Kallus, Wrath of Everblight

Template:Legbox This model is playable only in an Unlimited format.

Created by Everblight through his chosen servant Thagrosh, Kallus is a simulacrum crafted to house a shard of the dragon’s athanc. His flawless form is matched only by his battle prowess. Kallus, Wrath of Everblight is a terror in combat whose fearless certainty of his own immortality lends him unflagging stamina and resolve that he imparts to the blighted Nyss he leads into battle.

Basic Info

This model is a Warlock.

Warlock Rules A warlock is an Independent Model. a Leader model. a Battlegroup Controller controls warbeasts. Warlocks use Fury Manipulation Uses ARC to determine how many fury points it gains each turn. Begins the game with a number of fury points equal to its ARC. Cannot exceed its ARC stat in fury points as a result of leeching. Can spend fury points only during its activation (unless a special rule states otherwise) for the following: Buy additional attacks Boost attack rolls Boost damage rolls Shake some effects Can leach fury points from warbeasts in its battlegroup in its control range. Spirit Bond allows the warlock to gain a fury for each of its dead battlegroup warbeasts. Reaving allows the warlock to pull fury points from a warbeast in its battlegroup when it dies.

Feat : Host of Angels

1. When a friendly living non-Incubus warrior Faction model in Kallus's Template:CTRL range is disabled by an enemy attack, you can replace it with an Incubus model. The replaced model is removed from play.
2. While in Kallus's Template:CTRL range, friendly soulless warrior models gain +3 DEF.

Host of Angels last for one round.

Abilities

• Template:Soulless
• Template:Angelic Sacrifice
• Template:Hyper Regeneration
• Template:Unconquerable
• Template:Unyielding

Weapons

Hellbrand
File:Sword icon.jpg		RNG				POW				P+S
		2				7				14
Template:Magical Damage Template:Flame Burst

Spells

{{Category: Template:Dark GuidanceTemplate:EruptionTemplate:Flashing BladeTemplate:Ignite }}[[Category: Template:Dark GuidanceTemplate:EruptionTemplate:Flashing BladeTemplate:Ignite ]]

Theme Forces

• Template:Children of the Dragon. He gains Tactician [Blighted] in this theme.
• Template:Oracles of Annihilation. In this theme he can start the game with friendly upkeeps in play.
• Template:Primal Terrors
• Template:Ravens of War

Thoughts on Kallus1

Kallus1 in a Nutshell

Kallus was always a solid pick if you wanted to run Legion's infantry, and this is no less true now with a fair few infantry selections getting cheaper and better. He runs a bit counter to our beast heavy warlocks. He prefers to bring just a few warbeasts to get an animus or to fill a support role, while spending most of his army points on large swathes of infantry to maximize the efficacy of his feat and his main spell, Dark Guidance. Thanks to Unconquerable, he can make said infantry a little more durable than an opponent would expect as well. In a pinch, he can contribute to the fight as well with decent MAT, POW, and Flashing Blade.

Kallus isn't as durable as he may initially appear, while Hyper Regeneration is technically defensive tech, it only works if you survive an assassination or take a stray shot. Meanwhile, Unyielding gets his ARM to respectable levels, but nothing a dedicated heavy beast or jack or a few buffed weaponmasters won't have trouble with.

Kallus is a fairly passive (read: a little boring) warlock, generally upkeeping/cycling Ignite, and/or casting Dark Guidance. Even so, his toolkit allows his army to hit hard, accurate, and maintain a solid attrition/scenario presence. By sacrificing Incubi you may get a little more out of him but it's unlikely to be more than an Animus or risky zap.

Feat thoughts

The feat is primarily defensive, as it forces the enemy to waste attacks killing extra models. Any Incubi that actually survive the feat turn are just a bonus.

Kallus tends to have a slow army, so you should feat when you expect the enemy to alpha-strike. You can hold it to a later turn, hoping for a critical late-game state, but that runs the risk of losing too many bodies.

His feat is a little different to normal Incubi spawning:

• It triggers from any base-size model. This can be used to your advantage by placing the new Incubus at the back of the destroyed model's footprint, to be out of melee range of whatever killed the original model.
• It triggers at disabled. This is much earlier than /simultaneous with many RFP effects, so you can often circumvent those RFP.
• It doesn't stack with the Minion bonus rule in Oracles of Annihilation, because that bonus triggers at destroyed.

The DEF bonus from his feat affects Kallus, and that can be used to play him aggressively. While he will be impressively difficult to hit directly, do beware of indirect sources of knockdown.

Spell thoughts

• Dark Guidance - Dark Guidance is a very potent spell that is most potent with a large volume of attacks, but it is very expensive. Make sure Kallus is kept safe any turn he casts it. As the effect is an additional attack die, models that can boost can achieve very high accuracy while Dark Guidance is up.
• Eruption - An occasionally useful spell. Its main draw is that the AOE template does not deal blast damage. Instead, every model hit suffers the full POW, and the lingering AOE also is the full POW damage. It's a short range scather template on steroids.
• Flashing Blade - Flashing Blade can be very potent if the enemy manages to get a bunch of models onto Kallus. It can be cast multiple times as well, and before and after advancing, meaning he can cast it to remove jamming infantry, advance, and then clear more off of a control point.
• Ignite - Bring your chosen infantry or beast package a nice boost to their damage. As an upkeep, it can be cycled between two models/units each turn for maximum damage potential.

