Conquest Tactics: City States Faction Focus

Upon witnessing the death of God, some men will ask: “Can we recreate this in laboratory conditions?”

The City States are one of the most narratively interesting and open factions in Conquest. One of three heirs to the Old Dominion, the City States saw the death of Hazlia as an opportunity to build an utopia. The perfect society, the perfect government, man and divine working in perfect harmony. Machinery, robotics, cybernetics and progress became facts of life in these sprawling metropolises.

But human nature is a difficult thing to transcend, and many of the utopian experiments lurched in twisted directions. Tyrants seized sole power, aristocrats ossified into stagnant oligarchies, demogogues exploited the cracks of democracies and the new Gods that men had made turned out to be just as grasping as the old. But still the wheels turn, driving these great social experiments onwards to their final destinies, be they paradise or annihilation.

The City States, more than any other faction in Conquest, invites you to think about Your Guys. What ideal do they fight for? Are they getting closer or further away from it? Is the city-machine still functioning as it was designed, or is it whirling ever closer to annihilation? What do the warriors of progress look like?

Strengths

The City States is an extremely feature complete and well rounded army. It is at its core a hammer and anvil army, with an emphasis on having absolutely fantastic anvils, but there’s a huge range of configurations with which to organize your hammers and anvils. Your anvils can be a frontline of huge hoplite phalanxes, or small units of elite clockwork infantry, or tanky monsters, and your hammers can be elite infantry, or medium cavalry, or minotaurs, or terrifying monsters, or ranged firepower. You have options for extremely effective skirmishers and harassment troops and the ability to effectively control and deny objective zones. There are multiple build around Masteries and Relics, including the ability to shore up your army’s defense against spellcasting in a vast area for a pittance of ten points. You can even ditch the hammer and anvil configuration entirely and go for an extremely mobile skirmisher force with an emphasis on speed and positioning. Finally, warbands are so expansive and flexible you’ll almost never be making sub-optimal decisions to unlock restricted options, which is not a blessing other factions are given.

In short, this is an extremely flexible and well designed faction. There are so many valid ways to operate that you can go all in on your preferred theme or aesthetic and do great. 

Weaknesses

The big notable lack in City States is magic. There is only one Character caster with a pathetic Priest 5, meaning that she’ll fail some of her spells around half the time even before accounting for interference. There are a number of units with spellcasting but they’re similarly very vulnerable to interference and rely on complex synergies in order to cast their spells effectively if at all. The army is very good at projecting Interference but won’t reliably get its own spells off even under ideal conditions without very expensive support.

Another weakness is that the army is initiative slow. It can feel like you’re leaving money on the table if you’re not taking the time to activate all of your various buffs and special abilities and battlefield orders in the right sequence, but getting that extra value makes you ponderous and easy to predict, especially in the frantic moments right after the lines have met and everything is killing everything else. Knowing when you have the space to power up and when you need to just descend into bloody chaos is a key skill of this army.\

The army’s final weakness is getting flanked. The army overwhelmingly relies on shields, the Phalanx special rule, and good but not perfect morale. All of this together means that if you get hit from the sides you’re gone, sucker. Maintaining your formation is absolutely essential for a functioning City States army.

Army Abilities

The Strategic Stack

The Strategic Stack is, at its most simple, a free ‘pass’ every turn. It can also be an entire activation spent applying some light buffs. Be very careful to keep that in mind – as your army’s core mechanic, a lot of City States players fill feel obligated to use the strategic stack even when it is actively detrimental to do so. When the lines have met and everything is fighting everything else, taking an early turn to use the Stack can give your opponent full control of the initiative with disastrous consequences. 

In the early game, though, a card of stall is very valuable. It takes the edge off getting outmaneuvered if you’re playing a more elite army, and contributes to your tempo control if you’re playing more of a horde.

Auxiliaries

The dream of mixed regiments realized, Auxiliary stands are generally great and worth taking in any situation where you might consider them. The various minotaurs are just a great way to add beef to a regiment, but special note goes to the Sacred Band Veterans making medium units valid targets for Sacred Band spells. This is almost a build-around ability that fits nicely with the arrival timings of Heavies to turn the tide.

