 |
| The Skinwalker Alpha |
The Warpborn Skinwalkers Unit Attachment, the Alpha
As I mentioned in my previous post, when the Warpborn Skinwalkers were released, they were heavily criticized because of their similarity to, and inferiority to, Gatormen Posse. A really awesome aspect of Warmachine/Hordes is that you aren't locked into the army list in a book. Whenever Privateer Press wants to add a new unit or character they can, they simply release the unit with a corresponding stat card and voila, its legitimate. That's what they did with the Warpborn Skinwalkers in the form of a leader attachment, the Warpborn Alpha. This aspect also comes into the fact that you can always be excited about new releases and don't have to wait for an entirely new army book, like in 40k, although it seems like that may be changing with all the new dynamics coming into play.
This guy has all of the positives of the Skinwalkers. He is slightly better in combat and adds to the unit's effectiveness with another body, but his abilities make a huge difference. His most important ability allows the entire unit to make 2 attacks each with their only weapon, doubling their damage output with their formidable halberds with reach. The second ability doesn't come up as much, but is really cool and handy to have. It allows any member of the unit that kills a living model to immediately regenerate some wounds from eating its victim. Pretty sweet right? Both of those rules apply to the entire unit with the Alpha in play, and even if the Alpha dies, they keep their bonus attack. He also has the individual ability to make an immediate attack back on any model that hits him, which is a fun touch.
 |
| The braided hair makes no sense, but looks cool |
 |
| The Alpha joined by his pack |
I love this model; its one of the models that caught my eye when I was first looking at Warmachine. I was pretty excited when I found out how useful it is in the game so I was stoked to get it and paint it. I went a different direction from the rest of my Skinwalkers with the color so he would stand out. Its a small nod to my original fantasy army, Lizardmen from Warhammer. In their fluff, albino lizardmen were destined to be great leaders, and I thought the white wolf paint scheme would look good. I think it turned out well.
Let me know what you think of the scheme and the unit in general.