Shael Han Questions

[Swan]

I think you or I are seeing something different, maybe a drawing to show your point, but as I said, you can pitch out the end one, and then attack. The next now pitches out the new end one, and depending on angle even if the first Legionaire doesn't die, the new on will not be pushed into contact with the first, so he is now also an island to be attacked, and so on and so on, so the entire line of legionnaires are shoved one at a time so that they each get attacked in isolation, 5 howls, 5 legionnaires pushed in slightly different directions, each being attacked when they are not in contact with another.

As for the 6 swing theory, this is based on the legionnaires being in the enlightenment aura of the Dragon keepers aura, which means that they are only hit on a 8, 9 or 10 (about 1/3 or the time) and then they get their 50/50 save, so on average 6 individual swings

 

[crazedloon]

I am curious about your math on this. With a will of 5, roughly every other hit is a kill. Why would I need 6 hits to kill and not 2? Legionnaires can be pretty tanky, I don't dispute that, but me thinks you are giving them a bit more credit to survive 5 hits before finally falling.

well 4 in 10 results are not a hit, and with their rank 1 leader that goes to 3 in 10 which means you need roughly 3 swings to guarantee a hit than as you said 50% of those are negated by vapors0; thus you need roughly 6 swings.

Edit:

As to the howl example after looking at it again they can indeed break the pattern apart by knocking the end model out and the remainder laterally. However the Shael Han player can simply maintain 6.1" away so they get first strike if you move in for an attack next turn or sprint in to negate your ability to shield bash, or simply rely on the fact that without vapors or the defensive auras you still only net 4/10 kills which means you are looking at losing roughly 3 models to your all out attack and can then respond in kind with 8-9 of the legion reforming a defensive line (or at least giving vapors to the out of position models) and gaining 2 swings each into your howls meaning they kill 2x as many as the howls managed

 

[Mezegis]

Ahh, you were referring to dice thrown, not actual "hits" as the rules term, hence my confusion.

 

[Swan]

Just wow, talk about changing a situation and just throwing numbers out there. So, lets start with your assertion

You have to keep your force tightly grouped and within the enlightenment of both the Winterhawk and the Dragon Keeper (meaning that you have limited mobility, and cannot easily achieve objective based motivations, and the motivations where leaders are needed to kill the opponent are far more difficult.

Now with your assumption - that somehow sending in 5 Howls is an all out attack, and that the legion will easily eliminate the Pelegarth. Even if the 8-9 legion that remain eliminate the howls, there are still others that will move in and break up the formation in a second wave and since those legion have already activated, it is likely that they will get broken up further during this turn and the next (depending on initiative).

As for waiting at 6.1", howls could do the same, its the Shael Han in this formation that is giving up maneuverability. As for sprinting into the Pelegarth to prevent the shield bash, doesn't really work since nothing stops the shield bash, all you are doing is stopping the inspire. Just means there will be a pick and choose for which get attacked and which get bashed.

While my discussion has been Nasier based, there are ways of handling this type of formation/strategy. The first of which is choice of motivation, that allows the team facing Shael Han to achieve their goals while making it impossible for the Shael Han player to stop them (Objective positioning that the tight formation is just unable to cover everything). The fact that there are magic ranged attacks that have a 6 in 10 chance of hitting, though they do have a 3 in 10 chance of backlash. Abilities like Hestra's which will pull your legionnaires ever so slightly away from each other, but sill close enough for the dancers to strike 3-4 of them with a single flourish. Ravenscar with Cast Aside, The sheer Brutality that is the Bloodchild, Sevridian - which can move you out of formation and are basically immune to the Overkill explosion, Hadrosses abundant will attacks that negate all of the legions defenses, Teknes doesn't have quite the same ease, but the beefiness of pigs along with good use of Primal Surge will put a dent in the Legion line, and every legionnaire that falls, just makes the line weaker and more vulnerable.

Bottom line, yes a well played Shael Han is probably the toughest army to face in the game, but they are not unstoppable gods and there are ways to pick them apart. In the ned though is comes down to player skill and how much the dice love/hate you that day

 

[crazedloon]

You have to keep your force tightly grouped and within the enlightenment of both the Winterhawk and the Dragon Keeper (meaning that you have limited mobility, and cannot easily achieve objective based motivations, and the motivations where leaders are needed to kill the opponent are far more difficult.

