NauticalSoup

-2 rend and probably a warscroll ability that synergizes with attacking those high armour targets. Also they should be bravery 7. And with all that they probably still need a discount because they're still too slow and squishy. Anti-armour would at least give them a niche though. Don't agree about Ardboys tho, Ironjawz have too few models as it is and I love black orks. Either you introduce a new cheap unit to fill their exact same roll or just keep a unit lots of people have been attached to since the earliest days of WHFB.

I dunno, are Judicators worth it at 140? Still p expensive if you ask me for a Liberator with a bow. I'd rather they be good shooters than cheap shooters. Liberators are in a bad spot due to being the baseline unit for much of AoS. Compare to stuff like Chaos Warriors who are strictly superior in virtually every dimension and are still one of the crappier units in their own book. I honestly doubt GW is up to fixing them since it would require a deep dive overhaul of probably both SCE in totality, and the Liberator warscroll individually. Especially since new rules probably means SCE battleline opens up like everyone else's has and there are good odds that leaves Liberators in the dust if anything else becomes remotely take-able.

Indeed, I literally note this in my post. It's their one and only advantage over Ardboys. I'd consider it more of one if a good chunk of that advantage weren't blown by the 40mm base, which is more than a third larger by volume and will mean in some situations they'll actually have a harder time getting in position to fight. I agree with the second point but in the opposite direction. I'm being generous to the brutes by letting them arrive unmolested and be able to fight neck and neck with Ardboys by computing only raw damage, the single dimension where Brutes can squeak out a marginal advantage... maybe. Sometimes. If you get lucky. Even if we ignore the durability/bravery issues that make it challenging to have an intact group of 10 land a charge, Ardboys have a substantial 2" charge range advantage so there will be situations where you will do zero damage with Brutes but you would have been fine with Ardboys. Whiffing a charge with a hammer unit will easily cost you a game, doing one or two points of extra damage occasionally probably won't win you many. But you know what I didn't even mention in my rant is - you could just take Gore-gruntas if you want damage! They're just flat out better than brutes as damage dealers and are also much faster, which is why they're almost totally ubiquitous in both BW and Ironjawz but Brutes rarely hit the table. A few months back I was defending brutes too, I got into a debate about them @Malakree and he made a very compelling case as to why they're a bad unit. I played quite a few games with them since then and now I hate the things more than pretty much any other unit in the book. Except maybe the Weirdnob. Jury's out as to which is less pleasant to use.

This really aren't though. Better at dealing damage, that is. You can concoct select scenarios where it's possible for them to deal more, but you can do the same for Ardboys thanks to their 32s, and even being generous to the brutes the difference is pretty negligible and certainly doesn't make up for the mountain of disadvantages. 15 Ardboys (270 pts) with all buffs do 44.44 damage before saves. 10 Brutes with hackas (280 pts) with all buffs do 44.17 damage before saves. In theory the hacka Brutes can concentrate more damage thanks to their 2" weapons, but this advantage is heavily mitigated by their huge bases and poor maneuverability. It's an advantage but it's an oh-so-very marginal one. The only way you can get the Brutes doing tangibly more damage (and not by much) is to take five man squads with choppas, which ends up being a lot more expensive for your investment because you are wasting an entire Warchanter on a single 130 point unit when you could be buffing a unit double that size and doing a ton more damage in totality. There's no point in discussing ten man squads with choppas, cuz I've played enough SCE to know that ain't happening with 40mm bases. For the sake of completeness, unbuffed 5 choppa guys and 7 Ardboys: Ardboys: 7.11 Brutes: 10.22 There's your nominal damage boost on brutes, in their incredibly inefficient 5-man choppa configuration, fighting without buffs, assuming you can squeeze their huge bases in so they all get a piece. That's about as good as it gets for Brutes. Sorry for the rant, there's just been so much discussion about the viability of Brutes in this thread and yet we have to keep retreading this discussion without learning anything.

Interesting. In my experience small points games are pretty unpopular in Sigmar thanks to the way close combat is structured. At 1k you can't bake in sufficient screening so the guy who gets off the first good charge will probably just win.

@PlasticCraic It's a great article! Your review is what compelled me to expand into Big Waaagh! in the first place. I now have the minis to play Bonesplitterz but I haven't actually done so yet, more out of laziness than anything.

@PlasticCraic This all tracks. I suppose then it would stand to reason you'd get more mileage out of them in a Bonesplittaz list especially with the relevant allegiance, when you can't just slot in Gore-gruntas.

@Vasshpit I doubt it would change much. They'd be slightly more efficient in their 10-man configuration. They'd still have garbage bravery, be super fragile, annoying slow and have no warscroll abilities of note. It's also worth noting that Evocators should always be built with exclusively grandstaffs and zero of the other weapon. They're better against virtually everything, even stuff with good saves.

@Televiper11 I would search for the 'bossfist' in this thread, I recall the two new battalions were discussed at some length. In short they're both pretty gimmicky and require you buy into a lot of minis that most people will otherwise probably not recommend. Multiple Megabosses and lots of Brutes.

@NikitaCrab132 @PlasticCraic @Bululu I've seen a fair number of lists that have a single minimum size squad of boar boys to satisfy battle-line requirements after they've got their big blobs sorted. I haven't really tested it because my boar boys are as-yet unbuilt, but I would think that with a difference of only 10 points at minimum size boar boys can do a lot more work for you than a too-small chaff squad of savage orruks. Maybe I'm wrong though. They do look nice, however.

@Televiper11 February 2020, I think? Honestly not sure it's worth it for those alone though.

