Warriors of the North Unit Analysis Part 8: Neutral Animals

Warriors of the North makes more of an effort to make animals interesting and useful. They're... still generally a bit underwhelming, but I appreciate the attempt.

Instead of adding a little bit of clutter, here's the new 'Beast' Ability:

Beast
+10% Ice resistance, -10% Fire resistance.

Yeah, it's basically just explicitly formalizing the old Fire weakness and the new Ice resistance. I suspect it's also meant to help players understand which units can eg be targeted by Training, too, but I don't think it's actually mechanically relevant, really.

Bear

Level: 3

Hiring Cost: 160

Leadership: 70

Attack/Defense: 14 / 16

Initiative/Speed: 2 / 2

Health: 60

Damage: 7-10 Physical

Resistances: -10% Fire, 10% Ice

Talents: Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points)

Abilities: Beast, Brutal (Doubles Attack for the next attack or until 2 turns have passed pretty much anytime damage is suffered), Hibernation (If the Bear fails to take any action on its turn, such as by Waiting without moving, it falls asleep. On its next turn, the 'top' member of the stack heals to full, and the turn after that they get an actual turn), Stun (25% chance for melee attacks to Stun targets below Level 4)

Stun is the main thing here, as far as actually new stuff for Bears.

Unfortunately, Stun isn't quite as impressive as it would've been in prior games. In prior games, an attack that inflicted Stun would fail to be retaliated against; in Warriors of the North, such an attack will still be retaliated against. That leaves the Speed penalty and the blocking off of Talents as still relevant, but the very fact that a melee meatshield is inflicting the Stun limits the utility of those effects, especially since you're dependent on the RNG cooperating. Stunning at will can be used to ensure a key unit can't use a key Talent at a key time. Stunning at random... will very occasionally do something useful.

I personally don't really get why Stun isn't just a 100% chance to trigger. Being able to get a Bear, Ancient Bear, or Polar Bear into melee with something and shut off its Talents until such time as the bear is taken out of the fight would actually be a really cool niche, and it wouldn't be overpowered by any stretch of the imagination. Same for being able to trap 2-Speed ranged units; a really cool niche, but not any kind of gamebreaker. Especially since Level 5 units can't be Stunned regardless, and the Stun of all three bears is furthermore excluded from affecting Level 4 units for whatever reason.

I appreciate the attempt to give the bear series more justification for their existence, but it's a bit limp-wristed in practice.

Ancient Bear

Level: 3

Hiring Cost: 240

Leadership: 80

Attack/Defense: 18 / 20

Initiative/Speed: 3 / 2

Health: 70

Damage: 9-12 Physical

Resistances: 10% Physical, -10% Fire, 10% Ice

Talents: Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points)

Abilities: Beast, Brutal (Doubles Attack for the next attack or until 2 turns have passed pretty much anytime damage is suffered), Hibernation (If the Ancient Bear fails to take any action on its turn, such as by Waiting without moving, it falls asleep. On its next turn, the 'top' member of the stack heals to full, and the turn after that they get an actual turn), Stun (25% chance for melee attacks to Stun targets below Level 4)

They've gained Beast and Stun, just like Bears.

Nothing really new to say.

Polar Bear

Level: 4

Hiring Cost: 540

Leadership: 180

Attack/Defense: 22 / 26

Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2

Health: 130

Damage: 12-22 Physical

Resistances: 10% Physical, -10% Fire, 20% Ice

Talents: Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points), Icy Grip (Reload: 3. 14-24 Ice damage melee attack. If the target is below Level 5, it's additionally Frozen for 2 turns), Spirit of the North (Charge: 1. All Vikings and Beasts below Level 5 gain 20% Ice resistance and they do 20% more damage in the form of Ice damage, but suffer -1 Initiative. This effect lasts for 4 turns. Can't benefit Undead or Demons, though I'm not sure why the game notes this given none of them is a Viking or Beast)

Abilities: Beast, Brutal (Doubles Attack for the next attack or until 2 turns have passed pretty much anytime damage is suffered), Hibernation (If the Polar Bear fails to take any action on its turn, such as by Waiting without moving, it falls asleep. On its next turn, the 'top' member of the stack heals to full, and the turn after that they get an actual turn), Hardened (20% Ice resistance, and +50% Defense in snowy battlefields), Freeze Immunity (Immunity to Freeze status), Stun (25% chance for melee attacks to Stun targets below Level 4)

