by Peter Atkinson

When Pat’s Ushoran review said that the big dog should fit inside the Crypt Guard bodyguard bubble, we published in the knowledge that an endless stream of smartypants would tell us that Ushoran’s base is going to be bigger than 3″ across. Even with an early edit to say that we were aware of that, but still had a plan, people just couldn’t help themselves.

You don’t think we’d noticed he was on a big base? Well we might be stupid, but we’re not that fucking stupid. Plan A was to wait for the official base sizes to be revealed, but we’re getting jack of people chirping away, so it’s time for Plan B. Today we’ll go on the record with best-guess proxies and lay out how we see it working: for the illustrations below, we’ve assumed he’ll be on a 130mm base (same as Gobsprakk) and at the end of this article we’ll discuss a couple of other potential base sizes, and how it would work (or not) in those cases too.

Ready? Let’s go.

Update: 4th April 2024

Before we go any further, we just need to point out two things.

1. The base size was in fact 130mm, as we assumed in this article
2. The official FAQ has vindicated our interpretation:

So you can go ahead and read this article with confidence.

The Problem

FEC units get a 6+ ward because Death, but Ushoran comes with a 5+ ward right there on his warscroll: 

Meanwhile the Crypt Guard add 1 to the ward rolls of friendly FEC heroes wholly within 3″:

So if you can get Ushoran in close enough, he’ll be on a 4+ ward*. Just to be clear, there is no shame whatsoever in looking at that rule and thinking the tight range will exclude Ushoran; I thought the same myself at first, but Pat was all over it. 

Today we’re using Gobsprakk (130mm base) and Grots (25mm bases) as stand-ins:

So what are we gonna do about it?

The Solution

Now here we go with the first and most important illustration. We’re going to put 10x 25mm bases in a half moon, so the models are less than 3″ from their counterpart across the bay from them. This gives us a neat little pocket to drop the target unit into:

As you can see, the 130mm base slots right in there with plenty to spare.

Every part of the model’s base is wholly within 3″ of the surrounding unit, and we are GOLDEN. 

Badda Bing, you’re welcome, don’t forget to join the Patreon.

As an aside, if you’ve enjoyed my writing over the years, my bedroom carpet might already be familiar to you from this vintage image of 6 coherent Gore Gruntas:

And if you haven’t enjoyed my writing, and you’re here to hate-read us because you just can’t help yourself, well you might not be familiar with my bedroom carpet but your mum is. So ask her all about it.

Moving Around

So that half-moon formation is great if you see a bunch of Fusiliers across the table and need that Turn 1 protection. But can we take it with us?

Kinda. Crucially, the bottleneck at the top of the half-moon can be wider than his base. Two lots of 3″ makes 6″, which is wide enough for him to dash through, and then the supporting cast can run along behind him. So you can walk Ushoran up the board, and run the CG up behind him, and everyone’s a winner.

That will slow him down a bit though, because the CG won’t be able to keep up with Ushoran’s full potential move; so he’ll essentially be moving at walking pace as long as they’re tethered together.

If we did want to sprint Ushoran forward, what we’d need to do is set up a pocket with a second unit, ready for him to run into:

Again, the bottleneck can be set up wide enough for him just strut right through.

Ultimately you’re going to want to get this dude into combat and swinging arms, and at that point you can charge in the CG too and wrap around the back of him again. But the key thing is that you can leave the bottleneck wide enough for a 130mm based to get through, so you’ve got the option of bringing the enhanced ward with you as you move around the table.

Sounds great, but can you make it nerdier?

Of course. Our boy Calvin Rarie had his wargaming buddies who also happen to be engineers look at this. If you can understand their workings, you’re a smarter man than me, so I just got out some toys and played with them on my bedroom floor to prove the same thing:

And similarly, our resident artist Seanzor cracked out his Spirograph and drew a pretty picture as further proof of concept:

Other Base Sizes

We don’t get review copies here, so your guess is as good as ours regarding what base size this unit actually comes on. It seemed unlikely to be the full Maw Krusha pie plate so we went with the next one down, but if it does prove to be that large: You’re fucked. 

That base is a smidge over 6″ so the whole thing falls over; but even if that’s the case I reckon this is going to be a really useful thought exercise, because it will come up again with other units.

There’s also been some speculation that Ushoran might be rocking an oval, in which case I’ve repeated the trick with a Rogue Idol base, and the good news is that I reckon he’ll fit there too:

Casualty Removal

And as a final pointer, when you come to remove models from the Guard themselves, you can keep him protected for a bit longer with careful removal of minis and a flagrant disregard for coherency. 

If your opponent starts picking off the Crypt Guard to try and get Ushoran out of the bubble, you can remove the ones out wide that are just keeping triangles in order, and then remove others to leave gaps:

You’ll have to remove models to get back into coherency at the end of the turn which means you’ll be picking up most of the unit, so you’ll need to use your own judgment as to whether and when it’s worth it; but the option is there to let the Crypt Guard cop it if you really need to keep the improved ward up on Ushoran for a little longer.

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So that’s a wrap! The half moon trick is a good one to have in your arsenal, and hopefully you can apply it to Ushoran when we do see his base size. Anything less than a full MK pie plate and we should be in good shape.

*Yes, we’re aware it currently stacks; No, we don’t expect that to survive the FAQ.

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