There’s certainly no shortage of infantry options in this book. We went in with Ironguts and Gluttons, and came out with Cleavers, Gutseers and Hunters added to the equation. I’ll park Gutseers to one side for today’s purposes – they have their own niche as a magical supremacy tech choice – and we’ll circle back to Hunters, who bring a mixed arms aspect to the table. That leaves the mainline footsloggers – Gluttons, Ironguts and Cleavers – in competition with one another, and the question then becomes: have GW managed to give each of them a raison d’être, or is one option squeezed out by a flat better choice?

The Baseline

Let’s look at reinforced units, because that’s how I think you’ll mostly be running them:

• 10 Gluttons at 400
• 6 Ironguts at 400 points
• 6 Cleavers at 440 points

Relative to the others, Gluttons bring you more volume of attack dice but lower rend, so you’d expect that maybe they’ll struggle into elite armour. Leaving aside any buffs, this is our starting point:

And that is indeed the case. Gluttons are worse into a 2+ save but they overtake the Ironguts into even a 3+ save, and leave them behind from there. Cleavers stay in front all the way up to a 5+ save but they do cost 10% more.

Given that Cleavers can proc Crit 2 Hits on a 3+, maybe it’s fair to include that in their numbers:

At that point Cleavers really surge miles ahead for pure output. Gluttons are second best but cheaper (and put more health on the table), and Ironguts are left lagging behind. The overall picture is roughly in line with what I expected, but I was a bit surprised by two things:

1. How quickly Gluttons move past Ironguts. Even into a 3+ save they win out.
2. Just how much daylight there is between self-buffed Cleavers and the rest.

Who takes buffs better?

This army has quite a few ways to buff all three units. A few prominent ones are:

• Morga can issue +1 attacks to infantry units who’ve taken damage
• All of them can get Crit 2 Hits or Crit Mortal from their battle trait after fighting
• +1 to Hit from a spell, from fighting after the Tyrant or the ever-present All Out Attack
• +1 Rend into one of Monsters, War Machines or Cav from the Gruesome Trophy Rack artefact

As we discussed in our tricks and combos piece last week, the Cleavers’ Arcane Appetite ability can interact with the battle trait to get you to Crit Mortals one turn quicker:

Ogor Mawtribes: The Coolest New Tricks and Combos

Let’s look at how these buffs affect the scaling. I won’t run every single combo for the sake of brevity, but if we put them on a somewhat realistic scenario of +1 attacks and +1 to hit, with exploding 6s, we see the following:

I didn’t bother with +1 rend because that artefact offers no option for the highly desirable anti-infantry, so I think you’ll most often take Key to the Larder instead, but that extra rend would mathematically favour Gluttons most in general. Purple Sun is another option in that space if you don’t want to use your artefact slot on the Trophy Rack.

So with a suite of buffs we see that Gluttons leap ahead of Cleavers into the very worst armour saves (though Cleavers can get those buffs flowing), while Ironguts remain the worst option in most scenarios (barely edging out Gluttons into a 2+ save and downhill from there).

And if you think that’s more buffs than you’ll regularly see on the table, I do agree. There’s a strong chance that Morga gets squeezed out of most lists by Redd until their points get switched around for example. So how about we take a look with just +1 to hit, without that extra attack, but bringing the Crit Mortal option onto the table?¹:

I didn’t include Ironguts here because the graph becomes too cluttered with 6 bars, and we’d just be re-establishing what we’ve already seen (that they offer the worst output overall). What we learn from this set of numbers is that Gluttons only move ahead of Cleavers into the very worst (and rarely-seen) armour saves, while Crit 2 Hits is quite often preferable to Crit Mortal. You can see that the tipping point for Crit 2 Hits taking over is into a 4+ save for Gluttons and a 3+ save for Cleavers. I was surprised that Crit Mortal was mathematically inferior as often as it was, but it does make sense when you consider that Crit 2 Hits will sometimes get both attacks through.

Defensive Outlook

So Cleavers do the most damage unless you’re lucky enough to be fighting a unit with abysmal armour saves. Gluttons however put a lot more blubber on the table and have a great warscroll ability:

This is a really high-quality rule. Note that GW have kicked their bad habit of making such rules apply only to melee attacks for no good reason², so you get this against shooting too.

