Hobby Update: Abyssal Succubi

After the doubles tournament back in June (Game 1 here, with a link to the next game at the end of the each post), I was inspired by my partner, Leif, to dig out some old purchases of mine. Up now are a new pair of Succubi units for the Forces of the Abyss!

Both Regiments.

The minis are from Wrath of Kings, a now-defunct CMON game. I picked up two boxes of Nasier Bloodmasks over the Pandemic when a saw the miniatures line being liquidated by an online shop. As I understand it the game had some neat miniatures, and a decent number of factions at launch. They seemed to be a great way to pick up Trident Realms at the time, and I think Chop from way back in Battle 006 approached his army this way. Most of the stock was gone by the time I saw the sale, but I picked up a few of these, figuring that I'd find a use for them eventually.

The minis did not come on sprues. I had heard some horror stories about them, like the injection quality being bad with multiple bubbles, or QA being bad with missing or incorrect bits. Thankfully, I had no issues. While prepping, I noticed that there was a bit of a residue on something, but I was not sure if it was the box’s shrinkwrap, the box, the individually-sealed minis or the minis themselves, so I sorted the minis by type so I wouldn't accidentally mix and match pieces (all the nubs were particular..), and gave them a rinse before assembly. The sculpts are pretty distinct, with each coming in four bits. The body (torso and legs), sword arm, shield arm, and mask. This was kind of slick, in that the arm sleeves were the whole bit, so the arm joins were easily disguised. My only complaint is that they went for a nub / peg on the torso to slide into the slim arms, which did not fit well, and split several bits when I didn’t quite orientate it correctly. I think the GW Daemonette approach with flat joins and the possibility to rotate the arms for greater pose variation would have been better? But with some patience, these were easy hurdles and the units were assembled quickly.

The roughly black / red / white color box scheme on the box was striking and simple, but I felt like I needed to swap things around to keep my army coloring consistent. To do so, the skin was became my usual reddish Pink Horror, and the sleeves and socks and such became a darker gray. I waffled on the colors for the shields and mask for quite some time, but the Masks became golden, and the shields got gold trim and then a white inset to be a bit ostentatious.

I think green stuffing hair onto the minis would have been a nice call, but I did not think of it until the unit was all done, and that was also more work than I was looking to do here and now. We are calling these done!

A bright and shiny shield brings a little more visual interest.

I actually already had three regiments of Succubi readied-up at one point, but soon after finishing them all up, I gifted the two non-kitbashed units away to someone wanting to start up a Slaaneshi army. I’ve run the remaining kitbashed unit a few times now, and while they have continually piqued my interest, I have really struggled with understanding it over the years. In my defense, they are an odd unit!

The first concern is damage dealing. Succubi have good hitting stats (20 attacks hitting on 3’s!), but with no other bonuses, they struggle to get through any amount of defense.

The second concern is survivability, because while they have Stealthy and Ensnare, having just Defense 3 and no Regeneration makes for a quite fragile unit in practice.

The second regiment.

In our prep for the Interstate Doubles tournament, my partner and I agreed to double-up on the  Forces of the Abyss, and he was swearing by his Succubi. When we started getting into actual list ideas though, I found that his Succubi were paying for both the Lurker upgrade and damage-boosting items. I admit that they did do some good work, but with so many extra points invested in the units, it felt almost hard for them not to deliver some respectable damage. They still struggled to survive games as well, so only one of my big concerns was addressed, despite some very big investments. 

Pathfinder is a weird option for them as well. I’ve viewed it as an offensive upgrade, and regarded it as a bit of a trap before. You buy it, and can then make some very nice charges, but without TC or CS, you need to invest further into items (like my partner did), or into supporting units with Bane Chant (90 pts for the Harbinger with Lute) before this upgrade becomes something really useful for offense. That is a big investment, and I tend to think points could be better spent elsewhere.

I think the Lurker needs to be viewed through a defensive lens though? Pathfinder isn’t for charges. It’s primarily for positioning. You use it to get your Succubi up into the woods can start stacking some nice negative penalties for your opponent to engage them. This could potentially pressure them to stay put, or allocate more to fighting them, or start forcing some bad trades.

Unfortunately, nothing else has Pathfinder and only the Chroneas and the Well of Souls have Strider, so very little in the army can take advantage of your opponent’s stuff making a terrible charge into Succubi and them managing to sticking around. And then we are again stuck a bit with the offensive output of the Succubi.

As my Herd can attest, the usefulness of Pathfinder relies a lot on your meta, so I don’t think the Lurker is a go-to or mandatory upgrade if you are running the unit. The nascent Wisconsin meta is still escalating into larger games, and is still a little light on terrain most of the time. After the Doubles Tournament though, I am hoping we incorporate more Height 0 difficult terrain into our tables. Overall, I still think the upgrade is a bit of a trap, but I think this is the logic for how to use it and include it. 

I’ll likely run them predominately un-upgraded for now though, and see where that takes me. They seem ideal for trashing low tier and/or low defense infantry (Zombies, Draugr, Penitents, etc), but a regiment of Succubi costs roughly double any of these units, so the ladies still might not be a sound investment, as not every army has these options or takes them regularly. In short, the unit still befuddles me, but I'll see what I might be able to figure out for these ladies after a fee games. Thanks again for a fun tournament, Leif!