Where Bears and Ancient Bears were basically the same, Polar Bears have been noticeably changed. Their Leadership is higher and they've gained two nifty new Talents and... er... well, otherwise they've just gained Stun and Beast like Bears and Ancient Bears, and had their old cold resistance thing reworked for Warriors of the North. Still, Spirit of the North and Icy Grip radically change how they work, and it's worth noting that they're actually a bit less resistant to Ice than they were to icy effects in previous games. (Offset by Ice being a real damage type, and much more common than when it was a pseudo-type)

Notably, AI Polar Bears will pretty much always open their first turn by Running, moving three tiles forward, and then using Spirit of the North. This is a bit surprising given how many other units have Talents they insist on either using or moving in a given turn.

I do wish Bears and Ancient Bears had something over Polar Bears, but this is the first game where Polar Bears are interesting in their superiority, instead of much the same but more so aside a niche advantage. In particular, in prior games if you weren't interested in using Bears or Ancient Bears you were unlikely to care about Polar Bears, since for the most part they were just Even Bigger Bears.

It's also nice that there's an attempt to make animals a bit more interesting/usable as a pseudo-faction within Neutral, given how they've always been some of the more underwhelming members of Neutral, with little reason to take them over... much of anything else. Though that touches on the fact that I really feel like Neutral should've been broken up into 2-3 sub-factions of its own -maybe something like 'wild animals', 'magical creatures', and 'unaffiliated citizens'? Not sure, but Neutral is too vague and unwieldy for the mechanics, and it's only gotten worse as each game added more Neutral units. Who knows, maybe the series will get a reboot and the new version will rework Neutral?

With the exception that I kind of wish Polar Bears had gotten at least 50% Ice resistance -in general, I think there should've been more units with moderate-to-serious Ice resistance- I do think this is a really good rework of Polar Bears, though. I'd have liked it to go even further, but unlike with Bears and Ancient Bears it's 'this is good, but it could've been great', not 'you made terrible better, but it's still terrible'.

As an aside, it's worth pointing out that Spirit of the North tends to have a bigger impact on the really numerous, low-damage-per-head units, due to the game rounding up to a minimum of +1 to minimum and maximum damage. Slingers, for example, get a lot bigger benefit than other Vikings. Consider giving swarmier animals a second chance if you're giving Polar Bears a try in Warriors of the North.

Interestingly, the Talent additions are actually Ice and Fire-specific content. In the base game, Polar Bears are as boring as ever: just your biggest bear that happens to be especially unconcerned by Ice damage and Freezing, just like the prior two games.

Cave Spider

Level: 1

Hiring Cost: 24

Leadership: 14

Attack/Defense: 4 / 4

Initiative/Speed: 2 / 3

Health: 14

Damage: 2-4 Physical

Resistances: 20% Physical, -10% Fire

Talents: Web (Charge: 1. Ensnares an adjacent target below Level 5 with a web for 2 turns, preventing the unit from leaving its current tile or using Talents that involve moving)

Abilities: Underdweller (+50% Attack in underground battles), Stone Skin (20% Physical resistance)

No change, aside terminology adjustments.

Ice being a new, reasonably widespread damage type is yet another issue for Cave Spiders, providing yet more options for working around their modest Physical resistance. Web is still not very good on them. Really, the main point in their favor is that a Viking player might end up wanting to use them -one Item causes all spiders to auto-crit, and the Viking has a Skill that ultimately raises crit damage from 150% to 200%. So if your Viking run lucks into that Item, a spider-centric army could be pretty fun. Or even if you're not a Viking, auto-crit isn't bad, especially if you get the Spider Belt to boost Initiative and Damage.

Otherwise, they remain pretty sad...

Venomous Spider

Level: 1

Hiring Cost: 20

Leadership: 12

Attack/Defense: 5 / 1

Initiative/Speed: 4 / 3

Health: 12

Damage: 2-3 Poison

Resistances: 80% Poison, -10% Fire

Talents: None

Abilities: Poisonous (50% chance for melee attacks to Poison for 3 turns), Immune to Poison (80% Poison resistance, cannot be Poisoned), Vulnerable to Fire (-10% to Fire resistance)

They now have an Ability to call your attention to their preexistent Fire weakness.

