Guide to Warpath: Veer-Myn Starter Force

Following on from yesterday’s look at the Enforcer Starter Force, today we will be going over another army set in detail – the insidious Veer-Myn. These secretive creatures seemed to have followed mankind expansion across the stars and now stand ready to strike from the shadows.

At fifty-one miniatures, the Veer-Myn Starter Force has the highest model count of the new sets – a true horde of vicious rodents to overwhelm other forces! The main core of the force is made up of Nightcrawler infantry. Rather than being fielded as large units as you might expect, Nightcrawlers are instead limited to small teams of five. On the tabletop, this plays in an odd way, saturating your opponent with more targets than they could possibly hope to counter. Whilst each unit is weak on their own, when used in cohesion they can be very powerful – this is the basis on which the Veer-Myn force is built.

Each Nightcrawler unit can be upgraded with a Malignus – this is a cross between a heavy weapon operator and a leader. These can be used to add potent (if unstable) firepower to a unit, making one of your tiny Nightcrawler units suddenly very dangerous. If you don’t fancy fighting at range, then you can swap your Nightcrawlers for Stalkers. These close-quarters troops sacrifice range for more attacks in close combat. As melee combat in Warpath is difficult to pull off, but deadly when you succeed, making use of your Stalkers in terrain to get to your opponent’s forces can give you a big advantage in battles. The Starter Force includes forty Hard Plastic Nightcrawlers, who can also be built as Stalker and include parts to build a Malignus per every five miniatures, armed with either a Heavy Ray Gun or Chem-Thrower.

The main drawback to all of these cheap units is that they are Expendable, which means that they can’t claim objectives. They really wouldn’t hold well if they needed to, so it is better to use these units to tie your opponent down, while the larger and more important squads in your army focus on the objectives.

Speaking of large, the Starter Force also includes eight Hard Plastic Nightmares. These are Large Infantry, who are both more powerful and more resilient than their smaller cousins. Each one carries a Chem-Thrower and Combat Drill as standard, wielding one of each of these cumbersome weapons on each arm. Like many Veer-Myn units, they are good in close range with short range weapons and powerful melee attacks. You can take these in large units of up to six, which a range of upgrades available. A shredder Team replaces the Chem-Throwers for a second Combat Drill, for a pure melee unit; a Ravager Team has a Heavy Combat Drill, which is capable of boring through and enemy tank’s hull, and finally you can upgrade a Team with a Heavy Chem-Thrower, for more ranged support. While the Nightcrawlers distract your opponent, use these units to get the important tasks done. Saturating an Objective with a Chem-Thrower, before moving in for the kill would be a great way of dealing with an entrenched unit.

The Night Terror is a double-edged sword. As you might have gathered from this article. The key to fighting with the Veer-Myn army is to hide from sight and get in close, whether this is using terrain, or your own units as cover. The Night Terror exemplifies this with its Unseen Terror special rule; a Night Terror, cannot be targeted by shooting attacks if it is within six inches of at least three Nightcrawler units. However, if it is not within range at the beginning of a turn, then it may randomly attack the nearest unit – friend or foe! For this considerable drawback, you will get a lightning fast creature that is a good as a whole team of Nightmares in assault. You can even fit a Chem-Sprayer to it’s back, so that you can engage foes from the ‘safe’ cover of your Nightcrawlers units. The Starter Force includes one of the these deadly monsters.

Finally, the army set includes two Progenitors – one armed with a Spitter Rifle and another with a Chemical Grenade Launcher. These are upgrades to Nightcrawler units, providing those valuable Command Dice and orders to coordinate your force as a whole.. The main order the Veer-Myn will use is Swarm. This order allows your to activate multiple Nightcrawler units at the same time, so you can focus your attention (or firepower) on one objective. Basically, you can get the drop on your opponent by out pacing them with your own units.

As with the other armies, the Veer-Myn have a new character kit out, too. This set lets you build either a Master Creeper or the infamous Hacker Half-Tail. Both of these are commanders designed to mess with objectives. They come with the Sabotage Objective order, which can be used to damage or even destroy objectives, preventing them from being claimed by your opponent – if you can’t have it, then no one can. They also come with Recon, which allows them to set up ahead of the rest of your force, so you can use them to disrupt your opponent’s plans from turn one.

Speaking of disruption, it’s Hacker Half-Tail’s special ability. A Master Creeper so devious that even his own kind won’t trust him, Hacker can use his Disruption rule to deny one enemy unit access to one of their special rules – or worse! He carries improvised explosives into battle which are strong enough to penetrate enemy armour and is a still a decent force commander in his own right. You might notice that he pairs well with the Veer-Myn Creepers, who aren’t released yet – don’t worry! We’ll be sorting something out for your guys in that regard very soon!

Don’t forget, you can pre-order the Veer-Myn Starter Force and the Master Creeper/Hacker Half-Tail (or any of the new sets) now or pick them up from all good hobby stores in May!