The myriad of problems with this unit should be apparent. When you get within 12” of the enemy you fire your cannons, most likely hurting your own unit of leadbelchers in the process. You kill a few rank and file men and now no longer have any shots left to pummel them with unless you spend a turn doing nothing. You can stand and shoot with your cannons either, but not if they're reloading. If you do stand and shoot, you have your leadbelchers standing around doing nothing, and they'll most likely ignore you. They could be charged, but you're throwing expensive, naked bulls into combat. The enemy now has ample time to charge you and bring you down. You only have 5 ogres so you have the fighting power of ogre bulls, without the parry save of ironfists.
55 points each. A champion and a musician costs you 10 points each. If you did take 4 it costs you 240 points, 260 with a champion and musician. A champion without BS4. 4 ironguts with full command costs 242 points.
Yhetees: An ogre with S5 and I4, M7 and a -1 penalty to hit anything if an enemy is in base contact with your yhetees. They can also Scale Terrain which makes my head hurt trying to decipher the rule. Their Icy Weapons count as being magical until hit by a flaming attack, where they're just normal weapons again. Flaming attacks are abundant so you can be sure this'll happen. Also immune to Ice Magic. 8th edition doesn't have ice magic.
For a whopping 65 points you can move an inch further and hit at strength 5. Their aura may help your characters, but anything in a special slot in another army has WS4 anyway, so they now hit you on 4s instead of 3s. You aren't any tougher because you have no armour. You can't be joined by characters so there goes any benefit your aura would have, so you have to use your yhetees to multiple charge. They'd fill a support roll well if they actually hit hard enough to warrent the points.
65 points each. Champions are 20 points. 280 points for 4 yhetees and a champion. 4 Ironguts with a full command cost you 242 to compare.
Scraplauncher: 165 points for a war machine with chariot rules. It is a warmachine, but it sort of isn't because it's a chariot. Comes with T5, W5 and a 4+ armour save. You do D6 impact hits without a stomp. You are bad tempered, not frenzied like you'd assume a rhinox to be but simplified rules like Frenzied are newer so we'll not hold it against it. It also has a stonethrower with a large template that has the killing blow rule. The Misfire chart is also not good, but misfires never usually are.
Being a large template means if it does actually hit you have a good chance of rolling a lot of dices and getting more rolls of a 6 for the killing blow. Ultimately, it costs more than it should but it provides you with the ranged support you need. It doesn't do terribly bad in close combat all things considered, but it's nothing you want to charge into anything remotely considered a monster.
Take one at least, 2 because the rest of the special slots are terrible if you have the points and want more joy when you roll a 6.
Maneater: Ogre mercenaries without peer. Maneaters have seen all the horrors that the old world can produce and have come back successful and stronger than ever. For 80 points, what do we get?
WS4, BS4, S5, T5, I3, 4 attacks and LD8. You're immune to psychology, stubborn and you can mix and match weapons freely. You can buy heavy armour for 4 points, cathayan longsword for 6 (bargin), great weapon (6 points for ignoring your average initiative for S7 hits, on top of not having a cathayan longsword), or a brace of handguns (6 points for the ability to shoot, average).
Other than having quirky and fun models, Maneaters are lackluster. It seems the actual maneaters are still out partying, eating entire feasts for snacks and brofisting Golgfag in the next army book.
Lackluster doesn't mean unusable.
1 Maneater with a Greatsword costs you 86 points. Take a Tyrant with Fencer's Blades, Glittering Scales and a Greyback Pelt for 295 points. Your 381 point train of trouble is arranged in a rank of 1 and runs straight into the nearest enemy deathstar lead by something like a Chaos Lord or Vampire Lord. Your tyrant issues a challenge and they will probably accept. Seeing as they cannot hit a character in a duel and nothing in the rest of your unit is touching their base, they can't attack you. Meanwhile, their unit is touching the tyrant's base, meaning you get 4 S7 attacks at I1 to slog at them whilst you duel. The duel will go on forever, as you're WS10 and -2 to hit, so unless they have WS10 too they need a 6 to hit, then to wound and then to deal enough wounds. You hold up that unit for the entire game whilst the rest of your army dies around you.
For 381 points, you too can make a trolltrain. Fun and hilarious but ineffective in the grand scheme of things.
Otherwise, 4 maneaters with braces of handguns cost you 344 points. 4 with great weapons still costs you 366 points. 4 with cathayan longswords is still 344 points. Put a kitted bruiser or tyrant in with them and pretend you're a deathstar. You certainly have the price tag for one.
