Intro
Welcome to the forest! Spirits flit here and there, some friendly, and some vengeful. Ylthairi and her Guardians fight in the name of Alarielle, meting out justice across the Mortal Realms to all those who would bring harm to their goddess. They’ve made their way to Embergard, like many fighters, and now are scouring the city to rid it of their enemies.
Warscroll
Ylthari’s Guardians have an interesting warscroll. First, their Inspire is also kind of an Ability. You pull Cards from your Deck into what I’m going to call the flowerbed to gain Growth tokens until they, effectively, bloom. When you get enough tokens, you can add them to your hand. When you add it to your hand, you also Inspire, but there’s nothing preventing you from continuing to use this Ability when Fighters are already Inspired, as far as I can tell. So you kind of have delayed card draw that happens over the course of the game, faster if you kill an enemy, that also Inspires your fighters. This is a pretty cool ability, and it’s an Inspire you can fairly rely on, which is quite nice.
Then, unlike most warbands, you have a list of 4 Abilities. Each Battle Round, you can use one of these Abilities. While this means you can never have one big powerful Battle Round where you pop all your tools, it does mean you can reuse the same ability multiple times in a game, which has some value in and of itself.
First is The Burgeoning. Baseline, it’s Sidestep with an upside as your friendly fighters die. This is nice if you’re going for a playstyle that cares about Tokens, but I’m not sure it’s the most impactful. Still, keep it in your back pocket. Remember, you don’t declare which Ability you’re going to use until you use it, so you can reliably have a late-Round Sidestep if you don’t use any of the other Abilities. That’s quite flexible.
The Reaping gives you accuracy. Like Determined Effort, it starts at the already decent +1 Dice, though you get an additional bonus if 2+ friendly fighters are dead. Even +1 dice you can use every Round is pretty good, if you need the accuracy, so that’s solid!
The Dwindling lets you teleport a fighter to another fighter. This is very flexible, like The Burgeoning, allowing you to take an aggressive Charge and yoink that fighter back to your side of the board, or onto a Token, or just out of harm’s way in some capacity. This is an interesting one to keep in your back pocket, and the uses for it are numerous, but I think it may lack the immediate impact of the other Abilities.
Finally, Everdusk gives bonus Damage to melee based on how many friendly fighters are dead. This is excellent, as it is one of the few ways to get more than 1 bonus damage on an attack, as most similar effects in the game give Grievous. Conceivably, you can use this boost an attack with +3, putting nearly everything in the game to one-shot territory! I feel like this will be the most useful Ability to use once friendly fighters start dying, as it will give you lots of room for revenge kills. Early on, you probably won’t use it unless the game has gone horribly wrong.
Overview
Like I said, an interesting card. The Inspire being a pseudo card draw is very cool, though slow. The Abilities being repeatable and flexible are very cool, though the effects are pretty average overall except Everdusk. It’s a Warscroll that feels very flexible and able to evolve into whatever the game needs it to be, which is great in and of itself, though you may sometimes wish for more direct power.
Fighters
Looking at the fighters, we get Ylthari to begin with. The Leader of the Warband is also the only fighter with 3 Health, which is a bit concerning, though she does have 2 Dodge to somewhat make up for it. She has a reliable albeit low damage Range 3 attack, and a good but not great melee attack. Inspiring her makes both attacks extremely accurate, which is nice, though her Health pool will always be a bit of a detriment to the cause. She’s nice for playing back and shooting and counterpunching, though I don’t think you’ll use your first Growth Inspire on her unless she’s in a good spot to take advantage of that accuracy immediately and others are not.
Next we get Gallanghann, the beefy tank of the squad. He gets what I consider the mediocre Range 2 attack, which is Damage 1 at Range 2 and Damage 2 at Range 1. Unfortunately, Inspiring doesn’t fix this, except to give Brutal to the Range 1 attack, which I find somewhat underwhelming. The big thing he gains off of Inspiring is the amazing 2 Shield Save, which is very powerful and makes him tough to shift without Cleave or great luck. It’s a bit sad that he feels quite pillowfisted, though ultimately his role is less violent and more durable.
Skhathael gives us the melee expert of the warband. 4 Health on a Shield is a respectable defensive profile like Gallanghann, but the real bonus is that his good melee attack becomes great when he Inspires, picking up that extra dice like Ylthari but also Ensnare. I think he’s an easy first Inspire pick into Dodge teams, having that extra Health over Ylthari. There’s not a lot to say about good ol Skhathael – he’s just good at hitting things with his sword!
Finally we see Ahnslaine. While she’s the only 1 Bounty fighter on the team, she’s also 4 Health. The Dodge Save isn’t particularly great, but the Health pool gives her a bit of an edge over Ylthari and she’s worth less to the opponent. Her melee attack is completely terrible, but she has a similar Uninspired attack to Ylthari. When Inspired, it simply gains a point of Range, which is nice but nothing to write home about.
Inspiration Considerations
In terms of Inspiring order for your Growth Counters, I think you generally focus on getting Ylthari and Skhathael inspired for the accuracy, or Gallanghann for the durability if you see a lot of non-Cleave aggression coming your way. Ahnslaine sadly gets left to the end, but she can contribute with a perfectly good ranged attack while Uninspired, so it’s no great loss.
Overall I find the fighters a bit mediocre here. None of them are bad, and you wouldn’t expect any to be in a 4 fighter warband, but ultimately given how slow their Inspire is and how mediocre their Uninspired sides are, I would have wanted their Inspired sides to be appropriately stronger. There’s nothing wrong here, just a bit weak compared to similar teams, I think.
Conclusion
As for how to play them, I think you’ll be doing some sort of Flex. They have decent speed and you can get Gallanghann pretty durable to move into enemy territory and flip tokens with Pillage and Plunder, for instance. They fight well but don’t kill fast, so many of the “make attack” type Surges in Blazing Assault might also be quite nice for them. I don’t think they’ll want to go Take & Hold much, but ultimately their stats don’t particularly force them into one playstyle or another, so Flex is likely the key for winning with them.
And that’s all we have in this greenhouse! Have fun bringing vengeance to Embergard and of course, until next time we wish you the best of luck on YOUR Path to Glory!
