Sons of Behemat Discussion 👣

[Skabnoze]

On 4/18/2020 at 8:33 AM, KingBrodd said:

I was against the Sons being taken by all Armies when it was first rumoured but I've personally moved past it. I'm just so glad the big ladz are exactly what I wanted. The more the merrier.

I'm not calling you out specifically @KingBrodd, rather just addressing this type of comment as I have seen it a few times.

I personally don't care if someone else can play with some of the same toys as I can.  If some of the units from Sons of Behemat are available for use as mercenaries in any army then I just hope that GW spends a bit of effort making mercenary giants a compelling addition to other armies but that they remain an interesting and compelling choice but not the universally best choice.  So far they have on the whole done a pretty good job of managing the game that way.  It's not perfect but it is pretty good and easily in a much better state than 40k.

But again, I don't care if some of the toys in an army I like can be used by other people.  All I really care about in regards to Sons of Behemat is that their specific allegiance has fun and interesting rules.  As long as I can have fun playing with these things then I don't care if other people have a reason to buy and play with a big giant.  In fact, the more giants running around the table the better.

Honestly, I really enjoy modeling and if some of the Gargants in this army work well in other armies then I will probably just end up with a number of fun conversion projects as I convert models to fit into other armies.  I already had plans to convert a giant specifically for my Gloomspite as a gargant that had become infected by some type of shroom and was now some weird shroom-zombie giant.  Think of a big huge clicker from the Last of Us with weird fungus and shrooms growing out of it's head and erupting from it's body.  I might be interested in converting another one up for my Bonesplitterz depending on how the rules compare to the Rogue Idol (hard to compete with that guy in Bonesplitterz) or even for Ironjawz.  Imagine a huge gargant that painted its skin mostly green, is wearing a big wooden mask (think Rogue Idol), and is covered in bones - that sounds like it would look great in a bonesplitterz force.  Or imagine a gargant with a big metal/bone helmet and that is covered in a bunch of scavenged armor pieces (think like Phil Kelly's Mawkrusha) - that could look great in an Ironjawz force.  I would even consider using one in a NightHaunt force as that army really feels like it is missing a big heavy-hitter.  That could be a really cool conversion as well.

 

It is worth pointing out that in 40k Knights being big killy models was not the reason their inclusion was problematic for the game.  The issue once again boiled down to 40k's really awful army-construction rules.  That was the reason you saw armies composed of a few knights, some choice buff pieces, a bunch of cheap goons to hold objectives, and then individual good units such as Blood Angels Smash Captains (hero with thunder-hammer and jump pack).  40k has a 100% different army construction focus than Age of Sigmar.  The main difference comes from allegiance abilities.  40k restricts allegiance abilities to a detachment where all units come from the same codex.  It then allows you to mix up multiple detachments as you see fit.  The detachments are meant to be the restrictions framework that you play within to construct your army - however they designed so many detachment types that you can effectively do whatever it is that you want.  And so then within this system you can stack multiple allegiance abilities.  40k then pulled most of the really potent abilities into command abilities, but then the game gives you command points based on how you compose your army and it does not restrict those points to be used by the units that generated them.  So you stuff cheap detachments (ie: imperial guard, ork grots, chaos cultists, etc) into your army to bank up command points that you feed to the knights.

None of those things are possible in Age of Sigmar.  This game takes the complete opposite approach and funnels players into the most restricted builds to get access to Allegiance abilities.  That is not to say that they could not write broken rules and make something bad.  But I think it will be much harder for GW to invent a unit that has as big a negative impact as Knights did on 40k.  Honestly, if GW did something like force people to select just ONE 40k detachment as primary and then that detachment is the only one that got access to allegiance abilities & also restricted command points use to the detachments they were generated from then knights become fairly normal.

