New Guild Captains – Farmer’s Festival

It’s December, it’s that time of year when snow starts falling, when people start decorating their houses and singing merry songs. But most of all, it’s a time for presents, and it seems that Steamforged has some for us!

The Alchemists, Farmers and Union were the only three Guilds still without their third captains, which means that these were obvious choices as presents to the community. And oooh boy, I can tell you, these are some presents indeed!

FESTIVAL

First off, the lads from the dev team have decided to start the festivities with an aptly named captain – the third Farmer’s Guild captain Festival. Let’s take a look at her card.

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Looking at the front of her card, her statistics and playbook already give away that this captain is a Planter, ready to fuel her Reaper squaddies.

At 6″/8″ and 2″ melee, she’s quite fast, but I think she’ll only attack when she really needs to. Her playbook is quite straightforward – a single push on 1, a KD on 2 and a double push on 3 are the real highlights here, showing us that she’ll mostly try to set up her squaddies to deal some damage. With a 3/6″ KICK, she’ll have a 14″ threat on goal, which isn’t much. She’s a tad tankier than Thresher, having 2 extra HP to work with.

Looking at her INF stat of 5/6 and her being a Planting Master, it’s possible for her to fuel her team for anywhere between 5-7 influence per turn, just like Grange. But where Grange is all about throwing down defensive buffs and building a bunker, it seems that Festival is much more aggressive with her plays and traits. For example, Festival brings the first TAC buff within the Guild since Season 4 in Lend a Hand, and brings a tool against Tough Hide models in Our Tools Are Sharp.

Festival’s main playstyle seems to be built around two main elements: mobility and healing.

The mobility part of her kit is shown through the play Hare in the Field and her legendary play Line Dancing. With mobility, I do not mean speed. I mean positional flexibility, which Hare in the Field is perfect for. A 3″ AOE that makes other friendly models dodge up to 2″ is excellent for rearranging scrums, increasing (goal) threat ranges, etc. It’s basically the polar opposite to Scalpel’s Spirit Bomb with the added bonus that it’s a Dodge, which can go around corners. Added to that is her legendary play Line Dancing, which is a 6″ pulse that causes every friendly model affected to be pushed for up to 5″ (!) directly towards a pitch edge of your choice. MASSIVE! The possibilities for this play are endless, but there are obvious counters, as it’s still a push that is coined as directly towards. Don’t forget, it’s a pulse, which means that you affect models from Festival’s starting position, not from the position that Festival might push herself to.

Lastly, we look at the trait Harvest Supper, which grants every friendly model on the Pitch the Subsistence trait. This trait grants models the ability to use Harvest markers to heal themselves. Yes, now Farmer models are able to heal themselves for 12 HP – and Windle for 18! While this seems strong, do note that those Harvest markers are usually used to power up the Reaper’s combat tricks. If they have to use Subsistence, it usually means that you were winning the fight. I don’t see this trait being used often, as Reapers really need Harvest markers to power themselves to 110%, but it’s nice to have the option to use one of those markers for momentum efficiency.

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So, there we have it. The Farmers are getting their third captain at the end of this month. What do we think? Will Grange see play? Will Thresher still be top dog? I have no clear idea yet, but I do know that I’m very excited about this model. I’ve always wondered how it would be to play a squaddie-based Farmers team playing forward instead of backwards.

These last few captains will be able to buy at the Steamforged webstore at the 20th of December. To sure to pick up yours!