Blowing the Dust Off: Lesser Warbeast

[PG_BloodRath]

Hello every one and welcome back to another ~Dust Off~. This issue is unique because it’s not model specific. Today we will be discussing our Silly Killy Murder Machines, The lesser war beast of Legion.
I Love Lessers. They are a defining factor of Everblight for me. We Bleed Baby Dragons! These little monsters are basically mouths with legs, wings, and poisonous tails. They are some of the best 2 points in the game. For 2 points you can get a shredder with a stunning animus, a nifty built in buffing mechanism and 13 heath boxes of transferring goodness. Lets face it, I don’t need to tell you how good shedders are. However let’s not overlook the other two. While less utility than their brother the shredder, the stinger and harrier both bring some neat tech that when used right can earn well beyond two points. The harrier is a close second for me. This little flying monstrosity is born to hunt support. So let me lay out the basics for some of our newer players. 10.5” charge with Flight! An animus that grantees it will always hit its target so it’s better than boosting to hit. And it has sprint allowing for repositiong or a quick get away. They make great flankers and skirmishers and harassers. Send one after those problem solos like Eryiss and watch the magic. Its high defense helps protect it on the way in. it has a good threat range for a 2 point model and always hits its mark with true strike. Then it can sprint into the back field and threaten other squishy targets like choir, war dogs and Journeymen who may be lurking back out of range. it can also kill its intended target and then yo yo back to you. one of my favorite ways to use it like this is to have it lurk behind my infantry. becuase of flight it can fly over their heads and draw LOS through them. then it can sprint back out of the way or behind your lines. The Stinger is just as good as the harrier. Its shining weakness is a lack of pathfinder and any way to get it. It’s for this reason I often spawn them rather field them. They are great to spawn out after an enemy war beast mauls one of your heavies. It pops out, charges in, does some serious damage and then becomes more fodder for the spawning vessel. The animus Bush whack is also very useful in the right situations. One of my favorite examples of a caster who can abuse this animus is vayl2. (refuge + bush whack puts you 12” from your previous position).Don’t think that they are only useful as a spawned horror. That poison tail is also great at threating casters.


“I was getting tabled by a Siege player in a 35 point game. He cleared nearly everything on my side but my warlock, my spawning vessel and a harrier. To do this he had to over extend Markus and drain his focus. After his turn my opponent smirks at me and asks if I’m ready to give up. I laugh and told me he just game me the game. He looked really confused until the stinger I spawned charges in and ones shots his icy gripped caster. (It’s fair to mention that I also got off some obliteration’s on him from vayl2 as well) Stingers can threaten, hurt, and even kill living war nouns in the right circumstance.

In the end I love my lessers. I field them often and they are quickly overlooked by many opponents for bigger targets. Not every list has a use for all of these guys but swapping them around in list you have more than one shredder can be a great way to experiment. I also highly recommend trying our very underrated spawning vessel in list where you have the bodies to fuel them.
Tell me are you a big fan of lesser warbeast or are you trying to blow some dust off? Leave a comment and feel free to rant, rave, and detail your experience with lessers.

The Question Menu
• Which warlocks absolutely must have a shredder and which warlocks just like to have a pet.
• Which lesser is your favorite and why.
• How do you like to use your lessers
• Which warlocks do you use the non shreddrs with?

[Defenstrator]

If I'm going to buy a lesser it's almost always the Shredder becuase Tenacity is gold and it's a combo transfer target and guard dog. Occasionally I'll take one of the others but only for specific list builds.

When it comes to the Spawning Vessel the Stinger is normally king. A POW 12 4d6 missile will give any living target a bad day. The Shredder shows up if I want to chew on multiple infantry targets or want Tenacity, while the Harrier appears if I want to kill a high DEF solo.

For reinforcements the Stinger and Shredder have normally been disasters. They attack one thing and then freak out and kill one of your own models becuase you often can't mitigate the fury or get them into your CTRL zone. Harriers do ok. Having one charge, kill a model with True Strike, and then Sprint into the backfield has worked out a few times. Even if it frenzies there's a chance it will be chomping on an important support solo.

