1 Avante Reaver, Lvl 5

2 Amotep Gunner***
1 Elite Surok Apprentice***
1 Technomancer**

1 Faith Healer***

1 Shade**

Performs like a typical army, has shortcomings against extremes. I won't insult you by telling you how to play it.

Seems to keep that funk alive, like it was back in 1975

Glory be, the funks on me! Keep that funk alive...

look pretty good, but why do you need a techno? i would take out the techno and put in another amotep gunner, then downgrade the ESA to standard and put in a *imp. this will improve the attack ability of yuour army greatly.

Oh no no no, I cannot remove the technomancer. You may not realize their value, but technomancers are very important and powerful. Scroll through some of the nationals armies, and you'll see them. ML is an extremely powerful ability, which lends any army with a technomancer a great amount of its options. I could go on and on listing what the technomancer lends to this army, or any other army, but, judging by your post, I think just one example will do: ML yoyo the Avante for a 14" impune MB. How you ask? Just go read the ability. I'll leave the rest up to you, I can't possibly list all the benefits of ML every time someone asks.

Is there any reason to include the tough apprentice and standard techno? They would be much better suited as weak.

As for the faith healer, it would be much better as a shaman.

for a points, you get the enhancement of the apprentice and the healing of the faith healer...this would allow you to add another gunner or even a charger.

I run this army as I prefer it. The most numbercrunched version would actually downgrade the Surok and techno to * to afford a ** gobbo, adding a much needed second blocker, which I should have explained. The reason for the faith healer over the shaman is quite simple. He's there primarily for the Avante, which retains his initial defense for a while, which I, being a crappy roller, have no hope of hitting with a shaman. I want to keep pushing, even to LI, an option (meaning I need to know the healing is there when that should be my strategy). I do realize LI is optional, I suck with dice. The reason being, this army is obviously lacking against big defense ranged figures, myself being a crappy roller, once again.

Nice army. I like Avante a lot, and designed a similar army around him.

I used centaur Lieu's in place of the gunners, and skeletons. One thing though, you said you suck at rolling. Wouldn't playing something more stable (damage wise) then an Avante be a good idea?

Yes it would, and I often play other things with more "stability". But I wanted to make this army, and bad dice rolls are just another challenge to overcome. I seem to always roll 1s and 2s for WM and MB, always. But in reality its never that bad, or at least, my opponents seem to share my dice curse while playing me. Some of them anyway.

Right.

Basically Avante has such a tactical advantage anyways, you can afford to make bad damage rolls or even whiff. Half the time he can't be retaliated against.. so what does it matter? You'll get that 6 eventually...

Here's what I think...

I don't think Technomancers serve all that much value in armies that don't use Ram or other things like that, because instead of yo-yoing your Avante out and keeping him safe, you could just follow up on his shot with a Gunner attack for the points the Technomancer costed.

I've actually played a similar army, here's how I ran mine...

Lv. 5 Avante

*Shaman

3***Gunners

3**Gobbo Volunteers

2*Shades

Now you have plenty of harassment, more attack power, healing, and enhancement. You could take out the Shades for another ***Gunner if you wanted to.

The army I suggested is one I derived from my "Burntwist," a fairly successful 200 pointer. It consisted of...

Chaos Mage
2*Shaman

3***Gunners

2**Gobbo Volunteers
*Gobbo Volunteer

2*Shade

I find this army is very fragile with Ram and many other auto click abilities lurking about.

I play it with the techno not only for the Avante, but all the possibilities that occur as he's in base contact with a gunner and a surok. I actually use the ability quite frequently to put a vector where I want it in a hurry, or to get the funky WM dude someplace cool. He lends so many options to just about any army, I can't give up technos.

as another point for the shaman-
you can also move him forward to enhance avante without breaking the A.G. formation.

I could move the shaman out of formation, but I can also move the surok, as the two gunners and techno still make a formation, or I can levitate the surok, who is set to be in base with the techno.

lol, forgot you had 2 gunners, my mistake. Thought your formation was-techno, apprentice, gunner.

But still, the priniciple holds true. But I do not think you want to waste an action running the apprentice back to the gunners either.....

The surok doesn't necessarily have to go back to the gunners. The gunner formation could advance to him. Even so, any of these gameplay possibility/decisions are too complex to consider when numbercrunching an army, except if one had a specific army in mind. However, I never build an army with a specific opponent in mind. Instead I playtest when I want to consider specific opposition. Anyway, while the shaman is a good figure, my dice and I really need the 9 attack of the faith healer for the Avante, and I don't mind the MI on the FH making it harder to target. More ME is always good, and if anyone actually wanted to copy my army, I wouldn't object to them downgrading the surok and techno to make the FH a red shaman, as a 8 attack on a 15 defense is reasonable for realistic rolls.