Today, let’s start off by looking at one of the crossover models who also plays for the Engineers; Spade, the Bedrock of the Miner’s Guild!

Well now. First time we’ve seen any of the Miners in the wild, so this is quite exciting. We’ve kicked things off with one of the simpler Miners. Spade is a striker and you can really see that in her stat line. Fairly average striker stats across the board, with the exception of that 4”/6” MOV, which is of course made up for by Secret Tunnel, making her effectively a 7”/9” MOV (ish!). One point that stands out is the melee zone of 2”. She’s one of only 3 models the Engineers have access to that has a 2” melee zone! This is also great just generally for stripping the ball off of enemy models from a position of safety.

A DEF/ARM of 4+/1 is average, but makes her difficult to kill when combined with her ability to bounce out of melees, and her above average 15 HP. One thing you’ll note about her playbook is that she doesn’t have a particularly strong Counter Attack, and that’s deliberate. Miners have good defensive stats/health pools with strong disengagement capability courtesy of Secret Tunnel, so to balance this, most of them don’t have particularly good Counter Attacks.

Beyond that, she has that standard Engineer momentous Tackle on column 1, which is strong at enabling her to grab the ball from enemy players and score goals with it. A momentous push on column 2 is a bit different, normally a striker would bring some dodges, but the Miners prefer pushing people around! The momentous push/dodge on column 3 is a lovely option for her, but she will likely need to charge to hit it with her TAC 4. Finally, she has a couple of non-momentous damage results, as you’d expect for a striker.

Moving onto Spade’s character plays, we can see they’re both simple and movement based, which makes a lot of sense for the Miner’s Guild! Diggy Hole allows Spade to immediately place within 2”, which combo’ed with Secret Tunnel means she’s lightning fast and super hard to pin down! It lets her get around enemy models something fierce. Take her out before she activates, or she’s gone forever!

Her second character play is called Controlled Explosion, and represents the Miners using pre-planted explosives to force their enemies out of position. This ability is most often used when Spade is hunting the ball. Even with her incredible pace, she often can’t QUITE get within 2” of a specific enemy model. Controlled Explosion allows her to push that enemy model 2” closer, which is often just sufficient to get them close enough for her to tackle them!

One thing worth noting about Controlled Explosion is that it doesn’t roll to hit; it’s a range Self play which allows Spade to choose an enemy model within 6”, with no hit roll needed. Choosing an enemy model within 6” also means this is actually a very versatile play. While you can push an enemy model into melee range of Spade, it’s also useful for disrupting enemy positioning more generally if you need to use it that way, such as pushing an enemy model out of goal range. Or simply pushing an enemy model off the pitch if they’ve gone within 2” of it!

Digging Deep