Guild+Austringers


 * Austringer, Guild Minion** toc

=__Overview__= He's a guy with a bird. How scary can that be? The answer, apparently, is "very scary." With a very long range and the ability to ignore Line of Sight, the Austringer has quickly become a premier Guild Minion.

=__Mobility__= The Austringer has an average 4" Walk, cannot Charge and beyond //Quick Retreat// (see below), has no other way of enhancing his own mobility. Fortunately, after the Austringer finds a nice piece of terrain to hide in, his long reach means he'll rarely needs to move anyway.

=__Offense__=

Melee
Beyond the standard bash attack, the Austringer has no melee capabilities to speak of. Fortunately he more than makes up for this in the ranged attack department.

Ranged
The Austringer is armed with a //Raptor// - a Range 12 weapon that ignores cover modifiers and Line of Sight. This means you can sit behind a huge piece of blocking terrain and still attack up to 12" away, ignoring any negative flips from cover that your opponent is trying to use to avoid getting hit.

The damage spread for the Austringer is okay, at 1/3/4 with the potential for +1Dg from a //Critical Strike// trigger. The low weak damage means you want to avoid making negative damage flips if you can. Fortunately, the Austringer's //Raptor// has a massive Cb value of 7, so it shouldn't be hard to pull a straight damage flip or if nothing else, force your opponent to burn a high card to avoid it.

As a bonus, //Bayou Raptor// gives you a +fate flip on attack and damage against Gremlins and Silurid. The latter is particularly important - with their extreme mobility and very decent damage output against living/undead models the Silurids are the natural predators of the Austringer. The positive attack flip will cancel out the -fate flip from them being in cover (//Silent// prevents models from ignoring cover against Silurid). The +fate to damage flip should all but guarantee a straight or positive flip for damage, which enables you to cheat down a half-decent card for damage rather than getting that very poor weak flip of 1 (2 if you have the critical strike trigger). All in all, this makes the Austringer a significant threat against Gremlins and Silurid - something you should be taking full advantage of should you face such models.

//Hunting Raptor// increasing the range of a //Raptor// strike to 18" instead of 12", giving the Austringer one of the longest range weapons in the game. The only negative is that it requires a (2) action meaning you make only one strike per activation. Ideally you should be aiming to attack twice at 12" each activation, but if there's a high priority target just out of that 12" bubble, the Hunting Raptor Strike is a useful tool for putting some damage on it.

=__Resilience__=

With an average Df 5 and a very mediocre 6 wounds, the Austringer is not built to take hits. Fortunately, actually hitting an Austringer can be a challenge in itself. With it's long ranged attack and ability to ignore LoS your Austringer should be quite capable of sitting behind your own lines, either in cover or outside LoS. So long as your opponent has nothing fast enough to easily flank your crew (Silurid, Bad Juju, Coryphee Duets and the like) and you ensure they're presented with more immediate threats (e.g. an Executioner to the face), the Austringers should be relatively safe from retaliation.

The Austringer also has //(1) Quick Retreat//, which allows him to push 4" away from a model and avoid melee - something he's completely ineffective at. This action means that your opponents can't rely on simply tying up your Austringer in combat in order to remove him as a threat. Also if your opponent fails to kill an Austinger on the turn s/he engages it, you can simply push out of the way, shoot him back and even use //(0) Deliver Orders// to get a fellow crew member to help finish the target off.

Finally the Austringer has a surprisingly high Wp of 7, which means that models making Wp-based attacks (such as //Lure// or one of Pandora's many horrible spells) are going to be far less effective on the Austringer.

=__Tips and Tricks__=

Deliver Orders
//(0) Deliver Orders// is the Austringer's only spell. It allows you to activate a model within 24" after the Austringer has completed his turn. This can be a great way of finishing off enemy models your Austringer softened up, although he still needs LoS to the model he's activating so unless it's another Austringer you're targeting (hint hint), it can sometimes be hard to use if your Austringer is trying to keep out of enemy LoS.

Distract
//Distract// is generally ignored by most players in favor of actually dealing damage with the Austringers attack. While admittedly situational, this can still be an excellent trigger under the right circumstances.

The trick is to keep an eye on what's on top of your opponents discard pile. If the top three cards happen to be particularly bad then you can cheat a Mask on the next Austringer attack and put those cards back on top of your opponents deck. This is particularly nasty in combination with //Deliver Orders,// since you can then activate another model who will make the best use of your opponents poor card flips. The importance of this can't be understated - if you give your opponent a chance to activate before they flip those cards, they'll usually just be able to waste those card flips on something that won't mess up their own plans too much. Also remember that //Distract// can trigger on your own models too. So if you just flipped three great cards, an Austringer will let you recycle those cards for whatever you do next!

