In the beginning of 2nd edition 7 Vindictors list became very popular. A lot of people were saying that it is a great way to start playing Warcry and this opinion was repeated even more often after this list won a tournament. Discord and Reddit were full of people praising the list and its effectiveness against monsters. Few months later, with Core Book battleplans getting less popular and monsters in decline after the nerf this list popularity dropped. It’s still arguably the build that most people encountered this edition and the “classic” status is certainly deserved. Now the golden era of spear equipped Stormcasts is over and they are definitely overshadowed by annihilators as the default Thunderstrike Chamber unit. Let’s review the “oldie but goodie” and try to slightly improve it while at the same time trying not to change it too much – we don’t want the changed “Oops all vindictors” list to end up with not enough vindictors.
Let’s identify the list weaknesses and try to find possible solutions. One of the problems I had while playing vindictor based lists was always lack of impactful abilities, so we definitely need the added fighters to bring some exciting and impactful abilities. The other problem is that with no powerful rampager in the original list, it can’t change the direction of the game when rolling a quad. The big threat that would use rampage well isn’t necessary so we can look for fighters that will bring other impactful quads with them. For me 7 bodies is an extremely low number, but for a lot of people it isn’t the case and I feel that changing the number of fighters might lead us too far away from original idea, so let’s keep that number. Let’s move to the original idea and see which other direction we can move from there.
I would say that the key element of the list was that it was extremely cheap and easy to build, as it required only a single box of vindictors or using part of hugely popular Dominion box. Let’s start in similar place – Warrior starter, a smaller sister of huge Dominion box, was also extremely popular, but included only 5 vindictors. Let’s start here – our list will “only” have 5 vindictors so people that bought this box have enough vindictors to play the list we are crafting.
Core of the list:
The Warrior starter included alternative hero that could lead our forces – Knight-Arcanum.
This fighter is perfect for the list as it not only gives us completely new tool in ranged attack (that is terrifying to enemy chaff), that works extremely well with 2” range of vindictors, (moving to attack enemy fighters is not excluding the option to later shoot at it), but it also has a great double that we will most likely will use every time we have a double of threes, fours, fives or sixes – Bolt from the Heavens.
With Knight-Arcanum in the list we are left with only 120 points left. As we already identified the “magic missile” attack as a great addition, let’s not look further and simply take one of the only two 120 points mages with this attack profile that order has access to: CoS Battlemage (that can be easily proxied) or Scinari Calligrave from Lumineth Realmlords and our list looks like that:
- Knight-Arcanum
- Scinari Calligrave / Battlemage
- 5x Vindictor
I think the list above is already way more fun to play than the original, but it still has problems with access to impactful abilities and lack of good plan for a “quad turn”. We can stop here, but 5 points list adjustment can fix both problems and increase the power of the list immensely. All we have to do is “demote” single Vindictor into Annihilator with shield. This change will immidietly fix the “quad problem” as annihilators have access to incredible quad – Force of a Falling Star.
5 points gained this way can be used to improve our mage in 2 ways. The first path is the most popular Underworlds ally – Kixi-Taka.
Picking this skink priest gives the warband access to a very nice triple – Imbue with Azyrite Energy, as well as his faction double that in case of a kill gives him bonus move or attack action. Against T3 opponents this ability might lead to a lot of deaths among enemy chaff and together with ranged attacks of Knight-Arcanum can lead to quite impressive ranged damage.
The other path if you don’t like Seraphon estethic, are simply tired of seeing Kixi-Taka in every second list or don’t want any fighters that wield pokeballs is the Sorceress from CoS: Darkling Covens.
She has worse melee attack, speed, reaction and abilities, but is similar enough to serve the same role. The only advantage over Kixi-Taka is her quad, Vitrolic Spray that can nuke enemies when used with high ability value
The Final version of the list:
- Knight-Arcanum
- Kixi-Taka / Sorceress
- 4x Vindictor
- Annihilator with shield
My main problem with original 7 vindictors list is that it is very bad for beginners (#unpopular opinion, I know). Lack of distinct fighters that serve different roles depending on battlepack, opposing warband and the gamestate makes learning the game more difficult in my opinion. I believe beginner friendly list should help players learn game fundamentals and its different aspects and not rely on strong fundamentals to work. Lack of impactful abilities and combos also make running the original list less fun for “Timmy” and some “Johny” players as your fighters are quite OK and don’t have any big flaws, but at the same time don’t excel at anything and without rolling few sixes there isn’t much excitement or explosiveness in their gameplay. I hope the changes I proposed will make you reconsider going back to vindictor based lists, at least in more casual setting, where there is less space for powerful fighters like annihilators.
As always, thanks for reading and have a great day.
Overthinking Warcry 