Fork Handles?

No you only get two.

I’ve always loved these totems. The fluff that these are the first two spirits to follow Reva around and they just keep on possessing different bodies over and over again is not only very cool and thematic, but also a really strong indication of how these models play. They’re gonna die and come back, over and over and over again.

How do they come back? Reva summons them. Both versions of Reva have exactly the same rule that let’s you turn a corpse marker or a pyre marker into a corpse candle with burning. But burning bad? Well not really as they don’t take damage from the burning condition.

Be under no illusion, their stats are garbage. Utter ponk. Truly truly awful. They’re worse than Mindless oZombies. Anything that has a blast marker on an attack or pulses damage will be looking to bully these so be warned. As ever with war dollies, positioning is everything. 

Whenever they die, they not only drop a corpse marker but also a pyre marker. Equally if they kill something they’ll drop a pyre marker too. I’m not sure what they’re killing realistically in the game, maybe a bayou gremlin, but when it happens I’ll be laughing!

Obviously they’re insignificant, and much like mindless zombies they count as corpse markers. Which hilariously means you can at a pinch summon a corpse candle off another corpse candle. This isn’t as daft as it sounds as you would get a pyre marker out of this due to their demise. This can be super useful in a pinch.  It also means  that Corpse Curators can drag them about, and Archie/Grave Golem/Old Hob can throw them around with Hurl Corpse which if nothing else is a brilliant mental image and corner case super useful.  Unlike Mindless Zombies they don’t have the Mindless trait so they will get to activate the turn they come in but your opponent will get a pass token as a result.

On to the back of the card.

Light the way is a flipless 3” pulse that moves all other corpse markers 3” in any direction. This will affect Mindless Zombies, other Corpse Candles as well as corpse markers and look for a free ability shuffling stuff about without spending AP can be super useful. Between your two corpse candles you can move mindless zombies 6” on a turn they’re summoned despite the mindless ability. That is a useful thing at times. Positioning is everything after all and using zombies to block charge lanes is a thing of beauty. At least until Lenny/Hannah punches one and blasts off it onto an important model. Positioning people! 

Death urge is genuinely a legit attack: 8” range stat 5 vs wp push an enemy model 4” towards a pyre marker within 6”.  The amount of times I’ve gotten to the end of a turn and just speculatively shoved an enemy into a pyre marker. For a 1ss model this is a very strong attack, it’s not unreasonable to just casually get 2 burning on an enemy model and move them away from a scoring position. If it comes off, brilliant. You’re not expecting it to go off, you’re not relying on it, but your opponent absolutely doesn’t want this to go off. Hand pressure ftw.  I’m probably never cheating to beat my opponent with this unless it denies vp but there is way more onus on them to cheat against me and block this attack. 

Arcane touch exists and has a 0” engage and that is legitimately all I need from it. I can engage opponents and I have an attack I can use to charge with.  More on why this is important to me later.

So how do they fit into the crew? well much like Mindless Zombies they’re corpse markers.  So if I go into the app and type “target a corpse marker” I get the following:

So all of these models need corpse markers to fuel their abilities. Straight away two of them are in keyword, Vincent & the Draugr. They both have the cremation ability that turns a corpse marker into a pyre marker and because of the way Corpse Candles rules are written if they use the Cremarion ability on them you’re going to get two pyre markers for your troubles. Lovely. For the OOK options you can summon a canine remains with Sebastian (if you wanted to) and Ashigaru with Toshiro (again if you wanted to) and of course whatever double Master you’ve gone with (booooo) can benefit. More importantly perhaps, Bete Noire can remove them for her Rise Again ability which is glorious, especially as it will net you a Pyre marker as well!

Lastly how the Revas make use of them.

Firstly Reva (Horse Reva that is) can use her very significant Ethereal Reaping attack through any Corpse Marker within 8” and this of course includes Corpse Candles. Noding attacks is always fantastic.  Equally her Feed on Grief attack gains pos’ if the target is within 2” and LOS of a Corpse Marker. This can be handy for getting around a Serene Countenance or Manipulative model or any other Neg.  

R2 loves these little guys even more. Mainly because of her Enkindle the Cult ability meaning that whenever she would take damage she can kill one of these within 2” instead. When they die you get a Corpse Marker, 1 Pyre Marker because of their demise and then another Pyre Marker because of Funeral Pyre on R2 and then all the nonsense I wrote about yesterday kicks in. Not only is this a great defensive ability it is of course a great offensive ability as well.  My absolutely favourite thing to do with Corpse Candles is to charge R2 with them (which is why I’m glad they have a melee attack) relent and then use Enkindle the Cult to kill then for my 3 markers and the cascading nonsense that is the from of R2s card. So much value I must be playing Simic. 

For 1ss these spirits do so much and I hope you have fun abusing them, killing them and bringing them back over and over and over again.