Brief thoughts from a Reva-ing lunatic…

So, Ressers, known for generally having hard to wound, summoning in spades and a reliance on poison and .50cal flintlocks…..  Enter Reva, and her thematic crew.

Now I will note before I get into this, I’m not at all a Ressers master, not in the slightest. I’ve mainly been a good little Guild drone up until a brief dalliance with Schill while awaiting Reva to come out.

So over the last week I’ve had 3 games with her, a 8-8 draw, a 7-7 draw and a 10-(we called it) win, so I will give my thoughts on Reva and how she plays, coming from a Guild player (and filthy Sonnia lover…)

First up if we look at her card. Her Df is pretty shite for a master, Wp is good, Wds  are solid and her Wk is completely terrible given she is on a horse. Her Cg of 10, with a 3” melee range certainly does help though! Ht 3 is also the magic number for playing all the stupid and naff LoS shenanigans game.

For front of card abilities, we have Unimpeded, because you’ll be taking that 13” charge-threat if Reva really wants it.

Forgotten Dead allows a discard to summon a Corpse Candle(which are corpse markers in the same way Mindless Zombies are). While chewing a card never sits well with me, it also can sort of stop you stoning for cards as often as if you have 1 or 2 low cards, they’ll have a use. That and spitting out a Corpse Candle at the start of her activation can open up some movement shenaniganry.

The Final Veil is a nice little healing ability that allows Reva to heal 1 when a non-peon is murdered within 8 of her. One that didn’t come up in many of my games as she either didn’t get hurt, or she got the hell out of the scrum if she did.

Finally, is her glorious Strength of the Fallen, which is here staple gimmick. This is the power that allows you to reach out and touch someone from a corpse marker up to 18” away, which gives Reva…while stretching it…up to a 22” reach across the board. Only downside is you need LoS to the marker...but lucky old mate is Ht3. I found in my 3 matches, this sort of drove my opponents nuts…as in most games people generally don’t stress (unless ressers) about corpse markers too much, and with Reva’s thematic crew, you’ll have more corpse markers than you’ll know what to do with by turn 3. That and every time you kill a corpse dropping model, or your enemy kills one of yours, it just fans the fires of Reva’s different attack vectors, and allows her and old mate Vince to ramp up their damage tracks.

So back of card is where the meat is at:
Ethereal Reaping is her straight (1) attack and where you’ll get the most out of your Reva and most of her abilities. A Ca of 6 (crows) is pretty disappointing when you first look at it, as if you look at a lot of other masters, generally their ‘go to’ action will be a Ml, Sh or Ca of 7 (looking at the 3 Guild ladies for example), but then you see you can pick either Wp or Df, now that is where that 6 goes from ‘Eh’ to ‘ZOMG’! As not only can you pick your battles, but you can get around models with Defensive + x...and can also stop people getting either Df or Wp triggers etc… it is legitimately amazing, and I can’t stress this enough, it allows you to easily pick and choose who you want to knock of with Reva or how (excellent example would be a 10T brother, they go defensive, they get +1 Df (so 7 all up, with a +flip).. which is quite hard to hit, but only Wp 5, is easy pickings). I would honestly say being able to pick is very very strong and I would take that over Ca 7 any day of the week.

Apologies for the gushing about getting to pick what you attack, but god damn.

Anyway, onto triggers:
On a Crow (built in) she can discard a corpse marker within 3” to add +1 to the damage track. This moves her to a scary 4/5/6 damage track and at that point, do you really care if you get low damage…
On a Masks she can, after damaging, push the target 3” toward a corpse marker within LoS. This is quite good if you need to prep an explosive corpse marker, or push a model out of engagement with one of yours…
Rams allows her to heal 2 after damaging an enemy (god damn I need to remember this, as factor in killing a non peon within 8, that is a possible heal of 3 in 1 AP).

She has a (0) attack which has a Ca of a 6 (Crows) and a TN of 10 (Crows and Tomes). This just straight damages the difference in the final duel totals. To me this is either a throw away attack if you have the Tomes, or a hail Mary to put down a HtK model. It is only against will power, so choose the target wisely. But if you factor in some Yin shenanigans…oh….yes…..

Her tacticals are actually quite neat and useful, and I think maybe they’ll generally be over shadowed by her punchiness.
Death Shroud is a (0) Casting on a 6 (Crows) (sensing a theme here) with a TN of 14(Crows) and Rg 5, that can place her into base contact with a corpse marker, regardless of LoS. She also gets soft cover if she remains in contact with it. This is an amazing get out of jail free card that I used after in one  game where Reva copped an iron sides to the face. Managed to snag Initiative, summoned a corpse candle, teleported to it on a (0) then ran for the hills!

While this is great to run away from people, it is also good to get a free movement up the table to get into range of those tasty corpse markers. If we follow the same reasoning, we can measure out how far it can increase Reva’s reach for a (0). So you summon your Candle at 5” away, you teleport to the other side of it, so an extra ~1.15”, then factor in her base which is around about ~2.85”, giving you a total ‘reach extension’ of about 8”, factor that in with her 22” range with a correctly laid corpse marker, that is a whopping 30”..truly terrifying!!
It also has a trigger on double Crows that any enemy models within 3” (pulse) of her when she lands needs to do a TN13 Df duel or suffer 2 damage. Not bad, if the opponent has no hand left.

Another more tricksy example to use with this is, I was playing a mate and we both where running Exhaust Their Forces. He bolted up and exhausted Reva with a model, I had not yet exhausted anyone and he had only exhausted her. So due to her being a master I managed a 2AP Exhaust on his model, used her (0) to teleport out of engagement and then removed Exhaust off of her self..boom..schemey!!