Characters

Infantry Officers: Aristarch and the Polemarch

I’m going to talk about these two in relation to each other because in a lot of ways they’re extremely similar; they’re both infantry characters with Clash 3, 6 Attacks, Resolve 4, extremely similar warbands, Unstoppable and Shields who both cost 90 points. Because they’re so interchangeable it’s better to talk about why you might want one and not the other. But you’ll always be delighted to have one of them – Resolve 4 is an enormous add to any unit, and with the Blade of Eakides or Atlantia’s Spear they’ll carry their weight in combat – or you can just give one of them the Primodynamic Globe that puts a massive swathe of the battlefield under spellcasting Interference for an incredibly cheap 10 points. 

The Aristarch’s selling points are: Slightly more defensive-oriented, a very powerful one-off Supremacy ability (and a little extra movement where needed, which can be useful in stopping people staying exactly 8.1 inches away from phalanxes), the Tactical Masteries, mainstay Selenoi and restricted War Chariots

The Polemarch’s selling points are: Much more combat capable, can take two Relics, mainstay Agema and restricted Hephaesteans, and Combined Arms Tactics, and a good all rounder Supremacy ability.

This shakes out into the following rules of thumb: Take the Aristarch if you want to add ranged units to your warband, or if you want to build around any of the excellent Tactical masteries or the Aristarch’s Supremacy ability (though in all cases, see the Ipparchos below). If you don’t plan to do any of those things, take the Polemarch.

There are three Masteries of note in City States and all of them are phenomenal, absolute build-around gamechangers. The first is Expert Scouts which for a bargain 20 points lets you put Vanguard on units activating from the Strategic Stack – even if you only do this once in a game it’s what other factions pay to get one use of Flank. Initiative is doubling down on the concept – every turn you’ll get to march or reform an infantry unit once out of sequence, which can make otherwise slow hoplite blocks eerily mobile. This is an extremely powerful effect, letting you set up for flanks or rotate to face an unexpected threat – it’ll win you games in a way that 40 points worth of literally anything else just won’t. On the Polemarch’s side, Combined Arms Tactics lets auxiliary stands count as an extra scoring piece, which is primarily relevant in letting a unit of Thorakites with a Haspist score on turn two. 

Finally, worth noting is the ‘Spear Gun’ trick – the Inscription of Lighter Alloys, potentially combined with the Astriarch’s Supremacy Ability and possibly Aristia!. On a unit of Speed 6 Agema this gives you a move-charge range of a guaranteed 23 inches, or charge-clash of 14. If you have more activations than your opponent then you can do this in relative safety and therefore represent a punishing threat at spooky distances.

Eidolon

The profile looks weird at first, but essentially it’s the choice between 9 attacks at Cleave 0 or 4 attacks at Cleave 3. Otherwise, it’s not really remarkable as a costly sidegrade to the Mechanist, other than for the Dark Hand of the Scholae ability. 

The timing on this one is a bit unforgiving – you have to declare it at the start of the first round the Eidolon is in the stack, even if she’s not on the table yet, and have to pick something that’s currently on the table even if it’s just light archers that intend to stay out of reach. Then you’re stuck with your target until it’s dead. If nothing goes wrong and you’re not up against Old Dominion it’ll be a great multiplier on your Inquisitors. A good effect, in other words, albeit with more counterplay than I’d like.

Ipparchos

If you’re considering taking an Aristarch – and especially if you just want the chariots -, consider instead the Ipparchos. Not only does she have access to the same Tactical masteries as the Aristarch, but her warband boils down to ‘Companion Cavalry and War Chariots’ and those are both excellent choices – I’d far prefer to have a minimum unit of Companion Cavalry to a minimum unit of Phalangites. She doesn’t have a lot else going on but if you’re prepared to go deep on those two unit types she’ll have your back.

