“Tell him he’s dreaming”

Darryl Kerrigan, The Castle

by Pat Nevan

I’ve been a bit remiss when it comes to churning out content for AOS4. I have made the unusual decision to not write any Index review articles until I had actually played a game with the army in question.¹ Work/life balance has been giving me the Joan Collins special and my AOS time has been limited to savagely criticizing our Patrons’ nascent attempts at 4th Ed list writing in the Craichouse discord. Luckily the Craichouse writing team has been putting out a bunch of solid, well-researched articles on the emerging 4th edition (along with some serviceable filler from Editor Pete), so all is well.

Still, awesome people that they are, the Craichouse Patrons don’t just pay me to mock their ideas in discord.² It’s time to contribute something, and what better way to start the 4th Ed ball rolling than that ever faithful friend to the time, talent and creatively-challenged blog writer, the Listicle? Specifically the most overcosted Monsters in the all-new, all-different AOS 4 Indices.

Now you may be thinking that I haven’t actually played a game and the meta hasn’t had time to establish itself, so I can’t possibly know what’s worth its points and fair enough. Historically speaking I suppose my predictions have been wrong about 30% of the time and we all know what that means.

It’s possible that some of my picks will perform better than I predicted, but I will be shocked if any of the true abominations come to dominate the 4th Ed meta. The first point to raise is that the Monster keyword itself seems to come with a degree of expense that seems difficult to justify. Your basic Monster hits on 4’s, wounds on 2’s, has a control score of 5 and retails at least 15 points per wound regardless of utility. Even though they generally they have a Rampage of some description, it’s difficult to see why they are so expensive. I even checked the rules for some generic Monster usefulness, early 3rd style, that I might have been missing – but no, they just seem to be generally pricey. Lets have a looksee at the worst candidates shall we?

5. Stonehorn Beastriders – 290 points

I know, I know. There are worse monsters out there for 290 points. Believe me, we will get to them. Still, this once devastating terror of the battlefield made the list as an example of how far the mighty can fall. Plus complaining about the treatment of Destro units is a religious observance for the Craichouse team.

While it’s ok for its points, the entire package represents a major downgrade from the previous edition. Slower across the table with fewer charge mortals, the once-mighty Stone Skeleton has gone from halving damage to a 5 up Ward to ignoring a single point of damage per phase. Sure it can get run and charge or a ward from Everwinter prayers, but how many prayers are you getting from 300 point plus Priests?

Worst of all, they decided to stick with the crappiest aspects of the Stonehorn warscroll: D6 attacks on the Hooves and the 1 Damage attacks on the Riders’ Punches and Kicks. Nearly 10 years of AOS and these Muppets still haven’t figured out how to pick up a stick and hit somebody with it. The end result is something with wildly variable damage that needs an All Out Attack to perform, and is hideously vulnerable to debuffs. Exactly what you don’t want in the sort of Monster Truck list these things call home.

Ok, the numbers aren’t that bad for a 290 point beatstick but it’s a well of sadness compared to the 14 Inch Moving, 5 Up Warding, 3d6 Inch Tap Dancing Chads they were one short month ago. As for the current rampage?

Meh. So you plough into a screen, hit your 3+ at the start of the turn have one of your buddies wipe out the screen and Rampage on an extra d6 inches. Or skirt round the edge of a unit to engage a softer target. Honestly not too bad provided you hit your 3+ and roll something decent on your d6. Committed Destro-Sexuals hate random mechanics because they secretly yearn for the security of Order, but I don’t mind them. This one is ok.

In all fairness this one isn’t really an overpriced monster by 4th Ed standards. I’m just a little pissed at the way they massacred my boy. I mean they took my Blood Vulture, you can’t let that go unanswered.

4. Alarith Spirit of the Mountain – 330 points

Long term readers of Plastic Craic will be surprised to find any kind of sympathy for Elves pop up in an article, and this choice may be a result of me buying an LRL starter box for our Spearhead Hobby Challenge.³ Like the Stonehorn before it, the Hammer Cow ain’t too shabby.

Sure it’s as slow as that week between the army previews and the release of the faction packs was, but with a 3+ Save, 6+ Ward that you can improve on and the ability to ignore Rend, it’s pretty tough. I tend to think of high-damage, single-shot Monster attacks as an opportunity to amuse your opponents by whiffing dice rolls, but its melee profile is ok for a tanking monster.

