Offensive
Her Twin Scimitars are a great weapon, and with Weapon Master she is hitting somewhat more reliably than otherwise. With Overwhelming, Sharp and Bleed:1 it is a weapon that will do damage when it wounds, but at 5+ strength she is relying on the rerolls to ensure things happen, and the Bleed:1 here is nowhere near as useful as on the Hassassins for obvious reasons. If you're looking for a leader to kill things in League this is not the place to do it, take Ra's or Merlyn instead, but Talia is still more than capable in combat while bringing more support capabilities to the crew as well. The other things Talia have going for her in this regard is her speed, as she has a 6" BMD between Special Volume (as much as I hate it on principle) and Acrobat, and she has True Love: Damian Wayne. Compared to True Love: Bruce Wayne on the other versions of Talia, this one will see far more use, as Damian is a great henchmen available to League, but is also very fragile so it's not unlikely he will die and trigger the trait on Talia.
Defensive
Talia doesn't bring much in the way of defence, only really relying on Martial Artist and Acrobat to keep her safe. At defence 4 and movement 3 she's not going to be an easy kill, but with her bigger base size she is still somewhat easier to reach than her other variants, and even though she doesn't suffer a defence penalty for outnumber it is easier to simply mob her. Overall, she's not bad defensively by any means, but she's not amazing either.
Overall
It's in Talia's support capabilities that she really comes into her own. Scheming and Business Agent are both kind of useful, but not the greatest boons, and Strategist is almost a given on League leaders now (Merlyn is the only one without it in standard), but it is through her own unique traits that she shines (like most of this box). Manipulative lets her move part of her crew to fully react to opponent's deployment (like for example if a sniper is deployed in prime shooting position, you can redeploy to counter it), and it lets her choose a model every turn to activate last. This is kind of like a reverse Persuasive in many regards, and it lets you choose a model that is likely to have a big turn of damage and mitigate it until the end of the turn, hopefully when you've already killed it mid-late game. Early on not as useful, and with a willpower roll harder to do than Persuasive on bigger targets, but it can work in her favour. What is likely her biggest bonus though is Mind Control Substance, which doesn't let her Hypnotise enemies as it may suggest, but instead prevents her own models from losing counters due to damage accumulation, and cannot have their willpower reduced ever. This is a great way at mitigating things like Discourage, especially as it is often used as a first step before an Inspire Fear is used, and protects against the prolonged effects of Terror to also help in this regard, so Talia is an obvious counter to Scarecrow or even to an extent Raven on the other side of the table. It is a great way to mitigate the weaknesses of willpower 4 on League henchmen as well, as they will rarely be losing counters and thus will be operating at full effectiveness, so they can stay in the game at their peak lethality for as long as possible, and have to be killed to be stopped as a threat.
Offensive
Killing things is his job, and he does it well. Attack 4 seems a little low for this job, but with Unstoppable he shouldn't be blocked often, and he has a whole suite of special attack bonuses he can choose from depending on the job at hand. Devastating Blow is less useful here than in most cases, as at strength 2+ and Sharp he doesn't need any help with wounding, and at movement 3 with Large and Reach he has an effective 14" threat range, which is the highest in League, and an 8" threat range without any movement counters at all. Charge is worthwhile on him, as it's a little bit of extra damage with possible Knock Downs, and when hit bonuses are needed he can potentially just punch things with his +1 to hit, but this isn't that great because in League you're going to be doing the blood damage anyway, and you can usually just skip the stun. His one big thing that is unique to him is Juggernaut, which for it's cost is very very good. 1MC and 1SC to guaranteed push all models in contact 2" and then on top of that gain +1 to hit is a really good thing, especially if you can get enemies to hit terrain with it and also get an extra hit on them beforehand. With Reach too, he can hit whatever he pushes while they have to move to get back into contact. Excellent as a means of protecting or contesting objectives, as you can just force opponents off them without any potential to fail.
Without having played him I would guess once in combat, his best loadout is 2 special, 1 movement and 4 attack. That allows him to use Unstoppable, Juggernaut and 4 attacks, so you're as reliably wounding as is possible for him to do, and with his defensive abilities he can usually get away with not putting anything in defence.
Defensive
Not much to be said here, he's Desensitised and has Light Armour. At endurance 9 he can take quite a beating, and with Large gets to reroll all recovery rolls, so he won't go down all that quickly.
Overall
The Heretic isn't the "support" kind of sidekick. He's the "I kill things very effectively" kind of sidekick, just like most in League. He's a combat model through and through.
Offensive
Her sword is great, as is the poisoned Sai, and neither are really a must pick choice. The Sai is lower damage, but a lot more potential to put on Poison, and with Combo she can still spray a lot of attacks at targets, and she gets rerolls to hit and block with them which is very good, but the sword still has Poison, and rerolls damage as opposed to hit and block, which at strength 5+ is very useful. Factoring in Poison and Toxicologist, she caps out at 10 blood on a single target per turn using the sword, and if someone does survive this, they're probably dead next turn.
