The Mage Hunter Assassin, Retribution solo.

You can't see it, but she's totally about to mess with that bunnies head.

Shits and giggles was the phrase on the concept design panel for this one.

sadistic

səˈdɪstɪk/

adjective

1. deriving pleasure from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others.

   "she took a sadistic pleasure in tormenting him"

   synonyms:

   callous, barbarous, bestial, perverted, vicious, brutal, cruel, savage, fiendish, cold-blooded, inhuman, ruthless,heartless, merciless, pitiless More

Deriving pleasure from inflicting on others...

1. Pain
2. Suffering
3. Humiliation

Mage Hunter Assassins specialize in...

• Humiliation

It's an odd fact that being trained in the martial discipline of chain weaponry has a detrimental affect on the students disposition.

There are 2 important things to know about people using chain weapons and or flails.

1. There is always a chance they could fuck up and kill themselves
2. Because they are so highly trained and obviously still alive, the first point obviously didn't happen to them yet. Because of this they are probably extremely confident in their own skill and are about to either murder you horribly or fuck up and kill themselves in a spectacular way.

It is likely that because they are either aware that they don't know what they are doing and gambling with their lives and the lives of the people around them,  or are extremely skilled murdering machines that this is why they are generally not nice people to be around.

There are also 4 very important things to know about the Mage Hunter assassins of the Retribution of Scyrah.

1. They are extremely good at what they do.
2. Their chain weapons are exceptionally sharp and nasty
3. They are the most sadistic creatures in existence.
4. They are all women, some may argue that stating this is irrelevant because women are naturally sadistic when it comes to messing with people's heads, however Mage Hunter Assassins can mess with people's heads in whole new ways.

Evil, evil women.

Now many people would be saying, "hey hold on a second, I'm pretty sure the Skorne factions whole style is built up around kinky S&M stuff." To which you are right,  Pat yourself on the back.
However no one in the entire Skorne empire or indeed Immoren either has the ability to kill almost any other thing, man, beast or machine with a single flick of its chain. No other single man sized creature wields the power of a Mage Hunter Assassin.
Because of this, they are quite rightly mad.

You see a Mage hunters power complex, which feeds their sadistic tendencies doesn't come from the fact that they will kill you in the blink of a rather fortunate eye, but rather that they could.

They are extremely good, at what they do.

Mage Hunter Assassin training begins in hidden Retribution training camps in the forests of Ios. Here they are taught to stalk and mercilessly slaughter baby deer, bunnies, hedgehogs, mice, wild piglettes particularly cute or pleasant sounding birds. Also to generally trod on anything slightly enjoyable such as toad stools and saplings and generally treat life with the same contempt as cancer. This is the first stage.

We are not talking about some kind of life enriching spiritual rebirth social experiment behind the liquor shop malarkey here.

The second stage (and this is the real doozy). They learn with utter control, to stare manically,  cold heartedly, unflinchingly into the face of their victims. As if into the face of death itself and not blink, or wince but gently smile. As the terror and helplessness in their prey rises to defecating effect ...
they miss, not only do they miss but they give it a cuddle and a kiss and a pat on the bum, giggle like a lunatic and then slope off to torment another soul.

What we are talking about, is utter bastards.

Mage Hunter assassins are trained and employed by the Retribution because they CAN horribly murder things. The problem the Retribution has with Mage Hunter Assassins is that sometimes they simply choose to mess their targets up psychologically in stead.


So...

Because of their training on woodland creatures Mage Hunter Assassins have the pathfinding ability, they also have stealth and advanced deployment. How else are you going to get the jump on that baby badger.

Mage Hunter assassins love to mess with people's heads. Whether it's wrapping a razor blade embedded chain around them and ripping them off or its getting inside them and psychologically tormenting them.

Mage Hunter Assassins are sadists. Just because a Mage Hunter Assassin missed it's charge on its target it doesn't mean it's not messing with someone else's head, more often yours.

Because of this you can never rely on them not to be fucking with you in some way.

In order to use a Mage Hunter Assassin within the Retribution you must:

1. Be comfortable gambling, there is no telling what way the dice will fall and a 2 point investment might be worthless or net you a 10 point Warpwolf, it's all in the dice.
2. Be ballsy and have fun. It's only 2 points. You could save it for late game and try to kill the enemy war caster with it but they have stealth, advanced deployment and a 14 inch charge range for a reason. It's much more fun to deliver 30 points of damage to Tiberion or the Avatar, or watch you opponent poop his pants when your Mage Hunter Assassin comes screaming out of the woods for their war caster. 
3. Be able to laugh it off when it misses.

Mage Hunter Assassins work well with:

Everybody.
Seriously there is little reason not to fit at least one in every list you can.

Mage Hunter Assassins love to target:

1. Shifting stones, they genuinely hate those things and delight in killing them
2. Heavy or light beasts or jacks equipped with shields or bucklers. 
3. Enemy warcasters when they are not looking
4. Enemy warlocks when they are not looking and when they are not camping fury.

Mage Hunter Assassins should not be used to target:

1. Most infantry, unless they really can't do anything else.
2. High defense solos unless they are the only viable target or you can lower the defense. 

Special tricks to mastering these vindictive sadists:

Don't leave them within an enemy models melee range after you have finished moving, before you have made your attack, if you can help it. If they do decide to mess with you and miss or better yet leave Ghettorix on one box they at least have the decency to withdraw their chain and leave themselves un engaged, so you can shoot the target.


Chain weapon is 4" reach only during your activation.


As much as they love to mess with the heads of cute woodland creatures and us, they also mess with the heads of your opponents and sometimes the psychological stress of seeing one across the table will lead your enemy into panicked thoughtless actions to kill something that might just otherwise have done nothing but delivered self defecation, hugs and giggled like a lunatic.