Pirate Queen Skarre

Skarre Ravenmane, called the Pirate Queen, is the bloodthirsty ruler of the Satyxis, the warrior women of the island of Satyx blighted by ancient dragon blood to become something more than human. Her ship, the Widower, strikes along the western coast frequently and without apparent rhyme or reason. Following the guidance of mystical omens revealed to her through rites of slaughter and bloodletting, she braves the storm and lands ashore to deliver panic and grief. For decades anxious mainland admirals and captains entrusted to guard the coastline have tried and failed to predict her movements. Any foolish enough to confront her directly have been destroyed to fuel her legend.

Basic Info

Warcaster abilities:

• Focus Manipulation

• Battlegroup Controller

• Power Field

• Spellcaster

• Independent Model

• Leader

Feat: Blood Magic

Skarre immediately suffers any number of damage points. For each damage point suffered as a result of Blood Magic, one friendly Faction model currently in her Template:Control range gains +5 STR and ARM for one round. Skarre cannot spend focus points to reduce this damage. Template:Tipbox

Abilities

• Template:Sacrificial Strike

Weapons

Takkaryx
File:Sword icon.jpg		RNG				POW				P+S
		1				7				13
Template:Magical Damage Template:Life Trader
Bloodwyrm
File:Sword icon.jpg		RNG				POW				P+S
		0.5				3				9
Template:Magical Damage Template:Life Drinker
Horns
File:Sword icon.jpg		RNG				POW				P+S
		0.5				4				10
Template:Knockdown

Spells

{{Category: Template:BacklashTemplate:Blood RainTemplate:Dark GuidanceTemplate:HellfireTemplate:Ritual Sacrifice }}[[Category: Template:BacklashTemplate:Blood RainTemplate:Dark GuidanceTemplate:HellfireTemplate:Ritual Sacrifice ]]

Theme Forces

• Template:Black Industries
• Template:Dark Host
• Template:The Ghost Fleet
• Template:Scourge of the Broken Coast

Thoughts on Skarre1

File:Skarre1-orig.jpg

Skarre1 in a Nutshell

Pirate Queen Skarre is a bully caster who aims to overwhelm her opponents. She boasts both powerful support abilities and top tier close combat strength. Her brutal simplicity makes an effective cudgel to beat your enemies to death with. This does however force her into a few stereotypical builds.

Spell thoughts

• Probably the single most important element about Skarre is her Ritual Sacrifice spell. That might be a bit of hyperbole, but this spell is the lynch pin of making her work. At the cost of a warrior model, you get bonus focus for her next activation. A poor roll will force you to play defensively, yet a high roll can allow Skarre to make powerful reckless plays with few if any repercussions.
• Dark Guidance is incredibly powerful, but expensive. The trouble with this spell is that it does require over half of Skarre's natural focus. If you rolled poorly on your Ritual Sacrifice the previous turn, Skarre will be focus starved and open to assassination, forcing her away from the front lines. Despite it's cost, you are probably going to want to cast this every turn you are engaged in melee.
• Sacrifical Strike is not a spell but rather an action. This grants you a guaranteed damage roll on a target next to a model in her command range. While this ability costs the life of one of your own models, it can be a small price to pay in exchange for killing a valuable solo regardless of their defense. If you find her low on focus that must be camped while still wanting to participate in combat without full blown engagement, this can be an effective use of her action.
• As far as Cryx is concerned, Skarre has a pretty crumby natural focus stat. This will typically make her want to shy away from her offensive spells. That said, sometimes Skarre is safe enough that she can burn her focus on spell attacks, or sometimes desperate enough that she has to.
  • Blood Rain can be used to spread corrosion on high armor single hitpoint units or possibly knock out solos.
  • Hellfire much like Bloodrain suffers from Skarre's low focus. As such it will only be cast in rare circumstances. Having better range and power than Blood Rain, it can be used to snipe out valuable targets from time to time. Getting good use out of this spell can require a very heavy focus investment.
• Access to Backlash will typically not play a huge role in your battle plans, but it does provide some problems for your enemy. As mentioned before, Skarre is a bully. Backlash allows you to damage enemy warcasters without direct engagement. The extra damage is likely to force your opponent to play more conservatively. If you are making the most of your caster's powers from the front line and your opponent is hiding in the back, the flow of battle should favor your side.

Feat thoughts

Blood Magic is a very powerful feat. Several models will for one turn benefit from overcharged strength and armor. This feat will simultaneously cripple your opponent with strong attacks and reduce the effectiveness of their counter attack with the armor bonus. With this feat active and compounded with the effects of Dark Guidance, even a few models can be a legitimate threat to the life of an enemy caster. While she does have high defense, this ability combined with the damage she will probably suffer from using Takkaryx's Life Trader means she might end up dealing herself significant damage and put herself in danger of assassination.

The best candidates for this spell will have either mid to good armor, and multiple or accurate attacks.

• Skarre exemplifies all the requirements for Blood Magic to be effective. Significant armor, multiple attacks, and good mat. Even in the case that she won't be engaging, it's probably worth using the feat on herself for protection since she damages herself.
• After Skarre you are probably going to target warjacks with this ability.
• Banes who hit hard will probably want Dark Guidance to be considered for this feat. Afterwards, their armor should be good enough to shrug off small arms or warrant heavy attacks from your enemy.
• Satyxis have multiple accurate attacks which is definitely nice, but keep in mind their armor is so low, they are still probably going to die to relatively weak attacks on even average dice.

