Skabnoze

There is a relic that grants that same buff as the moon in a 12” area as well. So you can get a bubble of always-on moon power for Spiders as well. There is nothing that prevents using the relic in a mixed force.

Skragrott is useful in most lists he is added to and he does not need to be the general all of the time. You can make the argument for using him in a non-general role for a Troggoth army and I believe that @Malakree has made use of him that way. An all Spider list might be where he fits in the least and that is mainly because the rest of the army is fast and will leave him behind.

Good catch. I totally forgot that. The allegiance ability for the moon that gives mortal wounds on 5+ To-hit used to be the scuttleboss command ability. The Webspinner spell remained the same but I always got those 2 mixed up for some reason and it seems that I still do.

Well, if anyone has played Destruction long enough (and Goblins specifically) to suffer from this then it is probably me. That said, I would say I probably fall more into some version of masochism rather than being battered. Being battered implies that you are making excuses for someone beating up on you rather than enjoying getting punched in the face. Given that I play goblins & weird monsters primarily because I really like goblins & weird monsters and overall I am stupidly happy that we actually got a full army book I will freely admit to being a GW masochi.st at some levels. Despite the fact that I post complaints and criticisms about portions of this book do not get the impression that I don't love the book. Honestly, I think this is the greatest army book ever written by Games Workshop and the only possible way they could make a better battletome would be to rewrite this one. While I don't think you should evaluate any book in a vacuum and ignore cross-book comparisons, I also don't think direct point cost comparisons hold up well if they are absent a holistic view of the army. Some armies will pay more or less for something than another book will depending on a few factors. How prevalent is this thing in the army? The more of something an army has the less valuable it can become for that army and vice versa. What Skragrott does for Gloomspite is immense and that is even when he is not the general. He is absolutely unique and there is generally a cost of some form for that. Looking at that list I think Skragrott is much more unique to the force than a number of those characters. I would say the closest comparison is Lady Olynder and she is about the same price. I would not complain if GW reduced his cost, but it seems unnecessary to me. I still disagree with you about the Hoppers. As I said in my post, I would prefer 2 units of 10 to a max unit of 20 regardless of cost - and I mean current or discounted. The discount would have to be extremely steep (close to free) for a max unit to entice me. My issue is that the max unit adds nothing aside from some wound buffers. A very cheap max unit is basically a faster squig herd that fights worse and I am not certain there is a lot of value in that. For that role I think a unit of Squig Herd with a Hero on Squig to buff movement is a better plan as you can speed them up enough to get onto an objective and they can hold it better. A really big unit of Hoppers becomes harder to maneuver and harder to get bounce damage by hopping over enemy units. I really like Hoppers and I would love a reason to consider the max unit, but I just don't see one and for me it has little to do with cost. I am fully on board, and agree, with a cost reduction for the basic unit. But I see no gain at all from a Hopper horde discount because I don't see a compelling use for a max size unit. Now, I agree with you about a horde discount for Squig Herd. A max size squig herd is quite a compelling unit and the ability to fight in two ranks because of the smaller base size is one of the main reasons. Their slower speed means it is also easier to be able to position Snufflers near them for when you unleash them into combat than it is with hoppers or bounders. Giving a horde discount to Squig Herd I think makes them an interesting choice versus Stabbas. I already think squig herds are an interesting alternative to Stabbas, but a horde discount would make things even better and probably pull more people on board.

