Hey Everyone, John Jambo here back with another episode of Pimp My WarbandTM On today’s episdoe we’re looking at the king of the sandcastle himself THOMAS.
Huh, wait what.
I’m being told it’s actually pronounced Tomas, and I am deeply sorry to any who my words and actions offended.
Anyways, on with this episode of PIMP 👏 MY 👏 WARBAAAAAAAAAAAND [APPLAUSE sign lights up, nobody claps, star wipe]
My (lack of) Qualifications
I am, at best, a novice at this game. I can paint pretty well and I have enough of a background in gaming and game design to sound like I know what I’m talking about, but I don’t have even local tournament wins under my belt, so take everything I am about to say with a grain of salt. I have maybe 40 games to my name mostly in 3v3 and 2 in 5v5. I am going to talk a lot of theory about 5v5 because I think the game is designed for 5s and more thought has been put into it. I will talk more about execution in threes.
Why Tomas
A quick pitch for tomas is that you get to play Fazeal. Fazeal is a cruise missile of a monster. He explodes everything he touches and is relatively hard to deal with especially in tomas which provides him with a lot of survivability that he wouldn’t have normally.
To understand his power, first read decapitation and tomas effigy power. Yes this means you can roll a judgment symbol and 2 hits to decap, which will be doing 12 damage total against a 0 res model. This is very easy to achieve in theory, but unlikely to happen in practice, because Fazeal will get banned.
So what else brings you to Tomas? Well, while fazeal may not be in your warband in practice, building a strategy around him still creates a powerful gameplan. If you’re familiar with overwatch, we’re building dive comp. Tomas effigy power and warband bonus both heavily benefit fast characters that are able to pick off squishy members of the backline. Look at Kain, Rakir, and Nephenee all of which are in god for tomas.
Let’s look at a Sample List
Here is what I’ve been running in 5s
- Fazeal
- Nephenee
- Kain
- Onkura
- Marcus
- Zhim’gigrak
- Kruul
So the list breaks down into 3 assassins, 2 tanks, and 2 supports. I’m going to break out the list into more specifics as I go.
Fazeal – aka Fazolis
He turns your opponent into red paste
Fazeal is as I’ve stated above, an absolute killer. Decapitation and mounted often allows him to put up 8-12 damage in a single attack. Plus the ability to apply poison or curse and then use contagion to further debuff opponents means he is both good as the tip of the spear, charging in and setting up nephenee or kain for kills on already damaged and cursed enemies, but also as a sort of low health seeking missile, cleaning up a low health enemy and getting health back from the warband bonus and leech along the way.
Additionally if he gets a kill and dies I often don’t feel too bad about it because he is undead, so any kill he gets puts the soul onto another character. Usually you want this to be kruul, onkura or markus, but neph or kain aren’t bad options either.
Verdict – Must take
Kain – He’s here to kill
Really we all are
I gotta be honest, I understand the theoretical reason you take kain. He’s good against teams with a lot of regen, and he’s able to operate against models that are immune to poison or curse, but I think he lacks the explosive potential of nephenee or Fazeal. He’s also a lot easier to kill than both of them. Additionally being a demon pushes this warband up to 4 on the demon / undead count meaning Isabel is often a must ban. Verdict – examine replacing with Rakir.
Nephenee – Goes where she pleases
What do you mean she can make that charge?
Nephenee’s card does not look like anything insane, but every time I play her I am more impressed. She is consistently able to just be wherever she wants to on the map and output consistently high damage. Nimble, pathfinder, fly, dash, basically reads “Can make that charge” even if that isn’t exactly what it says. Dual wield means that you can consistently put up 6-8 points of damage on a charge before you use her laser storm. More if you can combine her with something like kruul giving her bloodlust.She also has AGI 5 which makes her a pain to kill in one activation.
However, she really struggles against anything with res. If she can’t do damage she can’t apply curse and do the laser storm. 1 on a glance 2. On a solid means that with res 2 you have to crit to do damage. Armor shredder is a frequent buy on her.
Verdict – Strongly recommend
Onkura – Surprise favorite
Bustin makes me feel good
Onkura is listed under my tank section, but more often she acts as a support. Yes she has res 2 against melee attacks but her primary use is as a debuff support. She’s able to use the bell to make it hard for your opponent to win scrums in the middle without burning a fate to deal with the bell. She’s able to shred armor and take down opponent’s RES, and she’s real hard to kill, which is a benefit. She is unlikely to do a lot of damage, but she’s not meant to.
Verdict – Highly recommend
Marucs – The great wall
We’re gonna build a wall and we’re gonna make our opponents pay for it
Without Sharn, Marcus is your only dedicated res 2 model in tomas. He’s a pain to chew through and is able to set up beneficial charges by applying knock down to your opponent’s back line. The wall is funny and often can make it hard for your opponent to collapse behind you when you dive their back line. It’s nice that nephenee can basically ignore it.