I will not deny a tight formation is required as to the motivation "problem" it does not exist. Of the Shael Han objectives only 1 requires a leader to kill models (and the winterhawk can still do that over his defense line with his magic) the other kill oriented motivation allows for the plethora of specialist that Shael Han can run to acieve through kills. As to the actual objective based motivation a simple line of objectives can mean the only "maneuvering" that will be required is forward and the gather info is another great opportunity for the quality specialist to shine. And the most egregious of the motivation (if I am simply allowed to pick my choice of motivation) is the escort civilian; the legion can now place the un-attackable civilian as the left most model in the formation above and now you can't bash him out of position and you are can no longer break up the formation as it moves forward to achieve all of its civi motivations.

Now with your assumption - that somehow sending in 5 Howls is an all out attack, and that the legion will easily eliminate the Pelegarth. Even if the 8-9 legion that remain eliminate the howls, there are still others that will move in and break up the formation in a second wave and since those legion have already activated, it is likely that they will get broken up further during this turn and the next (depending on initiative).

Ah I see you are only sending in 5 models which equates to roughly 1-2 dead models. This of course assume that the models removed from the formation are the furthest from the enlightenment and thus gain no benefits as far as backlash or extra parry. The best response for the shael han player is variable based on the actual table set up so I can not actually go into all the options but it can be as simple as responding with nothing and only risking 5 lost models to set up for a counter attack next round to as overwhelming as moving 9+ models to counter attack the howls within range.

As for sprinting into the Pelegarth to prevent the shield bash, doesn't really work since nothing stops the shield bash, all you are doing is stopping the inspire. Just means there will be a pick and choose for which get attacked and which get bashed.

Without the follow up attack the bash is an inconvenience at best (if your only intent is to break up the formtion) and because you do not get to chose the actual angle of attack for the bash you will not be able to bash them out of formation. This only leaves you with using the bash to attack which is not a great solution for previous mentioned reactive deaths.

While my discussion has been Nasier based, there are ways of handling this type of formation/strategy. The first of which is choice of motivation, that allows the team facing Shael Han to achieve their goals while making it impossible for the Shael Han player to stop them (Objective positioning that the tight formation is just unable to cover everything). The fact that there are magic ranged attacks that have a 6 in 10 chance of hitting, though they do have a 3 in 10 chance of backlash. Abilities like Hestra's which will pull your legionnaires ever so slightly away from each other, but sill close enough for the dancers to strike 3-4 of them with a single flourish. Ravenscar with Cast Aside, The sheer Brutality that is the Bloodchild, Sevridian - which can move you out of formation and are basically immune to the Overkill explosion, Hadrosses abundant will attacks that negate all of the legions defenses, Teknes doesn't have quite the same ease, but the beefiness of pigs along with good use of Primal Surge will put a dent in the Legion line, and every legionnaire that falls, just makes the line weaker and more vulnerable.

Bottom line, yes a well played Shael Han is probably the toughest army to face in the game, but they are not unstoppable gods and there are ways to pick them apart. In the ned though is comes down to player skill and how much the dice love/hate you that day

a limited number of models across multiple factions does not a solution make. I have already admitted that Hadross is the rock to this strategies scissors particularly with the ridiculous assertion that Ooroth stacks with himself negating the actual durability of the legion. As to teknes they do not have a solution, if they hurt their pigs to actually do damage they die to the backlash and explosion if they do not hurt their pigs they are more likely to get hurt as do damage to the legion and then in the following activation of the shael han player they will be killed due to the stupidest damage chart int he game.

My question is as far as game balance goes should every faction (except hadross) have only middling solutions to the line infantry of another and should one faction essentially be auto beaten by those very same line infantry.

 

[Swan]

I still do not see a single faction being auto beaten by the legion. Your force takes 2 units leaders to accomplish its tactics, removing one puts a major dent in the legion itself.

I have run several battles across all of the factions facing each other. I will get together with some friends and we will push this legion concept (adding in a Fu Lung to increase Legionnaire durability) and see if it is the be all end all force to be reckoned with. Maybe there is something I am just missing, though I will assume that since neither of us have faced each other there is probably something that you are missing also

 

[Alkymedes]

Exception you can't benefit from both dragon legion keeper's insight and winterhawk's in the same time (samr round yes but legionnaires have enlightenment 1). So it's not an issue.

That waiting at 6.1" theory is just ridiculous, it will ruin the game and never make you win.

