Thirdly, the Shepherds have even worse defensive stats than the Farmers do, featuring two separate models with DEF 3+ and 0 ARM.

Sounds bad, doesn’t it? Well, sort of.

You see, the fourth key thing—and this is the most important part about the Shepherds—is their new ‘punishment’ mechanic.

Shepherd’s Delight

When it came to the punishment mechanic, we were inspired by the work we’d done on Amber. Specifically, her ‘One of Our Own’ rule that triggers when a friendly model is taken out within 6” of her position.

What if, we thought, scratching our chins and staring thoughtfully into the distance, the Shepherd’s core ‘thing’ was that each of them had a rule like that?

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Now, the punishment rules aren’t exactly like Amber’s ability. They’re actually almost the inverse of that rule.

Each model in the Shepherd’s Guild has a rule that triggers when they suffer the taken out condition. These rules generally (but not always) give every other model on the team a benefit for the remainder of the turn.

And yes, when the crossover players are taken in a Farmer’s Guild team, the Farmer’s Guild models also benefit from these rules.

Thematically, this represents the Shepherds’ absolute outrage that a beastly enemy has hurt one of their flock, and them rallying together as a team to fight off the (generally metaphorical, but also literal in the case of Snow) wolves from the fold.