In her seminal work Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, the great Marcella Hazan wrote about the importance of using garlic in moderation: to seduce, not to bludgeon. Authentic Italian cooking should not aim to beat your pallet senseless with garlic.

Yeah, well I’m not an Italian cook, Ogors aren’t garlic and I’m certainly not too proud to bludgeon my way to victory by spamming the shit out of the most efficient units in the army. And I’m definitely here for that whole “beating them senseless” thing.

Now with that being said: chucking a Monster in there always adds a sprinkling of stardust to any list. Full-on BCR Monster Truck lists have been utterly emasculated by this book, but I reckon we can justify squeezing one monster into a mixed Ogors list: today I present to you, the humble Huskard on Stonehorn.

Weighing in at 300 points for 14 Health on a 4+ save and no ward, he’s pretty much made of butter, and Stone Skeleton isn’t going to save him when your opponent spikes damage:

But he can be a right pain in the ass for your opponent.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt¹

First up, his main warscroll ability has a nice dual purpose. If you’re running Companions (especially the Maulbeasts), that Crit 2 Hits will be very welcome, but if you don’t have the Cav you can ignore that and still justify taking him in basically any list for that Neg 1 to Hit instead:

So already he’s got a good debuff. Now the various Huskards offer our only access to this army’s excellent Prayer Lore:

• +1 (or +2) to Run and Charge stacks nicely on any unit with Run + Charge (from our Battle Trait) since they’ll get the bonus at both ends
• Pulverising Hailstorm is a nice piece of hero sniping (especially in combination with Soulsnare Shackles)
• Best of all is Whorefrost: Neg 1 to Wound (any maybe rend) is getting pretty debilitating when we’ve already got them at Neg 1 to Hit

So we’ve got a really nice utility piece here: a 300-point monster who can fight a bit, and make your opponent wade through treacle.

Enhancements

But we can make him even more of a pest. First up, this Heroic Trait is situational but was an absolute menace when I used it against Nighthaunt last weekend:

I’ve also been taking the Mantle on my deepstriking BCR heroes:

And if you can spare 10 points, the Horn Toss from Scourge of Aqshy’s Well-Fed Beasts is an optional extra Enhancement that’s cool and powerful: a variant on the fan-favourite Mega Gargant suplex, it’s always great fun to move your opponent’s models around. You will get stories out of this when you hook your opponent’s minis off an objective or out of buff range:

So now you’ve got a unit that already fights a bit and puts your opposition on:

• Neg 1 to Hit
• Neg 1 to Wound
• Neg 1 to their Rend
• Can’t heal or replace models
• Can’t use Commands
• Suplexes them off Objectives

I mean, that’s pretty handy to have in your list I think.

Bringing It Home

I will throw one more option in the mix, an Artefact from Scourge of Aqshy:

I think this one is actually better than Mantle of Entrails in most situations, but what it’s probably going to come down to is whether you’re using him to deepstrike down the board (in which case Mantle‘s disruption has more value for putting the cat amongst the pigeons) or deploying him with your main army (in which case he’s likely to have some good friendly targets around him to maximise Key).

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So long story short, of the Monster Trucks in this book, I reckon this one is my favourite. You’re getting the classic Stonehorn combat accompanied by a fantastic warscroll debuff, and as such he’s the best chassis for that filthy Prayer lore and the other annoying bullshit this army can pull.

In strict competitive terms, another block of reinforced Hunters is probably gonna do more for you at basically the same points. But if you lament the BCR side of the book, or you just want to slam down a Monster for Rule of Cool, the Stonehard will always look awesome on the table. While he might not pack the iconic Frost Spear, this is still a model with a great silhoutte.

I’ll be taking him for a spin and I’ll report back once I’ve got some reps in. Until then: have a good weekend, nerds. Catch you on the other side.

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1. One of my favourite Mark Twain quotes. The other is “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.” ↩︎