Skabnoze

Skragrott's moon-manipulation general command ability is a very good ability. But, I think it also depends upon your list and general battle plan. I would say that the moon is least important for Trogg-heavy lists. The regen ability for Troggs is nice, but you can do without it. You can get away without the moon for Squig lists as well since the Squig Lure spell somewhat offsets the moon ability. Spiderfang and Moonclan Grot heavy lists are where the moon really becomes more important in my opinion. Skragrott's ability to manipulate the moon for one turn can be a huge boon to those lists. But he brings enough to the table for his relatively cheap cost that even without the moon it is hard not to consider him. The Troggboss on the other hand is a relatively overpriced model without any extra abilities. The standard Dankhold Troggoths are arguably overpriced and the only difference is the Troggboss has one extra attack. But, the general traits and relics can make a very big difference in the performance of the Troggboss. If you are taking a Troggboss then I think you at least need to give him a relic to justify his cost. In a troll-heavy list with Skragrott I would probably make the Troggboss the general just to get access to a general trait since I think you can get away without needing the moon-manipulation ability. A Troggboss with a relic and a general trait is a very different thing from a stock-standard Troggboss.

I was considering picking up 4-6 Loonshrines and doing all sorts of crazy things - including this. I'll be watching how this works out for you! If nothing else I was probably going to pick up at least another one and use it as a source of extra mushroom bits.

The Cave Squig scroll got a nice little rework and I feel that it is one of the gems in the book. The unit just feels like they hit exactly the right spot with it in terms of stats, abilities, and cost. They have the herder abilities baked into the warscroll now and so you don't have the weird positioning & order of activation issues by needing to get the herders into position for the unit. They split the single multi-damage attack into 2 attacks like the old Hopper warscroll and they baked the +1 to hit bonus from the herders into the basic profile. And now the unit simply has to have herders alive to get the run/charge bonus. My one complaint is that I wish they had put a bit more buff synergy available to Squigs. I don't see any reason why it would have been too much for Sporesplatta Fanatics or the Spiker to be able to effect Squig Herds - but that is not a huge complaint. I'll probably be exploring an all Squig list built on a backbone of a few huge Cave Squig units since I already have a ton and I can't resist buying a bunch more of the new kit.

The problem here is that to a certain degree these are apples-oranges comparisons. You can statistically measure an attack statline, or a resiliency to certain attacks, but there are more intangible things to models and units in this game that are difficult to account for. Fanatics are a great ambush unit that is designed to be very deadly. They are quite likely to get a round of attacks in but they will evaporate after that. They have their own warscroll, but they still operate more like an upgrade to a unit of grots than their own distinct unit. I love Squig Herds (I had about ~50 cave squigs before they released the plastic ones...) but it is the Gloomspite unit that is the most susceptible to battleshock in the book. The toothy little monsters are quite offensive, fairly self-sufficient, have a fair amount of wounds, and are priced very nicely, but their absurdly low bravery can make units evaporate quickly. It can suck to have multi-wound models rapidly scatter. There are ways to mitigate this, but that requires active planning. The Giant never has to worry about bravery unless hit by one of the few bravery-based attacks in the game. There are both pros and cons for having large or small unit footprints and simple stat comparisons don't take that into account. I won't at all argue that other units will statistically fare better in combat. If that is the main metric you are interested in then that is fine. I don't argue that the Giant on average is probably not quite as good as he should be - that is fair also. I don't think he is the horrifically terrible unit that he is usually made out to be. To me he is a very random model who is very prone to swingy results and on average is a bit lower than he ought to be. However, he is also dirt cheap and I don't really see GW taking his points down much farther. You can cost adjust most things, but I feel that there is a limit to how low GW will go and the issues with the Giant are mainly inherent to his warscroll and also to the Gloomspite army not having any real potential buff-vectors for him. His only real buff interaction is within the Troggherd battalion. Gloomspite was designed heavily around specific keyword interactions and "Aleguzzler Gargant" was specifically left out of all ability keyword interactions. For example, imagine if Snufflers were changed so that their mushroom buff targeted "Gloomspite" instead of "Moonclan". There would be a lot of interesting interactions there (such as Manglers), but I think the Giant would immediately become much more interesting given that he has 3 different quality attacks on his profile. What if the Scaremonger could buff any "Gloomspite" rather than "Moonclan Grot"? For me, if they broadened how some of the buffs work then the Giant would become a lot more interesting. Or if they made some tweaks to his warscroll. They could change the variable amount of club attacks to a set value (I'd probably start at 14) or alternatively they could leave the club variable and change it to 2 damage. He strikes me as honestly not needing a whole lot of alteration. But, this is simply my opinion.