Your thoughts mostly mirror mine except for the above. I don't feel that Skragrott needs a tweak at all. He is such a bundle of unique abilities and generally listed as the closest thing to an auto-include for most people. To me the willingness of most people to reach for him before anything else says that there is nothing over priced about him. I think the Fungoid is right on target for cost. His personal spell is hardly ever going to get used and if it was removed most people would not notice. He is nice because he is durable, still cheap, and generates command points. The command point generation is immensely useful, but I don't feel that it is as amazing within Gloomspite as it would be in other armies. We are not an army that requires too many command abilities and we tend to have a decent amount of command points. We have a number of useful ones, but not a ton that I would say are lynchpin style abilities. Of the ones we have I would say the most important are the Loonboss on Squig speed boost and the spider shaman double venom damage. If you are running Squig or Spider lists then you will heavily use those abilities - but the rest are simply nice-to-have type of abilities. Honestly the most useful command ability we will use throughout most battles is Inspiring Presence. Maybe they deem the Fungoid to be too cheap - but I honestly don't see it. I could see a price increase if they allowed him to take a shaman relic - but currently the only real major reason to bring a Macap rather than a Fungoid would be the mommet relic in my opinion. Hoppers I don't disagree with your assessment, but I honestly see no value in a regiment discount. I like this unit and I think it is overcosted, but I also don't think there is much point in running them in units larger than 10 - regardless of what their cost is. Fielding this as a full-size of 20 really does not give you anything. Due to base size the unit cannot fight in multiple ranks (the big advantage of the Squig Herd) and a big unit is going to make it harder to pull off bouncing over enemy units to inflict damage. 10 seems like the sweet spot and so I hope that they reduce the cost of the unit itself rather than a horde bonus. I would rather run 2 units of 10 than a single unit of 20 in just about every case I can think of.

Sure, but do we honestly think that expanding either of those 2 buffs to Troggs or spiders would be over the top? Given other things in the wild I am not sure they would be. These are also 2 fragile units that have other things that restrict how they can be used (wholly within, cannot move, etc). I don't think every ability should be unleashed across all of Gloomspite, but there are a few that I do. For me, I would like the Gobbapalooza to lose the narrow buff focus and be able to operate as a faction-wide buff unit. If the Brewgit worked on all heroes I would love him. Right now his target selection is so narrow that the only compelling use is either for Skragrott or for the ranged prodder attacks from the Loonboss with Cave Squig. The other uses are just not worth having him. For the Scaremonger I find that his buff would be the most compelling for Trolls (which he cannot effect) and I have little desire to use him on Moonclan Grot units as opposed to a command point for a 6" run or a charge reroll. The Spiker would be useful for just about any unit that attacks either ranged or melee. Reroll 1s to wound is good but not the most amazing ability out there. It would be a big potential boon for Troggs, useful on Squigs although not overly necessary in lists with the Mangler Boss, and it could be pretty useful for Spiderfang units ranged attacks. The point is that they could do a whole lot for Gloomspite with tweaks to keywords for units or abilities.

I honestly don’t think it is - especially given the books that have released after Gloomspite. Honestly, I think a few of the Moonclan grot specific buffs would be better as simply Gloomspite buffs. I think some things should be confined to grots, and possibly just Moonclan grots, but I also think this book was too narrowly focused in how they developed synergy.

I don't expect warscroll changes. So far GW has seemed to take the position of only adjusting the Warscrolls in very extreme cases. You can do a whole lot with cost adjustments, but in my opinion some things just really need rules adjustments (ie: Aleguzzler Gargant). GW has become a lot better these last few years in regards to tweaking the state of the game in between editions. Their errata/clarifications system is pretty decent and the GHB is a decent way to take a shot at leveling the playing field periodically. The one area that I would like to see GW improve in is their timeframe for changing written rules when that is the best way forward for the improvement of the game. I am sure that they are erring on the side of avoiding that as much as possible due to the issue of logistics with how invested they still are with physical products for rules. They still sell expensive books and of course they want customers to feel that those books have long-term value so that people still keep purchasing them. I am almost certain the margins on their books are higher than most of the rest of the products they sell and that assumption helps explain why they have gone so book-heavy the last ~5 years across all their games in terms of the products they sell. But even so, there are cases where I think rule changes are a better route for improvement than simple points. Changing warscrolls, allegiance abilities, relics, general traits, spells, etc can have massive impact on how armies perform (and I assume how they sell). But to me this feels like an issue that has it's roots in logistics of how to roll out changes like that without negatively impacting book sales and I am not sure GW has figured that out. So I expect that we won't see more than cost updates. The biggest type of errata change I could see coming to warscrolls would potentially be adjustment of keywords. That seems like a low-impact change in regards to existing physical products but that could be a big change for army performance.

