Seeing comment about this team being op. If you give them 265442 CP yes but my impression is that most of there cool abilities are tied to spending CP and they have no way to gain any additional CP at all. Adding to this issue most of there profile are 4 dice on 3+ medium damage. Those are the kind of profile that have a degree of inconsistency and would love to use those CP for re-rolls. CP you will not have... Also lots of the cool effect require you or your opponent to be in shadow so there are plays around. There are also something to say about being a 9 body APL 2 elf team. Sure the chooser of flesh can give you 1 APL but this is not going to happen turn 1 and he will definitively have a big target on his back so maybe you have a guy with 3 APL for 2/3 turn. Not saying this would not be a good team but maybe try it and see it's weakness. They migh be very good against elite though because trading your chooser of flesh for a marines an 2 APL increase whilst charging from conceal across walls after dashing for free looks a bit silly.
Fantastic in depth review! Your reviews are done in the correct order: Roster, Abilities, Operatives, Ploys, then Tac Ops. Makes it so easy to follow along and get a sense for the team! This team looks really interesting, very cool playstyle of surprise movement and disruption.
As a Corsair player who leant heavily into recon, this team are right up my alley. I would describe them as a finesse team, you won’t be able to pick these guys up on day one and smash everyone, it’ll take time to maximise their abilities consistently. But it’s exciting to be excited about kill team again! How different nightmare is from salvation’s bland offering?
What I love most about this team is that it will make people play very differently once they learn how they work. You'll see opponents staying 3+ inches away from heavy terrain rather than hugging it as they normally do.
I think at first passthru people are really underestimating this teams shooting. Only a 33% save chance vs every 2 apl model in game. This is devastating to certain key models that rely on a good save to stay on board... and to some entire teams like salvagers... and reducing elites to a 50% save is great as well
team reads really strong, but i think they will be very squishy and easy to kill (think horde type teams but with only 10 models and not 12-14)... will need to be careful and play very defensively which you don't want to do.. we'll see
Faction Tac Op 3 seems like easy 2 vp. Nominate an enemy op you’re definitely not going to kill and then as your last activation use your teleport to get within 3. You get to reveal it TP4 as well. (Assuming I understood it all correctly)
A few thoughts: 1. If (if!) it becomes dominant, will this team mean tournaments need to reconsider how open boards are set up. There’s so much hard cover in current maps. Team seems broken on ITD but we’ll see…Elves are squishy and it will be interesting to see how everyone gets on with them. Suspect top players will be able to get tournament wins from them before people can adapt. 2. Think its going to feel great playing as mandrake but lots of their moves are real feels bad for their opponent. Really won’t be fun to play against this team. Bit worried that Elliott said in the WarCom video the Nightmare teams are the way they are looking to design teams from now on, which means a lot of messing with the opponent’s ability to do things or even moving the opponent’s models around. We know there’s more of that coming with the brood brothers team in the next box. Not sure how I feel about this… 3. KT design seems all over the place. The last box teams were not particularly strong, but these ones seem much better. If it wasn’t for that last box I’d be suspicious Retail are calling the shots and tell the Design team to make the teams OP for initial sale before nerfing later. But given they made so few of the Nightmare box that doesn’t even make sense. If the next box’s teams are also really strong then I think the power creep is real, which doesn’t bode well for the older under-powered / balanced teams.
Very much agree with you on the second point. Playing into Exaction and Inquisition already feels frustrating because they just turn parts of your team's rules off. There's a reason I play the teams I do, and having someone else take away my ability to play my team how I want to makes me not enjoy playing into those teams. Not a fan of those mechanics.
This team is going to need a balance pass, it's a little insane. I don't think it'll do too much in casual matches at first because it definitely seems like a harder to play team but in tournaments, this is going to be everywhere.
Yes, this team looks strong. However, considering fellgor are the current kings of the meta, how do you envision mandrakes playing into fellgor/frenzy as it currently stands?
Seeing comment about this team being op. If you give them 265442 CP yes but my impression is that most of there cool abilities are tied to spending CP and they have no way to gain any additional CP at all.
Adding to this issue most of there profile are 4 dice on 3+ medium damage. Those are the kind of profile that have a degree of inconsistency and would love to use those CP for re-rolls. CP you will not have...
Also lots of the cool effect require you or your opponent to be in shadow so there are plays around.
There are also something to say about being a 9 body APL 2 elf team. Sure the chooser of flesh can give you 1 APL but this is not going to happen turn 1 and he will definitively have a big target on his back so maybe you have a guy with 3 APL for 2/3 turn.