Winter hawk's magic attack is really not that powerful (not bad either) but planning on it for objectives seems risky.
Shael han has objective based motivations too that are a bit annoying as you need mobility for that and its not a strong trait. But motivations to me are balanced as you can always choose one that helps your army.

For the auto beaten theory.... In my experience, just throw in some rank 2 infantry and most rank 1 infantry will seem useless.
Those maths on 6dice is really weird, it looks like they are far more powerful than they are.... In this manner look at those deepmen they really tank hard



I don't see how the fulung may add defensiveness to legionnaires.

 

[crazedloon]

Exception you can't benefit from both dragon legion keeper's insight and winterhawk's in the same time (samr round yes but legionnaires have enlightenment 1). So it's not an issue.

They do not need to benefit from both at the same time. Because you get to choose your defensive insight after dice are rolled if they throw a skull you take the winterhawks if they do not than you are more than likely taking the keepers. You have 3 defensive insights all of which do not interfere with each other when selecting your chosen enlightenment after dice are rolled. If your opponent rolls a 7 and no skull you take guard, if they roll a 1-3 and no skull or 7 you take the shield and if they roll a skull you always take the winterhawk.

waiting at 6.1" theory is just ridiculous, it will ruin the game and never make you win.

It allows you to choose when the engagements happen because you can hold back a good portion of your army until the last 1-2 activations. This means even if you have to sprint to cover the distance (because your opponent chose to keep their unit at 6.1 as their last activation) they will lack a sufficient force to actually threaten enough losses

Winter hawk's magic attack is really not that powerful (not bad either) but planning on it for objectives seems risky.
Shael han has objective based motivations too that are a bit annoying as you need mobility for that and its not a strong trait. But motivations to me are balanced as you can always choose one that helps your army.

my group rolls randomly because it allows there to be some balance, as I pointed out the Shael Han player can simply choose to escort civis which just strengthens their defensive posture and can be slowly walked across the table with the knowledge that it wont be easy to stop the block of the legion, or they can have a few attached to their rank2 specialist which are some of the fastest models which can not be pinned down easily.

For the auto beaten theory.... In my experience, just throw in some rank 2 infantry and most rank 1 infantry will seem useless.

You mean like teknes's Addanii and their unimpressive 1 attack and horrible damage chart?

Those maths on 6dice is really weird, it looks like they are far more powerful than they are.... In this manner look at those deepmen they really tank hard

the math is the math and does nothing but support the actual facts of a unit. As to deepmen they too are stupid resilient but this started as a Shael Han question thread so I am limiting my griping to them :sarcastic:

 

[Alkymedes]

They do not need to benefit from both at the same time. Because you get to choose your defensive insight after dice are rolled if they throw a skull you take the winterhawks if they do not than you are more than likely taking the keepers. You have 3 defensive insights all of which do not interfere with each other when selecting your chosen enlightenment after dice are rolled. If your opponent rolls a 7 and no skull you take guard, if they roll a 1-3 and no skull or 7 you take the shield and if they roll a skull you always take the winterhawk.

Sure, so in your maths earlier, it's not really a 3/10 for hits as the guard is optional (i agree it's not even an argument, to me the whole "with each attack i choose a defensive insight after rolls are made" seems just too much, the counter being there are less defensive insight than offensive but it's a mehhh argument).

my group rolls randomly because it allows there to be some balance, as I pointed out the Shael Han player can simply choose to escort civis which just strengthens their defensive posture and can be slowly walked across the table with the knowledge that it wont be easy to stop the block of the legion, or they can have a few attached to their rank2 specialist which are some of the fastest models which can not be pinned down easily.

really liking that idea, some motivations given army composition are just plain stupidly strong.

You mean like teknes's Addanii and their unimpressive 1 attack and horrible damage chart?

Truth is, there are no teknes player in my group, played them once with pigs and linemen but except the zalaak (which i love) i just don't know anything on them (gonna look though). but Wrath/Sevridans/wolves/fel hammer do seem strong

the math is the math and does nothing but support the actual facts of a unit. As to deepmen they too are stupid resilient but this started as a Shael Han question thread so I am limiting my griping to them :sarcastic:

true, juste saying wording seemed weird, but maybe it's my understanding of english (as it is not my native language) :shut-mouth:. true about deepmen too, but legionnaires are nice and killable irate:

 

[Mezegis]

So I posed this discussion to Derek Osborne, one of the lead designers of the game, and who lists Shael Han as one of his favorite armies. This is his response:

The Winterhawk is a great Leader but hardly unbeatable. My guess would be that this group is approaching the game from their experience with some other game and trying to shoehorn it into what works in that system. Wrath of Kings is not like any other system, so trying to do that will create this type of situation. If it's become the 'can't be beat' list, I'd also suspect they are doing something wrong with a base rule or one of the abilities.