It's not just fanatics. Squig Hoppers, Boingrot Bounders, Loonboss on Mangler, Loonboss on Giant Squig, and the Squig Herd are all Moonclan units that have grots in them but do not have the grot keyword. Most buff abilities target "moonclan Grot" units rather than simply "moonclan" and so it means that buff interactions are highly restricted in this army. For the most part I think they managed the interactions pretty well by restricting them, but I do think that they went a bit too far and it would have been better to have more that were just restricted to "moonclan" rather than "moonclan grot". For example, I don't really understand why the Brewgit is Moonclan Grot Hero rather than either "Grot Hero", "Moonclan Hero", or even just "Gloomspite Hero". The Spiker is another case where I feel that the buff should apply to a wider group of targets.

It is a bit sad that with the Gloomspite book they did not really tweak the warscroll. I don't think the issue that most people have with the giant can be solved with cost. I'm not going to spend a while about the falling down rule. Yeah, it sucks when it happens, but it is not the worst thing ever and it prevents less than 10% of actual successful charges. I think they probably should have changed the Giant's warscroll in the same way that they changed the Colossal Squig and put a flat value onto the number of club attacks rather than a dice roll value. If the club started at say 10-14 attacks and then had a decent wound-decay pattern I think people would be a lot more positive on the giant even with the chance to fall over on the charge. I don't think the Giant is bad, he is simply very unpredictable. His on-paper average performance is not bad for his cost. The issue is that during any single game what you experience is not generally a statistically average thing. He is very prone to large swings in performance. At full health he can make either 3 club attacks or 18 - or anywhere in between. It sucks to get into combat and then only make 3-5 club attacks. That is quite a feel-bad moment. On the flip side, he can go nuts and drop 14-18 attacks and flatten something. You just don't know what you are going to get. For obvious reasons that bothers people looking for competitive options, and many other people will judge him by what happens the first or second time he hits the table. If you get amazing murder machine giant then they might love him. If they get bad hang-over day giant then they will probably be immediately turned off. The Colossal Squig had his random attack values converted into flat values (among a few other changes) and people immediately began to like him more. I think that would be the best way to tweak the giant.

I'll be exploring more with using Giants, but I think their base size is one of their advantages. For 160 points they manage to consolidate a fair amount of offensive potential into a small footprint. I think there are some shenanigans to be had by using Giants as a sort of reactionary tool that is mixed into your force in-between or even within other units. I am glad to see other people looking into the Squig Herd in this new book as well. Most people seem to be quite taken with the Boingrot Bounders (understandable) and not giving much of a look to the Squig Herd. The squig itself now has the same attack profile across the Squig Herd, Boingrots, and Hoppers and to me that makes the Squig Herd a very interesting unit given it's low cost. They also simply built the Herder buffs into the core unit and so they now just inherently can reroll run & charges and so they can be a bit self-sufficient. I think in most armies if you are using a big unit or two you will want the Boss on Giant Squig so that you can get his movement bonus, but aside from that they work pretty well on their own. They also work quite well with Snufflers since they move at the same speed and won't out-distance the snufflers - which is the main problem with Bounders and Hoppers.