At this point I think Bounders and probably Fellwater Troggs are the only things I would consider potentially safe from cost adjustments. Everything else I think will depend on how aggressive they feel they should be for Gloomspite. I think you could potentially make the case for various cost tweaks (standard cost or horde discounts) for almost everything else in the book. How far they go will depend on how far off the mark they feel this book is. That said, they have historically erred on the side of careful updates so I would not expect adjustments for more than a few things. Of those the obvious ones I think are the Dankhold Troggoth, Troggboss, and the Gobbapalooza.

This is a bit odd because if you go back to the battle reports from the 90s they used this type of format. They showed where the models were positioned with icons. They showed how the units moved each turn using arrows. And they showed who died by dropping little red X markers over the individual model icons. They did less with pretty pictures of the table and more with stylized top-down diagrams that are at home in a historical battle account. It would be neat if people could make battle reports or tactics tutorials with that method. I would prefer to read that than watch most of the battle videos that I have seen on youtube.

For me it is a bit of both. You can fix most things with cost adjustments, and if they put a very hefty cost reduction on these guys then I would certainly be more inclined to use them. But, I really dislike how this unit is packaged and certain model rules in this unit are a big miss for me. I also just detest the battalion. So, I guess let me start with what I like about the unit. The models are amazing and I love the concept behind each of the different unit members. They are all cool conceptually. I also like that GW is using the prayer mechanism for different buff effects in armies. The non-wizard members of the Gobbapalooza are all functionally using prayers and that was a good idea in terms of rules mechanics. Now for what I don't like. First, I greatly dislike that the Gobbapalooza only supports one facet of the Gloomspite book - grots. In addition many of the "prayers" that some of these models have are just uninventive, not broadly useful, or just sort of poor. The Brewgit and the Scaremonger are the worst offenders in this regard. If we are going to drop more buff options, especially an expensive package, into the Grot section of the book then they should be very good. The Gobbapalooza spells are pretty nice, but not really anything you cannot live without given other available spells. The "prayers" are extremely niche even for Grots. You will rarely find that you need the run/charge rerolls from the Scaremonger. The Brewgit has a good hero buff, but an extremely limited selection of targets for it (wizards, loonbosses on foot, and Skragrott) and so he will often just function as a tax. The Spiker is good - but only if you are trying to build for a fighting grot build based on the Stab Em Good ability. This unit seems like it really has an extremely narrow army construction that it supports - otherwise you are effectively paying for overpriced mini-heroes that you don't need. I am honestly torn about this unit. They could do a lot of different things that would make me like them more. If the target restriction for most of the buffs was broadened then I would like them more. But most of the buffs I would be more interested to use on non-grot units. The Scaremonger would be more interesting for Squigs or Troggs in many cases I think. The Brewgit I would prefer to work for ALL Gloomspite. The guy is just handing out moonshine to heroes. His buff is simply to reroll misses and while this is a good buff it is not the most amazing or rare ability in the game. Plenty of armies that are arguably better in combat can hand that buff out like candy already. The spiker is simply giving out poison for weapons and that fits with just about everyone as well. So if they change the Gobbapalooza so that they worked more generically across Gloomspite, rather than purely within Moonclan Grots, then I would like them more as they currently function. That would also make a good unit that fits into the soup style builds - which this army honestly has issue supporting well. Or if they are meant to work purely within Moonclan Grots then I would like the abilities designed so that they are compelling and effective within that niche. This means the Scaremonger and the Brewgit should be tweaked in some way. For example, change the Brewgit so that it no longer has the hero restriction. I'm honesty not sure about what to do with the Scaremonger in this scenario. Or they could break the unit up and let people pay for individual members rather than the full group. That could work also. I greatly dislike the battalion for a few reaspons. First, I feel that it took up the spot that could have been used for another interesting Grot battalion. Except for the Mega battalion there are only 2 battalions for Moonclan Grots. There is the Gobbapalooza and the Skukmob Horde. The other battalion is the Squig Rider Stampede and that one is supporting Squig builds (although it is small enough that you can add to a different army). One of my disappointments with the Gloomspite books are the battalions in general. I like the concept of battalions, but I find a large amount of the ones in Gloomspite to not be very compelling either due to cost or simply what they do. Moonclan Grots really got hardly any battalions if you separate out squigs. The Gobbapalooza does not really do anything interesting or compelling. The only compelling thing I see is that it is possibly the cheapest battalion if you are just looking for another relic - and if that is the selling point for a battalion then I contend it is a very poorly designed battalion. So long story short, all I know is that the Gobbapalooza unit just really did not land for me. I love the models and I love the concept behind the various characters - but I just find them to be one of the least compelling parts of the book and that is a real shame. They could do a ton of different things to make me like the unit and I am not picky about what it is. But in their current state I just can't see using them very much at all.