Honestly, I am expecting that the "everyone can take a gargant" rules turn out to be a bit of a dud with the broader community.  The mercenary rules overall have not made a huge splash.  There are a few armies and builds where mercenaries are a good choice, but choices from your army are still often better.  That is the ideal place to be in and I expect that is where Sons of Behemat will end up as well.  This game is just not set up for a single model to make that strong of an impact on an army outside of allegiances unless there are some crazy rules involved.  The only way I can see giants making an outsized impact with other armies is either if there is some rule that lets them gain allegiance keywords with the armies they join and then get access to weird buffs - or if they have some weird potent new abilities on their warscroll that cannot be accessed any other way. 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Skabnoze

[Skabnoze]

On 4/19/2020 at 7:17 AM, Forrix said:

A complete non-issue if you only get one to ally into an army but if you're building an army out of 4 to 6 of these dudes its going to get noticeable. Its basically the Fyreslayer problem but on a smaller scale.  I know the old kit is in the army but its going to increase your army size due to them almost certainly being cheaper and is then still only 2 kits. 

I don't quite agree.

First, the 3 variants they showed I think do an excellent job of displaying how diverse this kit is.  It took me a couple minutes of examining the pictures of these things to realize they all came out of the same kit.  The basic leg and arm positions are shared, but they did a good job here with the various hand/weapon positions and different head positions that it really transforms the models.  If you put all 3 of those guys next to each other I don't think you have an issue with everything blending for the viewer.

And that assumes that we have seen all of the parts in the kit, and all of the various ways you can combine them.  I expect there is probably a number of other details that we have not seen yet.  There might be another head in the kit (maybe a helmet), more alternate clubs, other variants of the free hand, and lots of decorative bits.  Just look at how much variety is within the Aleguzzler kit (and it only has 2 sprues).

And from there we can talk about conversions.  This kit is obviously going to work extremely well for modelers.  It has a ton of bits and a good standard pose that can be changed in pretty subtle but drastic ways through how the hands and head are added.  I'm sure it would not be too tough to do more drastic reposes as well.  And just look at what people have done with the Aleguzzler over the years. 

What I am curious about is what the average army composition is meant to be in regards to these new mega-gargants vs the old aleguzzler gargant models. 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Skabnoze

[Skabnoze]

5 hours ago, 123lac said:

In my mind forgeworld is largely irrelevant, be it for AoS or 40k. Don't care what models they do or do not make, whether they have rules, whatever. I don't want overpriced boutique resin with unreliable rules.

I like good models - regardless of who is making them.  I find it somewhat amusing that the big monsters forgeworld makes are not really priced higher than current big monster plastic kits.  I buy forgeworld when I like the models.  I like the Colossal Squig, Squig Gobba, Rogue Idol, and Troggoth Hag - I think those are great models.  I would have bought some of the other monsters they had, such as the Basilisk and Dreadmaw, but they never gave a compelling reason to use them in game and there is already a plethora of cool models out there to buy.

I like the rules for the Bonegrinder, and I like the idea of a giant that damned big, but I will also agree that I just don't like the model.  I keep trying to find a bright-side in that model that I could use to convert it into something I like and I just can't come up with anything.  I dislike most of the details and the pose of the Bonegrinder.  But there are other companies that make big giant models - so I will probably just convert up one or more Bonegrinders from an alternate source (assuming that the updated rules are interesting).

[Skabnoze]

2 hours ago, SaJeel said:

Random speculation time, how do you think the aleguzzler will change, im thinking that the rules for a horned one will be drastically different

My guess is that they will do something similar for the Aleguzzler as with the new Mega-Gargants in that they will either create variant warscrolls based on the options within the kit or they just will give the Aleguzzler different weapon options (they could swap out the club weapon).  The current model has 4 different primary weapons - which are 3 different types of club and also a chain with a chunk of masonry on the end.  There is also a weapon for the off-hand.

It would not surprise me if they took a similar approach to what they have done in the past and made different warscrolls out of some build variants from this kit.

[Skabnoze]

Speaking of Giant models from various companies - I was going to put together a list of the ones that I knew about but it seems they have already done that over at the 9th age.  Most of the ones I am aware of can be found on these 2 pages:

https://www.the-ninth-age.com/community/lexicon/index.php?entry/2243-miniatures-marauding-giant/
 

https://www.the-ninth-age.com/community/lexicon/index.php?entry/1488-miniatures-giant/

 

Black Scorpion Miniatures used to make a big pirate giant armed with an anchor but it does not appear to be currently available on their website.  Hopefully they just ran out of stock as opposed to discontinuing the model.