Her final tactical action is a (1) Look On My Works, Ca 6(of guess what…) TN 12, Rg:5 which lets you swap a corpse marker for a scheme marker, if you get it off on double Crows you can take the action again (no trigger restriction). So if it is the end of a turn, Plant The Charges is in the pool and you’ve got a couple of midling Crows available…you see where this is going!

So that is just her base card, which bloody well turned into an essay it would seem haha…

I’ll quickly go over her specific upgrades and then call it a day on this article.

Guises of Death, 1SS Limited. So this is 1 of the 2 limited upgrades Reva gets, and they both certainly have their uses.
Guises allows you to summon (no need to drop a card) a Corpse Candle at the start of turn 1 after determining initiative, on the enemy half of the board, 8” from an enemy. This can, if you get initiative, allow you to attack a model that maybe didn’t want to move in it’s activation. As the 4” walk on the candle, 1.1” marker it drops on death and Reva’s 3” range gives you a 8.1” melee strike, so not half bad. Factor in if Reva starts on her standard starting line (6” from the back), she has that 8” effective leap for a (0) and a card drop, then has her 22” shot, so that is..well..by my reasoning 36 from the back of the board..so board wide attack.., turn 1 with 3 AP of attacks left (as long as the corpse candle got into a good spot… Pretty gross.

It also gives her the ability to use Strength of the Fallen while engaged, while good, is a little corner case, given she can teleport if she needs to.

Beyond Death is the next limited upgrade, also at 1ss (helpful as you can always just see Reva as having 1 of them built in depending on what you need), will probably see a bit more protracted use over the game. She gets Regen +1 (very handy, given her other avenues of healing). And also a trigger on her Ethereal Reaping (Crows Tomes) that after she hits an enemy model, she may not do damage and may charge another target. This works while she is engaged , it ignores LOS, terrain and other models, can only do it once per activation. You can use it to get a cheeky 1AP charge off, meaning you hit some random model you don’t care about, force it through, then essentially appear 13” away engaging another model that you can now hit 3 times. Tricky, great, and allows you to get away if you need it!

Blood Mark is another 1SS upgrade that gives her a (1) Tactical action, friendly model push. It has a CA 6(of Crows….) TN12 and a RG10. It can push a friendly (not yet targeted by this action this turn) model up to 5”, if it is a Spirit or Revenant, you can push out a (0) action on them also. If you get it off on a Rams it turns the model into a corpse marker for the purposes of Strength of the Fallen. Great for pushing a beater in (Izamu) then walloping them with a few hits. Or even pushing Yin in to really screw with them (damn shame she isn’t a Spirit!!).

Reva’s final upgrade is very much a bit of an ‘Eh’ to me….especially given Old Mate Vince’s (0) action (will get onto him in the 2^nd article).

2ss, Litany of the Fallen. It adds another single Crow trigger to Reva’s Reaping attack, damage may not be reduced. Given that this is really only stopping Armour and Incorporeal, it isn’t completely mind blowing, given OMV’s does all of that and more. To me it is probably a leave at home unless you a know a Hoff ball, or a million Metal Gamin are inbound.

There is legit no good pics of them on the net ATM.

I’ll quickly touch on the Corpse Candles so they don’t flail away into the next article.

For starters, there fluff is pretty awesome, in that they are these 2 spirits that are…like..totally BFFs with Reva..and they pretty much go around possessing bodies and sauntering them over to where Reva needs them, dump the fleshy parts and they head off to find another...so awesome!

Anyway, onto the (rotting) meat of if!

They are horridly crap, worse than Mindless Zombies on front of card action. They are all 2’s across the board, with a Wk of 4. They have what you’d expect, Peon, Insignificant, can be used as a corpse marker for friendly models and can only be summoned by Reva.

Their melee makes me vomit in my mouth a little, but then again that’s not what they are here for.

They do have 2 tactical actions.

(1) Light the way allows you to push all corpse markers in a 3” pulse up to 3” in any direction. This is good, especially if Reva wants to turn them all into scheme markers. It is actually when you consider it a little deeper, bloody great (see told you she is schemey ;) ).
The other is a (0) and is probably where you’ll get most of your use out of them. Essentially it kills the model (not sacs) so you’ll get a corpse marker for your troubles. But they give you one of 3 funky things to carry out.
Ancestral Visage, targets a friendly model within 6” and they get Disguised until they next activate (solid!!).

Death Omens. Enemy model within 6” needs to discard a card or cop +ve attack flips against it until the end of turn (more corner case, but hey, will make people drop a card).

Finally is Blind Sacrifice, Friendly model within 8” may draw a card, then discard a card. They may then immediately Chain Activate (also solid).

So to me, the Corpse Candles, for the cost of any card a turn, are bloody great, not only do they soak AP, they can really fiddle around with you’re opponents hand, charge ability, or preparedness for attack.

So over all, as a resser newb, but a ranged damage player, Reva is great. Her effectiveness will no doubt die down a little when people learn to watch out for sneaky corpse markers, but here raw damage output is certainly something to be scared of. But the fact she can also scheme pretty well works great. I also like that it is a completely different use of corpse markers than what we’ve seen in the past, and boy is it fun! I look forward to trying her out in more schemey and less killy strats to see how she holds up!!

So we, in all honesty, have more than enough of a book right there, so next article I’ll talk about Old Mate Vince and the Shield Bearers, which are also fantastically solid models!!

Feel free to comment away gang!