Saturday 30 March 2013

Merc Solo Profile: Gorman Di Wulfe

In an attempt to branch out the blog, I'm going to start doing profiles focusing on mercinary units and solos, hopefully I'll still be able to provide some insight into those who haven't used mercinaries yet, so to start with one solo I've used quite a lot recently, Gorman Di Wulfe the Rouge Alchemist. He is an excellent solo that I've both used to great effect and been hampered by more times than I care to count. He has stats similar to that of an average solo, bar his MAT and RAT which are a little lacking, although he costs the same as a Manhunter and is available to any faction other than Retribution of Scyrah.



Gorman's melee weapon is one that falls firmly into the "if you are using this something has gone very wrong" Gorman shouldn't be getting into melee, he simply isn't made for it. However, his other weapons are pretty much what defines Gorman as a support model, armed with three varieties of grenade that can debuff an opponent's unit or warjack or throw out a smoke bomb all sharing the same RNG and AoE. Acid bomb causes a decent POW damage roll and causes the Corrosion contiuous effect (useful for killing those pesky Arcane Tempest Gun Mages), his Black Oil causes Blind, reducing the DEF and MAT of the models hit, stopping them from running, charging, making ranged or magical attacks and forcing models hit to forfeit their action or movemnt next turn, a brilliant set up for an assassination orjust stopping a unit from doing anything for a turn, the effects can't be removed, but don't try using it on Harbinger of Menoth as she's immune. The final bomb is quite a nice one, the rust bomb, a jack specific debuff taking a few ARM making that Arcane shielded Ironclad look a little bit more squishy again.

In terms of Gorman's abilities he has an Alchemic Mask, allowing him to ignore the effects of gas clouds and ignore cloud effects for LOS, which works well if you choose to use a cloud to hide Gorman. Like Assault Kommandos Gorman is immune to both Fire and Corrosion, meaning that if his Acid Bomb does deviate and he happens to be hit by the blast he just shrugs and gets on hit it, just as if a Menoth jack decides to spray him with a flamethrower for some reason. Given Gorman's up close nature it's no suprise that he comes with Stealth, making it a little easier for him to get close enough to start flinging his bombs without having to dodge all the bullets that will get shot his way when your opponent finds out about his abilities. Finally he has the * action to throw down smoke bombs, however Gorman has to be within an inch of where the AoE is placed, meaning that whilst whatever is behind the cloud can't be seen, but Gorman can be seen.

Gorman is a very flexible solo and works very well in tandem with eEiryss given the Black Oil being so useful in aiding an assassination run. It's worth keeping in mind with Gorman that if you do choose to target an opposing warcaster it's best to stand just outside of reach range as due to the AoE deviation rules the caster is guaranteed to hit and so long as the follow up attack is succesful, Gorman's risky position will not be an issue as the game will either end or be essentially won. It's also very worth taking note of Gorman's abilities even if you don't intend to field him as if your army can't deal with such a model your opponent will take advantage of that.  

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