Not much has changed for them overall. There's the spider Item I just covered with Cave Spiders, and that's about it.

Fire Spider

Level: 2

Hiring Cost: 60

Leadership: 30

Attack/Defense: 12 / 12

Initiative/Speed: 6 / 3

Health: 30

Damage: 4-5 Fire

Resistances: 50% Poison, 25% Fire, -20% Ice

Talents: Web (Charge: 2. Ensnares an adjacent target below Level 5 with a web for 2 turns, preventing the unit from leaving its current tile or using Talents that involve moving)

Abilities: Poison Protection (50% Poison resistance), Fire Protection (25% Fire resistance), Vulnerable to Cold (-20% Ice resistance), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), Flaming (Melee attackers are always Burned, if possible)

They're weak to Ice now. The only other change is that Flaming no longer has its not-actually-mentioned quality of failing to work if the attacker is currently above 80% Fire resistance, so you can no longer work around it with Items boosting Fire resistance.

I'm actually okay with Fire Spiders being effectively directly nerfed by Warriors of the North. They could be really frustrating to fight in Armored Princess, between their high Initiative, good Speed, immunity to mental effects closing off a lot of tools for stalling them, and the Burn retaliation, especially in conjunction with Web potentially trapping a unit into having to melee them if it wanted to do something of use in a turn. Being able to pick on a weakness to nuke them down faster makes them a lot less frustrating to fight, and yet isn't too huge an impact on their utility in player hands. Just be careful when fighting Ice-using enemies, or swap them out for something not vulnerable to Ice. Not a big deal, especially given how uncommon Ice damage is overall on units.

As such, this is my favorite iteration on Fire Spiders in the series.

Snake

Level: 1

Hiring Cost: 70

Leadership: 30

Attack/Defense: 14 / 8

Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2

Health: 30

Damage: 3-6 Physical

Resistances: 50% Poison, -20% Ice

Talents: Strike (Reload: 1. Attacks a single target across an empty tile, doing 4-7 Physical damage and Stunning the target)

Abilities: Reptile (+20% Poison resistance, -20% Ice resistance, -30% to Attack and Defense in snowy battlefields), Poison Protection (50% Poison resistance), Snake Agility (Flat 10% chance to dodge enemy attacks)

Reptile and Snake Agility. Since they already had Poison Protection, Reptile just flatly makes them worse.

Snake Agility, on the other hand, is... frustrating. It crops up so rarely you can almost pretend it isn't a trait on them at all, but every once in a while you'll get a critically-timed Miss. The flipside is that it's not helpful in player hands -it's far too rare to justify building a battle strategy around it happening, even aside how good play tends to minimize opportunities for enemies to get in strikes on your units in the first place. It's one of the more poorly-considered Abilities in the entire series, and it's unfortunate that the early game has multiple encounters with snakes of every type; my initial impression of Warriors of the North was actually quite poor, in no small part due to getting frustrated by Snake Agility dodges. In conjunction with a lot of other random elements that are especially prominent in the early game, Warriors of the North came across like a game designed to undermine player skill's relevancy. This isn't really true, not even in the early game, but the game's opening doesn't do a good job of communicating that Warriors of the North is much more about randomness being so layered and numerous that you have to adapt on the fly to constantly-changing conditions; it tends to take until the early midgame for the game to really come into its own in this regard.

But even aside how Snake Agility contributes to a misleading impression of the game, a flat 10% chance to dodge is dumb in a game where stacks can easily die in under 5 attacks.

The bizarre thing is Snake Agility is actually specific to Ice and Fire. The other changes are present in the base game, but not this bit of RNG nonsense. Ice and Fire is a sufficiently huge improvement in so many other ways that even in the early game where this difference is particularly prominent and frustrating I'd still say Ice and Fire is a smoother, more enjoyable experience, but in some ways that makes this all the more confusing a point.

Strike, it should be explicitly stated, hasn't been impacted by how Stuns don't prevent retaliations anymore. It's still a no-retaliation strike.