You’d have to go real deep on those two unit types to consider her as Warlord though. It’s an excellent buff to chariots and companions, definitely, but it’s a skew army and will require you to buy a lot of boxes of cav to get the most out of it. 

Mechanist

When every other Spellcaster got Priest +1 from Arcane retinues baked in, the Mechanist is still down here shitkicking at Priest 5, failing their Attunement 3 spells a quarter of the time before factoring in interference. It’s not the end of the world – Aggression Directive, i.e. the most important one, goes off very reliably, making a Mechanist a fantastic leader for Clockwork Hoplites – and bumping Clocklites down to Medium is an absolutely fascinating Supremacy ability. Totally legitimate leaders, but do not for the love of god build your gameplan around successfully casting Iron Stride.

Promethean Oracle

Even without being the warlord, the Oracle brings a host of benefits to all friendly giants on the table while having a statline very comparable to a Talos despite being Medium. Armed with the Spear he represents the ability to deny an entire objective zone by touching the tiniest toe into the edge and that’s another one of those abilities that’ll just win you games by itself. As a warlord they let you go all in on Hephaesteans, but consider taking him just for the zone denial – some scenarios both sides are fighting over a single scoring zone, and guarding the Oracle’s flank with an anvil unit means you’ll have all the time in the world to get your hammers into position.

The axe is mostly undermined by the fact that flamethrower chariots are so effective at destroying objectives with their long effective range that it’s not really a capability the City States needs more of.

Light Regiments

Selinoi

It’s hard to overstate what a complete package this unit is. They arrive early, provide a significant volume of ranged fire, have just enough range to be safe against getting march-charged by Speed 5 infantry, are resistant to enemy ranged firepower, have arcing fire to make sure they won’t get jammed up by your own infantry. Further to that, they’ve got a bundle of good stats:, they’re move 6, clash 2 means that they hit like cheap melee infantry, evasion 1 is relevant when they get counterbatteried by things like Karyatids or Leonine Avatara, and Resolve 3 is weirdly good for archers. All of this comes in at a surreal 130 points. 

There isn’t any way for the faction to buff them but they don’t need to be buffed, they’ve got everything they could possibly want while also being mainstay. I get serious faction envy comparing the light units of other factions to Selinoi.

Thorakites

In contrast to the Selinoi, the Thorakites are a unit that you can pour two hundred points of upgrades into and not feel like you’re getting a bad deal. The easiest thing to do is Combined Arms Drills+Minotaur Thyrean, meaning that for 210 points you can get a reasonable unit to book it up the table and score early. It also can be very tempting to add a Polemarch into the unit; the resolve boost is huge and moving the unit size to five helps avoid being shattered and that’s a serious chunk of additional damage. At that point you’ve spent 300 points on a monster of an early game unit that can not only score early but can seriously bully many medium units who get too close.

Medium Regiments

Hoplites

The City States medium roster is completely jam-packed with excellent choices, while at the same time City States warbands are very generous with their Mainstays. Where other factions might feel like they have to take tax minimum units of their generic infantry to unlock their powerful Restricted options, the Hoplites don’t really have that going for them. The only time you’ll take Hoplites is when you want to take Hoplites, and you often won’t. They’re slow, inflexible, and not particularly dangerous.

But they can be tough. With an Aristarch they’re immediately Defense 4, Resolve 6 with Untouchable. They won’t put out much damage but three hundred points of hoplites with a character can be brutal to chew through.

Also, please consider that even though you might not have to take small minimum sized units of hoplites – you may still want to. Sometimes you just need someone to stand on a backfield objective all game, and that function doesn’t get any less critical just because your cheapest option for that is 130 points rather than 120.

Phalangites

These are almost a straight upgrade on large Hoplite units. 20 more points and a point of defense trades for +1 Clash, +1 Attack, +1 Support, +1 Resolve and Pike Formation. I wouldn’t even necessarily call it a drop of durability from Hoplites – Pike Formation can potentially halve the damage output of a large cavalry unit hitting you, which will go far further than an extra point of defense would in the same situation.