[123lac]

4 hours ago, Hypno said:

There’s one AoS model that I see as relevant, the rogue idol, the only thing that’s a big useful threat as it can get buffer by both Bonesplittaz and Ironjawz makes it grossly overpowered 

I reckon you could kitbash a rogue idol pretty easy. Scam World sell it for $160, insane.

[KingBrodd]

2 hours ago, Skabnoze said:

I'm not calling you out specifically @KingBrodd, rather just addressing this type of comment as I have seen it a few times.

I personally don't care if someone else can play with some of the same toys as I can.  If some of the units from Sons of Behemat are available for use as mercenaries in any army then I just hope that GW spends a bit of effort making mercenary giants a compelling addition to other armies but that they remain an interesting and compelling choice but not the universally best choice.  So far they have on the whole done a pretty good job of managing the game that way.  It's not perfect but it is pretty good and easily in a much better state than 40k.

But again, I don't care if some of the toys in an army I like can be used by other people.  All I really care about in regards to Sons of Behemat is that their specific allegiance has fun and interesting rules.  As long as I can have fun playing with these things then I don't care if other people have a reason to buy and play with a big giant.  In fact, the more giants running around the table the better.

Honestly, I really enjoy modeling and if some of the Gargants in this army work well in other armies then I will probably just end up with a number of fun conversion projects as I convert models to fit into other armies.  I already had plans to convert a giant specifically for my Gloomspite as a gargant that had become infected by some type of shroom and was now some weird shroom-zombie giant.  Think of a big huge clicker from the Last of Us with weird fungus and shrooms growing out of it's head and erupting from it's body.  I might be interested in converting another one up for my Bonesplitterz depending on how the rules compare to the Rogue Idol (hard to compete with that guy in Bonesplitterz) or even for Ironjawz.  Imagine a huge gargant that painted its skin mostly green, is wearing a big wooden mask (think Rogue Idol), and is covered in bones - that sounds like it would look great in a bonesplitterz force.  Or imagine a gargant with a big metal/bone helmet and that is covered in a bunch of scavenged armor pieces (think like Phil Kelly's Mawkrusha) - that could look great in an Ironjawz force.  I would even consider using one in a NightHaunt force as that army really feels like it is missing a big heavy-hitter.  That could be a really cool conversion as well.

 

It is worth pointing out that in 40k Knights being big killy models was not the reason their inclusion was not that great.  The issue once again boiled down to 40k's really awful army-construction rules.  That was the reason you saw armies composed of a few knights, some choice buff pieces, a bunch of cheap goons to hold objectives, and then individual good units such as Blood Angels Smash Captains (hero with thunder-hammer and jump pack).  40k has a 100% different army construction focus than Age of Sigmar.  The main difference comes from allegiance abilities.  40k restricts allegiance abilities to a detachment where all units come from the same codex.  It then allows you to mix up multiple detachments as you see fit.  The detachments are meant to be the restrictions framework that you play within to construct your army - however they designed so many detachment types that you can effectively do whatever it is that you want.  And so then within this system you can stack multiple allegiance abilities.  40k then pulled most of the really potent abilities into command abilities, but then the game gives you command points based on how you compose your army and it does not restrict those points to be used by the units that generated them.  So you stuff cheap detachments (ie: imperial guard, ork grots, chaos cultists, etc) into your army to bank up command points that you feed to the knights.

None of those things are possible in Age of Sigmar.  This game takes the complete opposite approach and funnels players into the most restricted builds to get access to Allegiance abilities.  That is not to say that they could not write broken rules and make something bad.  But I think it will be much harder for GW to invent a unit that has as big a negative impact as Knights did on 40k.  Honestly, if GW did something like force people to select just ONE 40k detachment as primary and then that detachment is the only one that got access to allegiance abilities & also restricted command points use to the detachments they were generated from then knights become fairly normal.

