Night Fusion includes two excellent four cost pieces that can greatly help to round out the Janus and Hiveling lineages. Whenever a new set comes out that supports a linear mechanic like a lineage, it’s worth revisiting that mechanic to see if it’s reached the point where it has all the pieces it needs. This article will talk through the tools these lineages currently have available and how I’d go about building bands for each of them.
In order for a band to really be a Janus band in my mind, it has to have pieces that actually care that the other pieces are Janus. This means that I have to use some of Knight of Dusk and Dawn, Sir Glorious, and All-Seeing Mage. If I’m really pushing the theme, I’d really like to use all of them.
The other Janus pieces that I really like, which is to say the ones I’d strongly consider in bands that didn’t care about their lineage, are Runner with Scissors, Probability Walker, Knight of Strife and Joy, Dualist, and possibly Inscribed Axebeast. Looking at that list, Dualist looks extremely important, as I’d be very afraid of Runner with Scissors or Probability walker getting attacked, not to mention All-Seeing Mage or my other Madness pieces.
Runner with Scissors is an interesting piece. It’s very powerful, but has the potential to set you back really far. Regeneration is a huge drawback, especially on that piece because it denies a four die deathblow. Because of this, I feel like it’s a piece that gets strongest in multiples, because additional runners don’t come with an extra drawback because they already have an awesome place to put their damage. For the same reason, the piece makes Spellbound Scissors less abysmal because you’ll already have a piece that regenerates for them to kill.
The problem is that a dedicated Runner and Scissors band doesn’t work all that well with the rest of the Janus band because they want to be in a very aggressive band with an extremely low curve, although, that’s not necessarily unreasonable. I’ll try a list:
This list is a little awkward. It would love Scarab Warcharm, but can’t really support it because it has so many other pieces that cost 4. The same problem comes up with Virtuous Maiden. As a result, several off lineage pieces that cost other numbers have to be added to give the band the necessary blade abilities. The Clawclan Scout and Seraph are also very important to getting the double valor paid for Dualist and Knight of Dusk and Dawn. It’s even possible that one Knight of Dusk and Dawn would have to be an Honor Guard or Scarab Warcharm instead.
This band has a lot of internal synergies and that make it appeal to me a little more than I may have expected. The low curve that I wanted to stick with to work with the runner happens to also play out perfectly for the All-Seeing Mage, who would like me to have as many pieces in play as possible, and it also works well with the absurdly high cost of the Knight of Dusk and Dawn’s ability. The fact that there are not really powerful pieces is somewhat mitigated by the presence of answers like Probability Walker and the very high average power conveyed by the runners.
It does have a bit of an awkward tension about how to wants to play out, because it has a lot of pieces that it really doesn’t want to get attacked, which will often force it to play cautiously and stay back, but it also has a low enough curve that that can result in it running out of pieces to play. What this means is that there’s a turning point somewhere early where you’ll hit critical mass of power and abilities where the ultra-efficient runners and extremely threatening Probability Walker, All-Seeing Mage, and Cyclopean Sprite will mean that the opponent will have to fear you more than you fear them, and it’s important to push that threat as soon as it’s developed.
The band should play out a lot like the army the Janus Legion represents. At the beginning of the game it will build up a threat in the safety of its band row, and at some point once the formation is in place, it will begin a slow advance. Ideally this will happen with the support of Dualist or Sir Glorious to protect your pieces, but it could also be the result of a trap set by Chaos Puppeteer or Knight of Dusk and Dawn. The Knight lets you put two pieces forward and two back when you go second, and then on the next turn you can either push all of them forward or pull all of the back to safety. It’s important to only make this play when it has the potential to be extremely devastating though, because it commits you to using four spawn on the next turn, which is a huge amount.
This game plan, especially with Cyclopean Sprite in the band makes a strong case for the inclusion of Inscribed Axebeast. It’s an efficient body and the drawback would be quite minimal, but the benefit of it’s extremely high defense is somewhat minimized because there are so many other targets worth hitting in the band, which is why I’ve left him out of this build.
An alternate approach to Janus avoids the runners because they’re such a huge liability (incidentally, I’d guess including them greatly increases variance within a game). This band get to include more high end pieces, which work well the the build up approach that All-Seeing Mage encourages and opens up the four slot to allow it to include Scarab Warcharm or Honor Guard. This version would not include Spellbound Scissors, because it’s trying to avoid the risk they create. It would try to maximize the power of All-Seeing Mage without them though. That would lead to a band like:
The Battleweaver’s pretty questionable, but I wanted a Janus piece there and I wanted another way to get the Knight of Strife and Joy into battle. It might be better off as a Pearlthorn Castle. With both of these bands I used the desire to push the lineage and the defensive nature of the way they want to play out to justify the exclusion of Pearlthorn Castle, but I’m not sure that I can ever really support doing that in a band that can support the Valor. I really like Headhands’ shield ability, but I just couldn’t justify giving up Flux Fortunate for it, particularly since it costs and extra Madness aspect over Freakazoid.
This band plays pretty similarly to the last one, but it feels like it has a little more room for error. I think this band punishes sloppy play on either side a lot less than the first band. It’s less important to attack at exactly the right time and less important to carefully stay just out of range of their attacks. The higher curve means that if you sit back for a turn too long, you won’t run out of pieces to play.
