Night Fusion is an exciting set with a lot of very interesting pieces to build around. Several pieces in Night Fusion want new bands to be built around them, while a few others fit nicely into rolls in preexisting bands. Others warp preexisting bands by filling key rolls in such a way that the support pieces need to change. As a starting point to discussing how to incorporate Night Fusion into serious play, I’m going to discuss which pieces I consider worth attempting to build around and how to approach those builds.
Possibly the most obvious piece that is worth building around, Ancient Valkyrie, is an extremely powerful enabler. In the right band it’s a dramatically better Arch of Triumph and Rainforest Shaman. Building such a band is pretty straight forward, but worth discussing because the band has a lot of potential. The most important part of designing a band around the Valkyrie is working out a spawn progression that allows you to enable double Valor without needing to pay the second cost and that allows the Ancient Valkyrie itself to come out as early as possible, as often as possible. This can be achieved with startlingly few pieces. One Zungar Blademaster, two Clawclan Scout, and one Scarab Warcharm by themselves cover every possible first turn spawn roll.
The next consideration is the meat of the band. These are the pieces the Valkyrie enables. The ones I’d want to consider enabling are: Blind Envoy, Hawk-Eyed Instigator, Lunar Handmaiden, Raging Vanguard, Runetagged Initiate, Steelborn Lion, Totem Lord, Virtuous Maiden, Whirling Knifedancer, Whirlwind Dervish, Zungar Envoy, and Zungar Winddancer. Zungar Winddancer is the most significant of these, because it’s another excellent piece to build around. When considering the Winddancer you have to decide if you’re going to dedicate to that piece, or just play it incidentally, and if it’s only there incidentally, you have to make sure you can support it. Fortunately, another of the best pieces on this list, the Virtuous Maiden, interacts fabulously with the Winddancer, allowing 2 or 3 power pieces to move the Winddancer. With two maidens a Winddancer can even move itself as it comes into play.
Another central question for this band is how many valkyries to play. Each one can only be used once per turn, so extras are not redundant, especially given how cheap the pieces in this band are with a Valkyrie in play. This should be contrasted to an enabler like Infernal Screamer where the second one will almost never be activated while the first is still in play. Also, the Valkyrie is very fragile, but would like to be as close to the front line as possible, so backups are particularly valuable. In a band dedicated to it, I would love to see at least two valkyries unless the band is also focusing on Winddancer, in which case it will want multiples of those and possibly a Lunar Handmaiden, which is far too many pieces at the same cost.
The last question is the Bloodcut issue. Steelborn Lion is better than Whirling Knifedancer, and is usually an excellent inclusion in aggressive valor bands. This band already has two Clawclan Scout to Reinforce. On the one hand, Valkyrie partially obsoletes reinforce. On the other hand, if most of your pieces are getting spawned straight into combat, you’re not going to want to take many shift actions, which means spawning pieces in your spawn row should be avoided whenever possible. Since the valkyrie can only be activated once per turn, it may be important on high rolls to be able to spawn two pieces in combat. Steelborn Lion is a lot better if Raging Vanguard exists to reinforce to, but the vanguard isn’t a great piece. Ultimately, this may come down to the number of valkyries in the band. The fewer there are, the better the Steelborn Lion becomes. The more lions there are, the more reasonable the vanguard is.
I’ll take a break in explaining to throw out some possible builds, both a Valkyrie heavy version and a Winddancer heavy version:
At this point I should probably point out that I love Stained-Glass Angel. Being able to put a reasonable body into play for free is huge, especially in a band that’s trying to generate a huge number of combats like the first. The angel isn’t included in the second list because most of the dice that it rolls will be on special attacks, and the few real combats it generates will probably want to devote their blades to advancing and skirmishing. The first list has a curve that goes high to minimize the drawback of only being able to use a valkyrie once per turn. It includes a winddancer because there will be some game states where it will be devastating. The winddancer version relies almost entirely on Virtuous Maiden. The curve is extremely low because you plan to activate multiple maidens every turn. The tower is extremely important, because if you don’t get to activate the maidens you don’t really do anything that turn. The second list has Blind Envoy while the first doesn’t because the emphasis in the first is on striking, where the envoy is bad, while the emphasis in the second is on shifting. Note that both of these lists include Pearlthorn Castle even though neither is planning to regularly place it in C4 to advance pieces spawned in C5. The castle is there to pull important pieces into or out of combat.
