What does Fiona really like?

[wazatdingder]

I am taking Fiona for a spin in our local journeyman. I am unsure as to run her 4* or highborn. Most models I am planning for go to both, and I am leaning 4* at the moment, but She does make longgunners look sexy.

[canadianone]

Believe it or not, i am having a lot of success with her and pressgangers, but thats just because i like them, and its kind of fluffy, but with gang, they can boost their own stats which she can't do, that and with mercy on them and tough they make a great tarpit, and finally, the extra focus never hurts. Also, take welshnlons, just do it okay? Also, good luck! show your store the wrath of the kinky red haired sadistic psycho-*****!

[Robert Shepherd]

Eliminators.

[wazatdingder]

Eliminators.

What exactly does she do for them that they do not do for themselves. They are the main reason I am going 4*, but is don't see her doing extra for them.

[Robert Shepherd]

What exactly does she do for them that they do not do for themselves. They are the main reason I am going 4*, but is don't see her doing extra for them.

The feat makes them anything from 'very hard to kill' to 'literally invincible' depending on what's attacking them at the time. This delivers them to the enemy 'caster or some other squishy target, which wins games. In return, they give her side-stepping, acrobatic, SPD7 arc nodes.

The thing about Fiona is that although she supports her army effectively, she's an enabler, not a buffer. She needs to be bringing models and units that are already effective on their own merits, and then using her abilities to let them play the game they want and shutting down the opposition. So Eliminators, regular Kayazy, and so on, are excellent choices for her.

[Kenlen]

Telgesh mark I'm guessing, it's almost like having flying arcnodes.

[Skorpius47]

Boomhowler + Longgunners

Seriously.

In 4-star, you could substitute Longgunners with Nyss, Steelheads, or Croe's, but nothing beats two 14" 11-man CRA's with Nonokrion Brand.

[Robert Shepherd]

I played Fiona with Longgunners for a fair while. Even when you stack Dougal on there for Double Powder Ration, it still runs into the problem that they're just not a great unit without snipe. Once I switched for 4*, I haven't looked back.

[raincaller]

I played Fiona with Longgunners for a fair while. Even when you stack Dougal on there for Double Powder Ration, it still runs into the problem that they're just not a great unit without snipe. Once I switched for 4*, I haven't looked back.

This a bunch. def 15+ becomes a huge ball breaker on the feat turn and really helps deliver them to the opponent.

[MinaFangirlOfEverblight]

mariner or rocinante as your main jack are a must, or both. also if you go highborn, bring some gun mages. let them put their combined aoe anywhere they can reach regardless of who's blocking the path. also if you're going to use the arcnode spell on a warjack, i suggest a heavily-armored, heavy hitter such as rover, nomad or mangler. if you go rover, the good news is that you'll be shooting and then arcing spells, or vice versa. and doing so better than cryx, considering their ranged arc nodes kind of suck. a decent-ranged, high-pow gunjack with khador armor in its front arc due to its shield is kind of... well, you can imagine... plus his melee weapon hits even harder. he does both range and melee well enough that you should definitely consider him...

also bring some good tarpit units so that opponents have a hard time even getting to fiona. the best cheap tarpit we have would probably be the halberds... they can really muck up the works for your opponent.

[pattison]

I field her in Highborn mostly because with most of my other casters I ended up in Four Star and I want variety, plus the character restrictions are easier to pass like this.
My fav. arc node is Anastasia. With parry, Stealth and high DEF & SPD she brings the same advantages as an Eliminator.
I love Long Gunners with her, and yes I bring along Dougal too who supports Gorman with Artillerist and minifeats on assassination turn.
I found that a double tap from 16" is invaluable and as Nonokrion Brand is upkept on pEiryss until then it hurts WM casters badly.
Halberdiers with Rhupert works as a front line but I'm assembling my Boomies at the moment and will try them with her.
Sylys and Rocinante as mentioned are also great choices for her.
Not too popular, but I also enjoyed fielding 2 beatstick heavies with her. On feat turn they're just as hard to eliminate as high DEF models, and if you run them up very aggressively they will certainly draw resources and protect your Long Gunners from being taken care of. Yes, you can't really provide much for melee jacks with her besides focus, but sometimes that's just enough. Manglers have Thresher so they can get "free attacks" when the situation allows it.
I found that they come handy when opponents have quick heavies so you can send yours to take up the fight. Given your feat turn you'll be able to halt them for at least 2 turns. In the meantime you can get into position for a caster kill. Also for some reason I end up with "thin" Fiona lists from time to time due to the squishy Long Gunners and the high number of support solos. 2 melee heavies can bring some resilient muscle to the battlefield and something that has to be dealt with, not to mention that high ARM can also be handled by them, as you won't always have the resources for the Affliction-ping combo.

