Spoiler Alert
So if anyone has followed the fluff you'll know that after colossals Cryx basically handed Cygnar and Khador's collective asses on a plate to them in the Thornwood, Menoth faced off against a horde of Cryx in Lael and Vlad came face to face with Hierarch Severious to get them to aid in the good fight.The majority of the main story is incredibly Cyganr centric (which I can forgive seen as they're the "good" guys of the fluff) so essentially we witness the combined force of Stryker, Sloan, Blaize and Kraye take the pain to Cryx and taking that all important althnac (essence of a dead Iosian god if recall correctly) from the Cryx and then set it on a boat with a rather uncomfrotable Blaize guarding it. However in the midst of all this happening we jump to Strakhov who being the Assault Kommando guy who can stealth himself does so and legs it into the necrofactorum, eventually finding a somewhat drained and no less determined Karchev, dialouge ensues outlining that as previously discussed Cryx want to turn Karchev against Khador, to which Karchev tells Strakhov to kill him. However, as we all know Strakhov respects Karchev too much to do that and simply stays hidden out of sight while hatching a plan... TBC...
So what we can glean from that is that A) It's highly unlikely that Karchev will be coming back as a Cryx caster, otherwise we'd probably see something to back that up, fair chance we may see eKarchev in a Cryx jack body, but if so I'm pretty sure he'd be on the Khadoran side of things, specially if Strakhov has anything to do with it. B) theres a fair chance we may see an epic Strakhov out of this little escapade seen as he's currently in the middle of a massive amount of Cryx and if/when he gets out he doesn't deserve an epic for that I'll be pretty amazed, especially seen as Butcher had to 'die' to get his (as did Vlad for that matter :P) C) Also sets up the chance of one of the casters deaths, PP have said people will start dying soon and I'd say if Karchev doesn't go epic, he'll get killed off, leading to Starkhov's epic or vice versa, though the rate we're going the race is on for old age to take Severious or Nemo first.
Fluff to one side I've previously covered the new releases bar one (as it wasn't known about then) so I'll focus on that for now and when I come to my next battle report in a couple of weeks I'll try a little more deatiled analysis then.
So the Grolar (hybrid of a Grizzly and Polar bear 0_o), based on the Kodiak Chassis (win) giving it Pathfinder, making it the third to have in built Pathfinder, without Relentless Charge (Kodiak and Conquest being the other two), the third to have Gunfighter (Demolisher and Torch) and the first to have a RoF five gun :). Getting to the details it does lose heavy boiler, so no free running, however it does pick up Fleet, which grants extra movement for a focus, so for two focus your Khadoran jack can be as fast as a Cyganr heavy, if you really want it to. It's hammer is one P and S lower than the Juggernaut's Ice Axe but picks up the special ability Ram, auto knockdown on a hit with beat back thrown in essentially, it still has an open fist so can do most power attacks and then we come to the juicy bit. The big cannon mounted on the Grolar's fist is essentially 5 blunderbusses strapped together, so while the stats are a little low for a weapon on a ranged jack imagine the following scenario, warcaster hides behind heavy warjack, for this example we'll say its a crusader, Grolar charges knocks it down and punches it, then thanks to virtuoso (I forgot I hadn't mention that the Grolar has that, so melee and ranged attacks in the same activation) pumps 5 shots into said caster, they may well not be dead, but it creates a large threat to deal with or more sensibly sets up an assassination with something else. This is one thing I noted when looking at the Grolar, it's primarily going to be a second jack, on it's own it can do lots of things but it lacks the killer blow, so combo with one of the three cheap jacks (Beserker, Juggernaut or Kodiak) and you have a winning tag team as not much will survive being knocked on it's butt before getting wailed on pretty fiercely.
One thing worth keeping in mind with all the Vengance release is that they are geared around one thing for Khador, speed and manouverability and nothing says that more than the Malakov/Grolar combo, for two words Red Line, a speed and strength buff with free charge or slam on any jack is harsh on the Grolar it's down right brutal, giving it a charge range greater than a jack superiority (and when the Grolar doesn't have reach thats pretty damn nice). Downside the jack takes damage for red line, not a great deal of damage but still enough to have a mechanic close at hand to stop your Grolar having issues in the middle of the game.
So thats all for now, I will have another battle report up in the coming weeks hopefully swiftly joined by the long promised painting tutorial (apologies on the wait for it, the friend who is doing it likes to take his time with things, then switches mid project...) and maybe some pictures when I can get them up, but for now, go out and play like you've got a pair.