Drawbacks & Downsides

• You have to buy a bunch of Incubus models to use his feat.
• Lack of personal defensive tech outside of feat and Unyielding. The latter only works versus melee attacks.
• Dark Guidance and upkeeping/cycling Ignite (what he always wants to do) leaves Kallus with almost no transfers - if you have no models to trigger Angelic Sacrifice.
• Unimpressive FURY stat makes it hard to fit as many models as would be ideal in feat range.
• Models killed by continuous effects / collateral damage or just straight non-attack damage (like e-leaps) never spawn Incubi from his feat.

Tips & Tricks

• If Kallus must cut for Fury, the first Fury is always free since Hyper Regeneration always heals for at least 1 HP. Useful in the late game if his battlegroup is in shambles.

List Building Advice

Strategy

Kallus likes a large, melee oriented army, with enough troops to make his feat frustrating for an opponent. Each individual model and Incubus isn't much to handle, but when every single warrior drops a second one (with a large defense bonus from the feat) that must also be dealt with, you sometimes want your stuff to die. Incubi are essential for Kallus1's feat, so you'll want to get two packs for a total of 10 models at least to play this warlock.

Theme thoughts

• Chosen of Everblight are golden with him. Ignite and Dark Guidance are amazing with cavalry models due to auto boosted charges and impact attacks. Unconquerable is terrfic on models with eight boxes and ARM 17. As icing on the cake they come with native pathfinder, which is great on a caster with no speed buff.
• Blighted Rotwings - Another unit with pathfinder (or Flight to be exact) and a great jamming unit that will spawn many Incubi if the enemy kills them.
• Warspears are a very solid pick for Kallus. With Tough, a few boxes, and decent ARM under Unyielding, they can be a pain to remove, and even more annoying when an Incubus pops out after they do finally bite the dust.
  • Ignite and the Prey bonus from their Command Attachement can make this unit hit way above their weight class.
• Warmongers bring a DEF debuff with their CA and are cheap as dirt for how much work they can do. They already have Unyielding baseline though.

• Raptors are a good flanking unit for a Kallus army, and if they need to commit to mele, are reasonable Ignite targets in their own right. Their large base is flexible for feat turn Incubi placement.
• Swordsmen are probably worth considering despite Kallus's lack of defensive tech and lack of access to pathfinder, simply because they can be good sources of front line incubi, and of all Legion infantry will hit the hardest, especially with Ignite.
  • If you don't bring the Swordsmen unit, consider the Blighted Nyss Warlord. With Dark Guidance up, a weaponmaster with Decapitation can be a game ender on the enemy caster.

Template:Header You run Kallus in this theme if you just want to drown the enemy in cheap fast chaff, feat and hope they clock themselves trying to remove all the bodies and incubi.

• Blighted Rotwings - 10 bodies with SPD 7, Flight for only 9 points are a steal and they are FA 2, so 20 incubus hosts for 18 points. With Veteran leader from Golab, Sitting Vulture and Dark Guidance they are surprisingly accurate for MAT 5 chaff, too, and Ignite and Finisher makes them hit way above their weight class.
• Raptors, mentioned above, can also be in this theme.
• Strider Scouts - Advance Deployment, Pathfinder and SPD 7 means they can be way up the board really quickly, native DEF 15 also makes them tricky to remove. Their shots also randomly grant your beasts free charges.
• Strider Blightblades are good, cheap chaff, and can drop Incubi into awkward locations on feat turn thanks to Ambush. With two attacks each and critical Grievous Wounds, they get impressive mileage out of Dark Guidance.
• Banshees and Raiders are very fast infantry that can be a good first wave to absorb a blow, or put Incubi into obnoxious locations thanks to flight. Raiders will benefit more from Kallus's spells, but Banshees are generally easier to deliver in one piece thanks to Force Barrier.
  • A Grotesque Assassin or two is always worth including if you bring one of the base units.
• Hellmouths - Excellent scenario pieces and soulless warrior models to boot, so they benefit from the feat and even get to sppawn incubi from the tentacles.
• Golab - A quality beast that gets a lot out of Ignite and Dark Guidance.

• A Succubus is essentially required if you want to upkeep and cycle Ignite between two units and also cast Dark Guidance.
• The Forsaken - Fury management that powers itself up by leeching fury. If fully topped off it sits a ARM 21 with Unyielding.
• Blight Archon - A stackable ARM buff in Dragon's Blood and extended fury management, a bit of a points sink though.

Battlegroup

• The Blightbringer is an excellent choice for Kallus if you like huge bases. As stressed before, Kallus prefers only a few beasts and a lot of infantry, which the BB supports amazingly.
  • Doubling down on the BB and Ogrun and Unconquerable makes for a really nasty meat wall when using the STR/ARM breath. The same breath can also combine with Ignite and Warspear Prey for crazy damage potential.
• If the BB isn't your cup of tea, double Ravagores can control space and break opposing screens more effectively at the cost of the infantry support.
• Blight Wasps aren't a common pick, but have the potential to chew through infantry by using their animus, Dark Guidance and boosts to reliably land critical poison.
• A Nephilim Protector can keep Kallus safe from stray shots, and get his decent (but not stellar) DEF to respectable levels in melee. On feat, he'll be nearly untouchable with a Protector nearby.
• A Carnivean has 4 melee initials at MAT 6, so it gets a lot of mileage out of Ignite and Dark Guidance. Spiny Growth makes both it and Kallus himself very tanky, Kallus even gets to stack it with Unyielding.

Other

Trivia

Released in Hordes: Domination (2011)

Video Battle Reports

• 2019.06 Lock & Load Iron Gauntlet, vs Ashlynn1
• 2019.06 Lock & Load Iron Gauntlet, vs Rask1
• 2019.02 Arcane Assist, vs Malakov2
• 2018.09 Not Snakes Gaming, vs Morghoul2
• Template:VBR