I'll start with the Shield and the Winterhawks Defensive Insights since you asked. While both can be a pain, neither one of them are remotely close to game breaking or overpowered. Can you kill other models without attacking them? Sure, but the percentage to do so is not incredibly high.

The first thing to consider is that the Aura's are only 6", if you are suffering that much from a pair of 6" aura's, then you're not focusing on your Motivation and you're losing a game of attrition playing Mosh Pit style kill 'em all games.

The Shields Defensive Insight causes backlash when a model generates a Magic result, in most cases this is a 20-30% chance, Suppression lowers that. Also like my approach to Deepmen, I prefer to throw single dice instead of 2+ in an attempt to clear infantry under the Aura. Also if a Magic attack is generated the model suffers Backlash, which is a Will Attack, so a high willed model isn't going to have to worry as much here. Anything that has Strong Willed or grants it to other models will also lower the chances of suffering a wound.

The Winterhawks Defensive Insight requires you get an Over for it to activate. Sure it has the potential to do some damage but that is only 10% in most cases, but understanding what 2" is when placing your models is important here. However a Will Check is required for this as well, so it's still a 50/50 chance with Legionnaires to cause said wound.

The Winterhawks Inspire is pretty solid, however it requires contact with a friendly model, which coupled with Healing Vapors is great, it does create a need to be extremely smart about your troop placements and his Training is only about lane and table control as it can only deal damage situationally.

A pair of Galvanic Defenders wreak havoc when supporting Union Workers facing off against Legionnaires. A C.A.G.E is a nightmare. Sorik laughs at them. A Lineman Controllers training turns this army on it's head.

Ashmen are built for countering this type of thing, Fel Hammers don't care as Offensive Expertise allows them to re-roll attacks...and The Unmasked and Arkan Thesh look at this army and salivate. When you have a pair of Longhorns to dissipate the Legionnaire block formation, pretty much any other Infantry in the Nasier army becomes that much better at taking this force down. Pushing a Legionnaire out of contact and out of the Aura completely negates any and ALL bonuses it had. The Great Horn is Wreathed in Flame...just call him a Honeybadger here.

The Goritsi have any number of ways to deal with it. The Zeti can pull them out of formation/aura with Hestra's Inspire, and then can flourish through them. The Dancing Master does the same all by herself. The Skorza have access to Offensive Expertise under Korrad. The Ravenscar are naturally adept at ruining the 'impossible to assault fortress' by themselves. A Shield Breaker...completely disruptive to this formation. And personally, I'll bury a Blood Engine into this formation every single opportunity I get.

I'm not going to cover Hadross as both the R1 Leaders have Strong Will and Resonate creates all sorts of issues for this list to deal with.

In short anything that allows you to manipulate chart results/dice rolls, or interrupt formations will cause issues.

 

[Swan]

While thinking about the Teknes vs the Shael Han, Zaalaks lead by Defender Raeth would cause some serious issues to that formation. With Zaalak's being hit only on a 7+ and having 3 overpowers, and being able to ignore single hits, along with Abomination which will start to limit your leaders ability to control their force. Add to that the fact that if they explode, they get will attacks against 7+ troops, I think Teknes will be alright going against this formation of yours

 

[crazedloon]

Some interesting insight

I'll start with the Shield and the Winterhawks Defensive Insights since you asked. While both can be a pain, neither one of them are remotely close to game breaking or overpowered. Can you kill other models without attacking them? Sure, but the percentage to do so is not incredibly high.

since he is a game designer did he have any comments about how these 2 abilities make Shael Han a better reactive army than the supposed reactive army teknes? Will checks due to backlash and auto hits are worse than a select few attack rolls back which is all the reactive army has in its army

The first thing to consider is that the Aura's are only 6", if you are suffering that much from a pair of 6" aura's, then you're not focusing on your Motivation and you're losing a game of attrition playing Mosh Pit style kill 'em all games.

unless your motivation requires you to actually kill models in the mosh pit, everyone seems hung up on the motivations but they rarely break a player and you still need to kill something. A game of attrition should not be easily decided by only half the shael han army

the Shields Defensive Insight causes backlash when a model generates a Magic result, in most cases this is a 20-30% chance, Suppression lowers that. Also like my approach to Deepmen, I prefer to throw single dice instead of 2+ in an attempt to clear infantry under the Aura. Also if a Magic attack is generated the model suffers Backlash, which is a Will Attack, so a high willed model isn't going to have to worry as much here. Anything that has Strong Willed or grants it to other models will also lower the chances of suffering a wound.

