Spotlight: Harrower

The Harrower is something of an enigma as far as warjack design.  It’s a heavy, but its main target is infantry.  It wants to kill infantry, but it’s only MAT 6.  It’s got a decent gun, but you have to be in or close to melee in order to get the most out of it.  What it it comes down to is that the Harrower is looking for a set of ideal specific circumstance where it can shine, and so evaluating how good it is involves examining the difficulty and benefits of engineering those situations.  Is its whole greater than the sum of its parts or is it just an expensive mish-mash?  Read on and find out.

Stats and Abilities: The Harrower has the crabjack chassis that I’ve mentioned in my Leviathan spotlight: Moderately resilient and mobile, but expensive and relatively inaccurate.  The inferior MAT is a bit more concerning for a warjack that’s seemingly intended to hunt infantry than it was with the Leviathan, who is a heavy hunter.  It’s 2″ claw reach gives it melee threat parity with the Slayer/Seether chassis jacks and its gun, while serviceable at RNG 11 POW 12 AOE 3, isn’t especially impressive aside from its special abilities, though it is magical and thus capable of sniping Incorporeal models and Menoth warjacks.  16 points is expensive and comparable to most of Cryx’s character jack lineup.

Speaking of which, the Harrower collects souls in a 5″ radius.  This will mostly come from models it kills itself, but it’s not necessary.  In addition to the ability to convert souls to focus, making it self-sufficient once it gets going, it can use its souls whenever it fires its gun for a Wraith Shot.  Wraith Shot is a fully boosted LOS-ignoring shot and it’s pretty outstanding when you can pull it off.  To keep from agonizing over the decision of whether to use melee or range, the Harrower also packs Quick Work, allowing for a free shot after it kills something in melee.  This does NOT override the “no shooting while engaged” rule, so make sure you don’t bite off more than you can kill if you want the free shot.  Finally, it has Thresher, which makes it a threat against infantry and puts that 2″ reach to its most effective use.

How to use it: Generally, the most effective way to use a Harrower is to send it against an ideal target, kill a bunch of dudes in that target, and then take Wraith potshots.  Repeat until dead.  What is an ideal target?  Something that has souls and defensive stats where MAT 6 won’t be too much of a detriment and POW 16 can remain relevant compared to other lower-pow troop killing options Cryx has.  The problem with the Harrower is that relatively few units fit into that category and that many of the ones that do have no issues with scrapping your 16 point jack on the counterattack, such as Knights Exemplar or Dawnguard Sentinels.  For being a jack that needs to get into melee to get the most out of it, MAT 6 POW 16 is kind of awkward.  It needs help hitting DEF 14 infantry and solos, help breaking ARM with POW 16, and the stuff that it’s good against can either hit it back harder or isn’t usually on the field.  One niche it has is killing multi-wound infantry, since they tend to have lower DEF and higher ARM than a POW 10-12 can efficiently remove, but it still needs help if that infantry is shield walled or enhanced defensively.

So, does it turn into an unstoppable threshing turret once it gets the help it needs?  Eeeeeh.  The Wraith Shots are nice for killing solos and keeping casters honest, but the ultimate problem with the Harrower is that its predictable.  A good opponent will know the ideal situation you hope to achieve, or at least position things where you’re not able to take full advantage of it.  The Harrower isn’t a primary melee warjack or a ranged one, but an unusual type of specialist that has to take advantage of both capabilities in order to really justify its 16 point sticker price.

Caster Pairings: Any caster that can efficiently increase its accuracy is a decent pairing, since it expands the ideal target base to “all infantry” (Venethrax, Witch Coven).  Certain jack casters may not want to bring any infantry at all in order to pre-empt an opponents lower power attacks and the Harrower can make for a decent anti-infantry jack in that role.  There are a couple casters with the potential to really turn the Harrower up to 11, though.

Goreshade3:  Probably the Harrower’s best friend.  Not only does Infernal Machine help it out, but you get a really interesting interaction with the feat and Quick Work.  If you kill a target and have melee range to a bunch of stationary targets, you’re not engaged, which allows you to Quick Work multiple times a turn since it ignores ROF.  This gives you the potential to dump multiple Wraith Shots into a probably frozen caster.

Mortenebra1: You get a similar trick to Goreshade where if you cast Overrun on it and kill a target with a Quick Work shot, you can Overrun into melee again, kill something else, and take another Quick Work.  Sadly, Tune Up doesn’t interact with Thresher, so save that for something else.

So, is it good?: I can’t exactly give it a glowing review.  It’s better than it was before and it can pull off some crazy plays, but it’s not especially reliable nor unique in its role.  Unlike the Leviathan, whose gun gives it a unique place in Cryx’s stable, the Harrower is competing with a huge quantity of cheaper and longer ranged anti-light infantry options in the faction and it certainly doesn’t have the hitting power (see: Seether, Barathrum) or the utility (see: Leviathan, Malice) to be good against heavies.  It’s arguably strongest against “medium infantry” (multi-wound models and low DEF high ARM options), but it can’t really remove those options safely because it’s forced into melee in order to function and those sorts of infantry tend to shred armor by design.  A couple neat interactions exist and in ideal circumstances you can get a Wraith Shot party on vulnerable models, but if you’re taking a model to solve a particular problem or shore up a specific list weakness, whether against troops, warjacks or whatever, there are nearly always better and cheaper purpose-built options available.