Guild Ball team review: The Alchemists

Greetings wargamers and welcome to another exciting episode of Wargamer Ramblings!  Here today we are continuing the recent trend of Guild Ball chatting since the wife and I now own two teams!  While we’ve yet to get a game in (good ole’ life getting in the way) it is something we plan on doing in the near future.  So today I wanted to go over one of our teams in a little bit more in-depth, at least in my humble observation, stat cards can be found/downloaded right HERE!

The Alchemist Guild according to the lore a relatively newer guild as compared to some of the others in the field.  As a faction they tend to have a lot of Area of Effect (AoE’s) abilities and often have some ability to chain those together.  These AoE’s often come with additional penalties making the enemy models think twice before going in them.  They are a team that appear to commonly inflict conditions onto enemy players like putting someone on fire or poisoning them.  The Alchemists can manipulate the battlefield by placing several of these areas onto the field and if you can predict where the opponent wants to go you can cause a lot of problems for them.

The Alchemist's symbol

The Alchemists are on the softer side when it comes to taking hits themselves and most of their team members do not have heavy armor values or high health amounts either (with a couple exceptions to the health that is).  Therefore a cunning Alchemist player will not only use the aforementioned AoE’s offensively but also defensively, deterring enemy charges and plays.  It’s not very appealing for an opponent to cross a cloud of fire or poison to charge at one of your models as much as it is if they were in the clear.  Even if they do charge across the AoE a lot of Alchemist models inflict conditions once you get close to them anyways! 

So with the general faction trends out of the way let’s take a look at some of the model synergy going on in this team.  Like other guilds the Alchemist playstyle will change depending on what sort of crew you’re taking to the field.  Midas and Smoke, the two Alchemist captains, change the way you look at your team composition quite drastically.  Midas for example is a great all around captain with a host of abilities to keep opponents on their toes.  With the ability to replicate one enemy model’s ability for the rest of the game he can change the way you play mid-match.  His Heroic Play allows you to switch what you need for the moment at the cost of a Momentum Point (MP), gaining additional speed, offense, defense, and etc.  He can be a bit of an Influence hog though so you need to keep that in mind when using him properly.  His Legendary Play lets you acquire some MP on the go by spending Influence points, up to 3.  So if you are out of MP but need some in a pinch Midas has your back.

The 3 member starter!

The other captain plays a bit differently of course.  Smoke being the Season 2 captain the Alchemists gained, she specializes in manipulating the various AoE’s on the field.  Whereas most models will be able to drop down 1 type of AoE, she can drop 3 down.  She can drop a smoke field and her other two abilities replicate already in-play friendly AoE abilities.  All for 1 Influence each.  Her replication abilities are not limited to smoke however.  So for 2 Influence points you can replicate 2 more clouds of fire or poison which is pretty nasty when you think about it.  That 3” fire AoE can easily become a 9” wall of flame with the right set-up.  While she lacks a Heroic Play her Legendary play allows her to drop 2 3” AoE’s that deal 3 damage AND if they stay in there or move into it they are poisoned.  Ouch!

To save some time I won’t go over every single model in the guild but I will note some trends.  From Season 1 Calculus and Mercury are both great for laying down AoE’s that cause conditions while also providing some utility such as blinding enemy models, or in Mercury’s case just blasting a mofo with fire.  Vitriol takes advantage of being in smoke effects, gaining offensive/mobility boosts while her targets are in the AoE.  Katalyst is true to his name and his abilities play off of models with conditions on them already either gaining bonuses or causing additional damage and he is also one of the two models with a high health count.  Flask is one of the mascots and if positioned correctly he too can add to the AoE shenanigans by contributing a smoke cloud while also inflicting damage on those who have conditions on them.

A team example: Midas, Calculus, Mercury, Vitriol, Katalyst, and Flask!

The Season 2 crew continue this theme but with some additional twists.  Venin prefers to deal out his poison in melee but he also likes to inflict it upon himself to get some bonuses.  He also can do a pulse move for those already poisoned and cause them to start bleeding out as well, for double condition damage!  Compound is a dual Alchemist/Engineer model who functions as a goal-keeper.  His abilities make it harder for others to score goals while being able to counter-charge them if they get too close to the goalpost.  Katalyst Season 2 is something of a suicide player in a way.  He constantly takes damage each turn, has a huge health pool and offensive stats, does additional condition damage, and has a heroic play where if he takes someone out he can also choose to be taken-out but the team gains an additional 2 VP’s!  So he’s great if you are going for the offensive game but I feel like he’ll work best when you can have him take out a couple other people or keep him reserved for the final 2 points for the game.  Naja the Season 2 mascot functions primarily to work in tandem with Venin and other than giving him boosts serves little function in terms of team synergy.

Beautiful paint job (especially Mercury) from Battle Brush Studios:
here.

So that’s the overall gist I can glean from the Alchemists in Guild Ball.  Great battlefield manipulation, great condition control, and potentially annoying to deal with if played correctly.  Now if I start getting them painted up then we should be good to go!  I hope that give you all an idea of the way the guild plays, if I’ve missed anything feel free to leave a comment below.  Until then happy gaming!

p.s.: I mis-read Smoke's abilities and she does not put down a third AoE within 4", she just moves the targeted AoE up that distance.  My apologies readers!