Topic: The Return of Aurelia Malys

[Wyldhunt]

As someone whose dark eldar forces include servants of the Poisoned Tongue, I've severely missed our dear Archon's statline in the latest codex.  So naturally, the haemonculi and I have cobbled together a set of new rules to bring her into 7th edition.  In place of her old precognisant rule, I've given her Clockwork Mind so that she can play around with the new warlord trait rules and always bring the perfect tool to the table.  Crystal  Heart has been updated slightly to Crystaline Heart so that she can still benefit from allied shadowseers, void dreamers, and craftworlder psykers.  The Lady's Blade was always a nice bonus but not something that felt especially important to her character or especially helpful. I didn't want to give her a boring power weapon or turn her into a generic huskblade wielder though. I've given her a djinn blade so that she has something similar without requiring a unique set of rules to keep track of (especially since she has a few special snowflake rules already).

I'd like to include something that reflects her close ties to certain harlequins, but her profile seemed busy enough with special rules as it is. 

I've put her price slightly above what it used to be in case Clockwork Mind turns out to be especially powerful.  Considerin it replaced precognisant, and considering both power from pain and djinn blades are arguably less useful than they used to be, I think that's more than fair. 

How does she look?

Lady Aurelia Malys
Points: 140
Statline: Standard for Archons
Warlord Trait: Labyrinthine Cunning, Special
Special: Power From Pain, Clockwork Mind, Clumsy Fools, Night Vision, Independent Character
Wargear: djinn blade, crystalline heart, kabalite armor, plasma grenades, war fan (close combat weapon)

Clockwork Mind: Lady Malys possesses a mind unmatched by any in the dark city save perhaps for the overlord himself.  Each battle into which she enters has been carefully orchestrated to grant her forces the advantage.  In addition to the Labyrinthine Cunning warlord trait, Lady Malys may select a single additional trait from the Strategic or Tactical warlord trait tables provided she is your warlord.

Crystaline Heart: Strange forces have taken an interest in clever Aurelia. Lady Malys and any unit she joins are unaffected by Maledictions and Witchfire psychic powers. 
 
Clumsy Fools: Lady Malys can easily predict and evade the blows of her oafish enemies.  To represent this, she has a 4+ invulnerable save.

Note: Lady Malys is treated as an archon and unlocks a “slotless” court of the archon accordingly.

[Calamity]

This looks pretty good! 

Clockwork Mind: Lady Malys possesses a mind unmatched by any in the dark city save perhaps for the overlord himself.  Each battle into which she enters has been carefully orchestrated to grant her forces the advantage.  In addition to the Labyrinthine Cunning warlord trait, Lady Malys may select a single additional trait from the Strategic or Tactical warlord trait tables provided she is your warlord.

When you say 'select', does that mean the player can choose it or is it still randomly determined?

[Wyldhunt]

As is, you get to choose the warlord trait.  Which is very powerful, yes.  I considered giving her something similar to Asuryan's warlord shenanigans, but being able to pick a single tool for the job seemed more fitting.  Considering points spent on Malys could have gone towards something scarier in melee, an archon with a shadow field/huskblade, or haemonculi for a coven formation, I thought giving her a strong "big picture" advantage felt appropriate. 

What do you think? Too good?  I see her as an okayish melee combatant that you really take for the warlord traits.

[Calamity]

As is, you get to choose the warlord trait.  Which is very powerful, yes.  I considered giving her something similar to Asuryan's warlord shenanigans, but being able to pick a single tool for the job seemed more fitting.  Considering points spent on Malys could have gone towards something scarier in melee, an archon with a shadow field/huskblade, or haemonculi for a coven formation, I thought giving her a strong "big picture" advantage felt appropriate. 

What do you think? Too good?  I see her as an okayish melee combatant that you really take for the warlord traits.

Well, Labyrinthine Cunning is already a pretty powerful trait as it stands.  Also, when combined with this and the Crystalline Heart ability she does boarder on the OP side.  I do agree that a special character does need a big idea or two behind them though.

What you could do I suppose is select a small number (say three) of suitable traits (Master Of Ambush, Princeps of Deceit etc) and let the player either pick one or roll for them.

Also the Heart ability sounds like it should be that she's immune to all physic powers friendly or hostile.  I need to find my 5th ed. DE codex to help out more though. 

