Hello everyone,
With the Protoss project now well underway in terms of painting, and having received our Starter Founder Edition, we are now turning our attention to a second army for the StarCraft Tabletop Miniatures Game: the Zerg!
We have deliberately decided to pass on the Terrans for the time being. Our goal is ultimately to build an army around the character of Mira Han, but since her miniature has not yet been released, we prefer to limit our purchases for this faction. There will be plenty of time to revisit the Terrans later, once future releases allow us to build the army we actually have in mind.
This Zerg project will also be completely independent and pressure-free. Above all, it is about having fun and trying out a new faction, with the idea that this army will probably make its first appearances on the blog in a future battle report, or perhaps as part of a collaboration with HiigyTV.
To begin with, we have put together a list “in one go”, mainly built around the miniatures we already have in our collection. It will very likely evolve over time, particularly depending on which miniatures or units catch our eye, allowing us to add more variety to the army.
We have already pre-ordered the Ravagers, which particularly caught our attention, both for their rules and their sculpt. They will soon be joining this first Zerg force and will allow us to start expanding and developing the list.
Let’s get straight to the heart of the matter with a look at the different cards used in this list.
We chose the Zerg Swarm faction card, which unlocks 1 Elite slot, 3 Core slots, and 1 Support slot.
The Blood Instinct rule allows you, as a reaction, to add +1 to an Evade roll. This provides the Zerg with a way to make their saves more reliable when needed, which can be particularly useful as they can sometimes be quite fragile. It also works well in combination with the Rapid Burrowing rule explained below. Since the Zerg’s main objective in most situations is clearly to get into close combat, Evade will be particularly useful during the Assault Phase, especially against melee attacks.
Zerg Creep, on the other hand, is more of a drawback, as it currently only allows you to select one of the two existing Creep cards.
Finally, the Rapid Burrowing rule allows a unit to become Burrowed even if it has already been activated. This can obviously be used to protect a unit, but more importantly, it can disrupt the opponent’s plans. The rule can be particularly useful at the end of the Movement Phase, allowing you to make a unit disappear underground just before the opponent has a chance to take advantage of its position.
The unique Accelerate Creep card does not add any unit slots. However, it is free in Gas and provides the following special rules:
Creep Removal: a Creep Tumor is removed if a unit ends one of its movements within 1″ of the token.
Speed on Creep: increases the Speed characteristic of a friendly unit on Creep by 1.
Living Glob of Tissue: allows you to maintain Creep in place or reposition it as needed.
The Overlord card gives access to 1 Core slot, 1 Elite slot, and 1 Hero slot. It also allows you to deploy a unit at the end of the round, in contact with a token placed within 10″ of an enemy unit, thanks to its Ventral Sacs rule.
This is clearly a very useful tool for positioning your units exactly where they are needed, especially from Turn 1, but also for feinting and putting pressure on your opponent by forcing them to anticipate potential threats.
The Excrete Creep rule, meanwhile, allows you to add new Creep tokens to the table, once again enhancing the army’s mobility and ability to project threats.
Given the large number of shooting MSUs in this army list, we chose to take two Hydralisk Den cards. Each one provides 2 Elite slots and, thanks to the Missile Attacks rule, grants Precision (1) to the unit’s first ranged attack.
Given the way the list is built, this ability provides a reliable boost to two Hydralisk units, making it a particularly interesting choice.
The Overseer card provides 1 Support slot, allowing us to include our second Queen.
Oversight Mode allows us, during the Movement Phase, to place a marker and remove the Hidden status from enemy units within 6″ of it. Depending on the opponent’s army list, this ability can therefore be particularly useful for increasing the number of available targets during the Assault Phase.
Pneumatized Carapace, meanwhile, helps make a charge more reliable. Its use is therefore situational, but it can prove useful at the right moment.
The Roach Warren card provides 1 Core slot and allows you to remove the Burrowed status from a unit during the Assault Phase.
This allows the unit to make a melee attack during the following phase, which is not possible while it remains Burrowed.
The Spawning Pool card provides 1 additional Core slot. Its Feral Rage rule grants Precision (2) to a unit’s first melee attack.
Nous avons donc fait le tour des cartes de notre liste, qui reste assez simple dans sa façon de fonctionner. L’optimisation de la fiabilisation est ici une priorité, complétée par quelques petits tricks permettant de surprendre l’adversaire en fonction de l’ordre de ses activations.
Voici donc la liste finale, qui dispose d’une réelle puissance de feu grâce à ses 3 unités d’Hydralisks et ses 2 Queens. C’est une liste populeuse qui permet notamment d’engluer l’ennemi et de contrôler le champ de bataille, tout en offrant davantage de possibilités stratégiques que de simplement jouer une armée composée principalement de Zerglings.
This is our first army list for this faction. It gives us both painting and gameplay goals, but it will of course evolve according to our preferences, especially if the overall strategy of the list does not suit us.
In addition, the arrival of the Ravagers could shake things up and bring new strategic possibilities to the Zerg.
We will come back to the Zergs in more detail, as we did with the Protoss. For now, our priority will be to finish assembling the miniatures and start painting them.
We also have a basing project planned, which will require some modelling work and therefore a bit of time. We will of course put together a tutorial about it once we get started.
As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to share your own experiences and opinions in the comments, we’re looking forward to discussing the game with the community!
Don’t missed to support us on PATREON!
- StarCraft Tabletop Miniatures Game Zerg Project: 2,000 Points Zerg Swarm Army List
- Comming soon…
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See you soon!