Drawbacks & Downsides

• While being a force multiplier for her own army, she also happens to kill off her own guys. Between Sacrificial Strikes and Ritual Saccrifice, she can actually make a noticable dent in her own forces.
• Skarre doesn't just hurt her own army, she can actually hurt herself quite a bit. Her feat is going to knock off about a third of her life while she will continually harms herself with Life Trader. Despite good focus camp, great defense, and a turn of strong armor, her low hitpoints will keep her vulnerable to sudden death.
• Skarre's offensive spell power is weak without using a great deal of focus.
• Poor control range can force her up to the front lines before it is favorable to do so.
• The larger your army, the more powerful Skarre is. This draws her to leans towards spam lists. So despite her simplicity, this makes her favored armies difficult to collect, particularly for beginners starting with a Battlebox which doesn't have any particularly good synergy with her.

Tricks & Tips

• Even if you cast Ritual Sacrifice multiple times, only the first roll counts.
• Skarre has three attacks, each one can be useful in it's own way.
  • Takkaryx hits the hardest, but uses up life. Use this to deal the most damage.
  • Great Rack knocks down on hit. Against models with good defense, open with this to ensure subsequent hits.
  • Blood Wyrm heals on a kill, so use this as your charge attack if you are fighting infantry who don't necessarily need a powerful hit to kill. The healing will mitigate her more suicidal tendencies.
• Models with feedback like Satyxis Raiders and Satyxis Gunslingers can potentially make Backlash a real threat against the enemy caster. This is a cool trick, but building an army around this idea might not necessarily work well.

List Building Advice

Strategy

Skarre is a brute force caster whose typical game is going to look something like this. She will be commanding her army from a central position as you seek to overwhelm your opponent in several locations. She should be casting Ritual Sacrifice every turn after the first and Dark Guidance whenever you expect to seriously engage the enemy. At a critical moment, use the feat to vastly increase the damage of your army removing a key elements from your enemy as well as protecting your best troops. As the lines close, seek to push Skarre into the front lines so that she can leverage her powerful close combat abilities in your favor.

Theme thoughts

• Skarre wants a Spell Slave to cast Ritual Sacrifice for her, and of the three available Doctor Stygius is the best option.
• Scrap Thralls are the the cheapest models per points you can get in the army. Seeing as you will be using them as fuel, this makes them ideal for Skarre who is likely to eat more than a few models during the course of a game.
• Aiakos1 with his character jack Kharybdis are two of her best feat targets and and greatly appreciate Dark Guidance.
• Asphyxious the Sanctified - The other best target for her feat and Dark Guidance. Being able to feat on a merc jack like a Toro also has it's perks., but feating on two Talons with Gang Fighter and Dark Shroud is even better.

Skarre's army is molded by what she can provide for them. Dark Guidance promote her using high powered, but not necessarily accurate attacks. The second best way to load up your army with this are Bane units. They both hit very hard and greatly benefit from the increased accuracy. What she doesn't do for them is increase their mediocre speed, which is why it is only the second best theme for her.

• 30 Bane Knights. In a battle strategy that is about as brutal as it is simple, vomit 30 Bane Knights on to the field. Every turn you run these ghostly units run or charge across the board. Being super accurate from Dark Guidance, they should probably kill anything they hit. They also benefit from having relatively high natural armor for Sacrificial Strike. Not exactly a cost effective use of the ability, but it is certainly a high damage roll that is guaranteed to hit.
• Wraith Engines can make the Banes even brickier.

Her plan here is simple: Bring light warjacks for her to feat on, Aiakos and his character jack, Asphyxious4 and supplemental support. You do it here because they all gain Gang Fighter and jacks are much better recipients of her feat and Dark Guidance due to the having access to focus.

• Given her high DEF score, many plans to kill her involve knockdown. Being a Satyxis model, a Satyxis Raider Captain provides immunity to this.
• Aiakos1 is here (see above), he can run Kharybdis for her, as well as a group of Stalkers for Escort.
• Barathrum - The best jack in the Cryx stable hands down. Naturally it is a good feat target and with Advance Deployment it needs to speed buff to be able to do work.

Battlegroup

• Stalkers provide many things that Skarre appreciates. With naturally high speed and pathfinder, they provide threat to a caster who cannot extend it. Extended control range means that they can operate almost anywhere on the board and benefit from her pool of focus, Dark Guidance, or her Blood Magic feat. Some lists involve simply loading up with as many Stalkers as possible.

First Seven Purchases

A few veteran players have put their heads together and tried to figure out the seven best things to buy for this specific caster. This is not designed to add up to a nice round points limit, nor be balanced vs other "First Seven" lists you find on this website. It is simply going to give you some of the essentials this caster needs most of the time.

1. Warjack: Stalker
2. Warjack: Stalker
3. Warjack: Stalker
4. Warjack: Stalker
5. Solo: Doctor Stygius
6. Solo: Bane Lord Tartarus
7. Unit: Bane Warriors + CA

I don't like suggesting new players buy 4 copies of the same warjack, but in Skarre1's case it literally is what everyone runs with her. Also, Skarre1 really only has a "Top 5" - Bane Lord Tartarus & the Bane Warriors could be swapped out to pretty much any other combat unit and that unit's corresponding solo - because Skarre1 works well with almost everything.

Other

Trivia

File:Bloody Buccaneer Skarre.jpg

Limited Edition sculpt

• Released in Warmachine: Prime (2003)
• Sculptor (Skarre 2009): Werner Klocke
• The Bloody Buccaneer Skarre model can be substituted for the stock model.

Video Battle Reports

• 2019.04 Tiny Men, vs Garryth2
• 2018.12 Tiny Men, vs Irusk2
• Template:VBR