Pretty damn good with a plus one to hit in fact, so what exactly is the problem with this thing? Well there are two. First of all, most of its damage comes from 4 big single weapon attacks. Experience tells us these are easy to whiff regardless of the numbers, and the parse backs that up.

That’s the parse on the big hammer. I’m not really a numbers guy: as far as I’m concerned, a standard deviation is being into feet, but as I read it you have about a 20% chance of straight-up missing whenever you swing with this thing, and you’ll need to be lucky to get 3 hits in. I feel the big, low-volume attack Monsters’ ability to whiff damn near everything is not accounted for in their pricing. The second problem, and the real reason he makes the overpriced Monster list, is actually this guy:

Cue the Korngold Horn Fanfare, it’s Avalenor the Stoneheart King

For an extra 80 points you get the guy with Two Hammers and a Volcano on his back. Avalenor has more health, does more reliable damage, has a better rampage and buffs the hell out of nearby Stoneguard on top of it all. Avalenor does so much more for his 80 points I could almost guarantee that you will never see the regular guy outside the armies of unusual Cow fetishists.

3. Rotigus – 500 points

Rotigus has the exact opposite problem of the generic Lumineth War Cow: there is no reason to ever take him ahead of a regular Great Unclean One, and he costs more points for no apparent reason. Reviewing his warscroll is a matter of listing his flaws compared to the regular GUO, and that sounds like fun, so let’s have a look.

Rotigus does have a useful extra two wounds and slightly more reliable melee output. The regular GUO is cursed with the same sort of four big-hitting attacks as the battle cow above. However, Rotigus loses the GUO’s awesome and improved shooting attack for some reason, losing a chunk of output:

Neither of these guys are screaming 450 point combat monster. I threw the Tzeentch Big Bird on the parse just to make that point but hey, at least they are giant hard-to-kill blobs of snot. If you give a GUO the Witherstave and the D6 Heal in combat every turn from Grandfather’s Blessing he is very hard to shift. Shame you can’t give them to Rotigus.

Anyways, onto special abilities. The GUO is the lynchpin of any Nurgle Daemon army with his 4+ recursion roll for destroyed Daemon units. If you are putting Daemons on the table you just can’t do it without him, whatever the cost. His warscroll spell is the one way the army has to generate extra Disease that doesn’t involve people standing next to your trees, and his Rampage is decent too. Rotigus on the other hand…

His signature spell is great on paper. In the theoretical minds of the game designers, Nurgle armies cheerfully infected their opponents just like the good old days and Rotigus would hand out the mortals to your dying foes while healing your troops. In practice, early reports indicate the opposition is surprisingly reluctant to let you infect their entire armies with disease when it is fairly easy to stop, and 8+ CV spells are a bit of a pain to cast reliably. As for the Rampage, it’s a pretty interesting horde-clearer but it lands on a 3+ on the charge. How much charging are you expecting Rotigus to do? It’s an odd one to give to a GUO. You would just never take Rotigus over a generic GUO.

It’s strange that all of the unique Greater Daemons have effectively become 2nd-Round Pick Daemons by virtue of not having the necessary special rules. Not an unwelcome change for guys like Skarrbrand who could use some time on the bench, but Rotigus? He finished the last edition cheaper than a GUO for good reason, and I’m not sure why he started this one more expensive.

2. The Soulgrinder – 330 points

The pre-AOS STD Monster division has been circling the drain since the first Slaves battletome, and 4th Ed seems set on continuing the trend. Given the number of Slaves kits that wound up on the squatting block I’m willing to bet even the Slaughterbrute couldn’t tell you why it’s still around. Still, if you lay three turds side by side one of them has to be the shittiest, and this time around it is the Soulgrinder that stands clear of the pack. Largely by virtue of costing a whopping 330 points.

For that price you get a respectable 16 wounds, 4+ save and the 6+ ward that comes along with the Daemon keyword this edition. You get both ranged and melee output.

