by Peter Atkinson

“Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends” ~ W.B. Yeats

Regiments of Renown have replaced Allies as the “other stuff” you can put in your armies – I guess the theory is that because it’s a walled garden, permitting only specific units in specific armies, you can’t break the game with a weird and unintended combination. That being the case, it’s our duty as competitive wargamers to try and find the edge, so we’ve been looking at ways that army and unit rules can interact with Regiments of Renown and issue buffs to units that probably were never meant to be buffed.

Longbeards will remember similar tech on a far grander scale back in AOS1, so maybe this truffle-hunt actually was intended? They’re mostly “Hey that’s cool” rather than “Oops I just broke it”, largely because the ROR units you’re buffing aren’t reinforced so there’s a ceiling on how impactful most of these will ever really be. That’s OK though – it’s still fun, and I’d hope we never get so jaded that we can’t enjoy the joie de vivre of a good combo for its own sake.

Thanks to our friend and Patron Darren “Horsey” Watson for suggesting and requesting this article – Darren spotted a neat combo with the new Stormcoven unit from SCE, so how about we kick off with that one? There’s bound to be a few that we’ve missed, and more that come out in future, so drop us a line if you’ve got a good ‘un and we’ll update the article to make this into a really useful resource for everyone.

Order¹

Stormcast Eternals

Blasting out of the blocks are the all-new Stormcoven, whose Aethershock ability can issue Strike First to a friendly unit. Darren got a stiffy excited about the opportunity to get his boy Gotrek swinging early and often:

And still in the SCE space, the Heroic Trait Envoy of the Heavens can kick into gear when any friendly unit gets itself topped, including any throwaway from an ROR:

Sylvaneth

We’ve got a couple for the weeds. First up, the Lady of Vines can use Writhing Vines to Ensnare an enemy unit. There’s a whole subgenre of these abilities that target the enemy unit and therefore allow all friendly units to benefit from bullying them:

And there’s an odd little interaction for the Twistweald where they only have to be isolated from friendly Sylvaneth units. So they can still use Eruption of Thorned Vines even if they’re nearby to ROR units:

And finally for the Sylvaneth, Revenant Seekers are the first of many units that allow an enhanced Rally for nearby friendly units:

Fyreslayers

The Battlesmith is another example of that same tech:

The best targets for Rally are often units with a Ward, because you’re effectively bringing back “extra” wounds. So that’ll work well with Callis and Toll, if you really needed another reason to bring them!

Destruction

Gloomspite and Ironjawz

Both flavours of Hand of Gork can pick out any friendly unit for a teleport:

You’ll get good mileage out of this in any list featuring Kragnos, so he can issue a 3D6″ charge to whichever unit was teleported (himself included), and help them stick that 9″ charge:

Bonesplitterz

And sticking with Team Green, the Bonesplitterz can add a pip of rend to any melee weapons including Companion attacks:

This is probably best-used on a Mega-Gargant Merc. Funnily enough, Bundo Whalebiter can become quite scary with his extra attacks and this rend layered on top.

Ogor Mawtribes

Edit: Shout out to the Redoubtable Mr Jennings for our first community update!

Healing everything everywhere, all at once. Well not everywhere, there’s a range limit – but it does at least hit all friendly units. Every cloud has a silver lining, and a rough old weekend playing Gutbusters x Goroan Scions did at least unearth this gem.

Death

OBR

The other bone collectors can also dish out some extra rend:

FEC

We’ve got a couple for the noblest of boys. First up is the Cruel Taskmaster Heroic Trait:

Meanwhile the Grand Justice Gormayne’s Petty Transgression is another example of picking out an enemy unit, and then going to town on it with anything in your own list, RORs included:

The Big N

Hilariously, you can actually get recursion on RORs from the Big Fella, as long as they are Death keyworded:

Chaos

Special Mention: Daemon Prince

Pat’s done a whole article on this fella:

A Man for All Seasons: The Return of the Daemon Prince

Because he gets the keyword of and God army that he joins, this fella is a juggernaut of ROR synergy – he can even take Enhancements. There’s lots to explore so check out the article.

S2D

Thanks to Mark Paddon for this one from the Comments:

S2D heroic trait Radiance is a good one, affects friendly units. 3+ to heal and it’s flat 3 for monsters which is lovely on something like a Mega Gargant.

Great call.

Tzeentch

Most other Chaos examples we’ve found so far relate to the Blue Birds. First up is the Illusionist Heroic Trait:

The Changecaster has another of those abilities that lights up an enemy unit for all concerned:

And finally, the Gaunt Summoner can arguably put ROR units in deep strike. There’s a bit of a debate about how this one interacts with the core rules around deployment, so I’m going to take the coward’s way out and say “Check with your TO” or, if it’s a friendly game, maybe just swerve the whole argument and run something less janky:

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So hopefully there’s a few combos in there to get the cogs whirring! We’ll do a whole separate article on Be’Lakor’s own AOR if that survives FAQ, because at time of writing, they can take RORs within that AOR – and as you can imagine, that opens up a few weird interactions. So Zak will cover that in a standalone feature.

In the meantime, let me know if there are any ROR and army combos you’re brewing up, and especially if there’s any other good “friendly unit” tech that you’ve spotted. We’ll update this article as we go, so we can build up a really good resource together.

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1. Wankers ↩︎