Making Dr. Arkadius Work - Part 2

Greetings ladies and gentlemen.  It is Whitestar333 again from Steam-Powered Gamer here to bring you the thrilling conclusion to Making Dr. Arkadius Work!  First, I would like to put in a shameless plug for my own blog article where I continued the discussion of Dr. Arkadius with a list of things that will make Dr. Arkadius more of a contender (here).

Let's quickly review where we left off with our analysis of Dr. Arkadius does:
- "Protects" beasts from enemy shooting
- Efficient beast healer
- Fury manager with feat and maltreatment
- Cannot deal damage by himself


The natural conclusion here is that Dr. Arkadius should run with lots of warbeasts.  I believe that the best way to run our Dr. Frankenpig is with lots of War Hogs in a tight formation, while Arkadius sits back and waits for the counter-charge.  While it was mentioned that the feat could be used as an alpha-strike tool, I think that in larger games, it will be better utilized as fury management to gain extra attacks and drop insane amounts of fury.  Similarly, Arkadius cannot deal much damage himself, so he should make sure he is protected at all times, and when facing an army that has lots of incorporeal models, he will need to make sure that no models can be placed too close to threaten him.

Without further ado, here's a list that I developed which I believe will play to the strengths of Dr. Arkadius:

Dr. Arkadius - Mad Science (Tier 4) - 50 points

Dr. Arkadius (+6)
- War Hog (7*)
- War Hog (7*)
- War Hog (7*)
- War Hog (7*)
- War Hog (7*)
- Targ (2)
Rorsh + Brine (9)
Farrow Bone Grinders (min, 2)
Farrow Brigands (full, 8)
Benefits:
- Redeploy one model/unit
- Receive a +1 to starting game roll
- Warbeasts gain +2 SPD first turn

Since there are not many additional models to choose from in the Thornfall Alliance pact, I believe that Dr. Arkadius' theme force offers enough benefits to make it worth considering.  While some of the other benefits are "meh", having War Hogs for 7 points is a good deal (and hilarious) and making them a normal SPD 6 on the first turn can be beneficial to get them into a better position early.

Rorsh and Brine are necessary for a rapid-response team and they are great for holding down a flank since Rorsh can make Brine incredibly fast for a pig-beast (thanks to diversionary tactics) and Rorsh can also kill chunks of models by himself since he can both shoot his pig-iron and throw dynamite (read that card carefully!).  Place these two on your weakest flank, opposite your opponent's solo support.


The Farrow Brigands are a great utility infantry unit that don't offer much to Arkadius except for more opportunities to kill off infantry models and shielding your War Hogs.  The usage of Brigands will heavily depend on what force you are facing across the table.  If it's lots of infantry, you'll want to keep them behind the War Hogs to make the most of their pig-irons.  If it's lots of warjacks/warbeasts that you're seeing across the table, these guys should stay in front of the War Hogs, to make sure that you can counter-charge more effectively.

THEY'RE STILL ALIIIIIIIIVE!

Lastly, the 5 War Hogs are the staple of this list.  Since Aggravator and Psycho-Surgery affect each model in his battlegroup, this means that having lots of War Hogs will get the most mileage out of these two spells.  Aggravator is a situational spell, but can be quite aggravating (see what I did there?) for your opponent and prevents your War Hogs from being pinged with damage.  Also, with 5 of these guys, you can run a tight line formation to limit the number of enemy models that can engage them, while still having a threatening frontage.  This also means you can afford to lose 1 or 2 of these guys when your opponent strikes, because War Hogs can trash opposing heavies with the help of Aggression Dial (also mitigated a bit by Psycho-Surgery).  If you are lucky enough to have all 5 War Hogs alive and fully-functioning when you hit your enemy, you can even use a mind-boggling 20 fury points and then pop your feat to drain off as much of it as you want.  Lastly, Dr. Arkadius can throw Forced Evolution onto beasts at will, just in case they need that extra "oomph."

What this all means is that Dr. Arkadius can decimate any warbeast/warjack-heavy army with relative ease, but you definitely need to be careful in how you plan.  Dr. Arkadius is not for the feint of heart.  Also, I make no claims that he is better than Lord Carver or Sturm and Drang, so let's not make those arguments, but if you have the itch to try him, it is possible to have fun with him and to win a fair share of games.  It all comes down to amplifying your strengths and mitigating weaknesses.