Honestly, I am expecting that the "everyone can take a gargant" rules turn out to be a bit of a dud with the broader community.  The mercenary rules overall have not made a huge splash.  There are a few armies and builds where mercenaries are a good choice, but choices from your army are still often better.  That is the ideal place to be in and I expect that is where Sons of Behemat will end up as well.  This game is just not set up for a single model to make that strong of an impact on an army outside of allegiances unless there are some crazy rules involved.  The only way I can see giants making an outsized impact with other armies is either if there is some rule that lets them gain allegiance keywords with the armies they join and then get access to weird buffs - or if they have some weird potent new abilities on their warscroll that cannot be accessed any other way. 

I love all your conversion and alternate Gargant ideas!!

On the topic of Mercenaries I was really against it at first but seeing the miniatures I just want to see more of them. I do hope that they dont have such an impact as Mercenaries that absolutely everybody starts running one, I just hope that when run as a pure Sons of Behemat army they do far greater than they do as Mercs. With added abilities and bonus, maybe all Mercs will have a variation of the drunken stagger whilst a Sons army may not have that at all.

[Skabnoze]

50 minutes ago, KingBrodd said:

I love all your conversion and alternate Gargant ideas!!

On the topic of Mercenaries I was really against it at first but seeing the miniatures I just want to see more of them. I do hope that they dont have such an impact as Mercenaries that absolutely everybody starts running one, I just hope that when run as a pure Sons of Behemat army they do far greater than they do as Mercs. With added abilities and bonus, maybe all Mercs will have a variation of the drunken stagger whilst a Sons army may not have that at all.

I don't think there is too much to worry about here.  So much of what makes things good, mediocre, or just plain bad has to do with Allegiance Abilities in Age of Sigmar.  My guess is that Giants taken as a generic merc will probably either be like other mercenary choices from Forbidden Power and not have any specific allegiance abilities or else they will make some sort of mercenary ability that applies to them.

Big monsters tend to be at somewhat of a disadvantage much of the time in AoS.  When they are excellent it is often because they are a hero and can get extra abilities such as mount traits, command abilities, magic artifacts, etc.  Other times it is because they can get buffs from other friendly models (usually keyword/allegiance restricted).  I expect that a lot of what will make these guys great as an army is going to be due to allegiance abilities.

Having said that, I do think there will be a few armies where a mercenary gargant would be a good choice.  I just don't expect those armies will be the most common.

Edited April 20, 2020 by Skabnoze

[123lac]

3 hours ago, Skabnoze said:

Honestly, I am expecting that the "everyone can take a gargant" rules turn out to be a bit of a dud with the broader community.  The mercenary rules overall have not made a huge splash.  There are a few armies and builds where mercenaries are a good choice, but choices from your army are still often better.  That is the ideal place to be in and I expect that is where Sons of Behemat will end up as well.  This game is just not set up for a single model to make that strong of an impact on an army outside of allegiances unless there are some crazy rules involved.  The only way I can see giants making an outsized impact with other armies is either if there is some rule that lets them gain allegiance keywords with the armies they join and then get access to weird buffs - or if they have some weird potent new abilities on their warscroll that cannot be accessed any other way. 

Would be hard to balance for sure. If they benefit from allegiance abilities then there will probably be some broken OP combos. If they don't benefit from allegiance abilities then they will probably be on the weaker side when it comes to matched play.

Oh well, I just want to see some epic conversions to match people's armies!

[Aeryenn]

I don't like that giants can be taken by any army. They loose their uniqeness.

Anybody knows what happened to Aleguzler Gargants Colossal Crushers box? It seemed like a good deal. Hope it returns or GW creates a similar box.

Does anybody know how tall are new Giants? Like 4 liberators one on top of the other? Predictions in inches/mm?

Edited April 21, 2020 by Aryann

[123lac]

23 minutes ago, Aryann said:

I don't like that giants can be taken by any army. They loose their uniqeness.

Anybody knows what happened to Aleguzler Gargants Colossal Crushers box? It seemed like a good deal. Hope it returns or GW creates a similar box.

Does anybody know how tall are new Giants? Like 4 liberators one on top of the other? Predictions in inches/mm?

Way bigger than 4 liberators imo.

[Beastmaster]

34 minutes ago, Aryann said:

I don't like that giants can be taken by any army. They loose their uniqeness.

Anybody knows what happened to Aleguzler Gargants Colossal Crushers box? It seemed like a good deal. Hope it returns or GW creates a similar box.

