Kommandant Irusk: Nyss Hunters

What could make Nyss Hunters better? I've been running them with Warwitch Deneghra quite a lot, but when I decided to include them in my Khador force as my main unit, I made a list of abilities I needed available to them.

I quickly decided to include Valachev, since he brings access to Friendly Faction abilities, which includes Kommandant Irusks incredible feat: Undying Loyalty.

• Increased defenses: Iron Flesh, Inhospitable Ground, and Undying Loyalty.

Defense eighteen Nyss Hunters with 4+ Tough and immunity to knockdown. That sounds awfully hard to remove, and adding cover or concealment turns them into a unit that fears nothing but blast damage. In such a small game, a single round of near immunity could easily turn the game, and occasionally Inhospitable Ground will completely deny the opponent a charge.

With Zephyr the Nyss Hunters can walk into range and fire, followed by a three inch retreat. That's a long way to charge for an enemy unit (potentially fifteen inches), and considering that non-pathfinder units will have to deal with Inhospitable Ground while doing it, I suspect the Nyss Hunters will stick around for quite some time.

• Increased offense: Battle Lust, Undying Loyalty, Rust Bomb, and Kiss of Lyliss.

I would like to introduce you to something horrible: Nyss Hunters on Battle Lust. Going against a Warjack with Rust and Kiss on it, they will inflict about thirty damage each (5d6+13) on a charge, and with Undying Loyalty they'll be MAT 8 while doing it. Rust bomb isn't available against beasts, but they tend to be less armored anyway, and Black Oil will solve the problem with high defense heavies.

Ranged attacks won't benefit much, but a well placed Kiss and a couple of combined attacks should clear out a chunk of infantry, and retaliating is quite hard. The only problem is, that the Nyss will have to go without Iron Flesh on the round they engage, but since it will probably be my feat round as well, I think the losses will be acceptable.

• Disengaging: Zephyr

Most of the time I would probably just swing at them if someone managed to engage, but occasionally it's useful to either move further into a unit without taking free strikes (reach models, or layering), or disengage models to shoot, while a few remain to swing at the models he ran in to engage.

I'm looking forward to seeing if this holds true in actual play, but the theory sounds very powerful. The main flaw is the vulnerability of Valachev, so keeping him safe should be a priority.