Nekima

__**Overview**__
Nekima is a dual role minion with specialized abilities to provide support, and hard hitting melee power. She does however lack, in the resilience department, and costs quite a lot of SS to bring on the table.

Since this model’s release, there was an important change to the Nephilim Heart ability, restricting its application to Terror Tots and Young Nephilims only. This prevented some abuse from the synergy Nekima had with other models, but also severely limited her support abilities to specific minions.

With the latest FAQ update, Wyrd stated that “Nekima will get her turn” so we can expect that somewhere down the future, she will get a touch up, but there is no way to know to what extent this will affect her.

__**Mobility**__
Nekima is fast even by Neverborn standards. With a 6/10 Flight movement she's often seen picking off any straggling enemies. Unfortunately, the support side of Nekima often leaves her with a little less flight room, than often desired.

Her base size of 50mm can become a liability as well when it comes to mobility, although this may vary depending on the terrain you have on your table. Combined with an Ht of 4, it is sometimes quite hard or even impossible for her to hide from enemy LoS.

The supporting mechanic of Nekima often means she has to activate first of her “platoon”, and this can slow your advance because overcomitting Nekima up front early in the turn is a serious gamble. __Mobility support__ Giving flight to terror tots and a to their Ca can propel the tots into rocket mode. This is good when it comes to grabbing objectives, but it also requires that Nekima activates first in order to use Nephilim Heart and Growth Spurt, which are two (0) pulse actions.

If you go for this, you’ll have to plan ahead a little, because once the tots are away from Nekima, they’ll be out of range for her buffs next turn. Also, when she select Ca to get the, it means she won’t support melee offense for the turn.

__**Offense**__
__Melee__ Nekima’s only offensive option, bar Spill Black Blood, is her melee attacks with her Neverborn Greatsword. Her Cb is remarkable at 7, and her Rg 3" is excellent. The combined Cb 7 and the (+) to damage flips makes her strikes quite likely to hit and do potent damage. Even masters will have to cheat and/or use soulstones to prevent damage. The Melee Expert action modifier will add further threat within her range. You can use this range to strike from behind the Young Nephilim or terror tots, which will serve to protect her.

While she gets a trigger for free on every successful strike, the triggers are situational, a lot of the time. They’re pretty self explanatory, and unless you keep a control card for a specific trigger at a specific situation, you’ll find they won’t be that meaningful to the fight. Bloody Fate is worthy of mention, and for a the Throw Aside trigger can add 2dg, but only when terrain is around (which is sometimes prone to debates).

__Offensive melee Support__ For starters, she can give Tots and Young Nephilim an auto-trigger for flay for a (0) action. This makes Young Nephilims very dangerous with a minimum damage of 4. Terror tots follow with a minimum of 3. As far as gameplay is concerned, this auto-flay is the main reason for Nekima to show in a list (of course, we may just like the model and story :P).

__**Resilience**__
This is where Nekima is kind of lacking, as do most large-based models. Nekima is Df 4, with no kind of armor to mitigate Incoming damage. The 12 wounds might seem impressive, but it really isn’t rare for Nekima to be slain in a single activation.

Nekima's first line of defense is Irresistible. A WP duel that cannot be ignored by any talent. If they don't pass this, the action fails, so it's not bad at WP -> 12. We could only wish that Terrible beauty would affect this talent, but it doesn’t.

Black Blood is more a melee deterrent, than anything. Nobody likes taking free damage. Regeneration 1 is a nice addition, but don't expect it to save you from much.

This model is also one of the very few high costing ones to have no spell actions at all. While this does not have much impact in the game (and surely doesn’t mean that Nekima doesn’t do any magic), it does prevent her abilities to be nullified by abilities that prevent spell actions.

With this particular trouble of being squishy, Nekima must be protected. Other minions will be her best defense. Her high cost will also frequently have her bear the infamous tag of Protégée…a Scheme that is easier to achieve than it seems on her.

__Resilience support__ While a meager help, The Regeneration 1 aura can offset the cost of some spells and talents that are cast early. Spill Black blood comes to mind of course, but so does the Lilitu’s Two Sided flaw. In fact, bringing Nekima is perhaps the only way to get a Lilitu to fight on her own, without a lelu on the table (she will heal 2wds and regenerate 1). The Black Blood Shaman may benefit from it, although Nekima+Shaman will cost you 19ss for mainly support pieces.