The other needle-movers are:

• Ironguts have a 4+ armour save
• Cleavers (being Mawseers) get a 5++ ward near Redd (the others only get a 6++)
• Ironguts can get a 5++ ward near foot heroes

There’s other debuffs in this army like the Neg 1 to wound Prayer, but they’re available to all three options so we’ll focus on the above for now.

Firstly, standing on their own two feet with no Ward-providing chums nearby, Gluttons are miles ahead despite the Ironguts’ 4+ save. The numbers on the right hand side (Effective Health) show the amount of damage your opponent has to get through to pop a unit after saves and wards:

If we add in the Wards that are easily available, we get the following:

I reckon that’s pretty eye-catching, because what it shows is that even with the 5+ ward from a nearby hero, the Ironguts are still easier to kill than the equivalent points in Gluttons. On their best day (with that 5+ ward) and Gluttons’ worst day (on the charge so no +1 to save), they’re still edged out 58 to 54 (the higher the number, the more damage your opponent needs to push through to pop a unit).

Cleavers meanwhile are the softest unit, even with the 5++ ward, but they do punch out the most damage so maybe that’s to be expected.

Mobility and Intangibles

We can skip past movement pretty quickly: it’s a wash. They all have the same 6″ baseline move and access to the same (extensive) bonuses. That won’t affect your choices.

As for the intangibles, we’ve already covered the Cleavers’ participation in the Crit Two Hits / Crit Mortal tech (for which you pay a 10% points premium). Do Ironguts have any unique tech that can rescure them? Well that depends on how much you value Bull Charge.

I’ve already been playing games with this army, and I’d suggest that it’s not enough to change your decision. If you can get all 6 Ironguts within 3″ after your opponent has stepped back 3″ then you’ll get roughly 5 extra damage out of this, which to be fair can move the needle in those damage tables above. Your mind is probably going straight to scenarios where you’ve got your opponent pinned and they can’t move back, or they’d be stepping off an objective, but that’s not the modal outcome – most often they will step back and you’ll get maybe 2 damage out of this.

Worth noting that Gluttons do also come in a larger unit, so they push out more charge mortals naturally. In a perfect world, where your opponent just stands there and cops the damage:

• Gluttons do 8.3 damage
• Cleavers do 4 damage
• Ironguts do 5 damage (but can also do it in addition to another unit)

Ironguts: The Squeezed Middle

So where does this lead us? Based on the data, Gluttons are the overall winners. Cleavers have their role as glass hammers that can get the Crit train rolling, and if you write a list you like that ends up around 1960 points it could be worth upgrading one unit. I could also see an argument for taking one big unit of Gluttons and one big unit of Ironguts. That way you’re getting the max output from the first big Bull Charge with a larger unit, and the second one becomes possible with the Ironguts³.

But is that enough to bridge the gulf in the fundamentals? In my opinion, probably not. Gluttons have better overall output in most cases and way more wound density on the table, so while I could maybe run 10x Gluttons and 6x Ironguts, in practice I’d rather just have a second unit of Gluttons (and there’s no way I’d take two units of Ironguts).

The gaps are pretty marginal so you could probably find someone who’s posted a good result with Ironguts in their list, but I’m certain that person could have done equally as well (or better) with Gluttons instead. And it’s those marginal gaps that are the issue here: there’s not really enough differentiation between these units, so you end up taking the one that offers the most efficiency. Frankly I don’t think their points costs will stay identical – Gluttons will end up costing more than Ironguts – but a better solution would have been to create a bigger point of difference for Ironguts. For example, maybe they could ignore negative modifiers to their hit rolls? That would give them a strong case as a situational pick.

As it stands, I think they’re lacking that strong case to be picked. You’re smart enough to make your own decisions – you’re reading Plastic Craic, after all – but what I’ll be doing is chucking 2x 10 Gluttons into my lists. I just reckon they’re the best.

Credit for cover image: Games Workshop

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1. There’s a debate over whether you can trade in Crit 2 Hits for Crit Mortal with Gluttons (using the battle trait across two turns), but as you’ll see that’s not mission critical here. Crit 2 Hits is often better anyway and it’s the durability that really separates Gluttons, but keep an eye out for the FAQ regardless. ↩︎
2. “We copied an old rule that also only applied to melee attacks” is not a good reason. ↩︎
3. There’s also some minor synergy with the Butcher maybe giving the Gluttons that 6+ ward from his ability while the Ironguts also get it for being near him, although I currently prefer Redd in my lists anyway. ↩︎