Gobbapalooza was a massive miss for me with this book. It is a shame too because the models are amazing. It makes me very sad. But I have played this army for 25+ years now, so it is not like I am not used to waiting a bit for a unit to get better rules.

Sure. I think most of our disagreement was splitting hairs. But I did not mean all of that just in response to you and more as a general statement. I just feel that most discussions I see about Hoppers appear to be evaluating them as a front-line combat unit or as a “hammer” and they are something entirely different in my opinion. That said, I think they have a bit more use than just in the Squigalanche as you said in a subsequent post. They certainly do fit well into that battalion, but I think they have use outside of it. However, I do think they generally will want to be used in a Squig Rider Stampede - which I also feel is priced too high as a battalion and I really hope GW addresses that in the next GHB.

Note that none of my previous post really has anything to do with point costs. I don’t think that is terribly relevant to the points I was trying to make - although point costs are still important. I think the more recent books have really driven home the idea that GW was very overly conservative with the point costs in some of the early AoS 2.0 books like NightHaunt and Gloomspite. Let’s hope they remedy that with the GHB as it is a pretty simple fix.

There is a lot to unpack here. I'll do my best. First let me say that I don't disagree with your number assessment. I don't think Hoppers are naturally an extremely fast unit. I think that they are naturally the fastest Squig unit and faster than Bounders. They have the potential to be one of the fastest units in the game (18" normal move is bonkers fast) but that is going to be a pretty rare occurrence without some sort of mechanic such as an individual dice reroll or roll an extra dice and drop one. But we don't have a rule like that and what we do have is a flat speed buff and a full movement reroll. That said, while they are still somewhat unreliable they are less prone to extreme dice swings than Bounders simply through having a larger dice pool. I honestly don't really like using the median or mean values for assessing probability curves because it is not an overly effective tool for situations where you have small sample pools. Those values are useful for a casino to figure out house odds because they are working over a colossal amount of events (say dice rolls for craps tables). For our purposes you will get at most 6 turns of movement from a unit in a game. My preference is to look at the probability ranges as they give you a better idea of what to plan for. For 2d6 the range of 6-8 is roughly 45% and if you expand that out to 5-9 it gets to roughly 68%. I generally plan around the 6-8 range because it is almost half of the results range and it is still a pretty tight range. For 3d6 10-11 makes up 25% of results, 9-12 makes up about 45% of results, and 8-13 hits around 68%. The probability distribution for dice starts to sort of flatten out the more dice you add to it and so Hoppers are going to be more reliable than Bounders. By the same logic the Colossal Squig is more reliable than Hoppers since his movement is 4d6. The rule of thumb most people utilize for taking relying upon mean values is not terrible - but bear in mind that I am an engineer by trade and so I prefer a more nuanced evaluation of probabilities. I bring this up not to try to invalidate anything you or others post, but more to give a view into the sort of thought behind some stuff that I post. Now that that is out of the way, I want to again state that I don't disagree with the numbers you posted. However, I personally don't think they are a very useful comparison for a few reasons. First, top speed with this many dice involved and no real dice manipulation abilities means the odds are so miniscule that they are not useful outside of non-practical thought experiments. Secondly, and I think more importantly, this comparison illustrates (at least to me) that we are potentially taking a flawed evaluation of these two units because we are comparing their movement with the assumption that it is for the same purpose. Most movement comparisons between these two units works off of the basic "threat range" assumption - which is generally the idea that Unit A is moving as fast as it can in a straight line to charge into unit B. This is a good thing to understand and exactly the sort of thing you want to understand for Bounders, but I don't think it is necessarily the best way to view Hoppers. You are absolutely correct here and I inaccurately made my point. My point was simply that Boingrots gain a significant enough boost from charging that they really need to do so. Hoppers gain nothing at all from charging aside from making it into combat. I think there is a subtle difference here to explore and I think it very much can make a difference for how you can evaluate these units. Here are couple simple cases to examine for Hoppers: The Hopper unit moves over the top of an enemy front-line unit, damaging them as it crosses, and then lands behind that unit to set up for a charge into backline units. The Hopper unit moves over the top of an enemy unit (maybe on an objective), damaging them as it crosses, and then charges back into the unit. The Hopper unit moves over an enemy unit on