Agema

Excellent all-rounder medium infantry, Agema are amazing on their own and as a vessel to pour powerful buffs and upgrades into. They’re extremely fast, mobile and independent; you could form a mobile battleline out of them or use them as hammer units able to rapidly flank enemy units pinned by your anvils. 

Agema have particular synergies with both Expert Scouts and Initiative, letting you take dominating positions that you can then maximize with Fluid Formation. 

Minotaur Hapists

The City States have many units that fit into this category of highly mobile brawler, and the Hapisists seem to be unfortunately the least of those options. There’s nothing wrong with their statline – 18 wounds 18 inches up the table for 180 points. The thing is they don’t really improve on that; as Brutes there’s no ability to put characters in them or take advantage of any synergies. The key weakness, though, is the Resolve 3 – unless you pay a lot of points to expand the unit size that’s a really low number for a unit that expensive and means that each wound is doing 1.5 damage against them. 

Promethean

Stick with me for a moment here because I’ve got some thoughts on Quench Blades to work through.

It’s a baseline Good Effect. +1 Clash and Reroll 6s to hit for everyone within 8. Nice! But let’s just think for a second: Who is this for? Most of City States has a Clash characteristic of 3, which means they’ll Inspire up to 4 – thus meaning that they’re only getting rerolls of 6 out of that. So we’re looking at things with Clash 2 for maximum effect – hoplites and clockwork hoplites in particular. But clockwork hoplites already have Flurry and the chance for +1 clash from their Mechanist, so they’re not getting the full benefit out of this either. So, boiling this really down, we’ve got the following regiments that derive maximum benefit from Quench Blades:

• Hoplites
• Phalangites
• Companion Cavalry (especially on their Impact Attacks)

So it feels like unless you’re building around one of those synergies you want to spend your spell on Temper Resolve most of the time.

The upshot is if you’re considering taking a Promethean for whatever reason, consider that the unlock condition for a Promethean Oracle – Oracles are great Medium character units, but you’ve gotta take a Promethean as the cost of entry. 

Satyroi

The most unique threat in the game and an absolute gotcha for people unready for it, Satyroi can come in off a board edge, place themselves up against an enemy unit’s rear and prevent it from reforming (reforming requires spinning the unit, and they can’t pass through the satyroi). Next turn they can finish what they started with a devastating rear charge or cut into exposed archers, jamming up the enemy’s reinforcement line and causing chaos as they go. It’s a fantastic maneuver to pull off.

If you can pull it off. There’s a learning curve in playing against units like Satyroi and inexperienced players will learn quickly how to pace themselves and safeguard their flanks. Committing the Satyroi too early or too deep might get them shot to pieces by reinforcing archers, or see them trading their 200 point lives for a 120 point unit. They also might get wiped out by a unit with impact attacks reforming and charging, or obliterated by a spellcaster eager to take advantage of their Resolve 2. So remember the lesson of the infiltrating unit: Just because you can deploy them behind the enemy lines *does not mean you have to deploy them behind the enemy lines*. Sometimes you just want to deploy these normally and use them like an overpriced unit of Agema. It’s fine if that happens, it’s better than throwing the unit away – and you’ll get some value out of forcing a more conservative deployment pattern out of your opponent.

War Chariots

Build them with the flamethrowers. Not for mechanical effect – the Skorpios is entirely good, maybe even a little better than the flamethrower – but because the assembly of the crossbow is a pain and it doesn’t look nearly as good. The two firing modes are fairly comparable and if you’re taking multiple chariots you probably want both kinds.

Chariots are, other than that, extremely good and mobile ranged weapons platforms. They provide essentially needed firepower to a City States army and can comfortably fire over the heads of their own Infantry units. You’ll never go wrong with two, and even four is a reasonable choice. They’re hammer units and, due to their narrow footprints, can focus a lot of violence into a very narrow point in the enemy line. 

