Intro
Hello and welcome back to Path to Glory for another warband review! Today we’ll be covering the newest Lumineth warband to join the Underworlds: Thyrielle’s Zephyrites. Thank you, as always, to GW for sending us a review copy (although it was a bit delayed, so I don’t have the usual scans to share in this article and I apologize for the image quality). I am somewhat notorious for not being a huge fan of aelves (Lumineth, in particular), but I think this is actually a pretty sweet set of minis. Their poses feel much more dynamic to me than the models in Purifiers did and their weapons are just more eye-catching, to say nothing of having the first Underworlds incarnation of a Patronus. Mechanically, we’ve also gotten a serious upgrade on their Lumineth predecessors, at least in terms of player engagement/complexity, if not also power level. Branded as a “Mastery” warband, this is at least accurate in terms of the Zephyrites needing some reps to get your head around their positioning and mechanics, but for practical purposes they are reading as another Flex warband to me. Let’s hop in and cover why I am forecasting them as such!
Warscroll
Inspire Condition and The Living Gale
Since you can’t really discuss the Inspire without knowing what a windblown fighter is, we have to cover the main engine of the warscroll, which is Tzul. In case you were confused why you are getting a box with 5 minis that only has 4 fighter cards, the reason is that Tzul functions as a token rather than as a fighter. Essentially, just before the first Action step of the game, you place your little fox friend in any empty hex which does not contain a feature token. That hex counts as occupied, which is important on its own, but, more importantly for the rest of the warscroll abilities, causes any fighter in a straight line from Tzul to be “windblown.” An easy bit to miss here is that you must reposition Tzul before the first Action step of each round, which can be either a boon (if there’s a better spot to drop him) or a curse (if he’s already sitting in the optimal spot). We will get more into this later, but you can already see placing him in the right spot is going to be critically important to your success, particularly as poor positioning will leave you unable to inspire. That said, this will strongly reward players who are well aware of their opponent’s desired play lines and warband mechanics, as understanding where your opponent wants to go (onto feature tokens, for example), can inform you on where to place the mini. At minimum, this can add some extra strain to your opponent when placing feature tokens at the beginning of the game, since straight lines between tokens are immediately disadvantageous when playing against the Zephyrites. The occupied hex aspect of this ability is also sneakily useful, as it can help you deny early charges or even halt pushes for warbands like Kamandora’s Blades. Lastly, one kind of silly interaction I’d like to point out with this ability is that, in the mirror match, it does not matter which Tzul has cause a fighter to be windblown, so all of the warscroll abilities we’ll cover which refer to being windblown will be an oddly double-edged sword.
Zephyr Dance
The first of what will unsurprisingly be a warscroll full of windblown abilities is Zephyr Dance, which quite simply grants +1 Save to friendly windblown fighters with a Move or Charge token. We always talk about how simple, yet powerful effects are great in Underworlds and this one is no exception. For a warband which, cheating ahead a bit, only puts 15 Health on the table, this kind of survivability is going to be key to their function, and will particularly reward canny players who were mindful of where they place Tzul such that they can Move or Charge into position to leverage this. In terms of power card support, guard tech gets an obvious shout out here due to not only appreciating the extra Save die, but also preventing you from being driven back out of the windblown line you’ve set yourself up in. This might cause some awkwardness in Rounds 2 and 3 if you are already standing where you want to be (e.g., on a feature token), but this can be somewhat mitigated by cards like Duellist or Braced and is a strong enough effect that you won’t mind a little inconvenience on occasion.
Zephyr Leap
Zephyr Leap is probably the most thematic ability on the warscroll, granting your fighters +1 Move and the Flying runemark if they start a Move windblown. While this may not always feel impactful since the warband is generally fast enough to reach most places they might want to go, it will feel very impactful when it matters. The thing I like most about it is that you can essentially negate the occupied hex of Tzul because of this ability, which is something your opponent cannot do. This can allow you to set up scenarios where you can reach your opponent on a Charge, but they can’t reach you, which is exactly the kind of positional control tool that can give a warband a unique angle in the wider meta, particularly given the solid results we’ve seen from BARF since the start of this edition.
Hurricane Aid
This is the first and only ability on the warscroll that refers to enemy fighters being windblown, but it is a good one. As we have seen demonstrated by Deadly Synergy, extra flanking is an extremely powerful effect, particularly for a warband that only puts 4 fighters on the board. If you’re playing against an opponent with a very token-centric gameplan, you can leverage this effect to passively apply pressure to them and give your opponent the Catch-22 of wanting to hold but also not wanting to give up that accuracy in return. It will also apply that much more strain on your opponent even if they are simply playing a Strike gameplan to ensure they can Charge into a spot where they won’t be giving up flanked in return.
One with the Wind
If you happen to find yourself in a bit of an odd spot with your Tzul placement mid-round, this is, at minimum, a great way to fix that even if only for a turn. We talked earlier about how you may not wish to run off somewhere else and move out of windblown range, so having Tzul meet you at your new landing spot is a pretty nice boon to keep Zephyr Dance online. Needing to use it in your own power step does mean it might be tough to call your shot offensively with this, but the ability to now place Tzul four times per game will help tremendously with accessing the rest of your warscroll.