Swamp Snake

Level: 2

Hiring Cost: 60

Leadership: 28

Attack/Defense: 12 / 8

Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2

Health: 28

Damage: 3-5 Poison

Resistances: 80% Poison, -20% Ice

Talents: Strike (Reload: 1. Attacks a single target across an empty tile for 4-6 Poison damage, and Poisons the target)

Abilities: Reptile (+20% Poison resistance, -20% Ice resistance, -30% to Attack and Defense in snowy battlefields), Poisonous (30% chance for melee attacks to Poison for 3 turns), Immune to Poison (+80% Poison resistance and immunity to Poisoning), Snake Agility (Flat 10% chance to evade enemy attacks)

They've picked up Reptile and Snake Agility. As with Snakes, Reptile is a pure negative for them, and Snake Agility is not only a really bad idea of an Ability but since Royal Snakes have it there's still little cause to use Swamp Snakes over Royal Snakes.

Not helping is how common Undead are. Royal Snakes inflicting Poisoning without doing Poison damage on their attacks is far better a deal against Undead. This has always been true, but not so perpetually relevant.

If you do want to give them a chance, you'll probably want to wait until at least you've reached the Isles of Freedom, since that's the earliest area to not be heavy on Undead fights.

Royal Snake

Level: 3

Hiring Cost: 220

Leadership: 60

Attack/Defense: 18 / 18

Initiative/Speed: 6 / 3

Health: 64

Damage: 6-10 Physical

Resistances: 10% Physical, 80% Poison

Talents: Strike (Reload: 1. Attacks a single target across an empty tile for 8-11 Physical damage, and Poisons the target)

Abilities: Reptile (+20% Poison resistance, -20% Ice resistance, -30% to Attack and Defense in snowy battlefields), No retaliation, Poisonous (30% chance for melee attacks to Poison for 3 turns), Immune to Poison (+80% Poison resistance and immunity to Poisoning), Snake Agility (Flat 10% chance to dodge enemy attacks)

Just Reptile and Snake Agility gained. Inexplicably, Royal Snakes don't have the Ice vulnerability Reptile should give them, which fits with my suspicion that Abilities don't actually do anything to resistances in terms of how the game is actually coded. As such, Royal Snakes are even less affected by Warriors of the North than their fellow snakes. Or... more precisely by Ice and Fire, as the lack of an Ice weakness is new to Ice and Fire, strangely enough. In the base game, they're just as weak to Ice as their fellow snakes. Oops.

In any event, in practice they tend to stand out less than in prior games, due to points like the rising quality of early-game competition. This is fine; it's nice to finally have a game where you're not practically guaranteed to run Royal Snakes for a bit in the early to midgame.

Wolf

Level: 2

Hiring Cost: 60

Leadership: 30

Attack/Defense: 10 / 6

Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3

Health: 24

Damage: 3-6 Physical

Resistances: -10% Fire, 10% Ice

Talents: Howl (Charge: 1. All enemy Humans, Vikings, Elves, and Dwarves of Level 1-2 are hit with Fear, and additionally have a 50% chance of skipping their turn entirely)

Abilities: Beast, Night Vision (+50% Attack at night and/or underground), Rabid (10% chance to inflict Rabid for 1 turn on melee attacks. Rabid units are hostile to all units, but the effect ends after the first time they attack something), Horde (+1 to Attack and Defense for every 30 members of the stack, to a maximum of double base. In this case, that's +10 Attack and +6 Defense at most)

No direct stat changes, but they've picked up the 'Beast' explicit Ability and more significantly Horde. Horde doesn't shoot them up a million tiers or anything, but it does mean they take a bit longer to really lose relevancy as anything other than a mass Fear-inducer. (Which Werewolf Elves have always been better choices for)

Unlike the original Horde bonus units, Wolves actually fairly rapidly hit the cap on its benefits. At around 10,000 Leadership they're already maxed on both stats. As such, Horde doesn't help them keep up into the late game, which is unfortunate since in the early game Viking units will tend to work much better. Their low Leadership is part of this, and so they do actually scale quickly in the early game, but it's just not enough to make up for being a basic melee unit and also not a Viking. Later on, you've got the problem that Werewolves end up only 4 Attack and 2 Defense behind, while having better Abilities, the ability to transform back into a Werewolf Elf, and better support just from being an Elf.

And due to how Horde's scaling is handled, it's not like it's an advantage that you'll eventually go well past the cap. That is, a Wolf stack at 20,000 Leadership won't start losing points of Attack and Defense until more than half dead, but that's not an advantage compared to having higher bases that allow it to scale to a higher Leadership value.

