Xandire’s Truthseekers Review: Echoes of the Storm
Welcome back to another Path to Glory warband review! Today we’re covering Xandire’s Truthseekers from the Seekers in Shadow box, an old favorite of mine. Thank you to Games Workshop for the preview copy, and here’s hoping they live up to their old glory.
Warscroll: Oaths Reforged in Lightning
Just as they did previously, all your warband will inspire if one of your stormcasts are slain. Unlike before, this now happens after a power step rather than immediately, and Taros will inspire even if Luxa is the one who is slain. This isn’t terrible, as if your opponent is fighting you in any meaningful way you *will* get to access at least some of your inspired stats, so depending on the matchup it’ll be important to manage who they are able to quickly kill.
Raptor’s Eye
Extra accuracy is good, but tying it only to feature tokens within 2 hexes of Taros is quite a bit rougher. I’d like this much more if it was all hexes within 2 of Taros or all enemies on feature tokens. Since the warband now lacks a way to freely push Taros, this will be harder to trigger than I’d like.
Seeker’s Strike
This ability appears a bit niche at first, but has plenty of uses both as an aid for token-centric play and as a counter to it. This could let you protect your Iron Grasp or deny it to an enemy, as well as letting you overrun into a cover token rather than a treasure without staggering yourself. On the other hand, requiring a successful melee attack is a bit much. I think this ability will see use but not always be as impactful as I’d like. I’d also prefer this if it could work if the attacker was on a feature token, rather than only the target.
Blaze of Light
The first once-per-game ability on the warscroll! This requires your Leader to be alive, so you’ll use it early more often than not. Reducing enemy attack dice for a turn isn’t nothing, but its not especially exciting either.
Blazing Purity
The remaining once-per-game abilities all trigger whenever a specific stormcast is slain. This one is tied to Xandire, and lets you heal your other fighters. Notably improved from its first iteration, it now can let you heal a single friendly fighter twice or heal two separate friendly fighters once each. While I don’t think you want to lose Xandire first too often, if the enemy has spread damage around already this will help slow down the enemy snowball.
Blazing Force
This ability triggers when Dhoraz is slain. Giving a 2 hex push to one other friendly fighter or pushing 2 other friendly fighters 1 hex can be very impactful. This ability could set up stronger counterpunches after you lose your best hitter, help secure tokens, or even let you hide your fighters away from a dangerous enemy. Nothing to complain about here, except that if you’re using this you’ve lost the best hitter in the warband.
Blazing Reprisal
The last ability triggers when Luxa is slain. An additional ranged attack is nice, but it might not be as impactful as either of the other two abilities. Still, it could let you get one more kill, deny key enemy positioning, or soften an important enemy.
Fighters: The Seekers Revealed
Xandire
As always, we’ll start with the leader. She has a fairly standard stormcast stat line, and is worth only 2 bounty. The only benefit she gets for inspiring is Cleave on her melee weapon. She’ll get some work done, but I am disappointed she didn’t also get an additional save or point of move at a minimum.
Dhoraz
The heavy hitter of the warband, Dhoraz stands proud as the first stormcast to wield a base 3 damage weapon, and also comes with the Stagger runemark. In other respects his statline similarly matches the standard stormcast profile. Once inspired, his melee weapon gets a very welcome buff to 3 hammers, but in other respects he is unchanged. Once again, I am disappointed by the lack of an improved save characteristic.
Luxa
The archer of the warband, Luxa has the same stormcast statline as the others, but is cursed with a sub-par melee weapon hitting only on 2 swords. While her ranged weapon is serviceable, it is unexceptional until inspired. Once she does inspire, having both Cleave and Ensnare as well as 3 hammers should mean she hits most of the time, but she will struggle to deal 2 damage and similarly doesn’t get any defensive benefits.
Taros
Last and least, Taros the good bird hasn’t translated all that well. While 5 move and Flying make him very mobile, and 2 dodge is decent, he’s still just 2 wounds and his lacklustre weapon means you won’t really want to be charging with him. Similarly, he lacks any built-in mobility, all he gets for inspiring is 1 more dice on his melee weapon. The rerolls he provides could be useful, but getting him into that position efficiently will be tricky, and being worth 1 glory he’s likely the first target of opponents who want to claim kill bounty without inspiring your fighters.
Verdict: The Light Endures but Flickers
This warband will require some careful planning to access their best potential. If Luxa’s melee weapon was just a shade better I’d say they had adequate, flexible stats. However, given its inaccuracy, they will struggle a bit with only 2 of their fighters semi-reliably putting out 2 or more damage at a time. That said, they may be able to have a uniquely useful niche of being very good attacking into enemies on tokens. Their ability to flip tokens occupied by their enemies could be very useful against Emberstone Sentinels and/or Pillage and Plunder, and could be useful to them also as a tool if they themselves were using either of those decks. I’m not quite sure exactly how to make the most of them, and the aqua ghyranis token presents an additional challenge that taros might make them better at claiming than most.
