M2E+Black+Blood+Shaman


 * Black Blood Shaman, Neverborn Minion**

=__Overview__=

The Black Blood Shaman is a member of a secretive Nephilim cult. It has ritualistic powers that call out to the black blood that all Nephilim share. This has been updated to reflect the 1/1/2017 errata.

In play the Black Blood Shaman is a support and summoning piece for a Nephilim Grow strategy. It can turn Terror Tots into Young Nephilim.

The Black Blood Shaman is most often found in a Lilith Crew, and has a great deal of synergy with Nekima. toc

=__Mobility__=

The Black Blood Shaman isn't meant to be an objective runner. It has a **Wk 5 Cg 5** with only one special movement trick for itself.

The Shaman's **Blood In The Air** allows all friendly Nephilim with LoS to an enemy model that is killed within 4" of the Black Blood Shaman to push up to their **Wk** toward the killed model before removing it. This also includes the shaman himself.

=__Offense__=

The Black Blood Shaman has a **Ritual Knife** Close Combat attack at **Ml 7 Mask**, but it only does **1/1/3** damage. It has two triggers that only require the built in Mask. **Blood Curse** gives the target the **Blood Curse** condition for the rest of the game, which causes 1 damage to the subject model for the rest of the game. **Blood Infusion** gives a condition of the same name for the rest of the game, and that condition gives the model the **Black Blood** ability.

Because the Black Blood Shaman likes playing games with Black Blood, and the **Ritual Knife** has a low damage spread, it's worth attacking your own models to give them that ability. The Black Blood Shaman also has **Black Blood**, which does 1 damage to all models within 1" that don't have at ability when the Shaman takes damage.

The Shaman also has a long range Tactical Action called **Black Blood Pustule**, which the Shaman can use on any friendly model with **Black Blood**, including himself. It requires a 6 of any suit, and does 1 damage to the friendly model, and 2 damage to all enemy models in a 1" aura around the target. This action has a built in mask and three triggers, none of which are on a mask! For a Book the **Blessings** trigger will give the target a bonus flip on all **Df** duels until the end of the turn. On a Ram the **Boiling Blood** trigger will give the target a bonus flip on all **Ml** duels until the end of the turn. And on a Crow the **Clot** trigger will heal 3 damage off the target.

=__Resilience__=

The Black Blood Shaman has **Df** 5, **Wp 5** and **Wd 8**. It has **Black Blood** to discourage melee attacks, but few other resilience tricks.

The Shaman can increase its own resilience by using the Blessings or Clot triggers of Black Blood Pustule on itself. You will probably need to cheat the flip to get the suit you need, and it's better to keep the shaman back in a support role and give other models those bonuses.

=__Utility__=

When a friendly Terror Tot within 12" of a Shaman kills a non-Peon enemy model with an Attack, you summon Young Nephilim and sacrifice the Terror Tot. This is the basis for a grow list, and it doesn't require LoS. There are a lot of ways to help make sure this happens. You can use the many push abilities in a Nephilim Crew to throw models to Terror Tots with **Pounce**. Nekima can also kill models on behalf of a Terror Tot to **Grow** the Terror Tot if she has the Upgrade **The True Mother.**

The last trick of the Black Blood Shaman is **Bloody Feast**, which requires a six or higher of any suit, a corpse marker within 3" of the Shaman, and a Terror Tot within 6". If you succeed you discard the corpse marker, summon a Young Nephilim, and sacrifice the Terror Tot. This makes the Black Blood Shaman essential to any

One of the primary purposes of the Black Blood Shaman is to support Nephilim crews. If you want to create a Nephilim grow list - that is, a Crew built around the idea of hiring or summoning cheap fast Terror Tots and then growing them to more powerful Young Nephilim or Mature Nephilim - then Black Blood Shaman is almost an auto-include. For such a tactic, you may also want to consider Nekima.

The Black Blood Shaman has many synergies with Nekima to get more Terror Tots and grows of Terror Tots into Young Nephilim. The Shaman can use **Black Blood Pustule** on Nekima to do damage to models around her, which can then Summon new Terror Tots with Nekima's **The True Mother** Upgrade. The Black Blood Shaman can do this multiple times in a turn, and stack this with other Support effects to buff up Nekima at the same time.

=__Tactics and Tips__=

Most often, the Black Blood Shaman will want to be on the "second line"; close enough that it can support a friendly minion, be within 4" of models that die, use Corpse Markers that drop in the combat and use Black Blood Pustule on friendly models. It doesn't do much good to have it right on the front lines though. The Shaman isn't fantastic in direct combat (though it's far from useless) and its resilience is only so-so.

When supporting other models have the Black Blood Shaman go first and use a lot of **Black Blood Pustule** on a friendly model. It can soften up or kill targets, plus it can give a friendly Nephilim healing and buffs to use later in the round. Nekima is terrifying when she's surrounded by enemies, but she's even more terrifying when those enemies are down **4 Wd** and she has a positive twist to **Ml** and **Df**!

The Black Blood Shaman makes for a pretty amusing Personal Puppet for Collodi. The Shaman can stab Collodi at the start of the game, using Blood Infusion to give Collodi the Black Blood ability for the rest of the game. Then whenever Collodi takes damage from an enemy model it causes Black Blood damage, and then the Shaman can take 1 damage, which triggers black blood, to take a (1) action, which will probably be Black Blood Pustule on Collodi if the enemy that attacked him is within an inch of him.

=__Playing Against Black Blood Shaman__=

The Black Blood Shaman is a great target for ranged attacks, since it doesn't have very good defenses and it can't use **Black Blood** to hurt attackers.

If your opponent hires a Black Blood Shaman that's pretty much a declaration that they'll be playing a Nephilim Grow crew. Consider targeting and dropping Terror Tots before they can grow, especially ones that are close to the Shaman or Nekima.


 * __Ownership__ **

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