it's way to some other portion of the battlefield and damages them as it crosses - there is no resulting charge in this case. The Hopper unit disengages from a previous combat, crosses the unit and inflicts damage, and heads off to some other place on the board - there is no resulting charge in this case. Out of these cases only half of them require a charge, and none of them are necessarily straight-line movement simply trying to charge into a unit. The first case is closest to the example of full threat range. The reason I think this distinction is important is what it implies for how you approach movement buffs or rerolls for these 2 units. For Bounders you will want to plan for needing a 5-7" movement in most cases. More is better, but you can reliably expect to get those initial movement values. What you are planning for is to get into direct charge range. Hoppers are the least well suited of the Squig units to a direct charge into the enemy. They don't have the charge bonuses and rider attacks of the Bounders and they can't pack as many squig attacks into a combat as Squig Herd due to the 32mm base size preventing second rank attacks (people really ignore this advantage of Squig Herds I have noticed). Hoppers have the unique ability to inflict mortal wound as the move (they share this with Hexwraiths and Terradons - I posit that the Hoppers have the superior version) and so it is with this sort of use we should think about their movement. They don't just want to get TO the enemy - they want to get OVER the enemy. This means they need enough movement to clear the enemy unit and be placed 3" away. While the difference between an average 7" vs an average 10.5" may not seem that big - it is exactly the extra bit needed to land on the other side of a unit you have enough movement to cross. I think this use distinction also will change how people use buffs or the squig rider rerolls. With Bounders you are going to generally play it safe (unless you need a late-game hail mary) and use the reroll to keep the unit from rolling too badly so that you can get to charge. With Hoppers the distribution curve is more favorable and so you may be inclined to use the reroll to try to push for the higher end of speed in order to bounce over units. As I have said before, I view Hoppers very much as a janky harasser unit. They are very much light cavalry. They might not on average be the fastest light cavalry in the game, but their role is the same. They are going to use their combination of speed and flight to try to prey on weaker targets and mess with the opponents battle lines. They also have a very unique ability to be able to drop mortal wounds on targets as they cross and this should not be overlooked. They can soften up the front lines as they bounce over for another unit to charge (like Bounders). They can wound a big monster and push it down it's degradation chart without engaging the monster directly. They can potentially assassinate small support heroes through movement alone. And they fight well enough in combat to be a threat to other small or fragile units. I do not think this is the best unit in the book. I do not think this unit is better than Boingrots. What I think is that they are very different, but look extremely similar on the surface. I absolutely believe that Hoppers have really interesting and unique potential uses that very good players can take advantage of but that don't necessarily lend themselves to pure statistical discussions. Think of them sort of like the Knight piece in Chess - they are really weird and don't obey the basic rules that other units necessarily adhere to. They are something where I think the real potential is going to be unlocked by people earnestly exploring their use through play and less through a discussion of numbers. Those pieces exist in AoS and in my opinion the Hoppers are that unit for Gloomspite. Others may disagree and that is fine. Yes, but I will fully admit that due to a very heavy work-load and 4 kids (one with special needs) my game time has been somewhat rare. So I have not too many games. However, I have loved my Hopper models for a couple decades and they have honestly never been good in any version of the game until now. I mainly used them because I liked the unit and they were fun and I would include at least a small token unit that was cheap enough to not be a liability. Sometimes they did fun stuff, but most of the time they bounced around ineffectually. The Gloomspite book is the first time I have seen this unit actually have real potential use - and so I have been keen to explore it. I have not played a lot of games, but I have found the simple tactic of bouncing over the front lines, causing damage, and then hitting softer rear/mid line targets to be surprisingly effective. I have also found their ability to disengage from combat and still cause damage by bouncing over the enemy to be sneakily useful. Certainly don't take my word as proof. But I do recommend that people make real efforts to try to use this unit in weird ways and not simply as a straight-up combat unit. If you try to use them in the way that you would use Bounders then you are bound to be disappointed as Bounders are better at their role in every way. But on the flip side the Hoppers can do things that the Bounders cannot do or simply are not at all good at. Be open-minded and try new stuff. Group think can lead to stagnation.

