Why Calaban needs an "arc node" (and Pigmans don't)

PART TWO OF MY EPIC CALABAN BITCH POSTS! See here for Part 1.

A regular subject of internet Minions-related QQ is that Arkadius desperately needs a pork node to "work properly". Sturm & Drang too, while we're at it. Let's have a look at these two and their spell-slinging capabilities:

• Arkadius - 2 offensive spells (Crippling Grasp and Primal Shock)
• Sturm and Drang - 1.5 offensive spells  (Obliteration and TK)

Both casters have access to Bone Grinders in every list, and will probably take them as Bone Grinders are a pretty good unit regardless of their ability to buff casters since they bring a decent magic missile and very cheap bodies.

Arkadius

Arkadius' playstyle revolves around warbeasts that hit hard and frequently - he can give them all hyper aggressive on early turns (CTRL area buff) and he can heal them all to 100% efficiency for 2 fury (Psycho Surgery, CTRL area). He can buff a heavy beast to hit harder (upkeep), and he can throw decent POW magic nukes at long distances with Primal Shock. His feat makes all friendly beasts in his control area immediately frenzy - no need to have enemy models in your control when you cast it at all, although you'll probably have to move up a bit after feating to keep your beasts in your CTRL. His thing is to have beasts going bonkers in your face and ripping stuff apart - chaos. Maybe not the most competitive approach, but then again this is Pigs we're talking about - Carver takes all the good stuff.

He is a Fury 7 warlock with Maltreatment so he can stay pretty far back and have a transfer or two if needed. His defensive stats are pretty balls at 15/14, but so are Zaal's and several other Hordes spellslingers and nobody flips out about those dying all the time (granted he doesn't have access to the same level of defensive animi or protective models as "real" Hordes factions - more a problem with the faction than with the model).

There is only one catch about Arkadius - Crippling Grasp. This is the only reason he has to move up at all - this deliciously OP spell that can bring anything in the game to its knees, weeping for its mother. In my opinion, this spell is a trap on this warlock. He has no other reason at all to move up and risk death - none at all. If he can keep his beasts in his 14" control, he's happy and can do pretty much everything else.
Arkadius doesn't need an arc node - he just needs to stay the hell back and cast 2 spells all game along with healing his beasts and feating. That's about it. You only need the needle stick and Crippling Grasp if for whatever reason crap got into your face and you're about to die.
If anything, his problem is that he is kinda boring, not that he doesn't work or that he has to move way up to miss boosted Crippling Grasps and consequentially die a quick death. Making his Syringe into a RNG 10/12 gun would do a lot to make him more interesting, although that Syringe would potentially be as good or better than Rask's gun (and we cannot have that).

Sturm & Drang

I love this caster. The design looks like so much fun to play with, and is definitely a lot of fun to play against. He almost makes me want to play Pigs. I can never decide whether to refer to them as a single individual.

So what does he do? He has two radically different personas, both at FURY 7. His defensive stats are 14/16 which is pretty decent, but he is slightly prone to getting shot as he is on a medium base in a half-faction with not many medium bases.

Sturm is the psychic/defensive half of the duo. He has no cool special rules and sucks in melee, but does have a nice magical spray gun and some sweet spells. Deflection gives a +2 ARM buff to all warriors against ranged + magic (CTRL area). Vision allows the recipient to negate all damage from the next directly hitting attack (upkeep), and Watcher allows a friendly beast to make a full advance whenever an enemy models moves to within 6" of Sturm (forever) and you can also choose to make a fully boosted attack against said enemy model with a warbeast (then the spell expires). Not exactly something you want to rely on to live, but it's a nice defensive layer.

His best spell however is the ever-useful Telekinesis - RNG 8 spell that allows you to place your target 2". If it targets an enemy model, it is an offensive spell. Again, while it is useful to use on enemy models at times, it is not necessary to the functioning of the model.

Drang, on the flipside, is the psycho/offensive half of the duo. He has Pack Hunters and Goad so his warbeasts are pretty badass, and he himself is pretty legit in melee. He has only two spells - Killing Ground makes all your models charge for free and get pathfinder if they charge (CTRL), and Obliteration is an expensive, RNG 10 POW 15 AoE 4 mega nuke. This does need to target enemy models and you do need to get kinda close for it to do its thing - but at RNG 10 + Bonegrinders, I think you'll be alright to target almost anything you want to target. This is Drang we're talking about - he's definitely not an eVayl-style spell assassin.

The one thing they have that really has to affect enemy models is their feat Psychic Apocalypse, which reduces all enemy warbeasts currently in their CTRL to Fury: 1 and all enemy warjacks in CTRL cannot be allocated more than 1 focus for a round. This is a clearly defensive feat with some obvious assassination potential vs Hordes in that it reduces transfer options for opposing warlocks, and it is really the only part of their toolkit that requires you to move up to catch all their beasts/jacks. However, an arc node does NOTHING for this, so you'll just have to deal with it.
The second part of the feat is a 'no channeling spells' aura, which these days is neat but doesn't come into play all that much.


So in summary - I don't think the problem with these two casters is that they need arc nodes to not insta-die or to go through with their game plan. They just need their faction to have access to more awesome stuff - primarily better beasts, animi and beast support. A Spell Martyr or equivalent would be useful, but I don't think it'll "fix" them as much as just make them straight-up better - throwing out Crippling Grasps from a mile away at no risk pDenny-style is obviously good but not fun in the least for your opponent (f*ck that spell) and pretty contradictory to everything else Arkadius does.