[Wyldhunt]

Hmm. How about simply letting her randomly generate a trait from either the Strategic or Tactical tables and then also let her reroll the trait if the detachment is combined arms?  Labyrinthine Cunning combined with pretty much any strategic trait is great, and a tactical trait can really help with scoring.  I think it retains the feeling that she's an extremely capable commander/deviser of plans/thing from which nightmares are spun while also making it difficult to completely plan an army around, say, Master of ambush.

Regarding the heart, you're right in that, as written, the original rule technically made her immune to friendly powers as well. However, that rule was written before allies were a thing, so it wouldn't have made sense for it to specify hostile powers.  The heart seems like the sort of thing that selectively prevents hostile threats from harming Malys and pals as opposed to being, for instance, a null field generator.  It just seemed to make more sense for her to able to benefit from a farseer's buffs.

[faitherun (Fay-ith-er-run)]

Why not have the heart make her count as a lvl 3 psyched for the purposes of deny the witch rolls?  Then she can have a rather strong resistance without being fully immune and allow her to benefit from friendly powers too

[Wyldhunt]

Why not have the heart make her count as a lvl 3 psyched for the purposes of deny the witch rolls?  Then she can have a rather strong resistance without being fully immune and allow her to benefit from friendly powers too

That would probably be fine (especially if she generated additional warp charges for you to deny with), but it would also be considerably less potent of a psychic defense than she used to be.  It would probably call for a points decrease.  To break down my version of Malys, she basically has...

*The statline of an archon but no pistol option.  Let's say that puts her at the starting cost of an archon.
*A 4+ invulnerable save.  So basically the cost of a clone field.
*A djinn blade.  And let's face it, no one really likes the djinn blade.  Most people would rather have the husk blade or maybe some sort of ranged weapon. So let's say the djinn blade's cost, but keep in mind what you're passing on to get it.
*A close combat weapon for the bonus attack. No additional cost; this actually less useful than the pistol the archon normally has.
*Clockwork Mind + Labyrinthine Cunning. Which is pretty darn good.  Assuming the bonus trait is randomized, call it 30 points? 

I don't have my codex in front of me, but I want to say that comes out to about... 120.  So about 120, but as previously pointed out a generic archon can take a better wargear loadout. So now let's look at possible ways of handling the heart:

*Psy Level 3 (defensive only; possibly generating extra warp charges).  Best case scenario, you'd be denying on a 4+, but there are plenty of Level 3 (and even a Level 4 or two)psykers out there.  Being a higher mastery level would still only help her unit, but it would be far less effective at it than the old heart.  Considering the best case scenario is that you ignore 50% of the enemy's successes, and only when they're targeting one specific unit in your entire army, I'd probably only rate that at a cost of 5 or 10 points. 

*Immune to all powers (friend and foe).  Makes it so that her squad can't get witchfired to death.  Which isn't super common in my experience, but it does keep her safe from things like cleansing flame and helps you deliver, say, a unit of incubi relatively safely.  Keeps her (and her squad) from benefitting from things like fortune or protect, so those same incubi are hard to supercharge with eldar allies.  Also keeps shadowseer allies from giving her squad stealth + shrouded. The downsides here are situational (if you're taking Malys, you're not planning on buffing her unit with psykers), but not being able to witchfire or maledict a single unit in the army generally isn't too big a deal. Especially since Malys isn't exactly a wreckin ball.  10-15 points? 

*Immune to enemy powers only.  As the last one, but you can now make a mini-star with beefed up inubi or maybe a boosted court of the archon or something.  Maybe even toss her in with some shadow seer protected harlequins.  This is decidedly more powerful than the last option, but the real threat here is the mini-star as opposed to the heart itself.  It seems like relatively few armies would be trying to answer such a mini-star exclusively with psychic abilities.  Sure, GK would like to psychic it to death, but they'll still have force, hammerhand, and their non-psychic offense to fall back on.  Most other armies don't really rely on psykers for their dakka; using them instead as a nice bonus (and they can still have that psyker blast other stuff in your army).  Tzeentch daemons are the only thing that really comes to mind as having trouble against the hypothetical mini-star, and they'll have enough psychic dice to shut down your psychic buffs anyway.  So all in all, I'm inclined to say that the cost of this version is at most 20 points, but that feels pretty high for psychic protection on a single squad.

Thoughts?