Not saying this would not be a good team but maybe try it and see it's weakness.
They migh be very good against elite though because trading your chooser of flesh for a marines an 2 APL increase whilst charging from conceal across walls after dashing for free looks a bit silly.
Fantastic in depth review! Your reviews are done in the correct order: Roster, Abilities, Operatives, Ploys, then Tac Ops. Makes it so easy to follow along and get a sense for the team! This team looks really interesting, very cool playstyle of surprise movement and disruption.
As a Corsair player who leant heavily into recon, this team are right up my alley. I would describe them as a finesse team, you won’t be able to pick these guys up on day one and smash everyone, it’ll take time to maximise their abilities consistently. But it’s exciting to be excited about kill team again! How different nightmare is from salvation’s bland offering?
There will be some minor wording tweaks here and there, but nothing egregious or OP
What I love most about this team is that it will make people play very differently once they learn how they work. You'll see opponents staying 3+ inches away from heavy terrain rather than hugging it as they normally do.
First turn everyone Shadow Portal party! Then it's time to start cleaving some bad guys!
I think at first passthru people are really underestimating this teams shooting. Only a 33% save chance vs every 2 apl model in game. This is devastating to certain key models that rely on a good save to stay on board... and to some entire teams like salvagers... and reducing elites to a 50% save is great as well
Fellgore are gunna roll over these guys and laugh.
team reads really strong, but i think they will be very squishy and easy to kill (think horde type teams but with only 10 models and not 12-14)... will need to be careful and play very defensively which you don't want to do.. we'll see
Dang, this feels like night(mare) and day compared to the rules for Salvation. Two strong, dynamic, really novel team designs.
question on soul feast: can a mandrake which is incapacitated use that tactical ploy to come back from dead?
Card says Haunting Projection is 1EQ , Book says 2EQ. Have we heard which it is?
Faction Tac Op 3 seems like easy 2 vp. Nominate an enemy op you’re definitely not going to kill and then as your last activation use your teleport to get within 3. You get to reveal it TP4 as well. (Assuming I understood it all correctly)
If you reveal it TP4, you can't score it at all. Read the bullets again.
Hi, are you sure that the terrain must be in the oppenent's territory to score 2nd point of tacops 2? 🤔
100% put chain snare on chooser? nah he does 1d6 damage when they fall back, it's even more useless on chooser than anyone else on the team
4+ invuln team-wide has proven to be a mistake last time around. Not sure how its bettter now
At the end of the day they have the same problem hand of the archon has: 9ops, 2apl. Struggle with missions, poor action economy.
A few thoughts:
1. If (if!) it becomes dominant, will this team mean tournaments need to reconsider how open boards are set up. There’s so much hard cover in current maps. Team seems broken on ITD but we’ll see…Elves are squishy and it will be interesting to see how everyone gets on with them. Suspect top players will be able to get tournament wins from them before people can adapt.
2. Think its going to feel great playing as mandrake but lots of their moves are real feels bad for their opponent. Really won’t be fun to play against this team. Bit worried that Elliott said in the WarCom video the Nightmare teams are the way they are looking to design teams from now on, which means a lot of messing with the opponent’s ability to do things or even moving the opponent’s models around. We know there’s more of that coming with the brood brothers team in the next box. Not sure how I feel about this…
3. KT design seems all over the place. The last box teams were not particularly strong, but these ones seem much better. If it wasn’t for that last box I’d be suspicious Retail are calling the shots and tell the Design team to make the teams OP for initial sale before nerfing later. But given they made so few of the Nightmare box that doesn’t even make sense. If the next box’s teams are also really strong then I think the power creep is real, which doesn’t bode well for the older under-powered / balanced teams.
Very much agree with you on the second point. Playing into Exaction and Inquisition already feels frustrating because they just turn parts of your team's rules off. There's a reason I play the teams I do, and having someone else take away my ability to play my team how I want to makes me not enjoy playing into those teams. Not a fan of those mechanics.
This team is going to need a balance pass, it's a little insane. I don't think it'll do too much in casual matches at first because it definitely seems like a harder to play team but in tournaments, this is going to be everywhere.
We think that, like many elf teams, they read stronger on paper than they feel on the table. Give them a few games and you might agree!
This team is way too OP and I think it may even be disallowed in some tournaments until the nerf.
Yes, this team looks strong. However, considering fellgor are the current kings of the meta, how do you envision mandrakes playing into fellgor/frenzy as it currently stands?