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This Tower Fights Back
A Baxtar’s War Preview by Scott Gerhardt
September 20, 2006

So today I have been charged with releasing to you a new piece from Baxtar’s War. It got e-mailed over to me, and I had to blink a couple times to make sure I was reading it correctly. My first instinct was that it was good….real good. Now while I’m decent at Dreamblade, I wanted to consult someone who I knew was just awesome. So, I picked up the phone and give DCI Ranked #9 in the World Carl “Tony” Reddish a call.

“Hey Tony – I got this piece that I think is good but I want to get your opinion…” I start by telling him what it does, and I think he’s a bit taken aback by it. “That thing fits into the mono-Madness deck so well,” he said. We both agreed that the piece was good, and almost silly as a mere uncommon. This could be the piece that fixes a ton of problems that Madness had. Let’s give those a quick look.

#1 – Pearlhorn Castle. This thing is a real pain in the butt for any Warband. Having this little location sit there and annoy you constantly with it’s ability to shift things here and there, causing Brighthammer Carnage and the Warcharm right into the thick of the butt kicking can be a problem. Then again, what can you do about it? Slaughter Boots? Yeah, it’s an option but certainly not a great one. If only you could maybe stop the Castle before it go to where it was going. Since the rules say you can only have 1 location in a cell……

#2 – Awful blades. Madness has a history of having good guys with bad blade abilities. They tend to screw each other up pretty bad when you get a lot of dice and blades coming up. The good dumps for things like this, like Book of Nothing, are so fragile and die real easy. If only you could come up with a good, reliable way to dump blades as to avoid the ugly abilities associated with those dirty blade abilities…….

#3 – Gotta be fast. Madness’s thing is that it comes out of the gates hard and fast. It will dump things all over the board and swarm you before you know what hit you. You need something that is going to stay in that category. Sure, something can be amazing, but if it’s spawn cost is 11 there is a good chance it will never hit a Madness board. You need something lean and mean and can come flying out with friends……

Lemme see. One…check. Two….check. Three….check. Yeah, it looks like we have a winner. And now, I give you: Tower of Faces:

Man do we have a nice slice of hell here for you. Being a location, we’ll get it into those key cells before the castle can find it’s way there and get it dropped down. That will keep our opponent from being able to take it for their shifting pleasure. Having a double blade ability means that those mean Madness guys will have a place to put their ill-guided blades to do something not just good, but straight up devastating. Finally, with a spawn cost of only 5, it will be just as fast as Madness needs, knowing that it will always be able to spawn this thing out and get it set.

Playing this guy along with the up-and-coming Darkheart Cottage will give Madness enough solid locations to do what it needs to. Now though, those bigger fatties that can change the game can come into play, sit with the Tower, and start wrecking all the come in their way, and also wreck a few things that come in before they get in their way. This will give mono-Madness so many more options for Warband construction by allowing them to play creatures that might otherwise be sub-optimal. It also allows you to maybe drop out your Unspeakable Freak, who has the same devastating potential, but is much more fragile with it having to be in a scoring cell and eating up 7 valuable spawn points.

Of course, this does have the standard location drawback. You have to get the battle in that cell, or it’s no good. You need to find a way to force a battle, so this thing will likely be much better in opponents’ scoring cells making it a little harder to drop down. That should not be too much of a problem since you’re planning on swarming out the board anyway.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little preview, and until next time, keep playing!