Platoon 1 Cyphers
- Babylon Zero (+ Omicron Nina Zero)
- Poltergeist Golgoth (Alpha)
- 3 Bane Goliaths
- 7 Assault Medusas (3 Nucleus Gun)
- 6 Grim Golems (Omega, 1 Flamer)

The first thing you might be asking when looking at this list is why is there an Omega in a min sized grim golem squad? The answer is to make your company commander someone other than Babs, and put them in a unit of protected Infantry. Remember the company commander can use their routines on other units, but can only use those routines once. The Omega as your company commander in a Cypher list gives you an extra repair that you can use, This is crucial as Babs will be taking a lot of fire.

The Omega is also placed in the grim golem unit to keep him safe. reduce what can kill him and the longer you’ll have access to your LP pool. This is especially important if babylon zero goes down. Without this Omega company commander, you would be hurting badly for LP.

Strategy is simple with this list. Indirect fire weapons are not going to hurt you much so take out the anti armour weapons first. Babs can snipe to her hearts desire, the poltergeist can be rushed towards the enemy infantry to mow down any lasers or rockets, and the banes can be used in their standard way, brought in from reserves to deliver a knockout punch.

Once the anti AFV firepower is disabled, its simply mop up time. Your poltergeist will reign supreme here in addition to the hekats you will be summoning throughout the game.

Defeating this list revolves around eliminating babylon zero first, then taking out the infantry. With a neutered LP pool there isn’t much this list can do.

Tiamat is right at home charging towards the enemy, summoning hekats as she goes. Her opponents have a difficult decision to make. Do they take out the hekats she summons or do they focus their fire on her? If they focus on her and she is destroyed she can simply reappear, replacing one of her other units afresh ready to press the assault some more. For this reason many armies with tiamat will take a small unit for her to transfer into when she does get destroyed. If they don’t manage to destroy her, she and her 2-3 summoned friends will shred all the units in their path.

It is often more beneficial to target the summoned Hekats while Tiamat is still moving to engage. If you let the Therian commander swarm you with melee AFVs you are in big trouble. She can swarm very quickly too, by dashing she covers 50cm a turn, more than enough to engage most enemies turn 2. If you haven’t been focusing on the summons she’ll have 2 hekats in tow when she reaches you. Not a pleasant thought.

In addition to being a monster on the battlefield she also provides the largest number of LP when she is commanding the therian army. This gives them more than enough points to spend on Hekats, rerolling damage, and lowly combat drills.

Tiamat is a great company commander choice for a therian strategy that  rushes towards the enemy and she is perfectly complemented by Grim Golems.  If sitting back and shooting is more your style you should check out Babylon Zero.

Armed with 2 Nucleus Guns each, a unit is capable of putting 6 accurate shots on target each turn. On top of this, as every Therian commander knows, failing to wound isn’t such a big deal. For 2 LP they simply use Hyper Nanonucleus and re roll all their failed damage tests.

The Bane Goliath has one downfall though. It is easily grounded and you should expect them to become grounded the turn after they come onto the board. For this reason they are best used from reserves, coupled with a double activation. This will ensure that whatever you are shooting at willl be a smouldering pile of wreckage. Using the board terrain is important because these guys die easily to direct fire without “take cover”.

If you can manage to eliminate the enemy’s area of effect weapons, the banes will become a wrecking ball of fury, slicing anything with armor into little bits.

For extra added smashing power, try adding Nina Zero to the unit as the leader. This gives you access to overseer routines (you don’t have to rely on the Company Commander for Hyper Nanonucleus for example) and Nina has those ever deadly move and fire sniper shots.

The Banes are one of the Therian’s most useful units and there are very few lists where forgoing them is a good idea. They simply melt face.

The grims have three primary roles. Taking points from the enemy, holding points from the enemy, and taking out high threat infantry units. With Atis in the unit the Grim Golems are ideally suited to teleporting right into a highly contested point, eliminating many of the opposing figures and taking control of it.

Similarly, Atis can teleport her unit deep into your opponents lines in order to remove a high threat unit. Make no mistake the reaper blades are more than capable of removing even the toughest Red Blok kolossi from the table. With 2 attacks each and Hyper Nanonucleus, rolling 3 sixes on 18 dice isn’t a particularly difficult thing to do.

Even without Atis the grim golems become a formidable defensive unit. Armed with 3 flamers and invisible to most units, any player will think twice before sending their units into a position held by a grim golem unit.

Many green commanders often cry out about the imbalance of these guys, especially when there are more than one unit on the board. The Grims are easily countered, even without stealth detection.

Red Blok has it the easiest, by fielding a Zviezda you not only get some stealth detection but you also get a mortar. Additionally the dragonov kommandos can also see stealthed units and their snipers can deal with the flamer threats. Next up is UNA with their triple lens helmets, many of their men can see stealthed units. The Karmans do not have any stealth detection units but they do have very fast Trikes. These need to be used to get close to the grim golems and unload a barrage of fire. This is the one time when I actually like dirt trikes as they can kill far more Grim golems than a jungle trike can.

Grim Golems are a fantastic unit and I think that they should be included in most Therian lists. If you plan on going up against a therian commander, be prepared to deal with this unit as you undoubtedly will run into it.

The first decision is whether you want to use Tiamat or Babylon Zero as your company commander. For a more shooty feel go with Babylon Zero, for some more Melee action take Tiamat.

Therians – Cyphers

Platoon 1
- Tiamat (+ Omega Tiamat) / Babylon Zero
- Wraith Golgoth (Alpha)
- 3 Bane Goliaths
- 9 Storm Golems (Alpha, 3 Sonic Gun)
- 6 Grim Golems (+ Alpha Atis-Astarte, 1 Flamer)

- 2 hekats for creation

This gives you some more key essential models for Therians, while rounding out a 2000 point list. As you play some more you’ll figure out what else you need. With this list you will probably want to pick up 2 hekats for summoning. This is an additional cost but what would the Theirans be without hekat summoning?

