By Theo Kik-Jansen

Ever had that feeling that your unit is -3 rend away from being really good? You and me both pal! Well, we’re in luck, let me introduce you to Whorefrost Hoarfrost.

Edit 14-7-2023 10:00 gmt+1: To add a note on the FAQ. It states that after Hoarfrost, you cannot use abilities that change or modify the characteristic, but you can buff or debuff the roll itself. So make sure you check the wording for that! For example All Out Attack and Defence will still work, but you can’t stack rend up to -3 with Hoarfrost and then -4 with the Gobbapalooza.

Secret tech: If a debuff changes your rend characteristic, rules as written it can’t be used if you changed your rend with the spell first.

The spell:
The workings of the spell are probably well known at this point, as it’s been the main topic of conversation on Kruleboyz and S2D forums alike, filling little nerds’ heads with fantasies of terrible units finally being OP enough to be as efficient as a bunch of Zombies (yep, that’s the world we live in).

The question is: How good is this spell really? In short: Really fucking good and you should cast it 5 turns every game. If you stopped reading here, that’s the takeaway, it’s that good. But in today’s article we’ll be looking at how to use it most efficiently and where you can get this spell to really shine its brightest.

It’s simple enough to understand: Cast it on an 8, Roll a D3, replace the to hit, to wound or rend characteristic with the roll. So 2+ or 3+ to hit/wound or -1, -2 or -3 rend.

How to use it:
A quick freshen up on kindergarten maths: in a vacuum, if your to Wound and Hit rolls are equal, it doesn’t matter which one you choose. 3+4+ is the same as 4+3+.

If I’ve lost you there, please go play a game and have some fun. I love all equally.

The second math principle is that if you increase probability with an absolute number, it doesn’t improve probability linearly. Meaning that improving the characteristic of a bad stat has more impact than improving a good stat. To give an extreme example:

A +1 to hit on a 6+ characteristic is 4 times as effective as a +1 to hit on a unit that already hits on 3’s.

So if the Hit and Wound characteristics don’t start out equal, always buff whichever starts out worse: this isn’t +1, it’s a flat recalibration of the characteristic. For example, if you Hit on 4s and Wound on 3s, there’s more value in improving your 4s down to 2s than your 3s down to 2s, and you should choose to improve your To Hit rolls in this case.

And it’s the inverse for rend, where rend has more impact the better the armour save of a target:

Your -1 rend unit trades a lot more efficiently into a unit with a good save than into a unit that already has a bad save.

Improving your characteristics in the end looks like this (in a vacuum of course), a quick practical guide:

The easiest way to read this is: Look at your D3 roll. Take that column. Pick the highest percentage that corresponds with your unit’s profile: change that one. Easy peasy, your mom’s a whorefrost.

So, if you’re attacking into a 4+ save with a unit that has a profile of 5+5+-1r, and you roll a 2, you’ll see that the hit or wound roll from a 5+ to a 2+ boosts your damage by 150%. Pick that one.

Taking it further
For true practical use, apply the buffs and de-buffs to the roll you will face beforehand. Say you use all out attack and your opponent uses all out defence, interpret your profile as 4+5+0r. In that case, your hit and rend will each net you a 67% damage increase, while your wound-roll will boost your damage by 150%, making that the obvious choice. Make sure you consider every buff and de-buff and make sure you remember that it’s useless to rend beyond a 7+ save.

Writers choice:

My favorite Hoarfrost tech is Stabbas. Ingredients: Hoarfrost, 60 stabbas, Sporesplatta fanatics, Loonboss on foot, 1 CP. How it works: You give the Stabbas an extra attack either by Snufflers or Sporesplattas, giving them 2 attacks each, or 120 for 60 spear Stabbas. Then you buff them with the All out Attack from the Loonboss, giving them MW’s on 6s to wound. I’ll leave you with the following table:

So for example, if you roll a 1 or 2 and apply it to their To Hit characteristic, they will put 50 damage into a 4+ save. Not bad for chaff that are cheap, great at scoring objectives and -1 to hit!

Worth pointing out too that if you roll a 3 for Hoarfrost with these guys, you are still better off improving the To Hit roll than giving them rend -3 even into strong armour saves, because you’re pushing more dice into the chance to pop MWs.

Reference Guide
To close with, here are a few examples as a quick reference. Each table shows damage per 10 1dmg attacks, with the rows showing us the impact of applying 1, 2 or 3 on the D3 to hit / wound or to increased rend, and the columns showing us different armour save values:

And below you’ll find the full reference cheat sheet. Remember to apply every roll modifier you think will apply, so you can change the right characteristic for optimum frostiness!

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So hopefully that’s been helpful and given you some tools to make efficient decisions with Hoarfrost rolls!

The important things to take away are:

• Hoarfrost is every bit as good as the hype suggests
• This isn’t primary school: there is a right and wrong answer here, and our tables provide it
• Stabbas with all the buffs are fucking cooked

There’s plenty more gold to dig out of this spell and while I’ve picked out Stabbas, there are a whole bunch of units (chaff especially) that will benefit greatly. Let us know what combos you’re looking forward to using!

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