Let's Chat: Spiderfang

[Skabnoze]

You are going to find mixed opinions on the Giant (still not used to calling them Ale Guzzler Gargants...).  I think the general view is that he is not that great for highly "competitive" lists, but I quite like the big guy.

Let me start off by saying that I am fairly biased and that I have loved Giants since I started playing Orcs & Goblins in the early 90s.  They have never been pound for pound the best monster, but they have often been surprisingly inexpensive and I find them to be quite entertaining.  Giants have tended to be extremely random over the years.  Their abilities used to be completely random and you had to roll a die to see what it was that they decided to do in combat each turn.  Some of the things they could do were rather insane such as inflicting a staggering amount of damage by jumping up and down on a unit or outright winning the combat without anyone making attacks simply by screaming at the top of their lungs.  Other times they might fall down or decide to do something fairly inconsequential like eat one guy in a massive unit.  On the whole they were a pretty decent monster for their cost.  They were random enough to punch above their weight class - but they could also do very little.  Some of my favorite memories of games played with my Orcs & Goblins over the years are the various antics that my Giant did.

Now, as for Age of Sigmar, I think the Giant is pretty decent.  He is still fairly random, but not nearly as much as he used to be in the past.  His main source of random right now is the number of attacks he makes with his club (which has a fairly large variance) and his tendency to occasionally fall down.  The main weakness for the Giant is that he has very little defense and he is going to fall down on occasion when he charges - which ends up negating the charge.  If you can deal with the chance to fall down and laugh it off as bad luck then you are ok.  But that type of ability seriously bothers some people and I think that is where a lot of the dislike for him comes from.  The Giant's main strength is that he has a surprisingly large amount of offense  - especially when using his non-modified profile.  He has 2 very hard hitting single attacks with his kick and headbutt.  Then he has a variable amount of attacks with his club.  On average, he is going to generate about 10 attacks (3d6) with his club before he degrades due to damage and that will drop to about 7 (2d6).  These amount of attacks are variable though, so you could roll better than that or much worse than that.  So he is still pretty random.  But, his to-hit and to-wound values are quite good (3+) and so most of the attacks he generates tend to result in damage.  In addition, every attack he makes has a rend value of at least -1.  But it is also worth noting that when he gets close to death his club attacks drops to d6 and his offense is seriously reduced.

At 170 points I like him.  He is quite cheap and not too difficult to fit into a list.  I also find his randomness to be fun but your mileage here may vary.  I also find that he has a surprising amount of offense for his cost until he is damaged.  Most enemies cannot ignore him because he hits really hard when ignored.

A couple of weeks ago my local GW store ran an event where you brought a single model that has the monster keyword on its warscroll and fought in a big multiplayer monster bash.  You scored points based on the cost of things you killed and when you died you would come back onto the table on your turn at full health.  So it was 6 rounds of big monsters punching each other.  We had a fair variety of monsters - but most of the big guys (Archaon, Alarielle, Morathi, etc).  I brought just a giant.  I did not win the event - but I was not expecting to.  What was hilarious was that my giant was fairly disruptive for his cost.  I spent most of the game chasing a Celestant on Stardrake around the board and either killing him or seriously beating him up.  The first turn I got the drop on the Stardrake, charged into combat, and dropped 10 wounds onto him.  From that point onwards the Giant got more respect from the rest of the table because he hit hard enough that nobody could really ignore him.  He also fell down on a critical turn when I could have charged and killed Archaon (who was quite beat up).

So, that is a pretty long post about the Giant.  In the end it pretty much boils down to your approach to the game and selecting units.  The giant can perform exceptionally well in some games and terrible in others. 

[amysrevenge]

6 hours ago, SimonL said:

Some great info here. My daughter has decided she wants in on the dice rolling shenanigans. She had a look at the armies and decided on Spiderfang.

She currently (not all built yet) has a Grot boss on gigantic spider, 3 Arachnarok's and 50 Spider riders.

 

She also has a Aleguzzlar Gargant she wants to use. I know you can ally a Gargant but is it worth it? or as previous members have stated would I be better off getting some spear chukkas or just run pure Spiderfang.  

 

This is for playing at home against me or some of my mates. So not Tourney stuff. Just for fun. (and when she gets bored they will be mine )

 

 Giants are always fun.  Usually they do nothing (or worse than nothing lol), but anything they actually do accomplish results in a story you'll be telling to your mates 5 years later.