My big problem is that the wall is often as much of a hindrance as it is a help. It makes it difficult for fazeal and kain to get off charges and he otherwise doesn’t set up charges for your assassins.
Verdict- Maybe look at sharn? He is very good, but i think that sharn is better because she can force your opponents models out of position instead of expecting you to be able to get a charge and then support it.
Zhim’gigrak – Wrath of the lich king
Aka Z money, G money, the Gigs, Zaron 2: Tokyo Drift, Best Wizard in the game
Zhim’gigrak is mostly annoying. Swap menas that you can get him out of a jam when appropriate, and use him to set up deep charges. Freeze turns AGI tanks into freezer dinners, and Z Money can apply it with ease. As a soulless model with SH 4 it’s not unlikely for him to quash a soul and pick up a level. Standing on a shrine can tax your opponent’s fate. Plus at MAG 8, he’s able to put chip damage up on most targets. He won’t top frag, but is often a secret MVP.
The major downsides are he is undead, and he doesn’t have a melee profile. Being undead makes him a juicy target for a dive, because his kill nets a banked soul. Not having a melee profile, means that if he lives, he won’t help whoever comes back to collapse on him. He is a weird model to use because of that.
Verdict – try him at least once. If you don’t like him look at aschell, viktor, or masuzi
Kruul – Tomas Secret favorite
The real reason you play fazeal is so they leave kruul legal
Kruul is a menace. He is your only soulgazer, and has SH 6 but he usually only does that once / game. More often he is just a bloodlust machine. Giving a 1ap charge means you can set up some really gross turns with nephenee where she can take AGI 4 RES 0 models from 15 health to 0. Or with fazeal (if someone leaves these two legal at the same time), where he can pick up sometimes two kills with 2-3 decapitations. Being able to strip souls off of enemy models is also neat, but can frustrate charges if you need to stand where the soul is. Transferrence means you often want him to stand near an ally, which you want to anyway since you want to be giving them bloodlust. Additionally in melee he can apply curse, which works with Neph and Fazeal to use their abilities to do extra damage.
Verdict – Strongly recommend. This list is secretly built around kruul, so swapping him out means likely swapping other picks in the list. Masuzi is the next best contender though.
Other Options
Aschell
I’ve not played with him, but have played against him. He’s a menace that would probably require more dedicated support, but in this list he probably goes in the zhim slot. He provides pin, burn, and a source of damage that’s pretty good at chewing through res. Instead of being used to set up your turns he can be used to lock opponents frontline in place before sending in a proper assassin
Rakir and Masuzi
Well well well, if it isn’t the blowjob brothers
I mentioned both of these earlier, but if you’re going to swap out Kruul, the one you’re probably looking at is Masuzi. Masuzi is differently powerful than kruul in that he doesn’t let you set up insane long bomb charges, but he’s good for applying poison, applying curse and punishing enemy models that end up with lots of souls on them. Decay is very good against high AGI models and is also good at trapping a model in a useless spot. Devour reads insane, but is often hard to find a use for, especially when pain reflector, suppress, and physical augmentation are much more obviously powerful. If you’re bringing him, you’re likely to also bring Rakir.
Out of Krognar Rakir isn’t as hyper mobile, but he still has the ability to get out of dodge in a pinch. He has slightly less mobility than nephenee but more consistent damage against high res targets, especially with masuzi in the list.
I’d drop kruul and neph for these two and I think the list would still be killer
Yorgawth
The honorary third blowjob brother
I might also consider bringing yorgawth in either the onkura slot or the zhim slot if you’re taking rakir, this works in theory but at that point, might be worth looking at krognar.
Sharn
Take her instead of Marcus
Really all I have to say. Get Behind me is crazy, and she’s better at protecting your frontline assassins and setting up charges by forcing models out of place.
The Kvarto Eval
Talking out my ass a little
I have not played Kvarto, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but they look worth examining. First you have access to Aschell, who is a very powerful 2ap attack that you can do out of sequence with mind control. Second, they can apply poison and burn, which are things you’re looking for. Burn to cut back on healing, and poison for rakir and fazeal reasons. I’d try them in either the tank slot or the zhim slot. You probably still want fazeal in the list with them, but you really probably want Rakir, Masuzi, and Aschell in the list with them.
Drelgoth
He was in the picture, why aren’t you talking about him?
I used him in the 3v3 tournament and was mid. Now I may be stupid. In Tomas, you usually just want to explode an enemy and not apply consistent damage like Drelgoth does. The challenge ability is in fact very good, but again, you’re often able to create situations where your opponent’s squishier targets are out of place and capitalize on them. Could you take Drelgoth? Yes. Is this the best warband to take Drelgoth in? Probably not.
