The Threat From Below: Meet the Veer-Myn

Listen up, commander! If you’re considering siding with the Veer‑myn, know from the very start that you’re not picking a straight‑talking, honour‑bound force...not in the slightest.

Pick the galaxy's favourite rats (or least favourite if you happen to live a 'few floors up') as your Epic Warpath faction and you’re choosing the path of speed, misdirection and toxic trickery.

Sound good? Well, you've come to the right place. Let's start with a quick introduction.

Dark, Dirty and Dangerous

The Veer‑myn lurk under cities, starships, and mining colonies waiting for the perfect moment to surge upward in overwhelming numbers. While individually weaker than most troops, they're vicious in melee and their real strengths lie in speed, subterranean trickery, and sheer body count.

Their tech is ramshackle but deadly: chem‑weapons, radiation‑leaking guns, tunnelling machines...and they’re terrifyingly unconcerned by the toxins that would melt a GCPS hazmat suit.

Simply put, there is pretty much no limit to just what they might cook up or build to deploy against the enemy...and that makes them absolutely terrifying to the average infantryman.

Did We Mention They're Fast?

Veer‑myn as a faction reward fast and innovative play. You've got access to quick units like Tunnel Runners with Speed 12/18, which can potentially grab early objectives or look to control bottlenecks/choke points from turn one. There are a generous 12 of these in the Core Army box, and we reckon you'll get good use out of them in most games!

A big part of the faction's tactical identity is simply banding together, and their army special rule, Safety in Numbers, reflects this:

"When taking a Nerve test, this army’s Units receive a +1 to the roll for each friendly Unit within 6”, up to a maximum of +2."

Cheaper units like Crawlers (a mere 105 points) and Stalkers (130 points) can swarm the table and keep enemy elite troops busy, ready for brutal hammer‑blows from the heftier Nightmares with their AP1 Combat Drills - and who move no slower than their smaller brethren. Nasty, nasty rats indeed.

And appropriately, it only gets more devious from there.

Subterranean Deployment lets certain units appear from Round Two, potentially even behind enemy lines, striking where the enemy line is thin, or threaten flanks that opponents thought were safe. Effectively, they're deploying from reserves - even in scenarios that wouldn't normally allow you to hold units back from the initial deployment. How many dare you hold back for later surprises, at the cost of reduced damage output in the meantime? Interesting choices ahead - and this is an option for your Night Terrors, Creepers, all Tunneller variants, and a second Super-Heavy releasing for them in the future!

A Few Tricks Up Their Sleeves

While you're still wondering if Veer-myn have sleeves, let's check out their faction Strategic Orders - with the assistance of a shameless smattering of pop-culture quotes:

• Burrowing Attack:
  • When? When a Unit Sprints and engages an enemy Unit in an Assault in the Movement Phase.
  • Effect? The assaulting Unit ignores any Hindered charge modifier (other modifiers still apply). If the enemy Unit has Overwatch, its shooting attack against this Unit suffers a -1 to hit modifier. Now place a Status Marker on the charging Unit. Until the end of the Round, it has the Sustained Attack keyword when rolling to-hit in Assault.
  • In-a-nutshell version: this is a good one! You can avoid picking up 'Combat -1 Tokens' for difficult terrain/building interactions, shrug off some Overwatch damage, AND benefit from exploding 8's when attacking in melee this round. ('Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise!')

• Overwhelm:
  • When? Immediately after another friendly Unit activated using the Keep Going! Tactical Order.
  • Effect? Spend the Command Points once the friendly Unit has finished its activation to choose a third Unit to activate before returning play to your opponent to have their turn. This is an exception to the normal maximum of one extra activation.
  • In-a-nutshell version: get two extra activations instead of one as the rats pour onto the enemy and create some delicious panic...('They're coming outta the walls!')

• Narcotic Frenzy:
  • When? When an Infantry or Heavy Infantry Unit Sprints to engage an enemy Unit in an Assault in the Movement Phase.
  • Effect? The unit may move as far as its combined SP values and has a +1 to-hit modifier in assault until the end of the Round. Once the Unit has finished moving and any potential Overwatch fire against it is resolved, one Base in the Unit (your choice) is destroyed - remove it from the battlefield immediately. Narcotic Frenzy may not be used on a Unit if it disembarked from a Transport this turn.
  • In-a-nutshell version: normally you're picking between your Speed value to either Advance or Sprint - so combining them is crazy stuff, and very likely to catch your enemy off guard - at least the first time! And you're getting improved odds of hitting in melee, but at a cost - wave goodbye to a few of your rats at the end of this speedy surprise. ('It's time to pay the piper!')

And there we have it! They're fast, they're sneaky, and they can be resilient when kept en masse. The Veer-myn are an incredibly characterful faction to play, and a top choice for generals in Epic Warpath who're after lots of ratty, thematic fun on the battlefield.