Please no... As a game Fantasy has generally been in a better state than 40k for most editions due to having a more elegant and robust set of army creation restrictions. The current mess that 40k is in can be traced almost completely to the army construction system (yet again). I think the army composition guidelines in AoS are quite good and I don't see any issue with certain select armies bending those rules in certain ways. It is ok, and even advantageous, to have specific exceptions. The problems happen when exceptions become the norm.

Hmmmm, so my pipe-dream for an all-Giant army now has some precedent! I know that GW just gave me my all-Troll army, but I am spoiled and really want my all Giant army now please!

Well, they are doing digital sculpting so it is not really that surprising to me. It's not like the finished product for that from the design team is a physical model you can dump on someones desk. It's just a bunch of digital assets that should be able to be reused and reposed. I would not be surprised if they have a fair amount of stuff that has been worked on to some degree ahead of time for most armies. It would make sense to use small units like the Shadespire units as a test concept for how to enhance or rework some of the model lines. I'm not surprised to hear that the model team drives is the main driver for what is worked on also. I don't know what the financials at the company looks like, but they appear to have always relied extremely heavily on model sales. It is not hard to believe that it makes up the bulk of their revenue and if that is the case then it makes the model design teams one of the most important in the company in regards to revenue. GW is no longer a small private company. When they were their focus could be primarily on making fun games. Now they are a public company and so their main focus is now on increasing revenue and driving profit for shareholders. You can accomplish that by making fun games and great miniatures - but there is a subtle difference in focus that can effect how a company works depending upon who is in the leadership. If your main goal is profit and most of your profit comes from the sale of models - then the rules can become secondary to the models. We saw GW try to emphasize this quite a bit over the last decade or so when they claimed they were a model company and not a game company. There is a subtle difference between having your end product be a game and the models are there to support it and the end product being models and the game existing primarily to enhance the sale of those models. Thankfully they seem to have found a happy medium in regards to Age of Sigmar (jury is still out on 40k 8th as it is a bit of a mess).

True, but that sounds like what is going on if there is a one-size-fits-all formula that is used. Even if they tweak the values after getting them from the formula it sounds like the formula is agnostic of the intangible uniquenesses of an army. I'm not saying that a general formula for baseline points based on things such as warscroll unit & weapon stats is a bad idea. But if they do indeed use such a thing then it makes the concept of cross army comparisons more useful than our general wisdom says - and bear in mind that I am generally in the camp that says cross-army comparisons of individual units is not very useful.

Yeah, there is some serious keyword-bingo going on in the Gloomspite book and they very deliberately segregated ability interactions using very specific keywords. There are some keyword interactions that are easy to overlook but the main one is the "grot" keyword. A whole lot of Grot models do not actually have the grot keyword. And there is a distinct difference between "moonclan" and "moonclan grot" in this book. Basic rule of thumb is all Behemoth and Squig units do not have the grot keyword. In addition, the biggest issue that I have with the Gobbapalooza is that their buffs are absurdly restricted in terms of what they can be used on. The Gobbapalooza really is only worthwhile if you are going heavy on Stabbas/Shootas since that is really the only unit that can effectively take advantage of most of the buffs. The Brewgit is a bit maddening because his buff is probably the most restricted buff in the army. It only really works for the normal Loonboss, Loonboss with Great Cave Squig (the old Skarsnik model), and Skragrott. The Brewgit is probably my favorite sculpt in the Gobbapalooza but he is of questionable worth most of the time sadly. I hope that someone unlocks the Gobbapalooza as being something more than some really fun models, but to me they feel like the biggest miss in the book. The models are just so much fun that I really wish they had designed them with broader utility.

Nope, the Loonboss on Mangler does not have the Grot keyword. This means he cannot be a target for the buffs from the Brewgit, Spiker, Scaremonger, or Sporesplatta Fanatics. You can target him with the Snufflers - but that is about it.

Very nice. I especially like the grey Gore Gruntas.

This is operating under the assumption that he is actually using math, and good at it, rather than immediately plucking numbers out of thin air.

They are not all in the books. The various faction killTeam boxes all come with an extra 6 strategies that are in that set that do not appear in the core book. They also include 2 missions in each of the KillTeam sets that is designed for that faction. So they add a bit of incentive to buy the set than just to get the models.