If she can get into base contact with 2 separate henchmen, she should just use the Sai to guarantee hits on them (and thus Poison) and hope to get as much damage as possible, and then wait for them to fold from her Poison.
Defensive
Cheshire is hard to deal with in any way. Rerolls to block and dodge, defence 4, movement 4 Acrobat, you have to put in a big investment to take her out. The one big noticeable factor is that she doesn't have Martial Artist (which is really out of place in League) but it doesn't mean she still won't take a concentrated effort to do it. High potential to ignore fall damage is another thing that is quite good, but not really that useful in most situations.
Overall
Cheshire brings most as a support piece, as her kit is mostly based around Poison. She unlocks an equipment piece to buy a henchman Poison Master, but you only really want that on Hassassin 1 out of all the League cause he's the only other model with base Poison, but she herself plays around with Poison as well with Toxicologist.
Offensive
The Scimitar that 3 of the 4 have is quite a good weapon, and Martial Expert turns them into decently reliable damage dealers. At attack 3 they're somewhat easy to block, and
Hassassin 1 has Poison on his Scimitar, which is great for another little bit of sneaky damage (which can become a death sentence on lower endurance models), and synergises especially well with Cheshire for the bonuses to poison (and even for Poison Master on him)
Hassassin 2 doesn't have much in the way of special weapon bonuses, but he does have Tension which can bring him up to attack and defence 4 the moment he takes any damage. It's a careful line, because as soon as he takes 2 damage the benefit of being able to have 4 attacks is gone (unless Rebirth Talia is in the list), but he still keeps the option of being harder to both hit and block which is excellent
Hassassin 3 has Throwing Knives. Nothing to special, and he's the one I would personally drop first, because the extra ranged weapon is often not useful and it cuts into the funding of the crew (which admittedly Talia adds to). I would just rather take pieces of equipment (Hidden, Magazines for other weapons, Loyalty Tattoo, Ancient Weapon as I discuss below) or better ranged weapons, like Smoke Grenades (Ichi) or the Bows
Hassassin 4 has a different weapon set to the rest of his kind, in that he brings a Bhuj and a Hidden Blade (Hassassin's Creed?). The Bhuj has Reach, Heavy and Sharp, so he is the most reliable damage dealer of the 3, but he lacks any special crit to make the most use of Martial Expert. This is where the League equipment list comes to play, as Ancient Weapon has found it's home on this guy. Where it is normally not worth taking due to the unreliability of the crit, when you can get it on a 50/50 chance here (with Reach added) it is definitely worth using. The Hidden Blade is less so unless you really need to reroll hits, but it's there as an option anyway. He does also have Scout, the last of the brand new traits, which allows him to make a single basic move before the first Take the Lead phase of the game. This allows him to have in effect a Patrol on him (or use Patrol to make him even further up the table) which is good because he's further up the table, but has the downside of not being likely to be affected by crew buffs turn 1. Overall he's a faster option than the rest and a great damage piece for it, but pays for it by being more fragile.
Defensive
Compared to the ninjas, they lose out on a defence, Stealth and Martial Artist, meaning that despite their higher endurance (or equal in the case of Hassassin 4) they will statistically be killed much quicker than any comparable model in the crew. They are naturally 16% more likely to be hit than a ninja, from 4" further away, and with how prevalent double damage is on most models in the game, endurance 5-6 is without a doubt one of the weakest upgrades in the game when it comes to statistics. This is only compounded by the fact they have willpower 4, and so are severely hampered when it comes to defending themselves (or if they do it's at the expense of movement and attack). It's not a huge issue with these guys being as cheap as they are, but it's definitely something that factors in during games.
Overall
In general I'm very happy to see these models on the table despite their shortcomings (story of a League player I guess) and I'm very much looking forward to seeing their offensive potential. What makes me most happy about them is they're more Arab inspired and thus will fit well with Rebirth Ra's as well as his daughter, and as he is who I will be running most (at least until I can run a standard Talia/Nyssa list)
Objective- the Lazarus Pit
Thanks to Steffen over at the Iceberg Lounge, we have the exact wording and use of the League unique objective (and all others) before the box is out! The Lazarus Pit is quite a good objective in my opinion, but it has the potential to backfire greatly should the opponent play well around it. Being a 40mm based objective and obeying normal objective rules, it is harder to place than any other objective and much easier to contest, although the bonuses for it are great. 3VP means it is as good of a gain as Medical Supplies or Ammo, and brings League up to a potential 9VP max per turn from objectives, but it has another effect as well. A model can manipulate the Pit to make a willpower roll, and if they pass they recover 2 damage (blood or stun), but if they fail they must first allocate maximum into attack, then movement the turn after. This downside for League isn't huge, because they're a fighty crew anyway, but the potential healing just for sitting on an objective is awesome. Pair it with anything that has rerolls to willpower rolls (or just high willpower) and you've got a great combo.
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