by Peter Atkinson

In the word of the great Brian Taylor: Wowee! GW slipped in an update alongside the Gloomspite and Warclans Battletome tidy-ups. There’s no points changes¹, but a fair smattering of faction stuff plus one big Core Rule change that I reckon they’ll be walking back sooner rather than later.

We’ll go through it in order, starting with the Core changes then moving onto the Factions, which also means we can cover that big ol’ Core Rules elephant in the room early in the piece. Ready? Let’s go.

S2D

…But first, let’s just take a moment to crow about being right. Our guy Pat stuck his neck out with a whole piece on taking Enhancements for your Daemon Prince ROR in various factions, and that sweet scent on the breeze is called Vindication, by Calvin Klein. It’s now Facebook Official, so go nuts.

Core Rules

And now for the big ‘un. The Designer’s Note shows they had perfectly reasonable goals here:

…but I’ll take “Unintended Consequences” for 100, Alex.

To give you a taste of the can of maggots this has opened up, our guy Calvin has flagged up the following example. Let’s say Tzeentch casts as spell on your turn with Magical Intervention, so you’re the active player:

• You’re up against Tzeentch and they have Tome of Eyes on the table
• They attempt to cast a spell via MI and it fails
• You have nothing to Unbind, so your React window passes
• They React to their own spell and add 2 to the roll
• Now it casts successfully, and you can’t Unbind because your React window has been and gone
• Oops!

Where they’ve fucked up is that both the Unbind attempt and the +2 boost have the same Reaction window, and this is where AOS4’s legalese rules-writing bites it on the ass:

There’s various other gamey crap that flows on from this too. For example when Bela’Kunt² (who hardly needed the buff) slaps Dark Master on you, you’ll have to commit to using All Out Attack before you even know whether you can actually fight:

See the loop here? Dark Master is a React that kicks in every you try to do anything. So you either have to do your own React first, and then see whether or not you pass the Dark Master roll, or else you’re deemed to have “passed” and then you can’t do shit. So you effectively have to commit to spending resources on you own Reacts (like AOA) before you even know that you can use them.

Yuk. The sooner this mess gets unpicked the better.

Elsewhere we have a clarification on Set Up and Move in the same turn:

Fair enough. The idea was always to prevent shortened charges (deepstriking 9″ away then moving in closer). Walking over to a teleport beacon then jumping through it is officially fine.

We’ve also got a tidy up on Covering Fire:

This one was just a mistake that they forgot to clean up last time around. Done.

Now let’s look at the Faction stuff, starting with the meatier ones, which are Gloomspite and Orruks. There’s a really big one for Gits that’s not there, and I like it a lot.

Gloomspite

See what’s missing? The Dankhold Troggoth’s Wade and Smash did not get touched. There was a school of thought that this was a minor balls-up, but it looks like you’re good to go. Let’s compare the Faction Pack pdf version to the new Battletome version:

See that? You don’t have to be in combat to use this. It’s already a great ability to put out some chip damage and reach a target 8.9″ back, but there’s a few more applications here:

• Run up the board and then walk into combat from 5.9″ away
• Retreat out of combat, maybe moving towards a juicy target, and then pile back in at your leisure
• Set a trap for your opponent: At the start of their combat phase, pile in with old mate who was sitting pretty outside of normal combat range, and waiting to get into the fight and deny Do Not Waiver
• Combo with the sources of Strike First in this book (or Strike Last from the Gore Gruntas ROR) to engineer your own little High Tide turn, fighting first with waves of your army and reaching unexpected places

But that’s bullshit!

Well the good news is, it’s now your bullshit. Loads of armies can take one of these things as an ROR:

You have to pay a 70-point premium for a Loonboss you don’t really want (or get any value from), and the devs have fucked up pretty hard with the ROR abilities by allowing the Trogg to soak up damage for the Loonboss, when it’s actually the former that you’d want to keep alive and the latter that you’d use as a human shield.

I guess you can always run the Loonboss over onto a flank or zone out a charge or something, but at 250 points the package is a tough sell. Still, it’s a sweet mini and a truly unique ability in modern AOS. So if you’re not hunting a podium, it’s a cool interaction you can build into your list to put a little zing in the salsa. Don’t mind it.

Droggz

New Grom caught a little buff here, because that ability to yoink something out of combat was previously once per game. Note that he can do this to himself, to fight and scarper. Fair enough too, a once per game only working on a 4+ is Peak Destruction, and it’s still arguably a bit crap. You’ve got the opportunity to roll shit on the 2D6, so is it really necessary to have to roll a 4+ as well? Not really imo, but when it does work, it’ll win you games.

You’ll have two broad types of experience with this fella:

• He works on the table like he should on paper, leaves opponents flailing away impotently on 5s when he’s not even in combat and wins you a crucial combat
• His 7 Health on a 4+ Save (and no Guarded Hero) just gets trivially blasted out of your army, taking 10% of your total points with him

His -1 to hit aura and switching off AOA is fantastic tech, but he’s uber-fragile at his points. That dog is meant to be near-immortal in the fluff, so maybe they could have played off that to make him a bit tougher in some way? As it is, I’m personally not convinced the risk-reward really stands up at 200 points, so I’ll probably wait for one more point drop before I start taking the rough with the smooth. Interested to hear other opinions on this one, because the kit is intriguing.

Tidy Ups

The rest are just tidy ups:

• Kraggy is brought into line with his current rules, so no 3D6 countercharges
• The Webspinner Shaman is bumped down to 2 OC, as he was for the Faction Pack
• The Gitmob AOR thing is on the Boss Chariot, not the little chariots. Meh
• Skraggy’s AOR also gets the Bad Moon aura from the Mal Moon manifestation

All in all: Way more good than bad for the Gitz, and I’m especially rapt that the Dankhold keeps its enhanced Wade and Smash. Today was a good day.

