So as a long-term Ogors player, I went into this update with a long shopping list. The army has a huge amount of needs, well in excess of what an update of this scale can possibly deliver, but a few near the top would include:

• Tyrants that are worthy of the name. Fighters to be feared and respected throughout the game.
• Gutbusters in general to get a boost. Stonehorn spam has had a spell of being competitive but the Dadbods are languishing.
• Leadbelchers to have output worth a damn. Their shooting profile in no way reflects the horror of being blasted by a cannon wielded as a sawn-off shotgun. Getting sprayed in the face with that should probably hurt a bit, and at point-blank range it should be almost impossible to miss.

Beyond the individual warscrolls, this is an army with few tricks, built on crap armour saves and no recursion, which leaves them very exposed in modern Age of Sigmar.

So did we make any headway? Kinda. Let’s get into it.

Battle Formations

Mawpath Menaces

You get a pseudo-countercharge. It doesn’t cost you any CPs, and you can use both this and the actual Countercharge on two separate units if you really want to push your chips in. Thematically the Ogors are ganging up on their opponents, so it also fits the “Fat Bullies” theme quite nicely.

Now it’s time to set off that FAQ Klaxon. The good news is that the final clause (“the target has charged”) means that the unit can Fight – and therefore pile in – later in that combat phase, even if it’s not within 3″ of the enemy. So you can tee up some activation wars bullshit (which we’ll come back to in a moment). The less good news is that what immediately precedes it (“If it does so…”) is open to interpretation.

What does “If it does so…” refer too here – if it does what? There are three conditions in the prior sentences (move on a 3+, move through combat ranges, end in combat) and it’s not completely clear how many of those hoops we need to jump through to count as having charged. The pessimistic reading is that the most recent condition (ending in combat) is the first in line, and that’s how I first read it. The hopeful reading is that it’s calling back to the initial, overarching condition (roll a 3+ and move), and that the intervening “cans” are simply subordinate to that.

Confused? Me too. Honestly it needs an FAQ, but the more I read it, the more I believe that you only have to meet the first condition (hit the 3+ and move) to count as having charged, and everything else is purely permissive. They’ll have a chance to clarify before these are matched play legal anyway.

Why does it matter?

If you can “charge” and end up just outside of combat, you can then pile in and fight at your leisure. You’ll therefore get to swing first into something on your opponent’s turn, so it’s a little bit of much-needed bullshit in the Ogors’ portfolio. There’s a player skill element here because you’ll need to make sure you’re not too close to an enemy unit that’s in combat with something else; otherwise they can pile in, bring you into combat and whack you anyway. But I don’t mind a bit of skill expression in these kinds of rules.

Whichever way the FAQ lands: one clear benefit is that you don’t have to use this aggressively to get into a scrap. You can just take it as free movement, piss off to claim an objective / terrain piece, and score VPs or deny a Battle Tactic. So depending on the FAQ, this Formation is dicey as hell but ranges from “Really good” to “Really, really good”. I’m not sure it muscles out the +1 to Cast subfaction (which is also a banger) but it’s good enough to be in the mix, and that’s high praise.

Postprandial Warfare

Some rules that GW writes are obviously broken from the first glance. Some rules that GW writes are clearly dogshit. Postprandial Warfare is neither of the above and it’s one that you just need to get a feel for on the table.

Eh. Kill a unit and get a model back? I can’t say I’m hugely excited by it, but I’ve spoken to a few other experienced Ogors players who like it more than I do, so if you do give this one a run please let me know how you get on.

Let me illustrate my reservations with two very common scenarios that occur when you push Ogors into combat:

• You swing first, one-shot the enemy unit and don’t lose any models of your own.
• Your opponent swings first and cuts through your 5+ saves like butter. You either lose your whole unit, or what’s left is not enough to destroy a whole unit on the clap-back.

