What I think of...Lord Exhumator Scaverous

Hello everyone and welcome to another exciting examination of a unit/model/whatever.  Since the more recent theme has been about the Journeyman League and my journey with the Cryx faction I wanted to take a look at my chosen caster, Scaverous or Scavvy.

I have to make some claims though so take whatever I say with however much grains of salt you want, but I am not the best Warmahordes player out there.  I'm also not the most experienced with Cryx, and I am not the most experienced with Scavvy.  Almost all of my "real" games with Cryx have been with Scavvy.  So be forewarned this is just my inexperienced opinion of him.

Looks can be deceiving

Let's talk stats.  At a quick glance you can see that his weapon has a nice P+S to it, reach, and he can do a Thresher attack.  His MAT is a bit below average so you won't be hitting anything with high DEF (i.e. above 12) without boosting and hoping.  His RAT is also low but he has no ranged attacks sooooo whatever.  His Focus stat is pretty solid being what I think is the "average" so that gives him some leeway with options. Unless it's supporting warjacks then you are sort of boned as he is a focus greedy bugger.

He does have a soul collecting ability but being limited to 2" naturally it can place him in a risky spot if you're not careful.  Slightly higher than a Slayer's DEF and with his natural ARM being the same as a Slayer (combined total of 31) means that Scavvy could possibly hold his own...but not for long.

How PP paints him up

His spell list is a toolbox of options where he wants to do a little bit of debuffing, a little bit of nuking, and a smidge of utility.  Problem is that the spell variety and cost make it pretty hard to do any of those roles effectively.  His debuffing spells cost a total of 6 focus leaving you with only 1 point to boost.  His nuke costs 3 per shot meaning that unboosted/unsupported you only have 2 shots you can take.

Now his feat is where you get the impression that Mr. Scavvy might want to do a bit of arcane assassinating.  It lowers the cost of his spells by 1, increased the cost of spells/animi in his control area by 1, and auto boosts magic attack rolls.  So what it seems to me is that you want to get in a good turn in which you can make an arcane assassination and use your feat to help mitigate the natural problems he faces with his list already.

One of my favorite paint jobs

See this is what I'm talking about with Scavvy, he wants to be so many different things but he isn't particularly good at ANY of those things.  He's subpar in almost all respects except for his feat turn assassination and even then it's still a crapshoot.  To be honest it only seems to be that he starts to even glimmer once he has a Skarlock and the Withershadow Combine.  Without them his job of wanting to assassinate is even more difficult.  As far as getting into melee, unless they've been hit by both Icy Grip and Feast of worms to get a -2 to DEF and ARM then it's not going to happen reliably.

I don't see many WM conversions but when I do I like what I see

From my game with Kevin (right here), my own games with him, and from my research you just have to play him really carefully.  He is not a lolpointandclickwin sort of caster, he's like a hard game of chess where you will have to think ahead a couple of turns.  His lists seem to be either made up of the recursion mechanithralls (such as the one Kevin played), or with troops that can somewhat hold their own.  Either way Scavvy is not a small game caster but needs about 35+ points to be most effective.

Well those are just my thoughts and I'm sure the more games I play with him I will have more figured out.  Until then it looks somewhat grim but I am positive I will learn either Cryx mechanics or the core game mechanics better.  Until next time folks have a good one and happy gaming!