I think they could use point discounts for the non-shaman arachnaroks, the foot shaman, and the battalions as well. In fact, I think the whole Gloomspite book needs the majority of battalions reduced in cost.

I agree, but at least Spiderfang is in a better place with this book than before. Simply rolling them into a real Battletome was a fantastic first step. My hope is that in the future when Gloomspite is rewritten (it will happen eventually) that they choose to concentrate on expanding Spiderfang.

A lot do, but not every player is like this. There is variance even within competitive players. There are people that will try to squeeze every drop of gas from the tank of something that they really like rather than going for another army. And all it will take is a couple of trail-blazers to put on a good showing and there will be other people who will take a look that otherwise might not have. This trend is easier to spot in games that play faster - like skirmish games. AoS games are long endeavors and doing a whole lot of trail-blazing practice games can take a lot of effort. But take a look at games such as Malifaux. When that game first came out players immediately jumped onto the Guild faction because their synergies are obvious, strong, and they have high combat stats. However, much like AoS, that game is purely objective based and so pure killing power does not necessarily win outright. It was also a common trend for newer players to cry foul for the Guild faction and demand nerfs - even though the faction was fine. It was simply easier to play with. Once people got used to the game and became more expert at it you saw a lot of the competitive crowd move into the really weird crews that have very high skill-ceilings such as many Neverborn crews. Those types of crews are very tough to use, hard to initially understand, but extremely potent once people unlocked how to use them and were experienced at the game. This same thing will happen over the course of AoS, but I expect at a bit of a slower pace simply because a standard 2000pt game takes a lot longer to play (and is more expensive to purchase) than a skirmish game that experienced players can play in less than an hour.

Has there really been a lot of people heavily putting the book through it's paces though? I'm not sure there is. I also feel that there is a huge amount of group-think going on and not a lot of people really pushing the envelope for what the various units can do. The build where you take lots of bodies, stack debuffs, and then just camp objectives is probably the most obvious build from the book so it was natural that it would probably be the first one to do well. I don't think the competitive pool of destruction players is that large and so it seems natural that it will take people a while to explore different facets of the book. Goblins have historically been an army for those people who love the theme. Lots of people had a small goblin army in the old WFB days (Battle for Skulls Pass box set helped out there), but not a lot of people played them primarily. Gloomspite still feels too new to me to really pull in a dedicated competitive following. We have a massive page count in this thread, but I chalk that up to our army being far cooler than anyone else's rather than necessarily being stronger competitively.

