Idoneth Deepkin Turn The Tides Of Battle – Rules Preview
The Idoneth Deepkin are a nightmarish bunch of sea-dwelling elves who surge up from the unfathomable darkness of the forgotten sea. Riding monsters and beasts of the deep, they charge into battle to harvest your souls. Come find out exactly how they do that with a look at their upcoming rules.
Or: The Fish-Aelves are coming, the Fish-Aelves are coming. To arms! To arms!
I’m real excited to take a look at the Deepkin today. They’re a fascinating faction–even if they don’t quite fit with the rest of Order (a placement which GW even admits is tenuous at best). The Deepkin are monsters from the deeps. They evoke the horror of the unknown very well, with their eyeless aesthetic and strangely horrific but also beautiful models. They’re modeled like they’re underwater (which they are, sea below for more), and that gives them a fluid quality to their poses that is both graceful and unnerving.
So with all that in mind, let’s take a look at how the Idoneth Deepkin work with the rest of the Age of Sigmar.
via Warhammer Community
First up, let’s take a look at what exactly it is the Idoneth do. Obviously they’re hungering for souls–their young are born with feeble, ‘withering’ souls that will make them rapidly fade away, so they raid the surface to steal the souls of other sentients (doesn’t really matter who or what), and give them to their young ensuring that they can survive. In the meantime, they’re a bunch of forgotten, nightmarish creatures that ebb and flow like the tide–which is both really cool and gives them a fascinating couple of mechanics. Let’s take a look:
The Idoneth Deepkin seem to disappear from the consciousness of their enemies almost instantly, which can make keeping track of them on the battlefield nightmarish for budding commanders. This is represented on the tabletop by Forgotten Nightmares, a rule that makes the Idoneth Deepkin terrifyingly resilient against ranged weapons.
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That’s pretty cool–ties in to the whole Nightmares from the Deep. But then also we have the Tides of Death, which is kinda like the Plague Cycle and Rites of Blood from the last couple of faction books:
With Tides of Death, an Idoneth Deepkin army will start defensively, before quickly advancing on the enemy. Manage to get your best units into combat on round 3, and you’ll be able to take maximum advantage of High Tide – a devastating turn where all your units fight first in combat! Following this, you’ll be able to retreat before either re-engaging or picking off enemy units with ranged attacks.
Tides of Death makes playing with and against Idoneth Deepkin both challenging and rewarding. While powerful, your opponent will know exactly when High Tide is coming, and in the first two turns, you’ll have to work hard to stop their efforts to counter it
All in all they seems pretty cool. We’ve already seen a little bit about what they can do–I’m sure in the coming week we’ll see what their units are like. In the meantime, stay tuned.
Dun dun… dun dunnnn…
