by Peter Atkinson

Today’s List rundown is a little bit different: instead of me presenting you with a shining object of magnificent beauty, where I rattle off all the great stuff it does for you to Ooh! and Aah! over, we’re going to build it up from first principles. We occasionally do stuff like this together in the Patrons’ Discord and it’s good fun.

First thing I’m going to do is point you once more towards WHW’s excellent video on the Dawnbringer Crusades: partly because they did their customary excellent job, partly because I nicked a couple of their assets and fair’s fair. So credit and thanks to those fellas for the work they do every week.

Why Brodd’s Stomp?

The Gargants AOR comes in as a mid life-cycle refresh for Gargants players, giving you a completely different way to run your army. You lose all your favourite stuff but you gain some really powerful new rules too, with Battle Tactics being a clear upgrade for example. The headline is that you get a 40 wound, 5++ ward Gigachad to anchor your army. There’s two ways of looking at this: you can either use Brodd as a stable platform to launch missiles from, or you can double down on the “survive long enough near objectives” aspect. Or maybe a bit of both.

Next up, you get a potentially-awesome shooting attack:

Tip: The Gatebreaker famously has a single, high-impact shooting attack.

This new Hurled Terrain is also a Missile Weapon, so if you issue All Out Attack to a Gatebreaker you’re getting +1 to hit on both attacks, for that little bit of extra value out of the CA

Another cool thing about Gatebreakers is that they can bypass some anti-combat abilities if you don’t mind gambling. You can just nope out of making combat attacks and go for the Pulverising Strike instead. This is purely a warscrcoll ability and not a melee attack, which means that abilities such as All Out Ghost and Impenetrable Ranks never meet their timing window:

So we’re going to start out by grabbing King Brodd and at least one Gatebreaker. That puts us 1020 deep.

Pounding Techno

Next thing to think about is tech. We lost access to Bosses of the Stomp, so we’re frozen out of Warscroll Battalions. We only get one artefact, so what are the ones from the AOR like?

Fights First is cool but it’s only really game-breaking when you can do it on your opponent’s turn. Not so much when it’s your own turn and even then you have to roll hot. Needing to hit a 5+ on the Creepers is a bit miserly so I’m going to say the pick of the bunch is the 5++ mortals-only ward from Lucky Shiny Hat.

Is that better than the classic Amulet of Destiny and its 6++ everything ward? Debatable. We are still in a magic meta and it’s not like you have much in the way of screens to push Merciless Blizzard back; but the majority of output in the majority of games is still shootin’ and fightin’. I’m leaning towards the Amulet, but I wouldn’t say you’re crazy for picking either one of the two. If you’re feelsbad-averse that could be enough to swing the Lucky Shiny Hat in front – and in a lot of ways it’s a punt on whether you expect to face more Seraphon and Tzeentch, or Khorne and Grundstok KO.

The third item we get is a Nullstone Artefact. We know that Brodd can’t take one as a named character, but if we slap the Pebble on a third Mega, then we’re in business. Broddley has his native 5++ ward, we’ve just given the Gatebreaker the 6++ ward and now our 3rd Mega will be packing a 4+ Magic ignore. My main beef with the Pebble is that your opponent can usually just profitably make it snow on someone else, but in this situation we’ve left no good targets.

We’ve already discussed CTs elsewhere and the answer is that you’re always taking the healing CT. So that’s a ward on the big rig, a ward on the Gatebreaker, healing for days and now a magic shrug on the 3rd Mega. What kind of Mega should that be? We’ll circle back to that at the end.

Playstyle and win conditions

So that’s the shell of our list: King Ding-A-Ling, one Gatebreaker with Amulet and the Big Eater CT, and a third Mega with the Nullstone Pebble. That’s about 1500 points committed, leaving us ~500 for the final slot. Our options boil down to a 4th Mega, or 3x Mancrushers with a strong triumph bid.

At this point we can consider what the army’s rules want us to do, and what’s going to help us best secure Battle Tactics and our Grand Strategy.

Grand Strategy

This is a write-off currently. At time of writing the AOR GS does not function because you get 5 attempts to sunder 8+ terrain pieces. It’s obviously a mistake and will hopefully receive an erratum. Even if they change that to 5 terrain pieces though, that means you have to hit five consecutive 2+s, as well as keeping Megas alive and chasing a dwindling number of terrain pieces around the board. It’s broken now but still likely to be bloody hard soon.