These both happen a lot with Ogors, and in neither of those situations will you get any use from this Battle Formation. On the flipside you’ll sometimes lose a model to Covering Fire on the way into combat, or some Ironguts models drop dead between their first activation and the killing blow, but overall I just feel like you’ll only get about 2 or 3 “free” models out of this in a lot of games. And that’s not enough to get me excited – I see more value and impact in the +1 to cast or movement-bullshit Formations.

If you do decide to give this one a go: 4-health models are sweet but the best target of all is Gorgers, with their 5 health. Worth noting too that the (potential) second and third units to get a model back don’t need to have fought themselves – just to have gotten into that combat – so you can prey on a single enemy unit, smash them, then (hopefully) rebuild a few units who were witnesses to the crime.

Big Names = Big Win

Free stuff! I love free stuff. I also love Big Names.

Gutslugger and Megagobbler do not interest me in the slightest. Mage-Swallower on the other hand is solid gold.

Wards are great, so reducing wards is equally as great. We’ve already seen the leaked Battleplan that boosts wards, so the change to reduce them is desperately needed.

Note that this army already has the Fang of Ghur as an Artefact:

I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether you’re doubling up, but the best caddy for either is the Frostlord on Stonehorn. Worth noting that Mage-Swallower has a pretty generous range, so you don’t even have to be in combat. Since one can spray multiple units, while the other pushes down hard on a single target, I’d honestly consider grabbing both pieces of anti-ward tech.

New Warscrolls

The Ironblaster (170) has gotten a good refresh. That eye-popping damage characteristic of 5 is essentially in line (used to range from 4 to 6), but Crit (2 Hits) plus the ability granting an extra shooting attack gives it a fair old bump. You’ve lost the option for scatter shot but there are some small increases in the combat output: the Clubber gets rend and the Rhinox gets an extra attack, plus situational rend.

Hopefully these are a sign of things to come in the eventual Battletome. You’re not taking this thing for its incidental melee output but as a matter of principle, all Ogor combat profiles should be baseline respectable. Those Rend 0 Damage 1 attack profiles can get in the Mawpot.

But it’s the extra shooting attack that really elevates the new warscroll. The damage is a clear uplift:

That’s without using AOA and it comes packaged with a 30-point drop. Note that the extra attack is once per turn (army) so there’s diminishing returns to spamming these things. But that’s not a bad inclusion in any style of list, and when you do jag a couple of 6s in your Hit rolls, you’ll feel like a million dollars.

The Scraplauncher (150) by contrast is a weird and unasked-for sidegrade. The actual shooting is better (gaining rend amongst other tweaks) and you’ve switched out one conditional debuff (Neg 1 to hit if you kill a model) for another (move reduction). The bonus debuff of -1 charge dice being locked behind a 5+ roll is particularly dispiriting; that rule is already rife throughout the game, so how can it be so game-warping that it needs to be locked behind a bloody 5+?

The Scrappy probably / arguably is worth its 150 points in a vacuum, but how can anyone look at all the gaping holes and issues that this army had, hone in on the existing kinda-good Scraplauncher warscroll and decide that the absolute top priority is another kinda-good Scraplauncher warscroll? Coupled with 2 out of 3 uninspiring Big Names, I’m afraid that a huge amount of real estate on this 2-page pdf has been squandered.

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So I’m sorry if this article ended on a Debbie Downer. It’s not that the new Scraplauncher is shit – it puts out handy chip damage and even the baseline debuff will come in handy. It just shouldn’t have been the top priority for this army, in fact probably not even Top 10. Ultimately this update is a curate’s egg: I think it’s OK to feel a bit flat when other armies have got clear slam-dunks, but when the dust has settled there is some highly playable tech in here.

Circling back to our initial wishlist: Tyrants continue to languish but Gutbusters generally stand to benefit. The subfactions do offer much-needed tricks and recursion (especially if that FAQ goes our way), and the ward-reducing Big Name is a cracking ability.

You could do worse than include either artillery piece if you find the spare points burning a hole in your pocket, but it’s the Ironblaster that’s slightly ahead for mine: punching a hole into elite units is just a more useful purpose for your shooting units.

So how about them Leadbelcher buffs next time up?

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