I know it's been quite awhile since my last post. I'm going to try to get back to posting at least one or two articles a month. I have quite a bit to get caught up on at the moment as far as recapping episodes of the Chanting Conquest Podcast and some other articles I have planned. Today we are finishing the series of articles focused on a specific cult and what it does.
Before we get too deep into what the Cult of Conquest does we need to get into how using it actually works. Conquest is quite a bit different to the other three options in a few ways. First you don't really get to choose to have a warband follow it. Instead Conquest is limited to models with the Bellowing Roar* special rule, the cult of conquest, and any regiment joined by a character with the Teachings of Conquest tier 2 benefit. The Scion of Conquest follows the Cult of Conquest themself but does not automatically pass that on to their warband or any regiment they join. The Touched by the Goddess artifact similarly makes a character count as following the Cult of Conquest but does not impact their warband or any regiment they join.
These restrictions currently make it impossible to have either cavalry regiment or Warbred to count as Cult of Conquest. Remember a regiment can chant from any cult you have the tokens to activate unless they have the Bellowing Roar or Fanatic special rules so this restriction really just locks you out of ever reaching Tier 3 benefits with those regiments.
Secondly you don't use Conquest tokens to activate chants from the Cult of Conquest. Instead Conquest tokens are basically wild cards that are replaced with tokens from a Cult of your choosing when you chant. You activate chants from the Cult of Conquest by spending tokens from at least two different cults. This does not ever require you to discard tokens from a third cult although if you have three different you absolutely can. Three tokens from two different cults is enough to activate tier 2 of Conquest (or tier 3 if you also have Fanatic).
Now they we have the oddities of using Conquest out of the way let's jump into what we actually get out of it. Like every other cult we have three tiers of benefits and these benefits are cumulative - you get the bonuses from all the tiers below the one you actually purchase. Conquest focuses a little bit more on mobility than the power benefits of the other cults and that is readily apparent from the first tier. At tier 1 we get +3 inches of movement to our first March action. You do have to use an action on March to get the benefit but +3 inches is a substantial improvement for most of our regiments often being more than 50% additional movement on that March.
Conquest can be an excellent chant to trigger as a regiment enters the battlefield as that additional movement gives you a lot more flexibility in positioning. It's also an excellent buff on things like Tontorr or a Drumbeast as both of those are more than happy to March Charge into an opponent getting a nice increase in their immediate threat range for doing so.
Tier 2 of conquest provides +2 evasion to the regiment until the end of the round with a rather generous cap of 3 total. Evasion is an excellent form of defense typically trading higher base values for the consistency of ignoring the majority of rules the impact defense values such as cleave, brutal impact, and smite. Evasion 3 is fairly unusual across the game but factoring in this chant we have several units that can achieve it including some more durable infantry regiments such as Chosen of Conquest or Veterans both of whom have a base evasion of 1. While not a massive swing in defensive power moving to a very consistent 50/50 save profile makes regiments very annoying to deal with and excellent choices to tie up high cleave opponents such as Varangian Guard or Dragonslayers.
Tier 3 is where the Cult of Conquest gets spicy. The third tier of Conquest grants the regiment an extra action during their activation. Normal restrictions do apply so you are not able to charge twice or clash twice but otherwise unconditional third actions are very rare and shift some of the base elements of the game. Typically this tier is going to provide exceptional mobility either combining with tier 1 to greatly amplify the threat range of a melee regiment or making something like Slingers exceptionally annoying to tie down.
An example of the potency of this can be easily found with the potential threat range of the Chosen of Conquest. Chosen of Conquest are a reasonably threatening melee unit with base clash 3, 5 attacks per stand, and cleave 1 for good measure. On the surface they are held back a little by the somewhat limiting march 5. That is until you trigger a tier 3 conquest chant. Now they are capable of an action set consisting of March Charge Clash and you'll get the additional movement on that initial March. That is an infantry unit with a minimum threat range of 14" on a turn that they will also be able to clash. This combination lets them threaten clash actions further out than most cavalry regiments.
Another example is the currently popular Chieftain on Tontorr with the Mantle of the Devoted artifact. The fanatic conquest Tontorr can threaten 16 or more inches with it's full clash action available or can March March Charge and put its impacts and tramples into a target 22+ inches away. Doing so will also give it evasion 2 making it that much more annoying to deal with when it dives in (or more reasonably attacks a flank - Tontorrs are durable but most of the time wont survive the aftermath a 22" charge down the middle).
I mentioned Slingers a bit earlier in the article and it is probably worth looking at that combo in a little more depth. The Predator character does have Teachings of Conquest available to it and for 30 points spent getting to Tier 2 you can make the regiment of Slingers it joins count as Cult of Conquest. Add on a method to give them Fanatic and the Predator's own ability to give them Fire and Advance and all of a sudden you have a very mobile gun platform that can do things march aim shoot or aim shoot march twice backward or any number of other combinations that let them either extend their threat range, particularly getting into Torrential Fire range, or shoot and move away keeping good spacing to protect themselves.
To recap the Cult of Conquest behaves a little bit differently than the other three cults and is a little more challenging to get regiments into but not particularly harder to actually trigger the chant. It's worth a refresher on how the chant rules work in general but specifically with this cult every now and then. The benefits focus more on mobility than raw power buffs but go a long way to opening up options for the savvy W'adrhun player.
As always thanks for reading and I hope you have a great week
-K
*The Bellowing Roar special rule was added to the Apex Predator, Tontorr, Drum Beast, and the unreleased as of yet Quatl to allow monsters to interact with the chant special rules in a little more limited way. These monsters always count as following the Cult of Conquest, generate a conquest token when their card is drawn, however, may only ever chant from the Cult of Conquest. Sorry no Death chants for your Apex.
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