I am not a big Steel Wolves fan but the Steel Wolves Blade is quickly become one of my favorite figures of AoD.

Steel Wolves Blade + Albion Academy + Decoy = 142 points

On your first turn you use single-use evade to run, now you're sitting on your prime click with the following stats:

22 defense with Decoy against ranged
reactive armor
20 inch run with Evade
20 defense against CC
11 attack
15 inch assault (on secondary ballistic)
3 damage armor piercing or 2 damage energy

With the SH/SW SA card your effective range increases to 17
or
With the DF/SW SA card your ballistic damage increases to 4
or
With the DF/HL SA card your attack increases to 12

The SW Blade also has only two repair markers and since the SW currently have the only repair vehicle in the game, this can potentially be an important factor as well.

I'll admit the damage is a little low on this guy but the armor piercing and high attack definitely make up for it. I've used this combo in a sealed event and in "Birds in the Trees" and it has worked fantastically both times.

Anyone else used this mech with any success?

Haven't fielded one, yet. However, I did see it's potential early on and have 3 of
them. ;) You're right, they're sweet!

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I thought it was cleared up that you do NOT take a click of damage if you use SU evade to run?

Just means you have to mortar yourself first. Still a great little trick unit.

That may be the case. However, you don't have to waste an action to mortar
yourself. Just play the SW Faction Pride card, instead. ;)

Gray_Carlson - It used to say that running with SU Evade didn't cause it to be 'used' in the FAQ. That 'clarification' is no longer in the FAQ since the release of AoD. It is unclear whether this was intentional or an oversight. In any case, right now, running without heat does include qualify as 'use' in my book.

... and instead waste the 15/30 points.

Really, this is the worst faction ability. It is useful maybe once or twice in a game, as opposed to the SC or BR which is useful almost every turn. What were they thinking?

For me, the SW Valiant is the only non-unique light mech that's got it's range at double-digits at 10 inches. If you wanna top that, you gotta take a unique light mech for a spin. Evade + Armor piercing is always a nice combo for a mech.

It's a light mech -- 1 hard hit and it's close to useless....naturally, you'll be inclined to bring another one (to fit in a 450 game).

In my opinion the SW valiant is much better. w/ albion pilot it goes up to 23 defense. sure you don't have as long range as the blade but i have frequently found that 1 more defense is better, especialy with decoy and the opponent needing to hit 13 or 14 twice on you. Out of six games I have played w/ my little valiant + albion + decoy i have never had it salvaged, or killed. only once has it come close. hell I have even take down the E.O.D. battle master with it and a highlander donar alone. funny to watch your opponents jaw drop and hit the table when his assault mech gets critical hit fo 4 damage by a light mech then getting critical hit by a donar right after that in the same turn.


also according to our two battle masters anytime you use evade and it is single use, be it to get +2 defense vs ranged, break away on 2-6 or not take a click of heat it is used. if this isn't the case well then just use the SU armor piercing vs something even if you don't need too.

as for our faction pride, yeah it is a bit useless, i'd much rather take active volcanoes if you can use them, that way the enemy gets hurt too.

Sorry, I respectfully disagree. As I play faction pure, more often than not, it would
only cost me 15 points. That leaves me, still, with 435 points for my army. I would
much rather pay the up front point cost for this card than have to waste valuable
orders trying to pog my units (when I should be using my artillery to pog enemy
units) up to prime. In that regard, the SW FP card is extremely useful, IMHO.

I'm sure I'm not the only player who feels this way. ;)

Well honestly I tried putting JP milhew into this thing and whoa sis it become a fast little bugger:

26+112+21=159 Pts. but the albion pilot is more cheaper but of course putting milhew is gonna gove this little devil as 12 attack :)

and of course fielding a light mech like this warrants another little or medium mech for support and do not forget it is highly unlikely you will ignore this little bada$$, because if you don't this thing will run circles around your army in no time taking pot shots at anything and almost hit all the time (11 or 12 attack ain;t nuthin to sneeze at IMHO)

Well, I like this mech (and the Valiant) a lot, even though I prefer to use the SW Star Captian card with him... 12 attack is very useful to crack all these 22 to 24 decoy lights that are so common in the AoD battlefields... Add double rate to increase your damage output in certain situations and you get a very nasty llitle mech for only 152pts.

JP can't go into an SW mech if i understand Recruit Cost.

But i like both the SW valiant and The SW blade and i'm a die hard hater of the push spawn design. Both have interesting futures in the game i see the blade being one of those mechs tahts really a pain in the but to fight against

Last ruling on that was that SU Evade is NOT used when you use it to reduce heat on a run, only if you use it to 1) break away on anything but a 1 or 2) raise your defense by 2 against an attack.

Mortar Squads also do NOT work on the Blade. It has SU Reactive armor on the first click, so it absorbs anything the Mortar Squad shoots it with. Even if you manage to hit it with a 1 damage AP or a 3 damage pog you'll be taking 2 clicks and put it right past it's peak. You either have to base something and break away using Evade to get to your peak or shoot something with your AP.

Although the Valiant has a higher defense and an awesome heat dial, I hate it's design. Its peak is split between clicks 2 and 3 and the better one is click 3 so you have to take 2 damage to peak out (compared to 1 for the Blade). Furthermore, the Valiant is going to have a VERY tough time getting to it's 2nd click without a Mortar Squad or FP Card. (Personally, I hate the FP Card - I would rather use True Grit and/or Active Volcanoes than the SW FP Card.) Also, The Blade has a longer move and shoot range and, between the extra click of reactive and the fact that it keeps its damage longer than the Valiant, I think the Blade has more useable clicks than the Valiant.

Nice combo. Looks easy to get to its sweet spot. I have been using the SW Thunder Fox, which has to be shot at to get to its sweet spot (it has SU Camo).

Well I thought I understood this and I was going to post on how you were wrong, but now rereading the rules I am confused. :confused: So am I to understand that if a Gunslinger does not have a certain faction symbol with a point cost on the card that mean you can't recruit him into that faction? If that's the case then why do gunslingers have base recruit costs? Why not just list the allowed factions with point costs at the bottom of the card?

It was my understanding that you always use the base recruit cost unless you were recruiting a Gunslinger into one of the factions listed on the bottom of the card... but if I take the rules at face value it says:So that means you could not assign JP to the Valiant since he doesn't have a SW symbol with cost on his card. The rules seem to contradict themselves here and if true then "Base Recruit Cost" has absolutely no use in the current game. Perhaps I am just very confused... can anybody help me out here?

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@all
On the issue of SW Blade vs SW Valiant, I will take the Blade 99 times out of 100. Why?

- Gets to prime on only 1 click
- Reactive armor (VERY important, ignores non-AP artillery!!!)
- Repair markers are in better spots
- more usable clicks (the Valiant is worthless once it takes its 6th click of damage)
- cheaper

In fact, the only thing the Valiant has on the Blade is a marginally better heat dial. I don't think the 1 extra defense matters since 22 defense with decoy and 23 defense with decoy are both ridiculously hard to hit - I'd rather have the reactive armor than the 1 extra defense. If you're not going to use decoy then the Valiant might warrant more consideration but personally I would never play either of these mechs without decoy so that's not an issue for me.