For the cost of 4 LP you may take a type * AFV model that is not currently a part of your army and place it next to the Company Commander where it will be able to activate on your next turn. Only the Company Commander can use this routine so it is not possible to spawn multiple Type * AFVs in a single turn.

The spawned Type * AFVs are not alphas so they do not have any access to routines themselves. if you want to be able to use the rush routine with them the Company Commander must be the one to do it. Similarly, these summoned Type * cannot repair themselves, instead relying on the Company Commander’s routines. Remember the Company Commander is the only one that can use routines on other units in the army.

Another thing to note. If you are going to be summoning type *’s, having Sigma Urash around is extremely useful. Sigma Urash is the only Therian capable of using fusion on 2 afvs of different units. This means having him around will let you fuse those 2 half dead Hekats into a Type ** AFV of your choice.

This becomes extremely useful for dislodging units from cover and removing infantry that pose an immediate threat to your other forces.The ability is not cheap though, it costs 3 LP, so don’t expect to be creating hekats, teleporting and giving all your units combat drills at the same time.

The downside to this is that if some of your models cannot be placed in contact with the enemy and maintain cohesion, they are immediately eliminated. This gives an interesting defense against this very powerful ability.

By grouping your infantry together and against some sort of cover, you will ensure there is as little space as possible for Atis to teleport into. Therians do not have any long range indirect fire weapons so there is little to fear from using a tight grouping.

Atis is a powerful hero for the Therian army and the benefits far outweigh the costs of taking her.

Edit: Thanks to Blue Dane for clarifying an error, the post has been updated to reflect the proper rules.

Hyper Nanonucleus 2 LP (Infantry and AFVs)

This routine lets a unit re roll all the failures for one damage test. So if you score 10 impacts and only 5 of them damage, you get to re roll those 5 failed damage tests. Some players may tell you that this is 2 LP per die rerolled but this is NOT the case. You get to re roll all of them.

Transfer 1 LP (Infantry)

You may replace a living member of the squad with one that has been previously killed. This is useful for bringing back heavy weapons or heroes that have been killed

Repair (AFV)

This routine lets the overseer repair an AFV for 1 structure point of damage

Dash 2 LP (Infantry and AFVs)

Allows an infantry unit to move 30 cm when making a rush move. This is very useful for getting units into position. Medusa’s benefit from this letting them move 2 times their regular movement. The AFV version of this routine lets an AFV move 50 cm in a rush move. Very useful for melee AFVs like hekats and Tiamat.

Fusion 4 LP (AFVs)

Two AFVs of the same type in the same unit are fused together to create an AFV of the higher type. The two AFVs are replaced by the new higher type AFV.

Creation 4 LP (AFVs)

This routine lets the Company Commander create a type 1 AFV that spawns beside them. The Units card is added to the activation sequence for the next turn. This is a very powerful routine as it lets the Therians create a hekat a turn as long as there are enough LP to do so. If your opponent cannot deal with these hekats in a quick manner they will soon find themselves overwhelmed.

In addition to the general routines listed above certain heroes gain access to special abilities.  Since the Therians do not have access to medics and engineers it is essential to get the best use out of these routines.

I enjoy playing the Therians but do have a small problem with how Babylon Zero works. For those that haven’t encountered this unit yet be thankful. Essentially it gets 4 nucleus cannon 2.0 sniper shots while still being able to move. This means that in one turn it can pretty much kill any AFV on the board.

I recently played a game against the UNA where they were using Stark in his Copperhead. The UNA must deploy Stark first on the board and is a big juicy target for Babylon zero. I killed him on Babylon’s activation in one volley because I could re roll my failed damage tests. His cover was ignored. Now I could see zero fire being more balanced if you were required to use the “sniper” profile of the nucleus cannon 2.0 (only 1 shot instead of 2) but as it stands it seems extremely over powered.

I won the first game very easily but the UNA player came back with a good strategy. Using a morning star list, and Col. Stark on foot he took a good number of missile teams and laser guns. This put an end to Babylon Zero, but not before she had taken out a cobra snake, again with 1 attack.

Herein lies the problem though. This unit essentially is forcing a very specific build on everyone that faces Therians because if they are not equipped to handle Babylon Zero with overwhelming firepower they are going to get melted. Red Blok faces an even greater problem than the UNA, at least the UNA missiles ignore cover, practically the only option for the Blok is to go heavy Dragonov At-Gauss.

Infantry heavy lists seem to be the key to beating her, but I don’t think that anyone should be forced into a single cookie cutter list to just counter one unit. There is an interesting discussion over on the at-43 forums it is about cheese in general but a good portion is devoted to Babz.

Overview

The Therians are a species that wishes to bend the universe to their will. They are extremely technologically advanced and are ruthless in crushing anyone that attempts to get in the way.

Play Style

The Therian commanders known as overseers have access to routines that they can execute during battle. These routines provide many abilities from being able to re roll failed damage tests to summoning AFV’s out of thin air. All Therian infantry are also equipped with strong melee weapons so they can more than handle themselves in a close quarter battle. Their melee only, Grim Golems are invisible to the enemy and are ideal for charging towards the enemy. All Therian units are very fast and can take strategic positions faster than most of their opponents.  Don’t think that the Therian army is incapable of shooting though. They can also be very effective from a distance. They are a very flexible army and there is hardly a situation they cannot handle.

Strengths

• Summon AFV’s during battle
• Higher armor values
• 3 special weapons in a max size unit

Weaknesses

• very few 2 damage weapons
• routines are LP dependent
• no medics or engineers (though there is a repair routine)