But 2+s are easy

Individually, yes. Cumulatively, no. The chances of hitting five 2+s in a row is only 40%, and that’s assuming you can A) get to those terrain pieces without foresaking the primary and B) haven’t already been shot to shit by KO with the completely fucking stupid rules that GW just gave them.

So not only is the current Grand Strat broken, it will be dogshit even after they “fix” it. So we’re stuck taking this one:

Hey, at least it’s easy against Khorne. But in terms of unit composition that we should be taking, it’s a non-factor.

Battle Tactics

Ding Dong! As you can see from the asset above, we got three rippers. First up, we get one for killing a unit with the new terrain-chuck: dicey as hell, but we can already soften ’em up with Gatebreaker shooting first if needed. We’ll probably pick this one when something is already bleeding heavily but any units we can take with their own shooting profile helps a little with scoring this. This includes the Gatebreaker, the Mancrushers and the Kraken-Eater.

The other two are basically “take objectives”, which is very much our bread and butter. That’s two and a half in the bag. If anything, King’s Conquest incentivizes having more “stuff” on the table (so you can send a friendly Mancrusher off with him rather than having to overcommit), whereas Clear ‘Em out incentivizes Moar Megas since Mancrushers have a horrible habit of dying embarrassingly to chaff screens.

Overall a slight nudge towards taking a blend of both Megas and babies, but only slight. We’ll have a good chance of hitting these just with the units we’ve already locked in.

GHB Tactics

Having multiple units kicking around will help with a few of these:

Reprisal and Led into the Maelstrom will probably be do-able either way, but the circled BTs really want some Mancrushers on the board. This could be pretty important give our Grand Strategy situation.

Playstyle

There are a few things pushing us to hunt in packs here, especially with Megas:

• Brodd wants a friendly unit within 3″ for his ward. This is easily achievable while contesting multiple objectives, but even easier with a throwaway buddy to follow him around.
• Big Eater wants your Megas wholly within 12″ of each other, but Mancrushers don’t benefit.
• The King’s Conquest BT wants Brodd and any buddy.

Now Mega Gargants just generally survive better so there’s an inherent risk attached to only having one baby following Brodd around, whereby the baby could get punked and cost you two VPs or foresake your ward. But that’s OK: we can judge the situation as it unfolds. Maybe we run that Mancrusher on to contest the objective and secure King’s Conquest without putting him into combat; maybe we buddy up Brodd with a Mega, and scatter our babies out to contest multiple objectives, pull enemy resources around and set up for the Surround or Intimidate BTs in the next round.

So fundamentally we’re at a branch in the road:

• We can take 4 Megas, leaning into fighting and surviving. We will dominate primaries and aim to cling on to secondaries by scoring a few of those new ones ourselves – understanding we may not hit five every game, but we should regularly be able to prevent our opponent scoring 1-2-More and make up the difference that way.
  • Intangible: Four Megas looks way cooler on the table.
• We can take 3 Megas and 3 Babies, for a more hybrid approach. The Megas will still hunt in packs while the Babies will scramble to score additional Battle Tactics, skirmish with chaff on missions with a lot of objectives and bodyguard Brodd if needed.
  • Intangible: having Mancrushers scratch around scoring VPs (and dying) is arguably more interesting to play for both you and your opponent.

You wouldn’t be crazy to take four Megas, in which case you’re probably looking at:

• Brodd
• Gatebreaker
• Gatebreaker
• Beast-Smasher

…for 2k on the nose.  And that would be a highly competitive army that looks amazing – seriously, I’ve played Sons of Behemat at club meets with multiple systems going on, and people crowd around the table to watch your games.

But in today’s list we’ll grab 3x Megas and 3x Babies to help us consistently hit 5 BTs. There’s really not an awful lot in it, but with no way of securing an extra artefact for that 4th potential Mega I’m happy to put a few dickheads on the table to dink and dunk around the board.

Mega Combos

So circling back around to our earlier question: with Brodd and a Breaker locked in, what’s our 3^rd Mega?  There’s a case to be made for a few of them in fairness.