Companion Cavalry

These are very good cavalry. Just a pile of excellent numbers, plenty to be envious of on their own terms. But what’s really amazing to me is that they’re only 40 points per additional stand. You can very easily build very large and deadly units of Companion Cavalry; 300 points for 7 stands will get you 21 clash 3 impact attacks+28 regular attacks (assuming a frontage of 4) on the charge, compared to the 23 clash 2, uninspired that a full charge+clash from an identically priced Hoplite brick will manage. 

You can absolutely build a very good, very cheap hammer just out of Companion Cavalry.

Inquisitors

The big limitation on Inquisitors is that they come out of the worst kit I’ve ever built. Everything is tiny, fragile flat points of contact without clear tabs or connection slots and massive heavy robes that break apart under their own weight. It’s atrocious design, and it has the gameplay effect of meaning that I’m not really willing to experiment with Inquisitor units larger than the three I have already built.

In terms of stats, they’re pretty good. A bundle of good numbers. Terror 2 on their target from the Eidolon is a nice synergy, and the fact that she can only do it to one unit at a time is a good excuse to not build more than three Inquisitors.

Heavy Regiments

Hephaestian

Monstrous hammer units, if one of these hits in ideal circumstances it can blow out an elite regiment by itself. They’re not particularly durable for their cost – think of it as being three stands of Household Knights for the cost of 5 stands of Household Knights. 

Talos

This is the monstrous anvil, who is going to be Defense 4 and Fearless Resolve 4 against most threats. His big selling point used to be his resistance to Lethal Demise and Aura of Death, but both of those rules are shadows of their former selves so the Talos is a little bit of a prestige unit – viable while not being optimal or tempting. Definitely worth taking at least one in a monster heavy list for his synergy buffs.

Will absolutely die if he gets flanked. His defense drops incredibly sharply without the shield and when rerolling resolve.

Clockwork Hoplites

Very good, if very expensive anvil units. Because they’re Mainstay, have a minimum-unit discount, and are good enough without being buffed by a spell I lean more towards multiple independent blocks of three rather than big deathstars. Clocklites can be the backbone of an entire army, especially if Carrier of the Godflesh turns them all medium – just pair them with your hammer of choice.

Sacred Band

Premium heavy infantry who also bring the faction’s only healing, the Sacred Band are a unit you can absolutely build around. Have several small units of Sacred Band supporting larger blocks of Phalangites or Agema, and as the Medium units take wounds from the initial exchange the Sacred Band deploys to the table and starts healing them as they maneuver into position. With a 12 inch march and 12 inch range on Molon Labe the Sacred Band can deploy and heal three wounds anywhere on your half of the table on the turn they arrive. 

Healing is a really powerful capability to have because of how much it can throw a grinding, attritional fight between low-attack high-defense opponents. It’s not as much use against damage spike armies, but if you can slow down the pace of the game – especially by combining it with objective denial abilities like the Oracle’s spear – then it can really start to count.

Minotaur Thyreans

The most glass of all hammers, the Thyreans are defense two and resolve three and will absolutely push in the face of anything they hit. Tenacious is nice for taking the edge off unserious ranged firepower, but anything more than that will shatter their jaws. The flipside is that if they hit anything it is going away. 

Thyreans, more than any other City States unit, feel like extremely punishing units in both senses of the word, and you should only play them if you are skilled and experienced with the faction and have a battleplan for how they get into combat without dying. If you try to send them in alone and unsupported they will not accomplish their mission.

Example List

This is a very simple take on a City States army maximizing the internal synergy between Agema and the Sacred Band. The secondary Polemarch lives in the Thorakites unit and exists to power a high resolve, highly dangerous scoring unit up the table early. The large unit of cavalry can put out a comical number of Impact hits even on a march-charge, the war chariots provide pressure, and the Sacred Band arrive at exactly the right moment to start healing.

This list is fast and dangerous, but it’s got a glass jaw. It’ll crumple under a counterpunch so if you’re a newer player focus hard on not overextending and forcing your opponent to come to you. With chariots, healing and early scoring time is generally on your side.

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