Some say that he is the only person to steal Joel Henry’s lunch and survive the experience, and that Javier Mascherano would think twice before trying to scythe him down on the football pitch.
All we know is, this is the hardest man ever to wear a handlebar moustache.
Von Schill is one of my favourite Masters, for the simple reason that he does everything well. He has a potent ranged attack. At close quarters he not only sticks a large knife in people but also cuts chunks off their armour to permanently lower their defence value. By his very presence he makes other Freikorps models better, boosting their willpower and giving them a slightly better version of Hard to Kill. Killing him is very difficult to do, and pinning him down is even harder because he can even charge out of melee.
In short, I use von Schill a lot and think the Freikorps have much to recommend them, not least of which is that you can hire nearly all of them into other crews as they’re Mercenaries, so they can stand as a crew in their own right or support other crews in your collection.
There’s not a plastic boxed set out for von Schill yet – his is still metal. But it does give you some good toys in there;
· The Tache himself
· Freikorps Librarian
· Freikorps Trapper
· 2 Freikorpsmenn
· Freikorps Specialist
In terms of expanding this, the first port of call for me is the Strongarm Suit.
This is a beast of a model. It shoots against Willpower, fights really well in melee with a trigger than can ignore armour and incorporeal, and has a zero action that allows it to buff itself. It also has von Schill’s rocket boots, meaning it can ignore models and terrain when it charges and can charge whilst engaged.
Armour 2 and a high wound count mean it’s difficult to kill, but it’s not as difficult as, say, killing von Schill himself. Throw enough stuff at it and the Strongarm Suit will go down. But if it’s allowed to run free then it will make a very big mess in the enemy’s backfield.
My next pick would be to add another Freikorps Trapper.
For the 6SS cost to an Outcast crew, these guys are no-brainer takes and in a pair they can be truly horrific. Their rifle has a 14” range and a built-in positive flip to attack. Focus and that range goes up to 28”, double positive on the attack and positive on the damage. They can also Critical Strike, and have a built-in Mask that allows them to take the Reposition trigger to push 3” after taking the shot.
When you think you’ve charged them to shut them down, their next trick comes to the fore. As a 0 action, you can discard a card to push the Trapper 4” in any direction. This leaves them free to shoot what tried to pin them down, or just keep running.
It’s not hard to see why Tyne and Wyrd, a very successful group of tournament gamers in the north east of England, make extensive use of these guys and I’m only too happy to do likewise. Trappers are a bit good.
For my third choice I’m going to be a bit controversial.
I’m not going to pick Lazarus, a very handy robot with a big grenade launcher and a spell to copy abilities from other constructs. He’s good, and a lot of people swear by him, but I don’t find him an auto take.
Instead my vote goes to the humble Steam Trunk, von Schill’s totem.
This is a model you’ll need to build yourself (mine is an old 40K Ork Warbike track unit with the chest from an Ogre Ironblaster mounted on top) or use a proxy of (Otherworld Miniatures’ Luggage model from their Discworld series is oddly popular, but not steam punk enough for me), but it’s worth the trouble.
I love the flexibility. It has three 0 actions that can be taken by friendly models within 4”; Discard a card to remove the Burning condition from a model within 3", remove all scrap and corpse counters within 4”, or take a 1/2/3 healing flip and remove any Poison condition.
Von Schill can take the Engage at Will upgrade that allows models near him to take two 0 actions in a turn as long as they’re both different, and that combos really well with the Steam Trunk.
Don’t get me wrong, the Trunk won’t feature in every game, but if your opponent enjoys throwing around Burning or Poison, or can summon from Corpse and Scrap counters, being able to simply turn those off for a zero action is fantastic. I was able to dismantle Sonnia Criid in a recent game because my opponent could not keep the Freikorps on fire long enough to gain any benefits from it, and Resurrectionist players that lean on Poison very quickly get sick of Freikorpsmenn hitting their von Schill induced Hard to Kill and then healing back up with the Poison condition gone.
Hopefully this will help any budding mercenaries get the most out of their moustachioed hero, and even if you don’t play Outcasts the Strongarm and the Trappers are very, very strong mercenary options to bring into your crew.
And, as ever, to prove I’ve already put my money where my mouth is, here are mine;
Cheers
Ben
- From the PanzerPad
