My Favourite Two Minions

The Guild has some excellent Minions. Death Marshalls and Hunters are great for controlling bits of the board, Watchers make awesome scheme runners, and the Guardian is brilliant in its own right. But out of all the Minions we have to choose from, there's two that stand out to me as must-owns for any Guild player: the Guild Austringer and the Guild Lawyer. Both of these Minions offer good board control, utility, and scheming abilities.

Every Guild player should endeavor to own at least one Austringer, if not two. There aren't many times when you won't see at least one Austringer hunkered down at the back of a Guild crew. What makes them so useful is that their two most useful actions, Raptor & Delliver Orders, don't require Line of Sight and have an enormous range. The Raptor is the Austringer's primary shooting attack, and it's one of the better ones in the game because it doesn't require LOS to the target and it completely ignores cover. Given that the range jumps up to 18 inches when you focus, and that the Raptor can trigger either Critical Strike or Distract (which causes the attack to deal no damage but forces your opponent to discard two cards from their hand), this really is a beauty. But the thing I love most about Austringers is the out-of-activation scheming they can make other models do. Deliver Orders allows you to push a friendly model within 18 inches (which you don't need Line of Sight to either) 2 inches in any direction and take a (1) interact action. This is useful for getting down Scheme Markers quickly, getting models out of combats you don't want them in, and can make Marker-based strategies like Squatter's Rights and Headhunter much easier. There really isn't much an Austringer can't do, just make sure you deploy them in terrain and out of your opponent's Line of Sight, and they'll work an absolute treat. Seriously, if you play Guild get yourself at least one of these.

There's been a lot of discussion on the Wyrd forums and in other places about how to use Austringers, so I'm going to switch over and talk about the Guild Lawyer now. These fine fellows are my favourite Wave 2 Minion, and work surprisingly well in a number of different crews. They have an average walk of 5, but an above average Defense and Willpower of 6. Toss in Finish the Job and Highest Authority and the Lawyer can actually be a pretty nifty little Schemer. But the Lawyer's real strengths come in crew support. Reminder of a Worse Fate gives friendly models within a 6 inch aura a Plus Flip to Horror Duels, which can be a godsend against certain crews. This makes it a lot easier to deal with Resurrectionist or Neverborn crews, which tend to have one or two Terrifying models (like the Hanged or Coppelius for example). Just about every faction has ways of making you take Horror Duels, so even though this ability was obviously intended to synergize with Lucius, it can help any crew. 

All that being said, let's talk about the back of the Lawyer's card. Their first attack action, OBJECTION!!!, is a melee based Casting action, resisted by Willpower, that will always do 2 damage regardless of what you flip (barring Jokers of course). This attack doesn't do a lot of damage, but if you flip or cheat Moderate damage your target gains Slow, or if you flip or cheat Severe damage the target gains Paralyzed. There's also a trigger to hand out Poison +2, which makes McMourning very happy. You probably won't be using this action too often, but for its weak damage it can do some lovely things to an unsuspecting opponent. The Lawyer's other attack action is the ranged Special Damages, which is also a Casting action resisted by Willpower, and can target non-Leader models. It's got a nice range of 12 inches, but it deals no damage. Instead the target gains a stackable condition called Fees +1, which they retain for the rest of the game. Whenever a model with the Fees condition completes an attack action that dealt damage, the model suffers +1 damage. Basically, the enemy model takes damage every time they do damage to you. This can serve as a deterrent to most of the big killy models in the opposing crew if you can get the Fees total up to 4 or 5 on a single target. And since it lasts for the rest of the game (unless they have a way to remove Conditions) your opponent will really have to think twice about killing your models, lest they lose their own. Prime targets for Special Damages should be models like Howard Langston, Killjoy, Vik of Blood, Lord Chompy Bits, Nekima, or any of the other big scary model killers.

The last thing on the Lawyer's card is the (0) action Impassioned Defense. This is cast on a 6 of any suit because the required Tome is built in, and has a trigger on a double Tome to take the action again. It has a 10 inch range and gives the target Hard to Wound +1 until the end of the turn. And once again, it's a stackable condition. You can make a couple of models Hard to Wound, or if you really want to give your opponent a headache you can cast it on the same target. If you can hit the trigger two Lawyers working together can cover 4 models with Hard to Wound +1, 2 models Hard to Wound +2, or one model Hard to Wound +4. Target models like Death Marshalls or the Peacekeeper that already have Hard to Wound and it only gets more fun. And since it doesn't say "Target non-Leader model" you can use it to make Masters like Lady Justice, Perdita, and McMourning more survivable. Of course enemy models that ignore Hard to Wound aren't going to care how many times you use this action, but if they can't ignore it a Peacekeeper with Hard to Wound +5 can be brilliant for tilling cards out of your opponents' decks and tanking entire crews.