Viktor
You must be at least this tall to ride
I have not played viktor. I have not read Viktor. I have not played against Viktor. My intuition is that you could replace Zhim with him, but that is purely based on VibesTM
God Eval
Diamond Armor
Diamond armor is a very funny item. It can be used to make your assassins harder to collapse on and take the souls off of, or to make your soulists harder to kill, and allow them to be more disruptive. Putting it on Nephenee, masuzi, fazeal, rakir, or aschell are all defensible decisions, though I’d lean towards not aschell, as ideally he’s in the back line and not getting touched.
Warband Bonus
The warband bonus is all about extending your dives. It rewards carefully planning your activation order to let low health models get some life back on them. Kain really benefits from it because you can use your health as a resource, but so do nephenee, fazeal and rakir in that they can just live longer. It also benefits you if you do pick up some monster kills.
Effigy power – Virtuoso
Getting cheaper access to decap, viper strike, phase shift etc is what you’re here for. You also get two “Blessing of tomas” (henceforth funny fate) tokens that you can spend like real fate, they just go away at the end of the turn. You can use it to help recover from a fate deficit, but just letting ‘er rip when you have a profitable charge set up is honestly worthwhile. Most of your damage comes from 2S maneuvers (or 1S+1J for decapitation) so having access to something that can decrease those to 1S is very good.
This is where someone smarter than me would write like 8 pages on how you really should consider it turn 2 or turn 3 or 4, but I’m dumb as hell, so I just let ‘er rip when I think I can pick up some kills.
Plus it turns on your
Avatar Bonus – Fazeal is kinda cheffing it up huh
It makes fazeal crazy on the charge. If you have fazolis in the list, you probably want to let your effigy power rip even earlier, just because you can make even longer bomb charges and have even more consistent access to decapitation or other items.
How do you play the game?
I’ve been hitting it over the head quite often, but this list is really good at punishing your opponents for making a mistake, and forcing them to make those mistakes. You usually end up with two members of your holy trinity of assassins, your soulgazer, and two of your flex picks.
Jungle Monsters
You are usually able to kill monsters because they are usually out of position. Typically having one of your chumps setup and then having an assassin finish it off. You can use something like kruul, to buy, swap, bloodlust and then send said assassin in with the hunters knife to pick up an almost guaranteed kill against anything but the tier four monsters. This can guarantee a crucial level two on your assassin, and can put them forward enough to charge your enemies. If Jungle Monsters come back you can often maneuver around them or manipulate them to your advantage by forcing them into your opponents front or back line.
Shrines
If there’s a scrum in the middle over a shrine, using your tanks to contest it is probably a good idea. If it’s not in the middle having an undead like Zhim, or having your soulist stand on it aren’t bad ideas. You can usually swing the fate war in your favor because of your access to funny fate from virtuoso, so paradoxically you can afford to lose it a little and then win it anyways. You still should consider taking and holding control of some shrines, but you don’t have a dedicated shrine monkey, and with potentially two undead on the board you actually aren’t likely to win that war if it comes to it.
Diving the effigy
While not impossible, it’s usually best to pick up the last ~4 points of damage. I wouldn’t reliably expect to take more than that from a dive.
Soul Harvest
You have one dedicated soulist in your list (Kruul or Masuzi depending on preference) and then a handful of off soulists. This means that you can reasonably expect to pick up one or two souls off the pits throughout the course of a game, but I wouldn’t expect to win the game that way.
This is entirely unscientific, but I have won games, because rakir just rolled a 10 on his soul harvest, so now I just assume he’ll be able to make it in case of an emergency. Building your game plan around this is a bad idea, but if you have no other options sometimes you just have it.
Itemization
Items are pretty straightforward. You have a support that typically doesn’t want or need one, and then your main damage dealers who do. The vorpal blade is funny to put on Fazeal or Rakir or Kain to guarantee that you can blow up your enemy. Armor Shredder almost always goes on Nephenee Heartseeker goes on Aschell if you can manage and you can put the Ring of Power on Zhim if you really want to. Diamond armor is going to be your primary defensive item, and like I said before it is funny to put on any of your non-defender models, except maybe Zhim and Onkura. It can make your assassins harder to kill, meaning your opponent often has to dedicate more than they expected, or it can make kruul or masuzi up to what is likely res 2. Bloodsucker and Boots of agility are both generically good and can be put on crucial targets to keep them alive longer. Hunter’s Knife is not something you’ll keep on for a while, but can be bought, used to kill a monster in melee, then sold immediately for armor shredder or vorpal blade.