Cyclonic Pull
Perhaps best paired with our previous entry, Cyclonic Pull allowing you to access to what could very well be the best push in the game really completes this warscroll. While again this is tough to use offensively due to the restriction of being usable only in your power step, you could, in theory, literally cross the board with this ability. Other than being windblown, not having any other prerequisites makes this extraordinarily flexible when compared to other pushes which go even as far as 2 hexes, never mind one that could easily go more than 3. This again should serve well to support a Flex/Hold playstyle, but also furthers the ability of the warband to really just get anywhere on the board they need to. As easily as you can use this to get up into the fight, you can just as easily use it to bail and pop your fighter out of danger. This is a super good ability to cap off an extremely good and elegantly designed warscroll.
Fighter Cards
As always, we’ll start with the leader in Thyrielle. She’s got a pretty solid physical profile at 4 Move, 2 Dodge, 4 Health and 2 Bounty with two weapon profiles at 1R/3S/2D crit grapple and 3R/3S/1D with crit grapple. Once inspired, those attacks both swap to hammers and go to flat grapple, leaving you with an extremely solid fighter, particularly once you start factoring in the way those stats could be augmented via the warscroll. In the right situations, you’re tacking on an extra hex of movement, the Flying runemark, flanked, and an extra Save die to any given fighter in the warband. While obviously that is happy magical Christmas land, this is a fighter who is plenty respectable even with none of those boosts who can jump over the line into excellence when leveraging your warscroll abilities, even if she doesn’t manage to inspire.
Next up is my favorite mini in the warband with Orieth, the classic trope of the blind archer who is remarkably competent (my favorite iteration of which is Hawkeye Gough from Dark Souls). With a physical profile somewhat mirroring your leader at 4 Move, 1 Dodge, 4 Health, and 2 Bounty, you might be pretty disappointed to find he’s throwing out only 1R/3S/1D with crit grapple on his melee profile. However, you’ll notice pretty quickly just from looking at the mini that what is attractive about him is his ranged profile, which sits at 3R/2H/1D, but notably with crit grievous, giving you access to one of the few ways to pump out 2 damage at this range. He gains quite a bit once inspired, not only adding an additional Save die, but also slapping an additional die on that bow while upgrading his melee to flat grapple. This is a pretty high-priority inspire to me, if only for the ability to try and turret with him and pick off fighters from range. Overall, a very solid fighter, especially if you can pack in some stagger to grant him some re-rolls to start crit fishing.
Moving on to a less-than-inspiring archer counterpart in Anara, we see the same uninspired physical profile with a similar attack on 3R/3S/1D with crit grievous. The issue is not with her uninspired side, but with the inspired one, as she basically gets strictly worse, only converting her attack to 3R/2H/1D with crit grievous. It’s like they listened to us complain about Emberwatch getting worse at shooting when they inspire and decided to “fix” that mistake this time only to completely miss the context of when you would actually want 2H vs. 3S. While 2H is slightly more accurate in most cases than 3S, in this case, both the crit grievous and the warscroll access to flanked basically mean that this fighter is almost exclusively worse once she inspires, so you almost don’t want to get her windblown except for the fact that she is very fragile without the extra Save die. Of the entirety of this release, I would say that this fighter is the worst miss for me.
Lastly, we’ve got Sirikith, the only 1-Bounty fighter in the warband, as well as the only 3-Health fighter. His attack profile at 1R/2H/1D with grievous is pretty meh, especially in a 4-fighter warband, but bouncing up to 1R/3H/2D with grapple when inspired makes this another high-priority inspiration for you. That said, the fragility of these last two fighters (particularly when not benefitting from Zephyr Dance), is definitely concerning, as you don’t have enough bodies to afford losing two of them early.
Conclusion
Overall, I would say this warband is largely a hit for me. The minis look fantastic and the warscroll is both extremely thematic and mechanically engaging. It’s as good of an effort on that front as we have seen since Gardeners and is a shining example of what the warscroll can do in this edition, when done well. They feel like a great mix of first edition Soulraid and Cyreni’s Razors (from either edition). Where I think the warband will come up a bit short is in the fighter cards, as they largely seem to have priced in the many warscroll benefits to their numbers, particularly with regard to the warband’s survivability. While the ability to throw out 2 damage at Range 3 is enticing, they lack that all-important access to base 3 Damage, and they only have two fighters capable of outputting 2 damage at all if the dice aren’t cooperating and handing you crits.
As far as Nemesis pairings, I think their ease in making covetous attacks lends them well to Nexus of Power, which of course makes for a nice natural pairing with Emberstone Sentinels. Countdown to Cataclysm also grants you some of that nice Flex appeal, as well as pings which can help compensate for your low damage output and Improvised Attack can help you inspire in the power step as well. Lastly, I want to shout out Reckless Fury here as, even though this warband lacks the offensive firepower that many RF enjoyers can leverage, there is on-warscroll incentive for this warband to be charging, and, of the options available in the universal pool, RF offers the most charge token generation to help with getting that Zephyr Dance online even in cases where you do not wish to reposition your fighter.
On the whole, I think they’ll be solid, but I have a hard time seeing them crack into the A-tier. That said, with such engaging mechanics, I think the Zephyrites will be great fun both to play with and to play against, so they’re a welcome addition to the game in my book.
With no Rivals deck this time around, that’s all we’ve got for this release! Let us know if you are excited to play the Zephyrites and what decks you think you’d like to try out. Until next time, we wish you the best of luck on YOUR Path to (windblown) Glory!