Orruk Warclans

Ironjawz

Are Gore-Gruntas good now? I feel like they’re good now. The transition from highly-feared Damage Cav to more naunced Pinning Cav has been a difficult one, but they might be finding their own niche as Heavy Cav about now. Hitting on 5s was a straight-up insult so it’s nice that you can crank some damage out with those tusks.

The All-Pigs Allstars AOR was already good, crashing out waves of D6 mortals on the Go Turn, and this change further enhances the regulation damage they can pump out. The army works by kicking out enough pain that it can weather the storm from there on its 3+ saves, so this is a genuinely good unit and a sleeper hit of the new book.

Gork-Roara

This Mani adds +1 or +2 to casting or chanting rolls, and +1 to charge rolls as well. What happened before was that these buffs transitioned to becoming Passive abilities (more AOS4 legalese crap) so they didn’t stack. You can now stack the +1 to charge if you hit multiple 5+s, which most normal people probably did already, but now it’s there in black and white. Nice quality of life change in their favour.

Kruleboyz

The headline is that they’ve (somewhat) walked back one of the two brutal nerfs that the Battletome brought to an army that was already bang in the middle of “It’s fine” territory. Is it enough? No, but every little helps, I guess.

Sneaky Sneakin’ moves to Your Movement Phase. This means that you can at least use it on the same turn you use VEW to get your mortals popping on 5s (since they’re no longer both tied to the Hero Phase), but it’s still weaker than the Index version (which worked on both players’ turns).

The underlying issue is that Kruleboyz are structurally disadvantaged at scoring their own BTs: GW (predictably) gave Destro the worst ones, so they only have 1 feasible tactic instead of 2, and they still don’t have a Cavalry unit for those big brain “Go and stand over there” duties that AOS4 values so highly.

So KB relied on denying their opponent’s tactics with a sneaky off-turn teleport, and that’s still gone. If the view at GW was that the off-turn teleport just had to go as a matter of principle – well that’s fine, but what is the army getting instead? Bearing in mind that Kruleboyz were not exactly giving the trophy engravers RSI, if you’re taking away their jank (and also their output, via the Sludgeraker nerfs), they really needed to be given something else substantial in return. They’re still waiting.

One boost they have got for now is to that Sludgeraker: it’s no longer just combat attacks that can trigger a smattering of end-of-turn mortals. So you can blast away with your Boltboyz and maybe ping a couple of extra damage through afterwards. That one is a nice bonus.

Big Waaagh

We see a clean-up for Kragnos: cobber has to pick a lane (KB or IJ) and that’s fair enough, it was kinda silly that he counted as both previously. Everyone’s favourite soup will benefit from those boosted Gore Gruntas too.

Overall? I’m still just a bit deflated with where Kruleboyz are at. Believe it or not I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer – and even after KB spent virtually their whole AOS3 lifespan as objectively the worst army in the entire game, I was exuberant in my praise for their Faction Pack. They still won fuck all big events, but they had an identity at last, and this was diciness done well. After a long wait, the Koolboyz deserved so much more than 3 months of being a midtable army before they took another shoeing; and while these changes are undoubtedly a step forward for KB, GW still owes them some serious love and attention. Wake me up when 5th Edition drops, I guess.

Ironjawz and Big Waaagh on the other hand are both much more interesting. I’m personally focusing on Bonesplitterz until they get sent to the Great Hunt in the Sky, but if it wasn’t for that, I’d be getting serious with the listbuilding for either or both right now. And while we’re at it, shout out to the great Craig Navmar for piloting that Pigs AOR to an impressive 5-0 over the in the UK recently. They’ve only gotten better with this update.

Ogors

Just an explainer of what was already the case:

In case you didn’t know, Monster Trucks are back! Their charge mortals are off the charts so if you can get that 5++ terrain ward cranking, you’re flying. They’re in solid shape and the army is great fun, and I say this as someone who’s been playing against them quite a lot recently: when BCR are in good shape, that’s good news for AOS.

Nurgle

Just a minor clean-up, because the word “it” was previously ambiguous:

SBGL

Belladama won’t give Vargskyr +3 to their OC, boo hoo:

They’re Beasts, so they’re stuck with that OC1.

KO

Two favourable rulings for Frigates here:

Brokk lets them run and use Shoot or Charge abilities, and Assault Boat is a Charge ability, so that makes sense (despite Assault Boat’s own opening sentence). Similarly, Counter-charge allows you to use a Charge ability – and Assault Boat is one of those – so fill your tiny little boots.

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And that’s a wrap! A couple of nice little QOL boosts for those Destro books. I’m not sure I’ll be rushing to put Droggz or Kruleboyz on the table, but it’s certainly pointing in the right direction. And Gore Gruntas hitting on 4s (plus the absence of a change to Wade and Smash) are genuine wins for Team Green.

In the Core Rules, that Reaction thing is a mess that will need to be unpicked. You can see how it happened, but the Devs have got themselves a bit tangled up there, and hopefully it gets changed again soon.

I’ll close off with a request – I’d love to see any lists people are cooking with Droggz right now. Maybe there’s enough raw efficiency elsewhere in that book that you feel like you can carry him at 200 points for his tech, and if so: hit me up with those lists, cos I wanna see them!

Have a good weekend, nerds – see you on the other side.

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1. As the great Pat Nevan says: Congratulations, guys, for already having every unit in the game pointed to perfection. ↩︎
2. Interesting conversation at the Gaming Arena last weekend. Competitive S2D player: “Be’lakor is fine, his points don’t need to change. But if he went up by 100 points, I’d still put him in every list.” Okayyyyyyyy ↩︎

Credit for cover image to GW