I honestly can't tell you that. In the end this is your decision to make based upon the type of army you want to play. I am not sure anyone has really unlocked Squig Hoppers on the table yet. Just looking at the warscrolls this is a unit whose primary phase of the game is the movement phase. For some units (like Boingrots) the movement phase is primarily there to get them into charge range. For other units the movement phase is there to get them onto an objective that they can hold. My reading of Hoppers is that they fall firmly into the fast cavalry harasser unit role - although they lean a bit more to being more offensive in combat than most cavalry. But they are a strange unit because they can inflict damage through movement - which is pretty rare in this game. The only other units that I can think of with this ability are Hexwraiths (exact same ability but less reliable) and Terradon Riders (once per game). This is potentially a very useful ability - but it is janky and is going to require people to really play with and unlock. I have not personally played enough games with them to really claim much more than theory-crafting the tactics. That said, my hunch is that over time I think people are going to come around to Hoppers more than you currently see (especially if there is a cost reduction for them). Boingrots are a fantastic unit - but they are heavy cavalry to the core and so their abilities and use are much more straight forward. I have noticed a tendency in competitive games for models or factions that have powerful but straight-forward stats or abilities to be the early stand-outs and favorites for most people, but over time many competitive players begin to gravitate towards the more esoteric units that are harder to use but have a higher skill-ceiling. I don't for a second think that Hoppers will ever replace Bounders but I think people will begin to lean towards using each for different roles depending upon how their list is constructed rather than the default position of "just take all Boingrots". I could be wrong, but that is my hunch. Anyways, I recommend that if you are on the fence about which to build that you proxy using both of them and then use that information to figure out what to build. The only real difference in the kit is the heads & weapon arm of the riders - so you should be able to assemble them and leave those parts off and then play some games to figure out how to finish building them.

Hoppers - sure. Yes, the Boingrots could potentially get a large movement in the case you described, but we need to reiterate just how much resources and luck that requires. And aside from the command ability for the Loonboss most of that is available to just about any unit in the game (charge + command reroll, command ability 6” run). I don’t think I would ever say that Boingrots have insane speed - they top out at the standard speed of fast cav (12”). Most of the time they are going to be moving 6”-8” (without the boss speed increase) and that is solidly slower than the average speed of heavy cavalry (10”). Boingrots are a great unit. There is no argument there. But we should be realistic about what they do well and what they don’t. They are above average speed for infantry and generally slow for cavalry although they can speed up to fast cavalry levels through a combination of buffs and some luck. Hoppers on the other hand are fairly fast. They will average out to somewhere between heavy cavalry and fast cavalry and when they roll high they can become absurdly fast. They have access to all the same buffs as Boingrots to make them even faster. Despite looking similar on the surface the two units are quite different and fill different roles. That was simply my point earlier. When evaluating these units I don’t think it is good to mix up the advantages of the units as it will lead to some disappointment. Hoppers are not a devastating charge unit and lack the armor for protracted combat. Boingrots lack the high speed of hoppers and the ability to inflict damage outside of the combat phase.

Bounders are many things - insane speed is not one of those things. Hoppers are the fast unit, and Bounders are the slow one. Bounders are knights - armored and highly damaging on the charge. Hoppers are fast and janky.

No, they are not bad. I am of the opinion that they are very overlooked. If we take the opinion that Boingrots are not overcosted (by merit of GW saying they feel the need to adjust the army in the next GHB) then Hoppers are probably a bit overpriced, but they are not a bad unit by any means. However, they serve a different role and I think they tend to suffer in most people’s opinions due to comparing them straight up to Boingrots. Basically the hoppers are a fast janky unit and Boingrots are a straight-forward combat unit. In effect, hoppers are light cavalry and Bounders are heavy cavalry. Which one works for you will depend on how you plan to use them within the broader context of your army. Both of these units do something that the other cannot do as well. With the GHB on the horizon soon and points cost potentially moving all over the place I would consider building 10 of each and then build the spare 5 into whichever one you prefer more.

I would say that the Scuttleboss is probably the best combat hero in the army in regards to cost/benefit ratio. I would also say that he has better options for magic items than the various Loonbosses do - since there are 2 Spiderfang relics that are quite compelling for him and really no standouts for the Loonbosses (In my opinion). If you are looking for an inexpensive combat hero and don’t need synergy then he is a good choice. If you have a spare relic you can give him then he gets even better.