[moddball]

In 4 star I use Kayazy, Nyss and Wrong eye. In Highborn Nyss longgunners and Greygore. I like PG's with her seduction and influence is very useful. To me Fiona can work with most troop options. Long gunners or gun mages. Pirates of Steelheads it comes down to taste and play style.

[Robert Shepherd]

mariner or rocinante as your main jack are a must, or both.

Until Galleon comes out, anyway

That said, I've been mucking around with attrition-y, beatstick Fiona, and it works reasonably well. Two Nomads + Wrong Eye and Snapjaw and Bull Snapper + Ragman gives you serious offensive melee kick and huge durability in conjunction with the feat. However, you kind of give up getting anything out of Nonokorion Brand, so that has to be weighed up carefully.

[moddball]

Nonokorion Brand can be cast on Fiona to cast spells though the ranks.

[wazatdingder]

I was thinking of arcing though a Buccaneer. You can assault a jack, knock it down, and still be unengaged to arc.

[Mael]

I had quite a bit of fun running a Fiona recycle list. All the pirate goodness, Press Gangers and Sea Dogs, Alexia in the back mopping up whatever actually stays down. Also bringing as many "I control your army" models as possible. Influence, Bone Shaker, Command Undead... who needs heavy hitters when the enemy brings them for you?

[Ger]

Hammerfall Highshields can bring a high arm high output/damage shooty list to the table for such a plan. Have that melee beat wing lead and engage front lines and blow out back lines/counter charge threats. That list would likely shred the heck out of Colossals.


This has been a really enjoyable discussion for me. I've got some new ideas for things to try with Fiona and picked up some interesting ideas off you lot I hadn't had before. Running two melee heavies is a particularly interesting idea I had not previous given thought.


::EDIT::
I feel Arcane Tempest Gun Mages may be one of the best pound for pound ranged assassination units Fiona has access to. Point cost is a significant factor to this view.

[Robert Shepherd]

Hammerfall Highshields can bring a high arm high output/damage shooty list to the table for such a plan. Have that melee beat wing lead and engage front lines and blow out back lines/counter charge threats. That list would likely shred the heck out of Colossals.

Confusing grammar notwithstanding, I disagree with this. I've tried to like the Hammerfall, I really really have, but they're just a straight up terrible unit. For 11pts, their range is terrible, their accuracy is terrible, their hitting power is terrible, and their survivability is merely average and derives mostly from the fact that they're barely worth your opponent dedicating resources to killing on account of how little impact they have on the game.

RNG10 makes them a bad target in practice for Nonokorion Brand, and even when you add in Dougal MacNaile to try to address that they're still not worth it, and then you're packing 13pts worth of not very much that most opponents can safely ignore or easily neutralise. Even Affliction + the UA minifeat doesn't really make them worthwhile against anything much.

[Tavitin]

Affliction + Longgunners

No need to thank me.

[Ger]

I can see what you mean on Highshields. It's something I have not tested myself. That speed 4 might be worse in practice than paper. I kind of figured they'd be able to run after the jacks wall to get into position and then start doing things. Also, I just like affliction turns with tons of shots.


Sorry about the grammer. It and my spelling has been kind of awful lately. Which sucks because I've been inclined to longer posts at the same time.

[Robert Shepherd]

I can see what you mean on Highshields. It's something I have not tested myself. That speed 4 might be worse in practice than paper. I kind of figured they'd be able to run after the jacks wall to get into position and then start doing things. Also, I just like affliction turns with tons of shots

I, too, once thought as you did.

I wish the High Shields were SPD5, or 4/6pts, or something.

[Ger]

I'll make an effort to proxy them somewhere so I can get some hands on.