Just like Werewolves, Frenzy/Rabid has also ceased to be bounded by Levels, so that's something of a buff to them.

This is probably the Wolf's peak, and it's still not very good. Even with stuff like Polar Bears providing support.

Hyena

Level: 2

Hiring Cost: 40

Leadership: 20

Attack/Defense: 12 / 14

Initiative/Speed: 6 / 3

Health: 18

Damage: 3-4 Physical

Resistances: -10% Fire, 10% Ice

Talents: Preparation (Reload: 1. The Hyena's next attack automatically crits. Does not end the turn)

Abilities: Beast, Night Vision (+50% Attack at night and/or underground), Scavenger (Can move up to 2 tiles beyond current movement range, if there's a corpse to move to), Horde (+1 to Attack and Defense for every 30 members of the stack, to a limit of double base stats. In this case, that's a max of +12 Attack and +14 Defense)

Like Wolves, Hyenas have picked up Beast and Horde. Like Wolves, it means they stay relevant for longer. Also like Wolves, 10,000 Leadership is already enough to have capped the benefits of Horde, so they don't scale for as long as you might hope.

Unlike with Wolves, Hyenas are genuinely at their best in this game. The Viking in particular can really leverage Preparation's forced crit, finally giving Hyenas something to stand out from other units, and unlike Wolves there's no direct competition to make Horde's stat bonuses less relevant than they might seem. They're still not great, but this is still a pretty big improvement from in The Legend, where they were extremely difficult to justify over much of anything.

Devilfish

Level: 1

Hiring Cost: 20

Leadership: 12

Attack/Defense: 6 / 4

Initiative/Speed: 7 / 3

Health: 10

Damage: 1-3 Physical

Resistances: -20% Fire

Talents: None

Abilities: Marine (+2 Morale in naval combat), Vulnerable to Fire (-20% Fire resistance), Night Vision (+50% Attack at night and/or underground), Frightening (30% chance for melee attacks to inflict Fear for 2 turns on the target. Only works against units below Level 4. Victims will fail to retaliate against an attack that inflicts Fear), Frightful Fish (Enemies struck in melee have +40% crit chance for 4 turns. Doesn't work on inorganic units), Horde (+1 Attack and Defense for every 30 members of the stack, to a max of double base. In this case, that's a max of +6 Attack and +4 Defense)

They're now weak to Fire, but they've picked up Horde, functionally raising their base stats. I frame it that way because they'll hit the cap on the Horde bonus at 2160 Leadership, which you'll hit fairly early into the game, and stop scaling from there.

It's too bad 6 Attack and 4 Defense is only a minor boost, easily drowned out by damage variance.

Frightful Fish has also been tweaked; in Armored Princess, it wouldn't work on Droids, but it worked on anything else. In Warriors of the North, it additionally doesn't work on Ice Creations or Cyclops -Ice Creations and Droids are both inorganic in addition to their distinctive traits. So... less benefit to tanking them with Cyclops, I guess? Frightful Fish is an Ability I've always been confused by.

I'm really puzzled as to why Warriors of the North swapped their resistance into a weakness. I'd have gotten it if they were also given a strong Ice resistance -there's a bit of anglerfish to their design so it would actually make sense for them to shrug off cold, and I could sort of get that leading to a decision to say fire is bad for them. As-is, it's just a confusing reversal.

Lake Dragonfly

Level: 1

Hiring Cost: 12

Leadership: 9

Attack/Defense: 3 / 1

Initiative/Speed: 6 / 4

Health: 7

Damage: 1-3 Poison

Resistances: 30% Magic

Talents: None

Abilities: Soaring, Weakness (Melee attacks have a 30% chance to inflict Weakness on the target for 1 turn), Magic Resistance (30% Magic resistance), Paralyzes (Melee attacks have a chance of taking away the target's entire supply of Action Points. This chance is 50/40/30/20/10% against Level 1/2/3/4/5 creatures)

No change.

Functionally, this is probably their least appealing game in the series, just because Undead are all over the place to be heavily Poison resistant. The Ice and Fire content doesn't really change this, either -the Marshan Swamp is dominated by Undead and Undead Lizardmen, the underground portion of the Ice Gardens is dominated by Lizardmen. Poison resistance everywhere... and Ice Creations are a new addition that's fairly heavily Poison resistant... and the only Poison-vulnerable unit in the series -the Chaos Dragon- has been relegated to Wanderer Scrolls instead of being kept as a regular Spell enemy Heroes could theoretically use.