Does anybody know how tall are new Giants? Like 4 liberators one on top of the other? Predictions in inches/mm?

With the Aleguzzler being between 4 and 5 inches (or 10-12 cm), which should correspond to 6-7 m in real life, the new giants, being roughly double height, should be around 8-10 inches, or 12-14 m. So, about as big as a five-floor building. Huge. 😳

[NauticalSoup]

1 hour ago, Aryann said:

I don't like that giants can be taken by any army. They loose their uniqeness.

You could find giants in a variety of armies for pretty much their entire history until quite recently. Also, this is actually more unique, no? Being confined to a narrow allegiance like every other faction wouldn't be unique at all, it would be bog standard for AoS. 

Also, gonna be that guy - it's lose not loose.

[Beastmaster]

A 12-14 m tall giant would weigh about 28-34 tons, according to my calculations. Imagine such a creature (or several of them) marching through a medieval town. 
Not much would be left. 😳

[KingBrodd]

12 minutes ago, Beastmaster said:

A 12-14 m tall giant would weigh about 28-34 tons, according to my calculations. Imagine such a creature (or several of them) marching through a medieval town. 
Not much would be left. 😳

I've been comparing them against locations near me and imagining just how colossal a creature they actually would be!!

[Beastmaster]

Another fun fact: To such a giant, a human would just be a bit taller than the giant miniature is to us. And about as easy to crush. Not really a worthy opponent, right? 😄

Edited April 21, 2020 by Beastmaster

[KingBrodd]

11 minutes ago, Beastmaster said:

Another fun fact: To such a giant, a human would just be a bit taller than the giant miniature is to us. And about as easy to crush. Not really a worthy opponent, right? 😄

That's an insane visual.

[Beastmaster]

My car weighs 1,5 t. For a giant of 30 tons, that would be like a 4,5 kg stone for me. If I can hurl that stone, say, 10 m far without too much of an issue, a giant could easily hurl my car 70 m.  No siege weapons needed. 😎

 

*Yes, I know, physics and biology don’t work that way. A giant with those proportions would barely be able to stand without breaking his legs. All of the above is under the assumption that you could just scale up sizes and masses. It’s fantasy, after all. 😉

Edited April 21, 2020 by Beastmaster

[Aeryenn]

3 hours ago, NauticalSoup said:

You could find giants in a variety of armies for pretty much their entire history until quite recently. Also, this is actually more unique, no? Being confined to a narrow allegiance like every other faction wouldn't be unique at all, it would be bog standard for AoS. 

If it was up to me I would even erase allies mechanic. Just like when armies are monofaction. 

3 hours ago, NauticalSoup said:

Also, gonna be that guy - it's lose not loose.

Thank you actually. I use written English far too seldom. 

Edited April 21, 2020 by Aryann

[Dankboss]

I'm expecting the mega-gargants to have 22-24 wounds and a 4+ save that increases to 3+ against attacks without rend. I feel like regular swords will do nothing to them, so I reckon that's a good way to represent added durability. Although I feel like this still isn't enough to make them a stand alone army. DPR saves don't seem fitting for what are essentially big humans.

I'm also hoping that one of them has the ability to literally inhale an endless spell to dispell it.

On another note, despite the Bonegrinder being taller, the Mega-gargant is way more muscular, and their presence is far more immense. I'm not sure how the Bonegrinder will coexist with the megas. If it does, it'll obviously get buffed.

Edit: I also want to see them cause massive morale damage as a secondary ability. Ever since the Dreadsaurian got buffed, Bravery attacks are showing more potential purely through the threat of it and forcing the enemy to spend resources they might not otherwise have. It basically translates as: this ability reduces your opponents CP by 1.

Edited April 21, 2020 by Dankboss

[Dankboss]

Also, I forgot about this rumor engine from a while back. This seems 100% like King Brodd's pillar.

[KingBrodd]

41 minutes ago, Dankboss said:

Also, I forgot about this rumor engine from a while back. This seems 100% like King Brodd's pillar.

This is actually the Gatebreakers weapon from a different angle. I'm starting to think we wont get a King Brodd kit at release but the Battletome will have the Warscroll. And then next year we will get a King Brodd/Leader kit just like the Imperial Knights did.