[amysrevenge]

Double post

[SimonL]

Thanks for the replies guys. I have been on the receiving end of a Giant that managed all its hits and did some serious damage. She likes them so think I may build one for her.

Hopefully going to have test game this weekend

[Skabnoze]

1 hour ago, SimonL said:

Thanks for the replies guys. I have been on the receiving end of a Giant that managed all its hits and did some serious damage. She likes them so think I may build one for her.

Hopefully going to have test game this weekend

If your main goal is to have fun and not trying to squeeze the most optimized choices into an army then I HIGHLY recommend the Giant.  As I said in my overly long post above, I have been using one since the mid 90s and many of my favorite memories of games throughout editions come from the stuff he did.

Also, the model I took to the monster bash game I played a few weeks ago was the same metal Marauder Giant model that I painted somewhere around 1997.  I think he was the oldest painted model to ever hit the table in that GW store and some of the players in that game were only 1 year older than that paint-job.  I can say that I have certainly got my money's worth from that model purchase!

[Pyrtles]

Are there any changes in points?

[danimo]

I took Spiderfang to my FLGS final AoS 1 tournament and won all three matches. 

My army:

 Grot Big Boss on Gigantic Spider (Bellowing Tyrant, Battered Talisman)
2x Grot Shaman on Arachnarok
Arachnarok w/Flinger
30 Spider Riders
5 Spider Riders
5 Spider Riders
Colossal Squig
2 Squig Herders

The only change from my previous list in this thread is the Squig I just painted up taking up all the allied points, with just room left for some herders to stand around and look funny. I beat Fyreslayers, Tzeentch-allegiance Slaves to Darkness and Arkhan's Legion of Sacrament. I only won the last one due to time and my opponent getting unlucky with an objective (it was Scorched Earth). LoN is the matchup I struggle with the most.

I haven't seen any points leaks for Spiderfang but I think the new edition will be net good for the army. We can take a second Boss and spread the command ability out and the Endless Spells could give us versatility in the Hero phase.

Here's my army:

[Skabnoze]

That is a good looking army!

I like how you color matched the spider rider units with an Arachnarok.

How did you like the Arachnarok with flinger compared to simply taking a 3rd shaman?  With the new edition I was leaning towards more shaman.

[danimo]

9 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

That is a good looking army!

I like how you color matched the spider rider units with an Arachnarok.

How did you like the Arachnarok with flinger compared to simply taking a 3rd shaman?  With the new edition I was leaning towards more shaman.

I built these last November and went with the Flinger just because it seemed slightly more useful than a 3rd shaman. But only slightly, its pretty bad. Now I kinda hope I still have those extra bits around. Having a 3rd unbind would be great. Or I might just drop the herders and the Flingerarok for Moonclan shaman + 2nd Boss with points left over for spells or command points.

[Skabnoze]

If you don’t have the bits you can get the shaman for a couple bucks off eBay.  Most of the howda bits are super cheap as well - with the exception of the grot crew.  The grot crew sells for a pretty penny, but the rest of the bits are super cheap and very useful for conversions.  I bought a bunch of shaman to convert into Spiderfang doom divers a while back.  They were about $3ish a piece.

[Lardidar]

8 hours ago, danimo said:

I took Spiderfang to my FLGS final AoS 1 tournament and won all three matches. 

My army:

 Grot Big Boss on Gigantic Spider (Bellowing Tyrant, Battered Talisman)
2x Grot Shaman on Arachnarok
Arachnarok w/Flinger
30 Spider Riders
5 Spider Riders
5 Spider Riders
Colossal Squig
2 Squig Herders

The only change from my previous list in this thread is the Squig I just painted up taking up all the allied points, with just room left for some herders to stand around and look funny. I beat Fyreslayers, Tzeentch-allegiance Slaves to Darkness and Arkhan's Legion of Sacrament. I only won the last one due to time and my opponent getting unlucky with an objective (it was Scorched Earth). LoN is the matchup I struggle with the most.

I haven't seen any points leaks for Spiderfang but I think the new edition will be net good for the army. We can take a second Boss and spread the command ability out and the Endless Spells could give us versatility in the Hero phase.

Here's my army:

That is a beautiful army!

[Chris Tomlin]

Morning all,

Thanks for all the great contributions made here over the last year. It's been a really good thread, but the time has now come for this to be locked as we move into the new edition. To continue the Spiderfang Grots discussion, please head over here....

http://www.tga.community/forums/topic/18214-aos-2-spiderfang-grots-discussion/

Chris