Fire Dragonfly

Level: 1

Hiring Cost: 14

Leadership: 10

Attack/Defense: 4 / 1

Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3

Health: 8

Damage: 2-3 Fire

Resistances: 30% Fire, -30% Ice

Talents: Haste (Reload: 1. Doubles Action Points, using supply at activation. Does not end the turn)

Abilities: Soaring, Fire Protection (+30% Fire protection), Vulnerable to Cold (-30% Ice resistance)

Now they're weak to Ice.

This is particularly killer to their ability to be a threat given the player has Lord of the North, and Soothsayer runs are inevitably going to be using Blizzard to murder everything, but it also makes them that bit less appealing for the player.


Ice Spider

Level: 3

Hiring Cost: 340

Leadership: 120

Attack/Defense: 18 / 22

Initiative/Speed: 4 / 3

Health: 60

Damage (Ranged): 6-10 Ice

Damage (Melee): 5 Physical

Resistances: 25% Physical, 50% Poison, 80% Magic, -100% Fire, 80% Ice

Talents: Web (Charge: 1. An adjacent enemy below Level 5 is rendered unable to move for 2 turns)

Abilities: Underdweller (+50% Attack in underground battles), Ice Creation (Immunity to mental effects, 25% Physical resistance, 50% Poison resistance, -100% Fire weakness, 80% Ice resistance, cannot be Frozen, +50% Defense in snowy battlefields, -50% Defense in volcanic battlefields, immunity to some Spells), Spits Ice (Range: 5. 30% chance to Freeze enemies for 2 turns)

The only new unit in Warriors of the North I class as an 'animal' rather than a sapient. There's no such additional unit in Ice and Fire, either.

Ice Spiders are another of those rare units that doesn't leave behind a corpse when destroyed.

For a ranged unit, Ice Spiders are a bit short-ranged, but make up for it with high mobility and some nice utility, plus the hidden quality that they only lose 30% of their damage for firing beyond their effective range, making it more okay for them to take such shots. Web is a lot more directly useful on Ice Spiders than on any of the previous spiders, so long as you make sure to use Wait or something to allow the Ice Spider stack to Web an already-done unit and then back off next turn to start flinging ranged attacks.

They're also surprisingly durable. While their Leadership-to-Health ratio is unusually awful (50%), this is substantially offset by their incredible suite of resistances. Everything except Astral and Fire damage does noticeably below normal damage, Ice and Magic in particular being laughed off, but even Physical damage doesn't go so far on them. Astral is even rarer as a damage type than in Orcs on the March, and while Fire is something to keep in mind -Ice Spiders are another unit you might want to have a swap ready for- overall Ice Spiders are surprisingly reliable. They are, in fact, the first really good spider-type enemy in the series. Them being added also means that if you luck into spider-supporting gear, you can finally go all-in on a spider army. As with prior spiders, a Viking who happens on the spider-bolstering Items is especially good at leveraging Ice Spiders thanks to the crit thing.

The main flaw Ice Spiders have as a unit is actually their somewhat low Initiative. 4 isn't bad, but it's low enough that unsupported Ice Spiders can find themselves taking unnecessary casualties, getting a Freeze after their target has moved, and so on. A midgame Skald can patch that over pretty easily, though, and anybody can potentially find the belt that's +1 Initiative to spiders to help on that account.

Note that the in-game info makes them seem worse than they are; it lists their inferior melee damage instead of their ranged damage the way the game normally does with ranged units, it doesn't mention the reduced penalty to firing beyond their effective range, and I've struckthrough the Defense penalty on lava battlefields because they're bugged so it doesn't apply; feel free to take them into lava battlegrounds so long as there's either no Fire damage enemies about or you're confident in your ability to prevent such units from attacking the Ice Spiders. Also, you might assume that Spits Ice's Freeze chance only applies to their ranged attack, but no, it works in melee. You should avoid putting them in melee, of course, but if something gets in their face the Freeze chance kicking in on retaliation can help quite a bit.

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Next time, we cover what Warriors of the North has done with Neutral Sapients.