Exemplar Bastions

These exemplars learn to fight within the impossibly heavy bastion armor. The bond each Exemplar Bastion shares with his brothers in arms grants him their strength even as injuries wear them down. Their enduring resilience causes enemies of Menoth to despair as the bastions take up their glaives, their eyes lit with inner flame, and march forward imperturbable. This box contains all the models necessary to field a unit of Exemplar Bastions. A player may include two units of Exemplar Bastions for each warcaster in his Protectorate of Menoth army.

Basic Info

Abilities

• Template:Sanguine Bond
• Template:Set Defense
• Template:Defensive Strike

Weapons

• Consecrated Halberd - 2" reach, P+S 13 melee weapon.
  • Template:Weapon Master
  • Template:Magical Damage
  • Template:Blessed

Theme Forces

• Protectorate
  • Template:Exemplar Interdiction. They gain Aegis in this theme.

• Other Factions
  • Infernal players can use them in the Template:Hearts of Darkness theme, but only if Feora is leading the army.
  • Mercenary players can use them in the Template:Llaelese Resistance theme. They become Llaelese and gain Pathfinder in this theme.

Thoughts on Exemplar Bastions

Exemplar Bastions in a nutshell

Exemplar Bastions are relatively tough infantry who hit hard thanks to being weapon masters, and can spread the damage around between the unit so none of them dies.

Without Vengeance they are not as fast as their cousins the Cinerators and they lack any form of protection from guns, so they work better as a clean up crew who can hold points vs melee based opponents.

Combos & Synergies

• They have a specific support solo, the Exemplar Bastion Seneschal, who makes them regenerate health and grants them extra manoeuvrability.
• Thyra1 plus Severius0 can make them MAT 8 POW 16 weapon masters, which would make your opponent reconsider charging their heavy into a full unit, making it suffer three, four, possibly five 3d6 POW 16 damage rolls, thanks to defensive strike, before it could even make its own charging attack. Theoretically one shotting a Feral Warpwolf or any lights during your opponent's turn. Furthermore, due to Occultation from Thyra1, Stealth would help with the delivery of the Bastions.
• Along with High Exemplar Gravus, they have a threat range of 11" with a very high damage output on a charge. Adding Thyra1's feat, they have a threat range of 13".
• Durant2 - Inviable Resolve and Hand of The Creator both help keep the bastions alive.

• Ashlynn1 - Quicken, Gallows and her feat patches up both their lacklustre speed and defense.
• Ashlynn2 - True Path for speed, Blood Liberty for Unyielding and Tough.
• Crosse2 - Dauntless Resolve for +3 ARM and Tough, Ghostly to get around terrain.
• Morrowan Archons provide Blinding Radiance in that theme, increasing their DEF in melee.
• Thamarite Archons provide a cloudwall, increasing their DEF against shooting.
• Gibbs - This is one of those units he will be able to properly Hot Meal at all, as with Sanguine Bond they can spread damage around and survive charges. He also gives them Repo 3" and Feign Death.
• Ragman - A much needed damage fix.

Drawbacks & Downsides

• They are slow. And easy to shoot up.
• A charging POW 12 does more than enough damage to wipe a Bastion out - at that point you're taking extra damage to keep the Bastion alive. However, Defensive Strike helps them prevent that, but this won't help that much against a single-wound unit of 10.
• Armour cracking in general obliterates them.
• Before the Exemplar CID, they used to fall short to the Exemplar Cinerators. But now, they are a rather offensive unit with high damage potential, opposed to their rather defensive counterpart.

Tricks & Tips

• If you're getting shot before an enemy charges you, use Sanguine Bond to kill the Bastions within charge range, which will leave the enemy with no charge target.
• If you're getting beat up by an enemy unit in melee, use Sanguine Bond to kill the Bastions next to the enemies who have not yet made an attack, which will leave them with no attack target.

Other

Trivia

Released in Warmachine: Legends (2008)