The next piece I’d like to examine is Lady of the Flies. This piece is awesome. It’s also a reason to play a high number of Madness pieces, which we haven’t really had before. The most exciting thing Lady of the Flies does is let you set up insane plays; the kind that never worked before. The most insane play I can think of Darkheart Cottage+Book of Nothing+Wicked Carriage, so that’s what I’ll go for. The Book can safely hang out in your portal with a cottage while the Lady goes in search of a victim. From there the goal is just to fill out with a good madness band. That concept should sound a little weird, but I honestly believe it can be done.
The most important step to building a good madness band is to avoid Spellbound Scissors. I’m serious. That piece is a trap. I’ve won many, many games because my opponents insisted on spawning Spellbound Scissors. That said, I could see playing one, as long as you understand that it’s never supposed to be spawned before turn 5 at the absolute earliest.
Pieces that I would be looking to include from madness include the usual splashes: Chaos Puppeteer, Tattooed Squashbug, Cyclopean Sprite, and Probability Walker. The list is already madness/fear, so Slaughterwheel is entirely reasonable, but by no means necessary. The most important addition from Night Fusion is Chronosphere, which can substantially increase the chance that you actually get to “go off” on certain turns where your combo is set up. From there you probably want some random bodies that can hang out and fulfill the Madness requirement on the Lady or just not die to make the cottage better. Skinless or Canis Horribilis fill this role pretty well.
This band doesn’t look like it will have a ton of power, and it’s trying to attack with specific groups, so Expel will be at its best in this band. My favorite expel piece is Jack of Blades, so that would definitely me in my list. Scare is always good, but scarecrow might want to be avoided because it costs the same amount as carriage and lady. On the other hand, it can be devastating with carriage, so it’s a reasonable piece to include.
Lady could easily be added to a Chaos Wells list (probably not with Hellbred though), but I’m going to show the madness heavy list here. Any combination of this and Chaos wells would probably be reasonable. This leaves me with a “Let me take you to my room” warband:
The next piece I simply can’t write an article about Night Fusion without mentioning. Kendra Vale is head and shoulders above every other smasher in the game. The cost is that you have to be dedicated to Passion, but the reward is probably well worth it. A smasher like Kendra is dramatically better if it can be skirmished, so the best Kendra bands will be V/P. I’ve talked a lot about V/P in the past, but Kendra changes things pretty substantially, so it’s certainly worth going over again.
Nine is a very easy number of spawn to get to. So easy that Heartsblood Temple becomes unnecessary. That’s exciting, because it frees up space in the band and on the board to play Immortal’s Resting Place, the piece that was most undervalued in the drafts at the 50K. Immortal’s Resting Place makes playing a lot of other passion pieces pretty good.
So we want to focus on Passion’s early game. Mad Monkey Monk would be worth looking at, but the inclusion of Immortal’s Resting Place makes Bloodthirsty Redcap even better, so the monk probably doesn’t get to make the cut. Passion’s early game looks something like: 1-2 Bloodthirsty Redcap, 0-1 Succulent Creeper, 1 Rainforest Shaman or Maul Rat, 1-2 Infernal Gothic, 1 Bloodhawk Barag. Alluring Succubus and, I hate to admit it, Red Reaver, can also be considered, but probably don’t make the cut.
You also need enough Valor pieces to make sure you can always have access to skirmish, which means you might as well plan to be able to use Pearlthorn Castle. Additionally, Stormwatch Siren is an obvious inclusion. That leaves a band that looks something like:
The three other pieces probably want to include one piece at the top of the curve (I’d give Dragonship Golem a serious look), and 2 pieces in 5-6 range. The problem is that Passion’s really week at 4, 5, and 6 spawn. Maul Rat makes it in over Rainforest Shaman because this band doesn’t need huge spawn totals and just wants to kill things as early as possible. Crazed Maenad could be used, especially if the other piece at the top costs 10. A Bodyguard is very reasonable, but Armadillo Shieldbearer is fighting with Infernal Gothic, which is one of the most important pieces in this band. Inspired Samurai is fighting with Scarab Warcharm. Akiza Guardian might be worth playing. Other possible midrange pieces include Cyclopean Sprite, Jack of Blades, Bast’s Handmaid, Probability Walker, another Warcharm, and Knight of Strife and Joy.
Those bands should give you something to play around with before I go into more detail on any particular strategy, update old lists from the 50K, or go over the rest of Night Fusion. Speaking of which, now that I’m writing again, please comment on the forums and let me know what you’d like to see. With tournaments substantially less common, would you like more focus on unexplored ideas that might be less competitive and casual formats, or should I stick with what I know best, which is certainly playing to win. Also, would you rather see more board articles like this that try to give you a lot to work with, or would you rather I choose some bands that I like most and analyze some games to give you detailed strategy on how to play with these pieces? Speak up here on the message boards and I’ll try to deliver as soon as possible.