The negative to //Distract//, of course, is the need to flip or cheat a mask to get the trigger. Masks tend to be in high demand in your average Guild crew, usually for spells like Perdita's //Obey// and triggers like //Onslaught//, //Trigger Happy// and Lady Justice's //Riposte//. By comparison, using a Mask to move some cards from the discard pile seems like a poor alternative. Fortunately, with a high Cb, the ability to use the trigger on a friendly model and the likelihood that your opponent probably won't expect a //Distract// trigger, you can usually afford to use the lower masks in your hand.

Willpower
Never forget that the Austringer actually has a very high Wp of 7. It means that he's an excellent candidate for targeting models that require Wp-duels, such as models with //Pitiful// (Kirai, Molly), //Irresistible// (Nekima, Lilitu) or perhaps most critically, Pandora (whose Wp equals his own). If the opportunity arises, you could even consider keeping him next to a Hanging Tree (Terrifying 12) to use as an additional form of protection.

=__Master-Specific Tips__= The Austringer has little direct synergy with any one Master. The closest is Lucius (a Henchman), but in any case, he still makes for a good choice in your average Guild crew, regardless of who's leading.

Lady Justice
The best Lady Justice has to offer the Austringer is //Inspiring Swordplay// (+2 Cb to friendlies in 10" and LoS when she kills an enemy model) and //Blind Justice// (6" Aura, ignore duels and Rg/Df increases to target enemy models). While the Austringer can obviously benefit from both, in practice it will rarely be practical. As a dedicated melee Master, Lady Justice is more than likely to be out of range and LoS of the Austringer, who would much prefer to hang up the back. So unless the Austringer is up front or Lady Justice is hanging back (both are usually bad ideas) you won't see much benefit from either of Justice's abilities.

At best Lady Justice could leave her totem behind to cast //Blind Justice// on the Austringers but honestly, does an Austringer really need it? The high Cb, ignoring cover and Wp 7 are already excellent, so getting another boost to Cb or ignoring Wp duels to attack is going to be of minimal use. There will ALWAYS be better models for Lady Justice (or her totem) to be targeting with //Blind Justice// and //Inspiring Swordplay//, so in such crews you'll be far better off just letting the Austringers do their own thing.

Perdita
The Austringer is almost a natural fit in a Perdita crew. Not only will he complement the rest of the crews already formidable shooting, but he can also use //Deliver Orders// to activate a Family model and kick off an Ortega alpha strike. The only negative to this is that with a crew that's already so good at shooting, in some games the crew might instead value a model with more melee abilities or mobility than an Austringer. However it might be telling that it's usually models **other** than an Austringer who tend to get replaced to fit in such models.

Lucius
It's also worth noting that he is on the list of models that can be taken in a crew led by Lucius, who can quickly bring him to midfield using //Reinforcements//, and grant him additional attacks at +2 Cb using //Advanced Training// and //Issue Command//.

=__Minion-Specific Tips__= The Drill Sergeant can lend a hand to the Austringer with his //Shooting Range// ability, granting the Austringer a +flip to his //Raptor// attack flips.

=__Playing Against Guild Austringer__=

With such a high range and no LoS requirement, the Austringer can be an intimidating threat when you face a crew containing one (or two!). However this needn't be the case.

Actually killing an Austringer can be difficult. While he's not particularly resilient, he will typically be very difficult to get at. He'll inevitably be sitting behind enemy lines, hidden behind cover or in a room. And even once you get into melee, his //Quick Retreat// action means that he won't stay there for long if you fail to kill him before his next activation.

Your best chance at killing an Austringer lies with highly mobile minions with a half-decent damage output, like Silurid, Coryphee and Bad Juju. Night Terrors are another good choice - they don't do a lot of damage but their //Blind// trigger and //Night Falls// spells are both effective in neutralizing the Austringer, plus at 3 SS with Spirit and Hard to Kill, they take a lot of effort for an Austringer to kill for very little value.

That said, the Austringer is a model that tends to have a lot more bark than bite, so to speak. An 18" ranged attack with no LoS requirement might seem intimidating, but remember that the the Austringer can only make one attack at that range each turn. So if you can keep outside of 12", you're effectively halving the damage an Austringer can deal. Also remember that while an Austringer's Cb is quite high, the //Raptor// attack has a low weak damage flip (1 or 2 with a //Critical Strike//). Unless your own model has an equally high Df your chances of the Austringer missing aren't great, so your best approach is to cheat your own Defense flip high enough to force a negative on the damage flip and thus maximize the chance of taking only weak damage.

** __Ownership__ **
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