Slave Giant: 2 pages of rules. Yuh oh.
Not stubborn like other giants. S6, T5, W6, I3 and the only unit in your army book that has LD10. They suffer no panic for smaller units running away. A large target that causes terror. Moves as fast as an ogre.
Whenever it's beaten in combat, if it's fleeing at the start of your turn, crosses an obstacle, does a special Jump Up And Down attack or plain dies it might fall over if you roll a 1. You roll a scatter, that's the direction it keels over. If you're underneath it, you get hit, partially hits on a 4+. Does a S6 hit with D3 wounds and counts towards combat resolution if your giant Jumps Up And Down. When it does this, it takes a wound, no questions asked. Getting up costs you it's entire movement phase. If you flee whilst you've fallen over, your giant just plain dies again. If your giant can pursue, you don't pursue but get up instead.
It doesn't stop there.
They get special snowflake levels of attacks. If you fight anything 'big', which is usually monstrous infantry, a monster, a warmachine or whatever then you Yell And Bawl (you automatically win combat with 2 combat resolution, good thing), Throttle With Chain (toughness test or take 2d6 wounds, no armour saves. Also good) or 'Eadbutt (1 automatic wound, no armour saves, if it hasn't attacked it doesn't attack back, good on heavy hitting characters) depending on your D6 roll
If you fight anything smaller, you Yell And Bawl (not too great seeing as you'll be facing something steadfast), Jump Up And Down (2d6 S6 attacks that allocate as shooting, might fall over, will keep doing this if you roll it once until it dies or falls over, then it'll die again), Flail With Chain (D6 S6 attacks, less potential damage than Jumping but allows you to actually get a chance to do something else) or Pick Up And...
And we have to look at another dice roll to see what we do now. Oh, important note is that the enemy gets to make a single attack to not be picked up. If it hits and wounds the giant, the giant doesn't pick up the model and reading this counts for nothing.
They either get Stuff Into Bag (removed as an effective casualty unless your giant dies, then they are freed at the end of the battle and don't award points), Thrown Back Into Combat (picked up model takes a wound with no armour save, deals D6 S3 attacks to the unit), Hurl (thrown 12” away into a randomly picked enemy unit nearby, same result as Thrown Back Into Combat for that unit, if there's no unit treat it as Thrown Back Into Combat anyway), Squash (plain outright dead), Eat (less plain, more outright dead) or Pick Another (model is put away like Stuff Into Bag, enemy gets to roll a single attack again to avoid being picked up.
A fun, interesting, random unit that will get destroyed by a warmachine in the first few turns. If it gets to combat, then you have to use the 15 minutes you spend every night remembering the Slave Giant rules to roll a few dice and see if something zany happens.
175 points. For me, 175 points for an even better model is not worth 2 pages of rules for something that will take two cannonballs to the chest and die.
Gorger: Gorgers are surprisingly decent, in comparison with everything else. They get an enhanced S5, T5, W4, 4 attacks, unbreakable and have killing blow. They basically work like Ambushers do, and move towards the nearest enemy like they have frenzy without the +1 Attack. They always Pursue and can never overrun.
Gorgers fill a vital role in your army, in that your rare slots aren't too good and you need something to tie up and kill warmachines. Gorgers enter play, hopefully near a warmachine, wait a turn and begin to eat the crew to let your ogres not suffer multiple wound weapons. All this costs you 75 points, which is not horrific but still a little overpriced.
It's not like you'd take any other special choices anyway.
150 points for 2 gorgers to tie up enemy warmachines or gank anything on the back rows. This is less than a single scraplauncher, so all in all not bad.
Ogres were considered one of the lowest armies currently due to having a lot of dud units, little flexibility and even though they could win combat resolution by sheer wounds, T4/W3 doesn't cut it when you can get a lot of multiple wound attacks. They have no armour either, which is big and they have to pay for it, which makes their point cost big.
I'm not getting into magic items or big names because frankly, nothing out of them shines so hard that it's worthwhile. A simple review of gut magic: Short range augment spells that hurt your butchermaster but he can regain wounds as well and everything casts on a 3+. Good, cheap but doesn't have the range nor anything to bring the hurt to the enemy. Other than S7 Irongut hits of course. Nobody likes those.
What was the point in this article?
A reminder of what was, to compare to what's new.
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