[Skabnoze]

2 hours ago, Dankboss said:

I'm expecting the mega-gargants to have 22-24 wounds and a 4+ save that increases to 3+ against attacks without rend. I feel like regular swords will do nothing to them, so I reckon that's a good way to represent added durability. Although I feel like this still isn't enough to make them a stand alone army. DPR saves don't seem fitting for what are essentially big humans.

They can put after saves in for whatever reason they want - and it tends to be a fairly simple and common way for them to make units durable.  Daughters of Khaine, Bonesplitters, and Fyreslayers are all pretty much naked and have after-saves as their main toughness mechanism.

So we currently know that this will be a low model count army - but we currently don't really know exactly how low that is.  We don't know the point value of the mega-gargants or what the aleguzzler will be.  We don't know if Aleguzzler will be a single warscroll or if it will get split to multiples (at this point my guess is multiples unless they preview more new kits).  We have no idea if smaller gargants will be available in units (like the Dankhold) or as singles.  So all we can do is look at other low model-count armies and sort of guess.  But prognosticating is fun so lets do it.

So if we look at some existing low model-count elite armies there is a pattern that they seem to all have some abilities to increase toughness.  Ogors have a 5+ after-save on Stonehorns and a number of ways to heal.  Lizardmen all-dino armies have a combination of a universal -1 damage rule and a variety of ways to increase armor.  And Troggoths use a combination of after-saves, to-hit debuffs, and healing.  Other mechanisms for increased toughness in the game are rend-reduction and increased wound counts.

I can legitimately see an argument for using most of these for gargant toughness.  You could give them increased armor saves and/or after-saves and say that gargants have very tough skin, are generally hard to injure, and/or have a high pain threshold and don't notice most wounds.  You could use those same justifications to give them increased wounds or rend-reductions.  Giants are the one Warhammer monster that I can think of that has always had the ability to outright eat enemy models on the table (aside from some Forgeworld monsters such as the Mammoth) and they could make that more of a common rule that leads into a healing ability.  You could even justify to-hit debuffs as gargants being extremely foul-smelling and gross which is roughly the same reason that Fellwater Troggoths have that ability.  They could even tie durability to some sort of triggered special abilities.  For example, Giants have always had the unique attack "yell and bawl" which caused the giant to outright win a combat without anyone fighting as the Giant just screams at the top of his lungs into the face of the attacker and stuns them.  They could put that ability back in and cause it to disrupt select enemies or give some sort of toughness buff onto the gargant or within a close bubble.

They could do a whole bunch of things and pretty easily justify any of it with fluff if they wanted to.  From my perspective it has been hard to guess how GW will implement things because they have used fairly unique methods for each army so far.  My guess is that Sons of Behemat will be a pretty unique army - especially if they don't put out more kits than what has been shown.  I think this army is going to play fairly differently than the others we have seen because it will be the first army designed solely around big monsters - rather than armies that have a niche big-monster army build.

 

Edited April 21, 2020 by Skabnoze

[Skabnoze]

39 minutes ago, KingBrodd said:

This is actually the Gatebreakers weapon from a different angle. I'm starting to think we wont get a King Brodd kit at release but the Battletome will have the Warscroll. And then next year we will get a King Brodd/Leader kit just like the Imperial Knights did.

I don't think GW will do this for AoS.  They really don't seem to put warscrolls into the game that do not have a model. 

I saw where in the preview that suggests we may have seen all of the new kits - but the verbage did not seem to outright state that directly.  If these are the only new kits then I can deal with that since the kit is fantastic, but I would not rule out another kit or two being spoiled soon.

Edited April 21, 2020 by Skabnoze

[KingBrodd]

25 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

I don't think GW will do this for AoS.  They really don't seem to put warscrolls into the game that do not have a model. 

I saw where in the preview that suggests we may have seen all of the new kits - but the verbage did not seem to outright state that directly.  If these are the only new kits then I can deal with that since the kit is fantastic, but I would not rule out another kit or two being spoiled soon.

Oh I'm truly hoping that there is at least one more kit hidden from us. I'd love it!!