About the only issue I have with lessers is that only eThags can run multiples of them. Everything that makes our healing and fury mitigation good is made worse by lots of lessers. Healing a Shredder to get it back online is pretty insignificant compared to healing a heavy. Likewise a Shepherd getting 2 fury off a Shredder means little compared to cleaning off a heavy.

And eThags doesn't fix these problems. It's just the combination of Manifest Destiny and his feat are good enough to take them anyway.

[PG_Saturated Phat]

funny near disaster story, I was played a thags2 stinger swarm list and my friend played a baulder wold list...(perfect matchup lol) the only reason i won is he got cocky and did an assassination run on thags2, but got shocking rolls, I spawned another stinger and chomped him up. we were both noobs ha! it was crackup.

but 5d6 rolls are terrifying!

[ShockwaveIIC]

My favourite lesser is the Harrier, however I don't often take them. I really like the little cruise missiles.

[Lachlan the Mad]

At the moment I only have Shredders, but I want to buy a Stinger next. The Harrier isn't that useful in any of my current lists (I'm sure I'll need one or two eventually), but I love the Stinger's animus. I don't like it when one of my heavies begins its turn in melee and doesn't get to make a move; putting Bushwhack on the Carnivean lets it do its murderlating/throwing and then advance further up the field. If I were to use him, he would dig in at a safe point on the battlefield and become an animus on legs until I needed that 4d6-damage suicidal melee attack.

[Cromusz]

A Harrier makes eVayl's tier 4 a little easier to get.

I've only used the shredders so far but I have some Harriers on the way and will be picking up some stingers at some point for the pot.

[Belthazar1113]

i run abby tier quite often and a shredder line makes up my "heavy infantry" line. 3 or 4 of these little guys can just rabid in and chow down and i dont really worry about what they will be doing next turn. generally they buy their points back and or get killed by something else setting a heavy up to walk over and kill what took out the swarm. Harriers are great solo hunting true, but i also like to keep one near the backfeild to give abby a chance at a truestrike for herself. You boost her first init to get a crit for grivious wounds, mutate strength, boost damage, then truestrike the next hit, boost damage. two giant pow 16s have come out of nowhere (especially if you give her flight and slipstream her for a suprize charge) to win games. i have spent all six of her fury to get her on the assasination run of death and it works more than it fails. truestrike is fairly leathal.

pthags also appreciates a good old fashioned autohit. especially when he just wants to mutagenisis into some infantry, and make really sure to get a cloud cover from rupture to explode most of the line. its hard throwing him into the thick of it, but he does quite a bit of work if you let him.

stingers i have found use for with vayl1 just to let her ping something with her arcnode maker, cast her spells, and then GTFO. but i do agree stringers are better spawned than bought.

[PG_BloodRath]

CROSS POST:
I own 20 various lessers. the place i use them other than thagrosh 2 is with absylonia. i like a pack of 4-5 in her tier 4 at 35 and somewhere between 4-8 at 50. i run them as a fast AD pack to get up the feild and tie down the enemy and frenzy away then my heavies come in and mop up. typically i AD shreddrs and harriers get them down my opponets throat and then for get about them & the fury. if any of them survive then thats gravy. i advance move my ravagors up the feild and use scather to further restrict movement. also have had lessers run into the scather templests keeping them safe from non reach singel wound modles for a turn.
END CROSS POST

"I have had good fun with stingers and absylonia. bushwack can be a great animus to have her drop a blight feild then back away to safty or behind cover. also i have run 6 of them in packs of 2. i did this twice earlyer this year. i charged them in on the left and right of a heavy and have them sting the heck out of a it. then i have an angelius charge in behind them and AP sting the heavy. if its still alive then i have the angelius repulse it out of combat. (both of my games the dire trolls survived with 3-4 health) next i hit it with a boosted ravagor shot and kill it leaving a scather templet to restrict retaliation from singel wound infantry. its very situational but i did pull off this trick a couple of times and it was fun. the great thing was both games the stingers survied to feat turn and i was able to heal them to sing again! mwah haha. i know its not that cool but it was fun"