__**Tips and Tricks**__
Currently, Nekima is quite specific with her synergies. She works well with the typical Nephilim growth list or other Young Nephilim and Terror Tot based lists. However intended, Nekima’s support abilities have short range, and her melee prowess is only really useable if she’s protected from harm.

Nekima plays hand-in-hand with growth lists, because she has means to provide blood counters. Rather than draining blood when she kills, she gets a count whenever a living or undead model dies within 3". This occurs automatically, and even if another model used its Drain Blood, such as a Terror Tot. Remember that most Nephilim are alive and she will get a counter from them too when they die.

All this means she should lead a small group of Nephilim, and get the grinder to bear on the opposing crew. Timing will be critical, and how you support her will determine how long she lasts (because she will be focused). This group will either get a lot of attention, and can leave your other crew members to act unmolested, or it will be evaded at all costs, which will allow it to go adn achieve objectives.

Avoid any direct combat with soulstone users, and combat masters in general. Spellcasters may have some difficulty withstanding her assault, but with soulstones they will prevail, and the retaliation is typically ugly for the large female Nephilim.

__**Master-Specific Tips**__
Given that Lilith has a bit of synergy with Nephilim, Nekima may work well with her (even if the story would say otherwise). Lilith performs well against powerful melee opponents and masters, while Nekima falls quickly to them, so they sort of complete each other decently terms of melee abilities. The Terrible beauty talent can assist Lilith with transposition, and they can activate at the same time through companion.

Zoraida can find use for Nekima too, as long as she hires enough Tots and Youngs for Nekima to get some use for her supporting abilities. The synergies come from the fact that Nekima has a powerful offense and a long reach and isn’t immune to influence, making her a decent Obey target. The Terrible beauty, again, can allow Zoraida to affect enemy models within the aura more easily. Something to be wary of is that Obey’ing Nekima can put her away from her charges (tots/youngs) and dangerously vulnerable to the enemy’s retaliation.

Pandora can benefit somewhat from the Terrible Beauty aura, giving -2 wp to enemy models around. I wonder if Irresistible count as a Wp duel as well, even if it is at a fixed number. Problem arises from Nekima’s costs and the fact that Pandora have better minions to get than tots and youngs.

The Dreamer doesn’t have anything to do with Nekima, nor has the Hungering Darkness (sorry, Jakob). These masters have more uses from other minions, especially at her cost.

__**Minion-Specific Tips**__
Nekima obviously handles Terror Tots and Young Nephilims beautifuly, and can grant a small bit of regeneration to other Nephilims.

The Terrible beauty aura can produce some synergy with a lot of models that attack Wp as we’ve seen in the master section. One can quickly think of a Stitched Together using Gamble Your Life on an enemy model within the aura and it can help you get a better flip.

As mentioned above, Nekima can allow you to field a Lilitu without a Lelu (if you should fancy that), which can help luring opponents piecemeal toward her and the Nephilim “flay” circus.

__**Playing Against Nekima**__
Clearly Nekima has a big weakness: she’s easy to kill. Some would say a bit too easy for her cost. Now the thing is if she’s protected by other minions, namely Young Nephilims, getting to her in melee might not be the best thing. Ranged strikes and spells are your best bet. Given her low defense, and the fact she’s typically surrounded by tots and youngs, she’s even a great target for blast spells or strikes.

That being said, anyone that can use soulstones will typically send Nekima crashing down, depending on how much damage they do. The Nekima player will actually have to flee from your more powerful minions; for fear that they reach and cripple her. Again, 12 wounds seems a lot, but with her low defense, and perhaps even a soulstone, it’s not very hard to get in some moderate or severe damage.

There’s also another weakness to this minion, although more specific. Anything which attacks Ca will find her soft in the head (Colette comes to mind)

As stated above, Nekima is rather easy to kill, and you can make the Neverborn player even more paranoid by selecting the Kill Protégée scheme.

__**Ownership**__
Unless otherwise stated, all names and images on this site are property of Wyrd Miniatures, LLC. (Link) //Editor's note:// //I've edited the original text in attempt to better represent the current state of the model as of oct. 2012.// //- Sybaris, Nekima's right wing//