Priory Commander Crimson Tower - Unit Guide (english)

Priory Commander Crimson Tower
The boss of the Mörderponys (murder ponies) is like them, only better.

Overview

The values are a wet dream and actually only Cleave is missing to make me completely happy. Clash 4 with 6 attacks are excellent and also 4 impacts with Brutal Impacts 2 and everything benefits from Terrifying 1. There is simply nothing to complain about on offense and defense with D4 R 4 W6 for 110 points. He doesn't win duels with it, but he doesn't lose them outright either. Movement 8 could be confusing because the Order of the Sealed Temple has Movement 8 and the commander can belong to both orders. This changes the Warband and its special rules somewhat, but we will only discuss the variant of the murder ponies aka Crimson Tower here. It's important to know that all of the regiment's attacks benefit from Terrifying when the character is in base contact with the opposing regiment. Therefore, it is usually wiser to position the commander centrally.

The biggest drawback of the commanders is that they only ever have one mainstay and that is always the order from which they emerged. In other words, the commander of the Order of the Crimson Tower only has the order selected as mainstay and all other orders as restricted. This limits the usefulness a little bit, but since there are only Ashen Dawn and Crimson Tower out of the entire Warband, it's not important.

Like all commanders, he can receive "The First Blessing" as Supremacy, which is nice and, depending on the situation, extremely powerful. Once per game, all regiments in his Warband receive Blessed. If you already have the Blessed special rule, you can also get Hardend 1 or +1 attack until the end of the round instead. The latter is very interesting for Ashen Dawn because with Hardend 1 and D4 they can only receive very, very little damage. The important thing about Blessed is that you can only use it for dice rolls that come from a charge or clash action. In other words, also for Impacts and Lethal Demise, but not for Aura of Dead or Trample..

Common Equipment, Retinues and Masteries
The Commander is not allowed to buy heirlooms by default and is usually played without equipment or with Disording Strikes. If you choose Long Lineage you have access to the entire heirlooms and there are essentially two popular options. On the one hand Olefants Roar which allows +1 Clash and Terrifying 1 to cause impacts of the regiment. This is particularly interesting with larger Crimson Tower blocks, even if they are unfortunately a bit overpriced. The second alternative is the Armor of Dominion, which is preferred if the character is to stand in Ashen Dawn and thus protect them from Cleave. Both are nice and involve a high point investment.

What's new and great now is the option for Eccentric Fighting Style. This gives him +2 attacks and rerolls for all attacks, including impacts. Unfortunately, for this, in a duel, you have to repeat all successful armor saves. I would buy it immediately if I weren't always so stingy and would rather buy one more stand of bowmen for it.

Conclusion: Good character who is happy to have the best unit in the army book as a restricted selection.