That’s basically where I think Janus currently stands. It has to start slow and build up reasonably quickly to the point where it has a core combination of pieces, and then it has to strike before bands with more powerful pieces can build up. It’s likely that the window is too narrow for Janus to really be the best band, but it does have a very unique style that can make it an interesting band to play, and playing it can really help focus on learning when to switch from a defensive to an aggressive position.
Hiveling looks even more interesting to me. We have two fewer total pieces to work with, and the fact that the lineage is spread over three aspects means that it’s even harder to play a large number of them. Fortunately they can be stretched a bit further because there are more pieces it makes sense to play multiples of. Also, Hiveling is particularly interesting because, as a primarily Fear lineage, there are a lot of different directions it can go.
The primary question for me is how it wants to win. Does it want to focus on a swarm or attrition style victory, and does it want to use Queen Chrysota to let it play more expensive pieces that it would otherwise be able to, or does it want to maximize her power by using her to play multiple pieces every turn, thus generating even greater virtual spawn advantage.
Going through a similar list, the pieces that care about Hiveling are Spine Bug, Plaguebrood Larva, Queen Crysota, and Hiveling Overlord. The pieces that I’m most impressed by are Eggspewer, Omen Locust, Hiveling Royal Guard, and Droning Damsefly. Hiveling Overlord won’t necessarily be played just because it’s Passion rather than Fear, but the existence of Hiveling Royal Guard makes Passion a little more appealing. The fact that it’s the only 7 cost Hiveling helps, but that’s countered somewhat by the fact that if Fear is turned on and Passion isn’t, it’s competing with a lot of excellent pieces. Also, it’s abilities need to go a long way to make up for the fact that it has two less power than Infernal Gothic at the same cost. The last point against it is that it may be a significant problem that you’d sometimes have to venom your own pieces. Plaguebrood Larva has potential, but really wants to work with a Stitched splash to Corpsebuilt a Beetleback Mass for it to return.
I think the trap to avoid falling into with Hiveling is too heavy a focus on the swarm. Hiveling can support a very reasonable curve, and I think it wants to. Between that and the fact that most of their swarm bonuses make attacking better, I’m much more inclined to use Hiveling for attrition than swarming. That increases Night Queen’s stock. A possible list would look like:
Eggspewer makes Hiveling’s curve look a lot better than it used to, since it’s a good 4 cost piece in its lineage when it used to not even have a good 4 cost piece in its aspect. This band focuses pretty heavily on Expel, which is good, because I think that ability’s amazing, as evidenced by the band I played in the constructed portion of the 50K, which used a Jack of Blades despite not having any other Fear pieces.
I’m tempted to try Whispering Imp because mutating into any of those six cost pieces is very good, but I think Eggspewer is probably better. Still, I certainly couldn’t fault going to one of each. I’m a little worried that the list might want more cheap pieces to go with the Unwishing Well, but at the moment I’d be too afraid of Zungar Winddancer to go in that direction.
Deathhead, incidentally, looks fun, and I’m glad they gave it respectable stats, but I just can’t justify playing it over Glaive Scorpion ever. Hive Pincer seems like it can only really be considered after your already playing 3 Spine Bugs unless you’re really low on blades, but I don’t think you can really go the direction of Hive Pincer at the moment, again because of the Winddancer. Tattooed Squashbug makes the most sense if you’re using Damselfly to set up a deathtrap effect with another ambush piece, in which case I’d be tempted to include even more ways to push the opponent’s pieces into that.
With this band as is, I’d want to get Eggspewer out as soon as possible to discourage attacks. I’d try to wait as long as I could to drop the Unwishing Well to keep it around as a threat and to get the best piece I could with it. I’d also want the fact that I have it to encourage my opponent not to play their most expensive pieces, which would give me a chance to get them with Night Queen, which would be very good for me if I do end up trying to run them out of pieces. I’d be sure to separate my pieces with Expel to maximize the threat of attacking any piece twice. Obviously Queen Chrysota wants to come out early and stay back a little to keep her effects around. I’d generally hold off on playing the Infernal Gothic so that I have it around to work with the damselfly.
Another direction this lineage can go is to focus on Venom. That could result in a list like:
This is another attrition band with a little less focus on playing as many Hivelings as possible because it plays Toxic Sirroth over Spine Bug. It gives up Expel and and Purge to focus on using blades to kill pieces with Venom. I included the Butcher+Plaguebrood Larva+Beetleback Mass combo here because the Beetleback Mass works better with the rest of the band and the fact that the Butcher isn’t Hiveling is less of a concern. Also, losing Night Queen and Horrid Poltergeist because they eat too many blades on things other than Venom opened space in the six slot. Baxar was included as a way to give the band something to do other than just kill stuff. Voodoo Manipulator may be better, and I certainly wouldn’t fault including that. Eater of Hope is there as a source of a lot of power with no blade abilities to help make up for the fact that most of the pieces do have blades. Again, Voodoo Manipulator or Thunder Sultan would make completely reasonable replacements.
This band plays similarly to the other. The primary difference is that you probably want to consolidate your pieces a little more with this because you don’t need to maximize Expel. Also, it’s important to pay a lot of attention to the costs of pieces you’ll be attacking to position your own pieces in such a way as to maximize the effectiveness of your own venom.
That should give you some good starting points in how to approach building around either of these lineages or any other lineage or mechanic you’re interested in. Just start by figuring out what pieces you’re really building around, then figure out what the most important support pieces are, and finally, fill in a curve with your standard favorite pieces or other pieces that fit the theme well. Let me know how these play for you or how you build them differently on the message boards here.
