by Peter Atkinson

BAM! The wave of excitement from Trugg’s Warscroll landing was followed rapidly by the wave of frustration that he’s only packing a small handful of D6 damage attacks: the same as the (notoriously feather-fisted) Troggboss, albeit with a second, superior melee profile which in turn offers a measly two further attacks.  He’s still a tanky boi at a Listbuilding-friendly 320 points, so what did we find out about Trugg today and what’s the (early) verdict?  Let’s smash into it.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/09/11/trugg-the-troggoth-king-can-raise-a-mighty-herd-of-supercharged-troggoths-in-reign-of-the-brute-download-his-rules-now/

The Overview

Bravery 8 is awesome, movement 6” really isn’t.  Fuck me, that is slow for a model of this nature.  Aggressively, ostentatiously slow.  Off to a bad start.

His profile is a mixed bag: four Club attacks at 3s and 3s for D6 damage is nothing to get excited about, and pretty underwhelming considering how much bigger he is than a regular Troggboss.  The second profile is better, 2s and 2s with D3+3 damage, but it’s a puny 2 attacks for this one.  This guy isn’t going to be blasting through big units on his own, but least the dual profiles can receive +1 attacks buffs well.

He’s a Monster, giving you access to a Rampage without relying on the Troggboss CT.  16 wounds on a 4+ save is solid, and that save will often be a 3+ in practice thanks to the Bad Moon.  I do wonder if he’s been punished for his allegiance ability: a base 3+ save wouldn’t be out of place on this guy.

Abilities

We’ve got a neat timing window for the Crushing Grip, plucking a model at the end of the combat phase.  The important thing here is that the enemy units will already have piled in, so if you can break coherency at that point, they’re fucked.  It’s also “equal to or greater than”, so 5 wound models are most definitely in peril.  Identical to the Troggboss and that’s a good thing.

Regeneration is effectively D3 + 3 wounds (so better than the Troggboss’s D6) and it seems to have caused a lot of questions as to why it’s split across two rules.  I’m going to say that it’s probably to keep his Regeneration ability wording exactly the same as the regular Troggoth version, purely to avoid potential ambiguity around whether and how a “different” Regeneration rule interacts with Megamobb subfaction abilities.  It doesn’t really matter at the end of the day, but it is a little tidier this way.

He’s not a Totem, which is bizarre and insulting – that gate thing is most definitely totemic.  But he does get Warmaster instead (within GG at least), so potayto potarto.  This does matter greatly in Troggoth armies where the units can’t issue themselves commands – as well as opening up some bullshit, which we’ll come back to later.

Finally we’ve got the signature ability, which is random done right.  I will admit to being nervous and downright sceptical when the preview video mentioned this cornerstone of the warscroll would be random and “great fun in-game”: Destruction Fun Klaxon Warning.

It’s actually been really well handled.  Rolling a 1 hurts you while the other effects are all varying degrees of really cool and useful.  Best of all, you get to roll 4 dice and pick your favourite.  Having this bracket is also quite well thought out.  Credit where it’s due, this is really neat design. You can’t assume you’ll always get the 5++ Ward or Fuck You Shooting glyphs (even though plenty of people seem to have dived feet-first into assuming exactly that), but you’ve got a good chance early on. This does look legitimately fun and brings a neat sense of peril as he brackets.

What about the Army of Renown?

Yeah boi!  There’s gonna be a lot of fun writing lists here.  We found out quite a bit in the article:

• The headline is that every unit in the army gets the Leystone ability.  Holy shit!
  • The first thing that springs to mind is 5++ Wards on your whole army
  • The second thing that springs to mind is an anti-shooting teams list, hoping for Ulgu every time
  • This does fuck all to help our best unit (Rockguts), nor for that matter the Troggboss with a Glowy Howzit, but it’ll be awesome to elevate those Fellwaters or Dankholds
• You also get Battleline Dankholds.  Note that there’s no way to recycle them through the Shrine, so you probably don’t want a whole army of them competitively (especially with no screens), but fuck me it’s a cool theme army.
  • Note also that this does mean you can double-reinforce them to a unit of three for the ultimate blender
• You get a full suite of bespoke enhancements, including CTs that Trugg can take himself despite being a named character.  Looking forward to seeing all of these.
• The army can only contain Gloomspite Gits Troggoths keyworded units
  • Depending on final wording, it looks unlikely to allow Dobby or Mirebrutes since they lack the GG keyword

The army-wide Leystone really is the star attraction.  And I must admit that it will be quite funny when a heavily-bracketed Trugg rolls shit on the Leystone, and bops out D3 mortal wounds to the whole army. 

