I must apologize again for the lack of updates. Work has been insane lately and my biggest two races of the year are coming up so I've been training like a demon at 4am, which means by the time I get home from work at 6pm I'm too exhausted to write anything.
Hopefully I can power through these and move things forward.
-Rares-
Gnoblar Scraplauncher: The good news is it caught a big points decrease from the last edition. You can easily fit two into your list and still have enough points for a third Rare, even in a 2k list. The bad news is, it's a bit crap. Str3 small blasts are OK, but you can't really expect them to do too much. Even two of them are not going to scare a big unit of Chaos Marauders. The Killing Blow is cute, as always, but nothing you can count on to carry you. Better options are available.
Iron Blaster: So we have a Scraplauncher with a mega-cannon attached that fires Str10 Grapeshot! For 170 points it's a steal. In a vacuum this is a fantastic unit. But in the larger context of the entire army book, it doesn't work well. Cannons are great at killing monsters and elite armored units. Ogres aren't afraid of monsters, trust me. And elite armored units aren't especially scary. I consider the Iron Blaster a great answer to a question that nobody asked.
Giant: Move along, nothing to see here.
Stonehorn: On average it will do 9 Str 6 hits when it charges, potentially more, plus the rider's attacks. That's strong. Built in defense against cannons and bolt throwers, even stronger. It's expensive, but it's a frickkin' beat stick. Two of these in every list and done. Seriously.
Thundertusk: Wow, the Always Strikes Last bubble is insane. These absolutely frighten Dark Elves. High Elves get to hit at Initiative at least, Dark Elves just get smashed. Unfortunately, the thing has crap armor save, and doesn't have the built-in defense against warmachines. Adding to it's list of weaknesses is that it doesn't bring much to the table offensively itself. Yes, it makes the rest of your army better, but it doesn't kill much itself and is easier to kill. I don't want to make this sound bad, really the ASL bubble is absolutely nuts, but you have to consider if it's worth it for your army.
-Summary-
My take is that the Stonehorn and Thundertusk are the big winners. The other three are marginal. The debate is between Stonehorn and Thundertusk, really. So which do you pick? Stonehorns can be redundant since it's a big beatstick in an army of big beat sticks. Whereas the Thundertusk isn't a beater, but it is a force multiplier. Tough decisions that will come down entirely to your list. However, consider that the Thundertusk is a chariot and thus cannot march. The rest of your army can march 12". What good is a 6" ASL bubble when the rest of your army is in combat 12" in front of you? It may turn out to be something that sounds epic on paper, but is rather awkward to use effectively on the table top. Does that make sense?
> However, consider that the Thundertusk is a chariot and thus cannot march.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but this is not true. Thundertusk type is "Monster". So it can march together with the rest of the army.
Stonehorn and Thundertusk looks ok to me, but what do you think about their price? Isn't 250 pts per model is too expensive?
Oh wow, you're right. Not sure what I was looking at.
ReplyDeleteBut no, I don't think they are too expensive. I've never written a real WHFB list that didn't max out my Rare points in 8th Edition.
I've only been taking an Ironblaster and a Thundertusk, but that's because I have a Hunter on Stonehorn in the heroes section.
ReplyDeleteThe Ironblaster has proven to be highly resilient (T6 and 5 wounds; recently took a stonethrower to the face no problem, then crushed it in CC), and can deal with the monsters/chariots that Ogres don't necessarily want to fight. Also great for shooting warmachines, that ogres really hate to get shot by. I think it's a pretty good buy.
Other than that, I think you've hit the nail on the head here with the other reviews.