Credit AOS Stats hammer

Output-ish. I’m going to let the numbers speak for themselves here.⁴ At least they changed the rules from run and shoot to run and charge, allowing this melee beast to start “shredding” the opposition as soon as possible. The good news is it still gets a Mark of Chaos; you can’t buff its combat stats thanks to the Companion keyword, but giving it the neg 1 to wound in combat with the Nurgle Mark makes it a bit tankier. Plus it comes with a custom Rampage.

It can spit out mortals into infantry which is ok, but the best part is that if it goes off, you get a free six inch move of the old flying Stonehorn variety, enabling you to hop around in combat. The bad news is, for the most of you who have never seen one in person, a Soulgrinder has a 160mm pie plate base. This makes it impossible to jump across anything in front of it, leaving it to scuttle sideways. Honestly it’s not great rules writing but kind of suits the goofy mechanized crab-like nature of the model. Sadly you can only do this once per army, thus ruining the Soul Grinder spam dreams of the AOS world.⁵

While there are a few dud warscrolls around it’s the 330 point price tag that makes this one a real puzzler. That’s Maggoth Lord prices. That’s 30 points cheaper than the new hotness that is Abraxia, for a combat Monster that needs 4 turns to chomp its way through a unit of Clanrats, assuming the Skaven player or old age doesn’t kill it first. At least the Slaughterbrute finally got rend on its jaws at 240 points, and the Mutalith is the cheapest thing in its weight class at 190 points. 330 for this?

1. The Khorgorath – 170 pts

Full Disclosure: Editor Pete wasn’t going to let me turn in an entire article ranting about the Khorgorath⁶ so it’s all been pretty much filler up until now. 170 actual, honest to goodness, 4th Edition Age of Sigmar points for this fucking thing. When I first read the points in the index release I assumed it got a massive upgrade in it’s base stats but nope, it somehow got worse.

The poor dumb creature actually managed to lose a point of save and it joins the Fomoroid Crusher as being the only unit with the Monster keyword without a 5 Control score. It even gained the Companion keyword so its attacks can’t be improved by the generous range of Bloodbound buffs. Apparently the Dev Team studied the models themselves when coming up with the warscrolls for 4th Ed. Well they must have missed the literal scars on the back of the Khorgorath that were put there by the Bloodstoker. The two units have no form of interaction, yet again.

In 2 out of 4 Khorne Battletomes so far, Dangit

As for its combat output, well we could all use a bit of a laugh in these troubled times:

Yup. So it has the resilience and damage output of a particularly sloppy beer fart. I guess it must have some particularly kickass abilities to justify it’s 170 point price tag?

Not bad. The Khorgi gets an AOS3 Roar, which would be really useful in AOS4 if there were a lot more command abilities to turn off between the combat phase and the end of the turn. As it stands All out Attack, All out Defence and a smattering of double fight are about all I can muster off the top of my head. The heal is decent as well. If this ability package arrived with a half-decent combat monster you would be pretty happy with it.

Unfortunately, the package arrives with a slow, feeble, unbuffable and bewilderingly expensive Monopose tragedy that Shakespeare would have passed on as too implausible for Elizabethan theatre. 21.25 points per wounds for this? It’s not like the Monster keyword does anything in particular. Only the toughest models, leaders, God Monsters and uber-powerful Wizards that form the core of entire armies cost more per wound.

The Khorgorath is trash even when compared to other armies’ overpriced, useless units that will never be taken in a competitive list. When the Kharybdisses, Mutalith Vortex Beasts and Vargskyrs get together for drinks, they deliberately don’t invite the Khorgorath so they’ll have someone to look down on and talk shit about. For the Khorgorath to be worth 170 points it would have to get up off the table, follow your opponent home after the game and use its Monstrous Rampage on their friends, family and household pets. They should sell this thing with an apology card signed by the game design team.

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1. I know having actual experience of something has never stopped me before, but whatever. ↩︎
2. Except for Josh Clark who has a bit of humiliation kink. ↩︎
3. I’m not allowed to win I should add, I only entered to encourage the inferior hobbyists in the Craichouse discord ↩︎
4. Or whimper, as the case may be. ↩︎
5. I tell you what, If I’m TO’ing I’ll let you use the Rampage multiple times, I promise ↩︎
6. My first article was 3,000 words on why Bloodreavers are a complete rip off at 100pts, but I’m saving that for my Autobiography ↩︎

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