Welcome back to the Hiring Post.

This episode:  it’s the Saracen’s turn. Let’s take a look at the Lancer.

At 25 points, he is a fairly pricey independent. He makes a good bodyguard for more vulnerable models thanks to his abilities, which we’ll get into below. With 0 Protection and 12 Life Points, he doesn’t have huge staying power for a front-line fighter, but his array of skills and orders really give him an edge if properly employed against enemy models.  Let’s dig in.

Defensive Combat: This grants the Lancer the ability to reduce his own Combat by one die and the Combat of an opposing model by one die.  This can sometimes make the difference between the enemy being able to land very damaging hits against the Lancer and merely glancing blows.

Fury: This means that your Lancer does not suffer a -1 Combat when charging – giving you the full threat range of 10 fathoms without any loss of efficacy.

Man-at-Arms:  Allows the Lancer to force an enemy model to re-roll one die of their Combat roll.  Taking in conjunction with Defensive Combat this greatly helps keep the Lancer alive!

Protective:  The Lancer never loses his Control Area, regardless of the number of models engaging him.  Remember that he has a 2″ Control area thanks to the Lunge: 2 ability of his Lance.  Excellent for tying up a bottleneck and forcing the enemy to deal with your Lancer instead of the softer models behind him (such as an Alchemist)

The lancer has three unique orders to consider.

Speed of the Oribi: For two temporary Command, the Lancer gains +1 Movement and +1 Defensive until the end of the turn, granting him a 12″ Charge at Defense 5.

Sting of the Scorpion: For a single point of temporary Command, give the Lancer +2 Combat.  This order may be given twice per turn.  Through this order and Eager, you can reach Combat 10 with the Lancer!

Wall of Blades: Costing two temporary Command, this order puts the Lancer into full protective mode.  It grants Attack of Opportunity 3 and Defense 6 for the rest of the turn.  Attack of Opportunity 3 means that any model that enters your Control area (of 2″) automatically gets hit for 3 damage.

Finally, his Lance.  It has a number of rules, so let’s break them down.  It’s Eager, granting him a +1 Combat during the first attack sequence with a given enemy – hopefully after a charge, which the Lancer excels at thanks to Fury .  It offers Lunge 2, giving you a very solid 2″ Control area..  It has Receive Charge, granted him a +1 Combat when attacked by a Charging enemy, making him equally threatening on the Charge or taking one.  Finally it’s Cumbersome, so -1 Combat against second and subsequent attacks against a given enemy model, so you will want to try and keep him out of protracted combats – the Lancer is at his best when he can get in, beat the hell out of something, and then move on to do it again.

The Lancer will typically score 2-3 hits against average enemies – more if you are judiciously using Sting of the Scorpion – averaging at 5 damage per attack.  Through using Defensive Combat and Man at Arms, you can frequently ensure that your Lancer is able to survive to swing the balance of key combats in your favor.

That’s all for this episode.  Next time we revisit the Lost and see what other beasts they can bring to the party.

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