[Robert Shepherd]

I'll make an effort to proxy them somewhere so I can get some hands on.

Let us know if you have better results with them than I did. Like I said, I really want to like them

[pattison]

Painful to read such words about a Rhulic unit, but hell, I have to agree. They're just bad.
BUT this might change with Ossrum and Shae's new tier. These guys will certainly solve the problems of HS.
Not that I'm planning to buy any still...

Back to Fiona: I love Long Gunners with her. And I don't even need Affliction in most of the cases.

[Skorpius47]

Affliction becomes moot when Nonokrion Brand allows Longgunners to shove two RAT 18 / POW 21 shots into the opposing Warcaster's face.

[Thamarite Merc]

Affliction is still needed to go after ARM 24+. Won't happen too often, but when it happens, its good to have.

[Robert Shepherd]

Affliction becomes moot when Nonokrion Brand allows Longgunners to shove two RAT 18 / POW 21 shots into the opposing Warcaster's face.

In practice, doing that requires the combination of both Nonokorion Brand and your opponent durdling their warcaster into the entire unit's stand and shoot range. Which doesn't happen that often.

Having recently played with it, though, I can confirm that Galleon with Nonokorion Brand is a pretty threatening assassination threat. That 21" threat range is hard to avoid.

[Skorpius47]

In practice, doing that requires the combination of both Nonokorion Brand and your opponent durdling their warcaster into the entire unit's stand and shoot range. Which doesn't happen that often.

That's why it's wise to include things that punish retreat tactics and back-end positioning. I've used models with high flanking potentia like eAlexia or Stannis and have mused using Anastasia.

[pattison]

Long Gunners have a stand & shoot range of 16" with Dougal.
You start the game with 31" between your lines. If the LGs run 2x then they're 11" from your opponent's deploy zone... with one run and one walk they're precisely 16" away from it.
It's pretty hard for most of the casters to sit in their deployment zone for 3 turns.
We're not talking about eHaley or pSevvy obviously.

[Ger]

I really don't think LGs are as good as ATGM for killing casters. However, they are definitely better at hurting large swaths of an enemy army. Two Pow 20/21s on a jack is brutal. Or perhaps you split up some CRAs to murder out some support that thought it was safe and do a bit of damage to a jack. The big thing Nonokrion Brand does for them is allow you to screen them with a denser formation and still get your shooting. That's what I like them for. Murdering large swaths of an enemy army while being a huge threat if an enemy positions poorly. 10 RaT 7 pow 12s for the 10 man unit using dual shot. (correction any time you have dual shot you have aiming. So 10 RaT 9 shots)

Oh and Standard Bearers are very underrated in my opinion. The addition of a standard bearer takes most units from having an ok chance of failing a command check to almost no chance of failure. LGs go from CMD 8 to 9 with UA and reroll failures. Meaning they go from a 9-12 is fail to 10-12 with a chance to reroll. In almost just as good as fearless and beats out if you are making cmd checks for any other reason.

[PG_hendybadger]

Im just starting to expand Fiona from Talion and this thread is amazingly helpful with loads to think about.
So many choice now!

[Ransomansor]

Fiona is all about finesse and tarpits, so her general strategy will be to buy time until she can kill the important bits of the enemy army, like the caster.

She likes high def or high arm over any other defenses because of the feat.

With Roth's Mercy on them, Kayazy are nigh unkillable in melee, which is perfect for a tarpit. This also lets you keep the acrobatics mini-feat for after the jam. Their high def for the feat and high mat for the caster kill make them the #1 Fiona unit to me.

Nyss aren't far behind. Again, they have high def. They can take advantage of Nonokrion Brand because they don't mind walking up to an enemy without killing them, so you can just shoot their important stuff and ignore their front line.

I usually run Hawk as my arcnode. She has high def. sucker for defence in combination with Roth's mercy makes it so she only needs to be in sucker range of 1 model who can take the hit over and over again. Building in more acrobatics helps your game plan of ignoring models that aren't essential to kill. Command 9 commander is cool, too.

I don't really have the rest of the list. I've been playing around with options, but haven't come up with anything that great. Stalling very aggressive heavies is something that needs to be built in, but I haven't thought of a good way to do it yet.

Also, piña coladas and long walks on the beach.