Consideration: it looks like you're using one of the 32mm bases the fyreslayer came with. Ironbreakers are just 1W models and are on 25s. Not sure what you're planning to use them army for, but that's a pretty big base size difference. Big enough to be... concerning.

While I fundamentally agree with the notion, It'll never happen because they don't want to rebox stuff and current GW seems to care about having discrete unit names from a marketing perspective. They don't even clearly list dual-kits on their website, you basically have to already understand this practice to figure it out. Seems like they're going down the road of SKU hell like they did with fantasy before, though. Stormcast is already bloated with a ton of redundant unit choices and kits. Can't be good for sales.

Now that we've seen the new figures I'm hyped. I know a lot of people are probably disappointed by the fact that it's a single kit, or the adherence to the visual design cues of the old WHFB giant/aleguzzler, but what we've got is exactly to my taste. Gargants being allies in all GAs is just icing. Me and my best bud have destruction armies and we're planning to collaborate on a shared Gargants army either to augment what we already have or to play solo. All that's left is to see how the rules fall!

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.

Love your articles! Looking forward to more Gargant related content in the future, your coverage of the Orruk Warclans book is what really got me into AoS.

Most people seem to take the gore-choppa. It's more efficient before you get the warchanter buff, but then you won't always have the buff. Might as well take it. Also it has 2" range. I'd take the gore-choppa. Give the boss the claw. The optimal weapon for brutes is actually the hacka when you take more than 5 of them and most of the lists for those few people who have attempted to use brutes at the comp level seem to emphasize the unit of 10, which would play to its only strength over the Ardboy, the ability to concentrate attacks on a small patch of real estate. As an SCE player, I can tell you that 40mm bases are a ****** without 2" weapons.

Usually it's a block of 9-ish Vanguard-Raptors with Longstrikes and a couple squads of Aetherwings. Liberators as battleline because everything else is too expensive. Sometimes Evokitties to smash things. Not a heck of a lot of variety. Mostly it's just build around the Vanguard-Raptors and shoot them twice a turn while avoiding letting them get charged.

@ccconner777 Is 2" of move on a fast flying unit REALLY worth giving up a sizable chunk of extra damage? If you're planning to MD move it up first turn anyway I dunno if you'll find the extra bit of range all that necessary. Also I'll say it because someone's going to - 6 gore-gruntas is the magic number coupled with a warchanter buff. And even with hackas 15 brutes will struggle to pile in and fight if they don't take any casualties. Conveniently, an(other) Ironjawz SC box consists exclusively of models that would be good additions to that army. And it's worth keeping in mind you can't call an Ironjawz Waaagh! if a Megaboss isn't your general. This may not matter if you're suiciding it up the board turn one just worth remembering. Personally I'll always prefer the double big guy combo in Big Waaagh! cuz Bonezplitterz just have so many ways to buff the idol. Giving it speed and flight buff feels almost necessary to make the two of them work in tandem. One last thought - the teleport is probably more useful for its threat than anything because it'll fail too often to plan around. +2 to cast isn't bad but we're not approaching Big Waaagh! and Bonesplitterz levels of cast bonuses. It'll suck if you whiff it and your opponent snipes the Weirdnob leaving your huge block of Brutes to wander up the field on foot, which even with a free MD every turn will take... a while.

@Marcoangelo33 Fully built. First because it meant I could start using them in games immediately, but also because there's a bit of work in getting them to stand properly with the very loose 'contact' fits of the hands on the stabba. I usually only bother with subassemblies where the fully constructed model will make it difficult/impossible to reach spaces, especially with an airbrush, I didn't find it necessary with big stabbas with the spear stuck pretty far out and the orcs not packed closely together. Actually I don't think I sub-assembled a single Savage Orruk unit, come to think of it... the way they all have their arms held up makes them pretty convenient to paint as one big chunk.

That's the idea - problem is it's wrong. SCE units aren't actually elite and are almost universally understatted for their price and base size. There's a reason that nearly every tournament SCE list is a carbon copy! Just peek into the SCE discussion for a couple hundred pages of forlorn sighs and angry rants if you don't take my word for it. The Liberator would probably be in the running for the only viable troops choice even if you took away it's weapons and armour save - it can be the shittiest unit in the book and still be the only viable option purely on points. Which definitely qualifies it for a discussion as one of the worst warscrolls around.

They're used because they're the cheapest way to meet your battleline requirements - your average SCE player will assume it's just a mandatory 300 point tax for playing SCE, and that the only thing they'll accomplish if you're lucky is to eat a charge and die. They serve no other purpose except being an overpriced speed bump. Sure, the other options will do more work, but they all require more investment which instantly writes them off. I've seen the case made that if Sequitors were 110 points and default battleline you would still take the Liberators because every point spent on a unit that isn't Raptors or Evokitties is a point wasted. That's the absolute state of SCE right now.

Looks like I was correct - the preview suggests gargants will closely follow the thematic and visual cues of the existing giant model. Makes perfect sense for making the faction feel cohesive and honestly I'm VERY glad. I like WHFB giants, if they were super 'sigmary' or had a totally distinct design I'd be a lot less enthusiastic than I am!

There's no requirement to use either Arrowboys or Stikkas, one of the strongest Big Waaagh! lists floating around atm, Dalton Copeland's, uses a full block of 30 each.

But they aren't really a 'new' army, are they? They'll almost certainly be intended to mesh with the visual style of the extant giant model. AoS armies are considerably more homogeneous in their design flavour than Warhammer Fantasy armies.