No, the main buff spells available to either Moonclan or Spiderfang are the ones directly on the wizard warscrolls. Both spell lores are concentrated around utility, enemy debuffs, and direct damage. The Moonclan lore has only 1 direct unit buff spell and it is the Squig Lure spell that lets d3 squig units run & charge. That said, both spell lores are good and you will certainly want a couple of the available spells depending on how you build your army.

Sporesplatta Fanatics also have an aura that automatically pulses in your hero phase and grants +1 attack to all moonclan grot units within 12". This stacks with the Snufflers ability. The key differences here is that the Snufflers have a targeted buff ability that works on a single moonclan unit and the Sporesplatta Fanatics have an ability that will effect every grot unit that is fully within 12". Snufflers are cheaper and you can stack their ability multiple times on a single unit if you want - but for every use after the first you will kill a chunk of models in the target unit. Snufflers also can buff all moonclan and Sporesplatta are restricted only to Grots (but their aura would effect the Loonboss). Sporesplatta fanatics also block line-of-sight across the unit (except to/from flyers) and they strike first in combat before any other unit in the same way as the traditional Loonsmasha Fanatics unit does. If you are going to be using a core of Stabbas and buffing for mortal wounds with "I'm da Boss now stab em good" then it is worth considering both +1 attack buffs.

Thats because most of us were hiding away in our caves until the Bad Moon rose and brought us out to the surface. We shall now usher in the era of the Everdank!

The points for this are going to be about 790 without including the caster. I think this is a perfectly fine base for a list. This starts you in the direction of a Skulkmob Horde battalion if you want to go that direction. In my opinion it is certainly worth considering if you choose to continue building the list in order to put combat buffs onto the Stabba units - such as with Snufflers & Sporesplatta Fanatics. Grots are not a bad unit to build around in the Gloomspite army and the army really seems designed with grots as the focal unit since they can be chosen for the majority of buffs.

I had not looked at the errata that made this once per game. That is quite a change. But even at once per game it feels like it would still be worthwhile in combination with Fight Another Day.

You could also be attacked if you had already made your Fight Another Day move and you were still in pile-in range for another enemy unit that had not activated yet (beware 6" pile-in abilities). One thing that I have not looked into is how this artifact works when the only unit an opponent can activate to attack with is the one engaged with the bearer of the artifact. If they bearer had not made his attacks yet does the enemy in that case get to make attacks or do they have to activate and simply lose attacks since they cannot target the bearer. Just reading the rules for the artifact it seems like the answer would be that they just lose the attacks since the artifact does not prevent the unit from activating but simply from making any attacks against the bearer. But I have not looked for any clarifications around this and so that could be incorrect. But yes, it is altogether a pretty mean and annoying combo. It would certainly be somewhat annoying to play against, but I don't think it is so completely terrible that it would make for an extremely negative experience. There are still much worse things to face in the game. To me it also just really fits the sneaky underhanded cowardly tactics of Moonclan Grots very well. This guy is simply going to repeatedly surprise attack units by crashing into them and bouncing off to safety and then repeating the trick.

I would be wary about going very heavy into Bounders unless you are planning to collect a fair sized Gloomspite force. The Bounders are quite an amazing unit, but they also feel like the main unit that is potentially undercosted within the army (ignore external comparisons). If there was a single unit in the army that I would not be surprised to see get bumped upwards in cost in the next GHB it is the Bounders. I would simply be aware of that going in.

My current personal favorite for a Loonboss on Mangler with the Fight Another Day ability is the Doppelganger Cloak from the Realm of Ulgu. It synergizes with the command trait extremely well since it does not allow the opponent to target the bearer in melee until after he has made his attacks. This means you don't have to activate the Loonboss as your first unit when he is in combat and he will generally be safe from attacks until he has attacked the enemy and then ran away. It makes him a very annoying unit for your opponent to pin down and just feels like the sneaky sort of thing a boss grot would do.