Beast-Smasher

There’s a really neat combo here.  We’ve established that a few things are pointing us towards power pairs (or trios) in this army.  One cool thing in this book is the dominant alpha-beast vibe, where the Beast-Smasher gets to do two Rampages, and King Brodd prevents opposing Monsters from pulling off any Rampage.   These are warscroll abilities so we keep them in the AOR.

You can have a bit of fun by Roaring at a Monster with Brodd and stopping them from Roaring back, then your Beast-Smasher Stonhorns across to dogpile them (pumping out D3 MWs along the way). The latter can then Titanic Duel the same chump that already can’t AOD themselves.  It feels fun and unique but also gets your Ward up on Brodd when you might have been out of range, gets you inside healing bubbles and enables the King’s Conquest Battle Tactic too.  Sublime.  The Beast-Smasher is an underrated Mega Gargant and definitely one to make the shortlist.

Kraken-Eater

Also leaning into the power pairs aspect, but coming from a slightly different angle: compress the board around your Gargant castle and off we go. 

For advanced objective bullshit, you really want to overlap multiple objectives with multiple megas:

The fun part is on your opponent’s turn:

They have to nominate which objective their models are capping first, and you can react.  Quite often you can engineer situations where your Giants can nominate reactively to deny your opponent any primaries, causing an unexpected VP swing.

You can achieve this on a lot of maps anyway, but Kicking objectives towards your bullet sponges can be a big opportunity multiplier in this space.

Gatebreaker

He’s just a really good Mega-Gargant, right?  We already talked about his extra synergy with AOA and throwing terrain around, and he works really well for your main gameplan of forcing your opponent to fight you then striking hard against key targets when they do.  Popular for a reason.

The List

I reckon we’ve cooked up a solid 4-1 list here. Shout out to Chris Long for the suggestion to bundle the Maneaters into a Battle Regiment:

Brodd’s Stomp

King Brodd (5++ ward with a friendly unit within 3”)

Gatebreaker (General)

• Big Eater (wholly 12” radius of D3 healing for Megas every time they fight)
• Amulet of Destiny (6++ ward)

Gatebreaker*

• Nullstone Pebble (4+ Magic ignore)

Mancrusher*

Mancrusher*

Mancrusher*

Triumph: Inspired (+1 to wound)

*Battle Regiment

1960 points, 4 Drops, 146 wounds

Note that the Triumph is still valuable in a Sons army. Terror is one of the best things about Megas, and with Battleshock immunity being an extremely popular selection for other armies, denying that feels awesome.

Plus, ya know, we like smacking stuff harder.

The Alternatives

What if we don’t take the Army of Renown, but stick with the classic Battletome rules? There’s couple of other good options for Giants right now, that feel distinctive and strong in their own right:

Rabble-Rowsa

Take the Gits Regiment of Renown with your three Megas of choice, and either have two screens or get your Monsters all running and charging, depending on the situation.

These guys also help massively with the GHB battle tactics and your book Grand Strat, as well as just being quite good in their own right.  Notable that the Gobbapalooza has two great Warsrcoll spells that benefit any army, and can still dish out extra rend to your Squigs, so they’re fairly efficient even without a lore spell.  A proven 4-1 commodity.

MSU Mancrusher Mayhem

A Warstomper and 11 Mancrushers has to be seen to be believed.  The Warstomper can be a supertank in his own right with the 40 wound CT and 5++ conditional ward.  Meanwhile, he can issue CAs to your whole army.  There’s a minor gunline aspect to giving all the Mancrushers two shots each, but it’s when you Redeploy your whole army that you realise you’re playing a completely different game to everyone else.  Looks absolutely baller on the table too.

In Conclusion

Brodd’s Stomp offers a really interesting update to Sons of Behemat players.  Lifting terrain off the table, charging through gaps and Rampaging over the top of screens into the idiots cowering behind: it opens up some truly unique play patterns and the Johanns aren’t gonna know what’s hit them.

When 3^rd Edition rolled around and they were winning loads of events, there was a bit of a stigma attached to Giants because they were so one-note and idiot-proof.  Kudos to the devs for developing the army to the point where they are genuinely an interesting army to play and own, even if one aspect of that (the Rabble Rowza build) seems at least partly accidental. 

They’re honestly in pretty good shape, and I’m excited to get my own on the table.  You know by now I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t mean it.

Credit for the cover image to GW

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