So his response to it is a very select few models which have suppression or what amounts to luck? So essentially they knowingly designed an ability which punishes multiple attacks?

The Winterhawks Defensive Insight requires you get an Over for it to activate. Sure it has the potential to do some damage but that is only 10% in most cases, but understanding what 2" is when placing your models is important here. However a Will Check is required for this as well, so it's still a 50/50 chance with Legionnaires to cause said wound.

when said as 10% it does not look bad but when you realize it is actually 1/4 or even 1/3 results which actually have a chance to kill a legionnaire its far from unlikely when you are attempting to clear out infantry. As to 2" being a limitation I wonder how close he thinks that actually is, 2" mean you have to be outside of 2 bases from the exploding legion model to not get hit, this means if you are trying to clear them out you can only engage 1/3 models to avoid this back lash.

The Winterhawks Inspire is pretty solid, however it requires contact with a friendly model, which coupled with Healing Vapors is great, it does create a need to be extremely smart about your troop placements and his Training is only about lane and table control as it can only deal damage situationally.

How is that situationally? Placing the models where they gain all the benefits of their rules is not situationally it is just smart play.

A pair of Galvanic Defenders wreak havoc when supporting Union Workers facing off against Legionnaires. A C.A.G.E is a nightmare. Sorik laughs at them. A Lineman Controllers training turns this army on it's head.

How do defenders wreak havoc? They allow a reroll of a horrid will of workers when they trigger the shields ability? They do nothing to negate vapors or winterhawk explosions. Their 1 die magic attack is a joke. Cage and Sorik do decently, the former rather than the later, but was the designers intent to shaft any teknes player who only invested in a starter? For the lineman controller to be your leader you had to give up a slew of far better trainings, which means unless you are tailoring lists prior to a game means you are not going to take it.

As to the Zalaak that was not mentioned here that pathetic waste of points is magic bait where it tends to get zapped with its garbage chart well before it can close to the 3" (at least vs a smart player) or due to that garbage chart just takes 2 normal hits and dies to the magic even in place.

Ashmen are built for countering this type of thing, Fel Hammers don't care as Offensive Expertise allows them to re-roll attacks...and The Unmasked and Arkan Thesh look at this army and salivate. When you have a pair of Longhorns to dissipate the Legionnaire block formation, pretty much any other Infantry in the Nasier army becomes that much better at taking this force down. Pushing a Legionnaire out of contact and out of the Aura completely negates any and ALL bonuses it had. The Great Horn is Wreathed in Flame...just call him a Honeybadger here.

how are ashmen built to counter this thing? I guess they get to throw out the die with the most disadvantage but they lack the actual number of attacks to actually kill anything.
As to fel hammers you get to chance hurting yourself just to net that reroll and you are more likely to trigger the winterhawks explosion changing it into a 50/50 anytime you are looking at actually hitting a legionnaire. The same goes for Thesh so I do not know why he "salivates" as he risks (even more) all the allied models around him without directly making the legion easier to kill. I guess the unmasked has the precision to at least try and avoid the skulls and bump up into hits, which nets them no aditional chance to actual harm the legion.
Longhorns get to knock 1 model an activation and as I have pointed out there is only 1 model that is easily knocked out of formation and if I get to choose civis as my motivation (since motivations are what this game is about ) than there is no model which can be pushed out of formation.
Greathorn is nice in that he generates a lot of attacks at varying points in his activation but nothing a responding unit of legionaries can not drop in a single activations. I guess you get the benefit of breaking the full line formation which means if you have some pelegraths left to activate you can knock them around and break up the formation.


As to goritsi and hadross I agree they are on a better footing than the two above

In short anything that allows you to manipulate chart results/dice rolls, or interrupt formations will cause issues.

but those things are few and far between and rerolls on bad charts are not good enough to constitutes a solution.

 

[Swan]

Wow Loon, some crazy Shael Han hatred there, and quick off the cuff quips to shoot down things that have actually been played out time and again by other people.

I am going to have to go with Derek here on his thoughts that this is probably a group dynamic. Different groups have different thought processes, and don't get mired down in the same thing.