Will it be better than Megamobb?  You’re giving up a lot (“screens” springs to mind), and what it brings you can mostly be achieved in other ways (for example I’ve been running reinforced Fellwaters with a 5++ ward thanks to Snufflers since the book dropped). 

While we wait for the full Army of Renown rules, I’m currently thinking that Trugg in Megamobb might be more competitive overall, whereas the Army of Renown is shaping up as a cool and playable themed army – or a neat skewed list to terrify shooting armies at teams events.  And that’s probably the sweet spot for something like that to be.

What’s missing

It’s disappointing that there’s no magical resistance on his warscroll – it was hinted at in the Nova stream, and it’s long been a thematic part of #Trogglyf.  The regular Dankholds have it on their warscroll and real ones remember the Dank Dame popping back Unbind mortals before Gobsprakk was even a twinkling in GW’s eye. 

That goes double when you remember that the Army of Renown can’t actually take any wizards.  You’ll get a Nullstone trinket while they’re around, but magically-resistant armies like Khorne and Duardin have a bit more anti-magic baked into their rules and Troggs should too.  Hopefully the full army rules give us something we haven’t seen yet.

There’s also no Ward baked in, so at time of writing he’s liable to get punked in a Merciless Blizzard meta.  16 wounds on a 4+ isn’t all that durable, and the healing only comes into it if he doesn’t get smashed in one go – which a lot of stuff can do, if they outdrop you and hit you up before the Leystone roll, or you just don’t get what you want on his table of joy.

Having Trugg smashed off early and taking away your army’s main piece of candy will feel awful, so that’s another thing currently steering me back towards using him as a well-priced, standalone anvil that can take buffs well in Megamobb – rather than as a weirdly vulnerable lynchpin in Trugg’s Troggherd.  Let’s see what the full Dawnbringer book brings us because it’ll only take a small anti-magic boost to get him over the line.

Is There Any Fan Service?

Notably, you can put the new Command Traits on Mollog as a named Troggoth Hero.  Will it make him any good?  Unlikely, but it does at least give you a unit that you can fit into a Battle Reg.  Prognosis remains grim.

The best (or at least the coolest) thing about Batteline Dankholds is that you can have a double-reinforced unit of three.  An army of all Trogg heroes and Dankholds is honestly amazing and so, so cool.  Great fan service right there.

The Nuance

OK here’s the juice: a lot of stuff you can miss on a quick skim-through, including a couple of gems that I haven’t seen anyone else talking about.

• Trugg does not get to pick 4 items on the table.  It’s not pick 1 per dice – it’s pick 1 in total.  It just gives you a better chance of getting the result you want.  I’ve seen loads of people get mixed up on this one, so watch out for accidental cheating when you play against him.
• Note that your Leystone results last until you next choose to clobber it (which is optional).  Crucially, they do not automatically expire at the start of your next hero phase.  If you’ve already got an option you’re happy with, you can stick with it indefinitely.
• The exception is that the army-wide effects do expire in the Troggherd, so if you want to benefit from them, you’ll need to take your chances on the table again. Fair enough.
• Timing is the start of the hero phase, so at higher health often want to clobber first and then do your Regeneration, so you can heal up any accidental damage. 
• The opposite applies if you’re on death’s door though: remember to Regenerate first before you risk rolling that 1 and popping yourself, FFS!
• In fact, it should be impossible to ever roll 1 dice on the table. Even if you’re sitting on 15 wounds, Regeneration will add back 4 wounds minimum taking him back up to 11 wounds (giving you 2 dice on the table). It won’t actually be uncommon to jump right back up the second bracket and then roll 3 dice.
• He is a Hero with the Dankhold Troggboss keyword, so he can use the (excellent) Wade and Smash Heroic Action
• Note that per the article, Trugg’s Troggherd allows you to take you take the special CTs only (not all Enhancements).  This is important because it prevents you from slapping a Nullstone Pebble on him and giving him the Merciless Blizzard protection he desperately needs.  Again: watch this space for the full rules reveal, and cross your fingers and toes.

Hobby Corner

Trugg comes on a 100mm base – this will be a nice fit for the Dank Dame.  She’s a big Trogg hero with something magical on her back, and two very obvious ummm…..weapon profiles (her own Warscroll has always had her big whacking stick and crushing bulk).

So I’ll probably upgrade and rebase mine, doing a better job of painting up her newly magical sack that she dips in. Let me know if you’ve got any cool hobby ideas inspired by Trugg?

The Wombo Combo

There’s plenty you can do to pump this guy up:

+1 Attack from the Dankhold issuing AOA

+1 Attack from Snufflers

+1 Attack from Sporesplattas

+1 Attack from Leystone

+1 to hit, also from the Dankhold issuing AOA

+1 to wound from Best Day Ever

+1 to rend from the Gobbapalooza

5++ Ward also from the Snufflers

There’s a few of those buffs that require dice rolls or tight bubbles – but also a few that don’t.  In a perfect world you can put him on 8 Club attacks and 6 Antler attacks, all on 2s and 2s with rend -3 and Damage Loads.  Lots of this is coming from non-Troggoth units, so we’re in Megamobb, but he’s gonna be healing twice a turn and impossible to ignore.  Unstoppable.

It’s true that you can already apply those buffs to other units that would multiply them all up across more attacks, but it’s also true that you’re constructing an anvil here that smashes out so much pain and is so bloody hard to put down itself.

So this is how I see it shaping up:

• In classic Megamobb, the rest of your army supports Trugg.
• In the new Troggherd, Trugg supports the rest of your army.

Take your pick.

Have you got a list for us?

Nah not yet.  Most of the chatter I’ve seen revolves around “If you take X plus Y, you can fit in Z number of Dankholds”.  Which is dope.  But we’ll wait until we see the full book and do it properly.

I daresay this will be a major topic of conversation in the Craic House, and we’ll probably conduct a few thought experiments around how much tech you can actually fit around him in a well-functioning list, in Troggoth factions both old and new.  Can’t wait to rip into it.

Is there any bullshit?

Shout out to Dom S for flagging up this one in the Gloomspite WhatsApp, and to Rob Kelly for explaining it to me when my head was spinning:

• Fellwaters and Rockguts are Battleline if your General is a Dankhold Troggboss
• Trugg has those keywords, and counts as your General
• Their Pitched Battle profiles don’t specify chosen General.  So it looks like Trugg triggers their Battleline status just by being in the army
• You can then take a Moonclan unit as your chosen General, and given them the Clammy Hand Command Trait
• Hey Presto, you’ve gained access to Clammy Hand in a Troggs army

Nice.

The Verdict

The Gits and Gits-Curious player bases seem to pretty disappointed with this one initially, because he doesn’t really do a whole lot.  A handful of attacks, mostly with the dreaded D6 damage profile, isn’t enough to get people pumped.  He’s tough to kill unless he isn’t, and he really lacks a signature buff like the Glottkin’s counter-charge ability. 

And yet.  He is at least pointed to reflect all the stuff he doesn’t have.  People who were excited for him are going through the stages of grief that he’s not a God-tier meta-definer; a lot of Trogg players would have been happy to pay for a 500+ point model, with a ward and signature army buff right there on his warscroll.  But he is at least costed to reflect their absence.  If you like the mini, and you want to run him, at 320 points you can totally make it work. 

He’s an anvil first and foremost, he’s pointed appropriately and he’s pretty good.

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