Zaron

Race: Human
Class: Soulgazer
Survivability: Med (can be high if played conservatively)
Damage Output: Med
Threat Range: High (uses ranged magic attacks and a summoned skeleton to deal damage)

Profile: He has AGI 4, MOV 4 and a lowish amount of boxes (14) but his mediocre defensive stats are made up for by his ability to contribute at range, often at extreme range. He has a MEL of 5 that you want to avoid using and a MAG of 7. The damage on his magic attack is higher than the damage on his melee attack as well.

He is able to summon a skeleton with MOV 4, AGI 2 and MEL 2. It only has 2 actions and 4 damage boxes.

What does he do?: Zaron's game is focused around 3 things, his soulgazing, his summoning and his magical attack. Of all the soulgazers he is able to contribute most when not soulgazing however unlike Saiyin and Kruul he has no way to strip souls from enemy models and he provides very little support outside of ganging up bonuses from the skeleton. He has the Gift of Life ability which gives a model Leech 2 (the ability to heal up to 2 damage with each attack) an ability I quite like on Brok (BOOOO! errata). With the errata only allowing you to gain 2 life per attack action this is no longer something I would look in any way to build around and instead this is a way to add some healing particularly to ranged models (since your opponent will generally get a turn to try and kill the model before any healing has a chance to go ahead).

Soulgazing - Zaron has two ways to soulgaze, he can get within 4" like a regular soulgazer or he can soulgaze through his summoned skeleton from any distance. This allows Zaron to stay base to base with his effigy, soulgaze and bank. Also when Zaron gets to level 3 he is allowed to use the Shadow Orbs he can place to teleport around the board and of course back to the effigy to allow him to bank. On maps with two soulpits he is able to stand within range of one and send his summoned skeleton to the other soul pit in order to easily soulgaze both spawning locations.

Summoning - In addition to the skeletons ability to act as a soulgazing proxy it also has some useful combat abilities. Though it is only Range 1" and MEL 2 it is able to charge and throw 3 dice at most targets and often as importantly when Zaron gets to level 2 the skeleton will explode when destroyed doing 2 damage (ignoring RES) to all models in 3". It costs an action and a fate to summon a skeleton and is almost always the right move given the versatility of the skeleton. Even when the skeleton does very little you get some value from your opponent directing attacks to destroy it.

Attacking - Zaron has the best base attack at range of any of the soulgazers at 2|3|4 and at MAG 7. This is actually a really strong ranged/magical attack as those go in the game. Though Zaron generally prefers to be summoning and soulgazing he can actually get a fair amount of work down with his magical attack.

Fate Appetite: High. He wants to make a skeleton every turn if he can.

Level Appetite: High. The skeletons are a lot more valuable at level 2 when you add in the exploding rule. You can force your opponent both to waste attacks and to take damage digging it out of an awkward area. His level 3 teleport ability is also very strong. This is mitigated by the fact that he is a soulgazer and will level up easily if there are souls on the board.

Magic Items: Ring of Power (Low), Boots of Agility (Low). He doesn't really need an item, he can generally stay pretty far back and contribute and spends a lot of actions soulgazing and summoning.

Combinations: I wrote this before the errata last night and a lot of this section was the combination I liked with Brok where you put leech on a level 2 Brok, hard to kill in one activation because of Heroic Destiny and then he could heal up to 12 damage back. I'm not sure the combination works now that you can only heal a maximum of 6 damage but you can try it if you want. Considering it's been 12 hours since the errata I haven't had a chance to play around with the new rules. Also I have had some joy using the skeleton to go and engage targets for Piper (you don't risk anything to trigger backstab and your opponent has to waste attacks to deal with it). Generally though Zaron is a very strong soulgazer in a fate light warband (as in where the rest of the warband doesn't need fate). He is the strongest soulgazer for double soul pit maps so far released.

Ban Targets: Zaron doesn't like ranged models both for his ability to stay back himself and for their ability to aim, kill the skeleton and use the symbols generated to move into range of other models. Whenever you take a soulgazer if you can stop your opponent from also having a soulgazer you have an advantage. Watch out for Brok using the skeleton as a way to trigger backswing and get a free attack. Watch out for models like Piper pushing the skeleton into your own models before exploding it. Styx is always a pain for back-line models that do not survive in frontline melee and Zaron fits that bill.

Judy's Judgement: