Some of my favorite Dark Age miniatures and concepts are with Saint Luke and the Forsaken. Dark Age is one of those games that I love to get in when I get the chance. This holiday season, its time to bring out the Abominations and let them run wild.
In the meantime, Saint Luke is getting some updates, and here is what was just released about them. I definitely need to get my Dark Age new rulebook soon, and pick up some of these models. This is one of my favorite skirmish games to play.
via Mr. Black from Dark Age
http://dark-age.com/index.php
So why did we reconfigure the Saint-in-the-Machine? Well basically we saw some issues in his troops, namely we liked how they functioned, but on a power-to-cost level many players just weren't taking them. A few reasons for this but namely it was a combination of high cost and low wounds. We do believe this is a certain play-style, and we didn't want to take this from Luke and his crew, but we also saw the issues (namely with the Stingers) that having an expensive melee-based troop with only one wound is a problem. I'll leave the specific changes to their entry below:
Saint Luke (Mantis Style)
+Gained "Pop Smoke"
Explanation: Luke in his Mantis form was usually the go-to way to outfit him, and we honestly didn't have a big issue with how he currently functioned. Given our changes to the Stingers, however, we felt it didn't make since to buff them and leave those same buffs off of Luke. Overall, we feel Mantis Style is fundamentally strong and balanced with the 2013 updates, so little change was needed.
Saint Luke (Dragon Style)
+Lost Restricted
+RoF increased on Shotgun to "2"
+Point Blank added to Shotgun
-AG#1 (Combat Blade) removed
Explanation: Dragon Luke was the black sheep of the Saints: Seldom fielded, usually overshadowed by his Mantis counterpart. We mitigated this by allowing this 130 point model to actually make more than 1 attack a round (his old Combat Blade didn't count). We pushed to focus him more on a hit-and-run skirmisher by adding the extra RoF on his Shotgun, as well as allowing him to use both his Combat Shotgun as well as his Grenade Launcher each round, allowing this Saint to put out a level of firepower on par with the rest of the Saints.
Arsenal
+Lost Restricted
+RoF increased on Shotgun to "2"
+Point Blank added to Shotgun
-AG#1 (Combat Blade) removed
-Points reduced to "75"
Explanation: See the Luke (Dragon) listed above. In addition, we reduced the points to 75. Overall, we feel with the changes we have a terrifyingly high damage output model. Even with the changes, we still felt like a small points reduction was warranted simply to bring the Arsenals more in line with models of their cost. They are still the most expensive 1 wound model for their points in the game, but are now one of the hardest to kill with the ability to Pop Smoke and use their Grenade Launcher for an additional Smoke Cloud reach round, while still keeping the utility of their RoF 2 Combat Shotgun.
Stinger
+Gained "Pop Smoke"
+Points reduced to "65"
+AS reduced to "7"
Explanation: Arsenals were the go-to model for Luke throughout his existence, with players seldom investing the points in the equally expensive Stingers while the Arsenal existed. We still want to keep the central Luke feel of heavily equipped 1 wound models, so merely giving them an extra wound was a route we didn't want to take. To level it out, however, we have reduced their points to "65", meaning Luke now has access to a mid-cost troop type, bringing him in line with the rest of the saints. In addition, we have given them "Pop Smoke", thus removing their reliance on Arsenals/Ravages to survive. We now hope to have the Stingers be a highly model, highly offensive unit that has the means to keep itself a live while still having a level of fragility seen in the rest of Luke's playstyle.
Get your updates in the link below (they will be added to the Forsaken Card Document in the coming day):