Bjørn - Character Spotlight

VALHALLA!

Unlike Olim and Liv, Bjørn offers no support options and instead opts for an all-out damage and combat policy! The first and simplest such ability is bearskin, reducing all non-Piercing damage he suffers. To supplement this, Bjørn also has a healthy complement of 8 wounds, as well as three energy, shifted as far to the left as possible. The main advantage of energy shifted all the way to the left is as normal, he doesn't lose energy as easily the more wounded he becomes. Whilst this is obviously a great advantage for gnomes in general it is even greater of an advantage to Bjørn due to how his melee damage bonus works. 'Berserk Fury' is a unique melee damage bonus, it gets better the more the Berserker is wounded. It can vary from no bonus damage for a healthy Bjørn to a +4 to all damage types for a Bjørn who's suffered 7 wounds! When Bjørn has suffered 7 wounds though he is likely to die from the next melee attack courtesy of the opponent and his 1" melee range. One way to remedy this is to make use of his norse trait and make Liv put protection on him, else he can accept his role as a berserker and go down fighting!

Although the 1" melee range is no doubt limiting, Bjørn does have a couple of ways to get around it. Whilst locked in a round of melee, Bjørn can utilise his signature which has an end step effect to move 2" closer towards the enemy. When he's not trying to dash at the enemy, his signature is normally used for doing reliable damage against all cards, all 0's (+Berserk fury) and no ∅'s. Finally, it grants follow-ups against all the aggressive cards to punish anyone who dares to attack the rampaging berserker! These aggressive cards will generally cause the most damage to Bjørn though too. The signature will therefore need to be carefully timed with Bjørn's wounds else the damage from the opponent's attack may kill him before he gets a chance to follow up. Bjørn can also close the gap on his enemies during his activation by making use of 'Bear charge'. This is very similar to Hoff's 'Furious charge' except instead of dealing additional damage like Hoff does, Bjørn gets to nullify enemy signatures for the rest of his activation. This is perfect against models like Fraya or Loubard which have signatures with huge effects.

Of course, as a norse model, Bjørn also has plenty of uses for the top card of the deck. Firstly he can get around his pathetic arcane of 2 so he can utilise his high damage arcane attack 'Throwing Axe'. More interestingly though, it can be used to set the deck up for his passive flip top card of deck ability, 'Skål'. When your model is buffed by suffering wounds an uncooperative opponent may get around this by simply not attacking said model. This is where 'Skål' comes in as he can generate the wounds himself! By flipping the top deck at the start of his activation he can suffer X Wds to speed up his Dmg bonus in combat. If this is done though he won't be able to make use of any arcane setup for the 'Throwing Axe' as the arcane deck will be shuffled after flipping this card. Naturally knowing the top card of the deck can be useful for this so he doesn't suffer too few or too many wounds. It can also be useful for strategically planning its catastrophe which in a pinch can heal him to full! This comes at the cost of 'Berserk Fury' for the turn, but with the right timing, this won't be a problem. 

With perfect timing and top deck manipulation, he will therefore be able to put out large amounts of reliable damage whilst simultaneously shrugging off huge amounts of damage!