Combine.

His main game is to play an 'aggressive control' game, playing fairly forward and using his throw spell and Stranglehold to put the brakes on key pieces, whilst simultaneously threatening with his 20" assassination threat. This is key to his success really, the psychological impact of knowing that Aiakos can get you from 20" will really cause issues for opponents and might force them into a much more defensive strategy, the trick is going to be to master the fine line between pushing hard enough to make it a problem for the opponent and not over extending to expose Aiakos too soon.

I am really looking forward to solving this little puzzle.

If you get him on the table, let me know how it goes.

As always, thanks for reading and I'll catch you on the next one.

Steve