Witchwood

"Beware the comely maiden ’neath the old and knotty tree—a foul, deceitful witchwood the maid will likely be."

Bound together as a witchwood, the woman and the ancient timber seduce victims with lilting song and fruits freely given, turning stouthearted allies against one another in jealousy. Any who take axe or torch to a witchwood soon find how easily their flesh tears in the tree’s gnarled grasp.

Basic Info

Abilities

• Template:Advance Deployment
• Template:Bone Picker
• Template:Death Feast
• Template:Death-Powered
• Hunter
  • Text required.

• Template:Immovable
• Template:Just a Tree?
• Template:Strange Growth

Weapons

Tendril Trap
File:Gun icon.jpg		RNG			ROF			AOE			POW
		8			1			Template:-			-
Template:Drag Template:Black Penny
Swipe (x2)
File:Sword icon.jpg		RNG				POW				P+S
		2				6				15

Theme Forces

• Template:Bump in the Night
• Template:Dark Menagerie. In this theme, this model gains +1 corpse token at the start of the game.

Thoughts on Witchwood

Witchwood in a nutshell

Witchwoods, affectionately known as "the spooky tree", are a fairly unique combat solo with a gun that can disrupt and drag enemy models. It is very often used as a scenario anchor due to its high arm, and potential stealth.

That said while tough and very strong in melee it's static movement and low range gun makes it difficult to fully apply itself, it can't even charge, though if fully loaded on corpses it will do some damage.

Why should i include Witchwoods in my army?

Witchwoods where generally brought as a free solo but now their large base prevents this. Their 5pt price tag is expensive for a control piece. You should generally consider bringing one when you want to bring a combat solo who can sit on the edge of a zone or on a flag and not be trivially removed. Some casters in Bump are very support orientated and will be considering models such as Eilish and the Glimmer Imp. When you don't need these kinds of models however, Bump has only two non character combat solos, Trapperkin and Witchwoods.

Trapperkin are the offensive option, and Witchwoods can be viewed as the defensive option.

Combos & Synergies

• The Heretic will sometimes passively assist its accuracy if his Trump happens to be on something it wants to hit or shoot. Don't expect Heretic to do much for it though. You can technically walk enemy models through Heretic's wall of fire, but this is generally something you'll do that's cute and available at the time, not a realplan
• The Wanderer causes the Witchwood to have stealth at all times while Fog of War is up.
• The Dreamer can technically make it RAT 9 by using mark target on the small phantasm. Once again, kind of a side case you shouldn't expect to see
• It has one decent support synergy in that it can't be pushed so you can use it to either backstop your models from pushes, or stand in front of them to stop drags

It should be noted there really isn't that many powerful synergies for this model. It's very self contained. It's just the nature of a slow, ponderous combat solo who is more defensive in nature than offensive

Drawbacks & Downsides

• Thanks to immobile, it can't aim. RAT 7 is stellar, but the downside of not being able to aim is definitely there
• It's threat ranges are pretty short, 7" for melee and 13" for its gun. These ranges are completely static with zero extenders meaning typically your opponent will be very aware of what you can and can’t do
• It's not super easy to kill, but its also not super hard to kill. Melee troops in particular will be able to polish it off as even very low pow charges will chip away at it until its dead. It's at its most annoying when your opponent has to commit a decent gun at it, and possibly anti stealth tech.
• The gun is pretty restricted, it works on non-caster, warriors only, and living models. This means its fairly typical to play some games where it will never fire its gun and its 5pts for a model with a 7" threat range
• Its output is pretty low for 5pts
• It has no answer to stealth or anti shooting tech such as Sucker or Shield guard.

Tricks & Tips

• It can anchor zones, and use a combination of its gun and melee to walk models out of a zone while killing others.
• Bewitch suffers from limited target selection, but its very powerful and flexible with a range of uses
  • Walking a unit leader away from the unit can leave members out of command which is awful, a whole unit can potentially be crippled. Opponents savvy to this may also not think enough about it when making field promotions when a leader dies. That is, their original leader was very safe from this threat, and then you killed a few models and he was forced to promote to the middle of the unit to keep everyone in command, which the Witchwood then takes advantage of
  • You're able to make a ranged attack with models you take control of, not just a melee attack. Be aware of taking control of models with very powerful attacks if it ever comes up. Eiryss1 for example is a hard target, but if your opponent ever fails to consider the tree and you're within 10" (or can get a back strike...). Gorman can blind important models with his grenade
  • The model you take control of is friendly during its move and attack. you can un-dig models with Dig in with this among other tricks. Your opponent can also make actions such as Admonition, Defensive strike etc.
• You can use bewitch to make up for its mat 6 by turning its target away from you.

Other

Trivia

Released with the Faction release (2017.06)