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.

Setup

The setup featured a lot of terrain, the way AT-43 is supposed to be played. We used a collection of home made terrain, Necromunda scenery and crates. The density of terrain represents a decent board for at-43. it opens up a lot of tactical avenues and will make for a really fun game.

Armies

We used a Therian Cypher list with Tiamat, Atis, Grim Golems, Incubus Golgoth and some storm golems.

RedBlok was vanilla with Urod, 2 Sierps, Dragomirov Kolossus with Lt Dragomoria, min sized krasnye repair squad, and a full size RPG soldaty squad.

The Karmans were also vanilla with 4 kaptars, 8 wendigos with grenade launchers + cornelius, an easy trike, k-shooters and a king buggy.

We didn’t want to complicate things using support squads and what not so we played the core lists of each army pretty much. See the Full report after the jump

Turn 1

Troops deployed as normal with Urod taking a full on assault from bane goliaths. Fortunately the krasnye came in on Red Blok’s next activation and fixed up some damage. This was lucky as the Therian Incubus came on next and re damaged Urod. The Krasnye repair unit got lucky with their one grenade launcher and managed to ground the banes with some lucky dice. Meanwhile the Karmans were happy to sit back and take up defensive positions. Unfortunately for the wendigos they were pinned by overwatched sierps and didn’t dare make an appearance. This gave the kolossus enough cover to advance towards the wendigos, bad news!

The Karman K shooters did some decent damage to Tiamat followed up with the easy trike which destroyed her out right. Unfortunately she simply body hacked into the storm golem unit, putting her closer to the vulnerable king buggy. The kaptars took up a defensive position from which it was easy to move in to repair the king buggy.

Turn 2

Turn 2 saw Urod first repair, then take out a bane goliath with his AT-cannon and do some damage to the Incubus. The therian player then pulled a nasty move by teleporting into the karman K-shooters. The Nearby k-fighters knew that they were going to face the brunt of the flamer in that unit so decided to unload its overwatch into the melee. What are the chances they would kill the heavily armoured K-shooters? Somehow with some unlucky dice out of the 3 impacts the k-shooters took, they rolled 2 sixes, killing them instantly. To make matters worse the grim golems armour deflected enough impacts that there was no way the flamer at the far side of the melee could be allocated a hit. This resulted in the unit getting flamed, killing 3 of the 4 kaptars on the next turn.

Realizing that unless they did something quick, the karmans would be wiped out, they ran full force into the overwatched sierups line of fire in order to take out as much redblok infantry as they could. The sierps hit 6 wendigos killing 1 grenade launcher. Luckily the wendigos manged to get close enough to the Kolossus to cancel their overwatch. If this didn’t happen it would have been game over for the karmans. Instead, at range 0, they fired on the full unit of RPG soldaty with their maser strike scoring 11 hits  for double damage and a 10cm radius. with with concentrate fire from cornelius, this scored enough wounds on the  unit to kill it outright. The wendigo grenade launchers then killed 5 of 8 of the krasnye soldaty.

The Therian player meanwhile realized attacking urod first is not the best way to go, given his 2 repairs and switched focus to the poor karman player. Tiamat manged to spawn a Hekat, then reach the king buggy in melee. With some lucky dice the king buggy became immobilized, with the flamers facing Tiamat. With the kaptar repair unit wiped out it was all but over for the poor buggy.

The Easy Trike then took a few more damage off of the Incubus golgoth. It we obvious that the karman player was pretty much out of the battle at this point so the Red Blok player destroyed the rest of the wendigos, with his sierps and moved the kolossus to engage the spawned hekats and the Incubus.

Turn 3

This was pretty much a mop up turn for the therian player. With hekats and tiamat screaming towards the kolossus and the banes and incubus bearing down on Urod the end was pretty much sealed for the Red Blok. It was a really fun game and a great way to introduce at-43 to a couple of friends.

Conclusions

Here are the main takeaways from the battle. Don’t engage Urod first turn, you’re better off focusing on the sierps / infantry. The same goes for Tiamat. If you are light on heavy weapons make sure that you’ve taken out the other overseers on the table first, the last thing you need is an infantry unit turning into an AFV. Snipers are great way to do this.

Fly on top of terrain with Buggies. it creates distance between you and other AFVs and doesn’t cost you any extra movement. Melee AFVs will be stuck on the ground.

ZZ rifles are fully able to take out battlesuits (even your own!), sure you need 6′s but with 16 dice you’re sure to get a few hits.

3 way is very fun and a great way to introduce players to the game. Sure you’re not getting RP or VP, but those are things to add in slowly as you get used to the core rules. The next battle we have will be fought over objectives with reenforcements .

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?

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.

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)