Calaban

Now onto a real charity case:

Calaban has 3 offensive spells: Hex Blast, Parasite and Bone Shaker.
He has access to Bone Grinders in his tier list which I am told is 2 legit 2 quit. He also has a meat node gun that is confusing as it is crap. Calaban is 14/16 and on a medium base - just like Sturm and Drang. We already know he has an amazing spell list, but let's have a look again in biased detail:

He has two upkeep spells - Occultation and Carnivore. Both very nice spells, and Occultation does help to protect Calaban after helping your Posse on the advance. Carnivore is a nice MAT buff vs living for Gators or Swamp Horrors, although Calaban's only use of life as a resource is Life Trader on Carcass, so the heal rarely comes into play like it does on eMorvahna.

Then he has three other spells which are all 100% traditionally offensive spells - they can only target enemy models and are all cast directly from Calaban:

• Hex Blast is a POW 13 nuke that removes upkeeps and animi on a direct hit, and has a neat 3" AoE attached to make you feel better about casting it (RNG 10, Cost 3).
• Parasite is an amazing debuff that reduces target ARM by 3 and increase Calaban's by 1 (RNG 8, Cost 3).
• Bone Shaker is a pretty good  POW 12 nuke that allows you to take control of enemy warriors you kill, make an advance and make an attack with it before RFP. Lich3 has this spell so you know it's good (RNG 8, Cost 2).

Thankfully, his feat does not require the enemy models you kill to be in Calaban's control area - only the model doing the killing. Since Blindwater doesn't have many guns, this more or less means that you have to have the front line of your engagement in your control area if you want to suck in the sweet death and convert it to fury. This is a reasonably safe distance. I am fine with that - the problem comes from the second part of the feat that allows you to cast spells as you generate the fury, which you really want to be doing since not doing it means you have a really good chance of overloading on fury and your beasts frenzying next turn. Therefore, since you usually don't want to move up too far up and consequently die, you will be using this fury primarily on throwing out lots of defensive animi on friendly targets or just camping it. Which isn't too bad, but severely limits the depth, character and potential of the feat. It would be more accurate if the flavour text read:

"Calaban revels in the fervor of slaughter and the feasting of his beasts and allies and can tap into the tremendous energies released by death. Amid the carnage, he can freely call upon his magic and unleash an endless tide of fury camping and spiny growths on his gatordudes so that less stuff dies and he can revel in the miracle of life."

Yeah, that sounds like some serious badassery.

The gist is that he has to spend his fury in order to manage warbeasts, and to have an impact on the game/help his stuff out by removing upkeeps, reducing ARM and killing things with Bone Shaker. Unlike Arkadius and Sturm&Drang, he can't have much of an impact on the game by buffing his own stuff (outside just upkeeping Carnivore).

This all comes back to the need for a decent arc node mechanic, which I would assume is the mechanism to get around the above problem and allow you to use his feat at least partially offensively. The Grave Door meat node is balls:

1. It only works on living enemy models. This means against a handful of matchups (Cryx, CoC, jack/construct-heavy lists), it is not usable, which is a problem given that he needs to cast those three offensive spells to have an impact on the game.
2. It has to hit and damage to trigger, unlike most other arc node mechanics (Vayl's Orraculus, Fiona's Telgesh Mark, Hexeris' Soul Slave and beast bond, etc.). Not so much a problem in itself as it is just throwing a heap of additional dice rolls onto a fundamental mechanic....
3. The gun is decent - RNG 10, POW 10, ROF 2, magical and RAT 6. So you will probably have to boost to hit and damage, and be a bit further up than you want to be because....
4. The Grave Door model remains an enemy model, and cannot be arc through while being engaged by YOUR stuff (which is likely to be the case if it is a front-line model as Posse all have reach), and...
5. The Grave Door model maintains its LoS. This means if you tag something in the enemy front line, you can't really target many enemy things. If you tag something a bit further back, it means you likely could have just targeted things you wanted to target directly with RNG 8 spells. Granted, this is thinking in only 1 dimension and you can also use the arc node to increase your lateral threat range across the table, but in my experience this is a rare case.

Basically, my point is you have to jump through a lot of hoops relative to other arc node abilities on other casters that rely far less on offensive spells than the Grave Walker and in the end, you end up with a rather lackluster arc node. But you could potentially have two of them! Huzzah!

Conclusion

In conclusion, I don't believe Arkadius nor Sturm& Drang really need an arc-node or substitute to function as intended, while Calaban does. An arc node for those Pigmans casters would be a straight-up buff, but so would having access to good things outside Slaughterhousers. I think a Shield Guard/Krea animus type beast or solo would have a bigger impact on them than an arc node would. Calaban on the other hand, has access to some pretty sweet things but trips over himself on the table since he needs a way to project his offensive spells across the board without getting ganked in order to function properly - and in my opinion, the Grave Door mechanic on his ranged weapon does not appropriately fulfill this function.

He has a sweet hat and I would like to see him more on the table and not be completely replaced by a bastard bog trog. I can handle the fact that Calaban is going to suck against things that shut down magic attacks as he is heavily based on offensive spellcasting. Unfavourable matchups are just part of the game. But it'd be pretty sweet if he had good matchups too, or at least matchups were someone else just doesn't do straight-up better, easier.

TL;DR version is basically that the bee in my bonnet is the result of Grave Door not working how I would like it too. It has too many conditions and too many hoops to jump through that I get far more enjoyment complaining about it than I do actually playing with it (reminds me of 40k!).

And that's my incoherent Calaban rage for this month. :)