[Calamity]

I found my 5th ed Codex, and after reading it I've come up with these suggestions for her old rules:

Crystal Heart: At the moment I'm going to have to recommend the middle option (the immunity to all physic effects).  That was the effect she came with back then and I think that is the effect that she should return with now.  Yes, it's a very mixed bag but I think it's very characterful and it can be weighed out by other factors.  Slap +10pts on her for the privilege.

The Lady's Blade: How about this is?  It's a djinn blade either without the drawback or the chance to block the effects of the draw back.  You could either write it as rolling doubles means nothing...or only a double 1 will effect it...or that she can block the effect by passing a leadership test.  Does any of that sound appealing?  Personally I would go for the middle one.  So that the danger is still there but it's much reduced.  Slap the cost of a dijinn blade +5pts on her.

Precognisant: You could bring this back but change it to d3 units gain Outflank.  Always useful and when combined with her Warlord Trait pretty nasty.

I hope these suggestions help. 

[Wyldhunt]

Thanks for the response, Tangi.

I'm inclined to agree with you about the Crystal Heart.  I don't really see a great reason for why she couldn't benefit from allied blessings, but I don't think it's a big enough loss to cry over either.  Just having the crystal heart make her and her unit immune to all psychic effects seems to be the simplest route.

I think there are a lot of neat things that could potentially be done with the Lady's Blade, but erring on the side of simplicity seems easiest.  A djinn blade isn't a terrible weapon (unless you compare it to other options an archon normally has), and Malys isn't really defined by her melee prowess.  She's a scary-good swordsman. Heck, she even goes toe-to-toe with a Solitaire in one story.  But she isn't defined by her swordsmanship the way, for instance, Lelith or drazhar are.  Just leaving it at a djinn blade is fine and gives me a reason to use djinn blade rules for a change.

Precognisant was a wonderful rule that allowed all kinds of fun shenanigans with mandrakes.  That said, I think she'd need a pretty significant price hike to add it on.  I always sort of took Precognisant to be a reflection of her ingenious schemeing, and I essentially replaced it with Clockwork Mind. Giving her both would be neat, but I think it would also A.) make my opponents groan as I pulled out trick after trick before turn 1 and B.) warrant at least a 30 point price hike. If she winds up in the ball park of 170 points, she gets a lot harder to justify. For those points, I could be taking an archon with a shadowfield and webway portal who could still choose to roll on the strategic table (at the cost of labrynthine cunning).

I like the idea of keeping Malys a low-cost character who neither excels nor fails miserably in close combat and who offers the army significant advantages on a big-picture level.

[Calamity]

Thanks for the response, Tangi.

No problem.  I'm always happy to offer advice and help to get the forge fired up again. 

I'm inclined to agree with you about the Crystal Heart.  I don't really see a great reason for why she couldn't benefit from allied blessings, but I don't think it's a big enough loss to cry over either.  Just having the crystal heart make her and her unit immune to all psychic effects seems to be the simplest route.

And the simple route is always the best one.

I think there are a lot of neat things that could potentially be done with the Lady's Blade, but erring on the side of simplicity seems easiest.  A djinn blade isn't a terrible weapon (unless you compare it to other options an archon normally has), and Malys isn't really defined by her melee prowess.  She's a scary-good swordsman. Heck, she even goes toe-to-toe with a Solitaire in one story.  But she isn't defined by her swordsmanship the way, for instance, Lelith or drazhar are.  Just leaving it at a djinn blade is fine and gives me a reason to use djinn blade rules for a change.

That works for me!  If a djinn blade isn't a popular choice then this is a good opportunity to give one a chance to shine.

Precognisant was a wonderful rule that allowed all kinds of fun shenanigans with mandrakes.  That said, I think she'd need a pretty significant price hike to add it on.  I always sort of took Precognisant to be a reflection of her ingenious schemeing, and I essentially replaced it with Clockwork Mind. Giving her both would be neat, but I think it would also A.) make my opponents groan as I pulled out trick after trick before turn 1 and B.) warrant at least a 30 point price hike. If she winds up in the ball park of 170 points, she gets a lot harder to justify. For those points, I could be taking an archon with a shadowfield and webway portal who could still choose to roll on the strategic table (at the cost of labrynthine cunning).

In the interest of keeping things simple my advice is to use Precognisant instead of Clockwork mind but this is your project and the choice is ultimately yours. 

I like the idea of keeping Malys a low-cost character who neither excels nor fails miserably in close combat and who offers the army significant advantages on a big-picture level.

It's a good angle, and I like it.