Yuan Bo - a review

[Ferreus the Umbral Arrow]

Finished the campaign on the RoC map, to see what story there is. Finished on Very Hard.
Want to talk about how he plays, faction wise.

First, the units. Crowmen are nice. Super fast, when you buff them up, they can melt low armored units. In auto resolve, they are like the lizardmen's revivacation crystal - as in the auto resolve likes to kill them. So, be mindful.
They also remind me of Little Nicky lol - "I deserve this! I Deserve this!"
Also, they seem to behead units a lot. Watching them, they jump up and boom, there goes a head.

Jade and Jet lions. They are fun to watch. Not as GOOD as Tomb Scorpions for what their role is in a fight. Jade is less useful imo. The Jet lions have two charges of the mirror shield which can reflect missiles back at a unit. I ran 3 in my army, 3 crowmen one being the RoR and the RoR wardrum.
Speaking of the wardrum. It's actually pretty good. The AoE is wide enough to cover your front line unless you are going super wide. The +24 armor is great when you have lore of metal to further buff, and jade shield. Your frontline just feels immortal. RoR version has a stance that gives you movement speed which is nice too when either chasing down a routing army or moving your army into position faster.

Yuan Bo's Wu Xing compass victory. You have to go and capture certain cities. Two of which is within cathay on the RoR map. So, kill your siblings lol.
Other two are in and around the darklands.
Final battle is a joke. Super easy.

His faction mechanic of balancing the steel and jade is fun enough, with nice rewards. Nothing tooooo special or mindblowing as mechancis go, but isn't terrible.

The best thing about Yuan Bo is Yuan Bo himself. He is FANTASTIC at just destroying infantry units. His animations are awesome too. His execution ability also means he can duel well enough, even if his natural weapon damage is low.

Lastly the new Celestial General, generic lord, is actually pretty good too. Also a beast at dealing with blobs.

All in all, I think Yuan Bo is a great addition to the roster, a lot of fun, and the units he adds to the faction via this DLC were actually useful.
Very much enjoyed his campaign.

Though it must be said, I am using the greater garrison mod and tier 3 walls mod to make the game feel like WH2 again. I recommend those mods tbh. They don't impact the game in a way that makes anything feel unbalanced or broken.

Now...try Ol' Stanky lol See how she does.

[Risotto]

Yeh Yuan Bo is alot of fun. Im really looking forward to when we get Li Dao and Yin Yin.

[Ferreus the Umbral Arrow]

Just finished Ol' Stanky's campaign on RoC, on very hard.

Units!

RoR Things in the woods is a must for MP in most scenarios. Other than that, the things in the woods are okay. They don't add too much to Kislev tbh, and they just look like a mix between the Vampire hounds and the wolf rats. Very underwhelming unit all around.

The Ambushers. They are better than I originally thought, especially the RoR, but....Kislev has a ton of missile units. These are vanguard, and so can be used in certain situations to net great value. Just again, more on the 'meh' side of things.

Incarnate Elemental is so unessential and forgettable, half the time I legit forgot I had him on the field. His mortis-like effect is meh, his animations are meh, he is VERY squishy. Skaven slaves can do a number on him. All around mehhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Hag heroes were nice to add. More hero options always are. Ostankya herself is okay. She has a heal, a swimming bear that does lots of dmg IF it hits. Mobile artillery. Her skill tree is very basic though. No love given her at ALL by CA.

Her mechanics are very basic, BUT the curse banners are fun. If you can maintain alliances and use her blessings on allied units, that is interesting. All an all, she's boring, the units don't add much to the roster - she's the worst of the three lords of this dlc.

[Darklordnj]

Got a link to your Changeling review or is that next?

[Havean]

Thanks for writing these outs. It's nice reading your thoughts on the lords.
TO me the unit choices just seem so random, a flying unit, a drum and a weaker statue unit. There doesn't seem to be any reason to go crows when Cathay is all about balance and units supporting each other.

[Filthy Pollo 🐔]

I love War Drum, which proves useful since it has 3 selective auras against some specific factions, if daemon or undead, I would use psycological immunity.

[Ferreus the Umbral Arrow]

Originally posted by Darklordnj:

Got a link to your Changeling review or is that next?

next :)

[Ferreus the Umbral Arrow]

Originally posted by Havean:

Thanks for writing these outs. It's nice reading your thoughts on the lords.
TO me the unit choices just seem so random, a flying unit, a drum and a weaker statue unit. There doesn't seem to be any reason to go crows when Cathay is all about balance and units supporting each other.

The crows are cheap harrassing units that are fast, has a high model count, and serve a few functions. They can run interference for sky lanterns/junk. They can quickly get to enemy missile units. Mainly a lower cost version of longma riders, BUT can be buffed in campaign and do very well against most missile units and even some of the higher cost flying units. They dumpster rot flies for example.

[arcseed]

Hell, the crows are straight up the best high model count flyers in the game. They can even hold their own all right against lower tier ground infantry, and with easy flank and rear attacks I feel are a valuable addition to an early melee line.

[Darklordnj]

Originally posted by One and Only Kell Ursa:

Incarnate Elemental is so unessential and forgettable, half the time I legit forgot I had him on the field. His mortis-like effect is meh, his animations are meh, he is VERY squishy. Skaven slaves can do a number on him. All around mehhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Just wanted to say that incarnate elemental does not technically have a mortis engine effect, they have a constant AoE flock of doom, which means the damage can be resisted and is impacted by armor. So the effect is decent against low tier trash units, not so much against anything else. Aside from that, the beast is more useful against SEMs than infantry and is probably best treated like other giant units, where it should be mixed in with other infantry units of yours.

Other than that, I kinda agree that comparatively to Cathay, Kislev got a bit of the shorter end of the stick with most of the new units not really covering any obvious holes. They are slightly better options for what they already have I guess. Whereas most of Cathay’s new stuff really helps support their existing strengths. On the plus side though, at least Kislev has more variation in what lores of magic they have access to, which helps open things up a bit more for them.