What's up peeps? Finally got my hands on a copy of the book for an extended period of time, so I can go through it section by section and give you a comprehensive review. After the reviews are done I'll post my list ideas.
So before we get to the units, let's go over the special rules for the army. It's what makes Orcs Orcy.
Animosity: Animosity has been greatly reduced in impact from the 7th Edition book. Black Orc characters will be key to keeping animosity from affecting important units at clutch times.
Choppas: All Orc weapons are now considered Choppas in addition to their normal properties. What's a Choppa do? +1 strength in the first round of combat. Ideally, Orcs will be devastating in the first round of combat and opponents would do well to plan for that eventuality.
Size Matters: Little stuff being destroyed, panicking/fleeing won't scare the bigger stuff. This will keep your Orc units in place when your throwaway units get a pounding.
Fear Elves: Everything in the book Fears elves. This can be super shitty with the amount of DE and HE armies out there. Fear is generally less important than last edition, but you never want to be WS 1 on the turn your key unit charges an elf unit.
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Magic Items
GW has caught a lot of flak for drastically cutting down the amount of magic items in the army book, and perhaps rightly so. But you can't argue that it won't make the game easier to learn. I've never played in a Fantasy tournament where I didn't at least once have to ask someone "what's that do?" This will go a long way to solving that.
Battle Axe of the Last Waagh: 100 points hugely buffs strength and attacks. Can turn a warboss into a one man killing machine. Unfortunately, it's 100 points which means it should never be used under any circumstances.
Axe of Stunty Smashin: +1 attack and strength. Doubled vs. Dwarfs. 50 points. More crap.
Armor of Gork +d3 toughness determined each turn. You also get impact hits special rules. Great! It costs 100 points. PASS.
Lucky Shrunken Head: 50 points and increases your ward save by 1 for you and your unit. Sorry, Savage Orcs with a 5+ isn't worth 50 points.
Morks Warbanner: d6 MR, rolled each turn when needed. 100 fucking points. No goddamn way.
Spider Banner: Gives the unit poisoned attacks. Great! 85 points. Bad!
Bad Moon Banner: Makes a Night Goblin unit fairly imba. They get soft cover vs shooting always. They get Stubborn. Any unit that charges them takes dangerous terrain tests. These are all awesome. Unfortunately, no one is making a Night Goblin character his BSB except in theme lists.
Skull Wand: Horrible. 75 points to kill an enemy if he fails leadership test. Except for the fact that everyone uses BSB's and Inspiring Presence. Fail.
So in summary, the book's magic items aren't fail because there are only a handful of them, it's fail because they all suck.
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Up next: Lores of magic, and Characters!
Cool, look forward to the rest of the series.
ReplyDeleteSince the O&G specific items aren't good, hope you cover in a later part which generic items you think would work well with them.
Definitely. I'll tell you right now that the Sword of Swift Slaying, which gives ASF, is insanely on Orc fighty characters. Thanks to the Choppa +1 strength they get to strike first and get a strength bonus? Win.
ReplyDeleteIs choppa an army wide rule or a special weapon rule?
ReplyDeleteIt's a unit by unit army rule. If your unit (or character) has the Choppa rule, then any weapon he wields is a Choppa in addition to its other properties.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I really hate how they took away all the little 10 or 15-point items. I will be mourning the Tricksy Trinket and the Amulet of Protectyness the most, though.
ReplyDelete