As for he Zaalak comment, how can you say that those little guys are worthless and easy to zap at a distance, and their defensive stat line is garbage? Have you ever played them with Defender Raeth? Having only 1 safe number to hit them on makes them a solid force. Since they Unleashed on an 8 or better, and ignore hits of 6 or less, they are a pretty nifty unit. Also, since they depend on reacting to an attack, and not really using their melee to damage, and have that 3 inch aura, they have a 15" threat range. What savvy Shael Han unit has the ability to strike the Zaalak from 15" away? I know that they are just a lonely little Squid with a kid, but they have feelings, and they are quite useful for causing problems for the opponent, especially an opponent whose strategy is to cluster their units tightly together. Stop bashing the poor Zaalak, they have a tough enough life as it is.

 

[crazedloon]

Wow Loon, some crazy Shael Han hatred there, and quick off the cuff quips to shoot down things that have actually been played out time and again by other people.

I have also played them out, and my comments are also based on the stat block of the models being discussed (both for and against shael han)

As for he Zaalak comment, how can you say that those little guys are worthless and easy to zap at a distance, and their defensive stat line is garbage? Have you ever played them with Defender Raeth? Having only 1 safe number to hit them on makes them a solid force. Since they Unleashed on an 8 or better, and ignore hits of 6 or less, they are a pretty nifty unit. Also, since they depend on reacting to an attack, and not really using their melee to damage, and have that 3 inch aura, they have a 15" threat range. What savvy Shael Han unit has the ability to strike the Zaalak from 15" away? I know that they are just a lonely little Squid with a kid, but they have feelings, and they are quite useful for causing problems for the opponent, especially an opponent whose strategy is to cluster their units tightly together. Stop bashing the poor Zaalak, they have a tough enough life as it is.

How can I say that? I run them 2 to be precise.

As to why of their defense chart is so bad as I said I am discussing their ranged defense, where they can be zapped before they are in 3". Vs ranged attacks, or magic, they have 7 hit results. At range any skull is not actually good since you are out of range to be effective and a single skull means a dead zaalak. Sure if you stay base to base with your models evasion helps reduce your hits to only 5/10 but this is still a horrid chart. As to what ranged options does shael han have to kill these waste of points (I take them for other armies) they have
-winterhawk
-Shields (who only need 1 hit to kill them)
-Hong Yao (who has the speed to keep up with a zaalak and can zap whatever model you are using for evasion)
-death bloom (only 1 attack but with 2 skull results it may be all it takes)
-Fulung

and on top of the above ranged attacks Hong Yao, and deathbloom can easily kill it in melee the former has the ability to will check any hits caused by the zalaaks death and the later will simply heal any wound it receives after killing the zalaak

 

[Swan]

Actually the question was, what ranged options do you have to take out a Zaalak at 15"

Shields have a Max 13" Range
Deahbloom has an 11" Range
Hong Yao has a 10" Range
Winterhawk has a 14" range
Fulung also a 14" range

So nothing in that force has the range to stop the Zaalak before it gets into range of its unleash. Most of the units you list would also be travelling behind the Legionnaires that they are using their Insights to boost, so the Zaalaks have an even easier time get stuck into the lines without having to worry about ranged attacks coming in.

Again, I do not see how you can call these guys a waste when they have the ability to engage the Legionnaire wall you are so sure is impenetrable. Shooting them while they are engaged is a good idea, but it still takes 2 hits to remove the Zaalak, and even on their own there is a 2 in 10 chance that unleash will trigger. Since it will take a minimum of a 2 die attack (except for the Shield) to kill one, that equates to a 36% chance of a single overload concurring, and a chance (though slight) that 2 unleashes will trigger. With such a tight formation you are looking at your entire Legionnaire line dying in one shot.

 

[crazedloon]

you hit the nail on the head when you say except shield, which is honestly almost a must take as his aura and magic attack are just that good. The shield kills the zaalak on every result but 3 results, indeed 2 still cause him to explode but you are far more likely to kill without causing him to explode.

also 15" only hits 1 model for his death, which he only gets 50% (will test vs wp5) of the time when he does get overpowered. His effective threat distance is 12" (move/sprint) This allows you to get a quite a few models in his bubble when he dies. At that range all of the options but deathbloom have that range (hong yao is a 12 inch threat because if he is just trying to shoot magic at 1 target he gains +2 inches for taking no offensive)