Gargantuans: Minions Breakdown
Time for the last of the Gargantuans faction breakdowns – Minions.
Minions took home some great new models in Gargantuans. I just wish the quantity matched the quality. Yep, I’m another inconsolable Minions player boo-hoo-hooing the sparse five entries my favorite underdog faction brought home in this latest book. And the worst part is that one of the five won’t even work for my gators or my pigs. Whatever shall I do? I guess I’ll have to look on the bright side. After all, what we did get is pretty amazing.
Midas might be the new best Thornfall Warlock. Why just “might be?” First, he lacks the survivability of Lord Carver (the only other real contender imo) with a point less in DEF and ARM and no Tough. Carver is the only caster for whom Tough has prevented me from losing a game, so I’m keenly aware of it. Second, Midas is more “expensive” with one fewer Warbeast Point. Finally, I haven’t actually played with Midas yet so I don’t want to go making any claims I can’t really back up.
For this Warlock, the awesome begins with a list of cool special abilities. First among them is Butchery. Every time a warbeast dies this ability will give Midas a bone token that can be converted to Fury during his activation. He can have three of them, which means he can access up to nine Fury a turn. This single Fury would be a small consolation for the loss of a warbeast but for the new two point Razor Boar lessers that Thornfall got along with Gargantuans. Next up is Curse [Bone Grinders]. Without having to roll to hit Midas can target an enemy unit in his command with this ability thereby granting Bone Grinders an extra 2″ of movement when charging them and +2 to hit them. Suddenly those dirt cheap Bone Grinders can really pull their weight in combat. And if you didn’t notice in that picture up there, Midas is a bone Grinder himself, making him the equivalent of MAT and Fury 8 when attacking anything he curses. Unfortunately since the range on this curse is Midas’ mediocre CMD (8) you’ll have to put him in some danger to make it work. Midas also packs Dismember – essentially Weapon Master vs. warbeasts. Situational but potentially quite dangerous. The last ability I’m going to go into isn’t actually on Midas himself, but on his Bonesaw. Soul Food allows Midas to cast a spell with a cost of 3 Fury or less when he eliminates an enemy warbeast. Emphasis on enemy since if you’re anything like me you were already planning on hacking up some Razor Boars to get the free cast. And if a three Fury spell isn’t good enough for you you can also choose to cast the destroyed beast’s animus.
Midas’ spell list starts off with the rather awesome Bad Blood. This spell prevents healing or damage transference to a target enemy warbeast, and causes any warlock leaching from it to suffer a point of damage per Fury leached. If anything this spell has gotten more powerful with all those enemy Gargantuans running around. If you can cast it on one of those big guys and take out its Spirit that’s 20 points of your enemy’s army reduced to about half of it’s potential effectiveness. Up next is Battle Lust. You might remember Kommandant Irusk using this spell to beat your ass. It gives a friendly Faction Warrior Model or unit an extra damage die in melee. This takes those Slaughterhousers up to 11 as they will roll five dice on the charge against a damaged model. Or use it to turn a unit of Brigands into something to be truly feared. But don’t get too excited yet, Midas has some more pain to sprinkle on with Calamity. A poor man’s Crippling Grasp, this spell grants friendly models +2 to attack and Damage rolls against whatever’s been targeted by it. Finally those Brigands have a way to boost their RAT. Last but not least is the awe inspiring Hex Blast. This offensive spell might seem unimpressive with it’s hefty cost of 3, and mediocre stats of RNG 10 POW 13 AOE 3. But with Hex Blast Midas can do something no other Farrow model can: strip upkeeps. Yes any enemy upkeep spell on a model directly hit by Hex Blast expires immediately.
I’ve been saving the Feat for last since it’s a really sweet one. With Pet Cemetery, Midas can return all his destroyed warbeasts to play within 3″ of him as undead models. No, I’m not joking, but they do come back with just one unmarked damage box per spiral. When you use this feat you can also spend any number of Fury to heal each beast one point per Fury spent. This might be a good time to cash in those bone tokens if you’ve been saving them. As you might expect returned beasts can’t be forced the turn they come in, and if they were destroyed on that turn, they can’t be activated. That means you can’t pull off any really dirty tricks here. Y’know, like killing your own beasts so you can use the feat as a long range War Hog delivery system. But hey – ranged beasts can still get an aiming bonus… and couple that with the bonus from Calamity and they almost don’t need to boost. So not only is this a spectacular attrition feat, but there’s still a little room for some assassinate-y shenanigans there if you play your cards right.
If you’re going to play Midas, I strongly recommend going all Tier. As long as you’re willing to restrict Midas Battlegroup to non-character beasts (none of those even exist yet so… not hard) and only Farrow models, you’ll get some really cool abilities to work with. First up Bone Grinders become FA U. I already liked taking an extra min unit of these guys from time to time since Arcane Bolt and Confluence means they can be relied upon to hunt Incorporeal solos, or solos with high DEF and low ARM. But Midas can turn these cheap little pigs into a unit that can actually fight in melee as well. Sounds good to me. At Tier 1 you can also add BoneSwarms to Midas’ Battlegroup. With their Swarm Animus these guys offer Midas some added survivability he can get no other way. I’ll take it. Up next, each Bone Grinder unit you include allows a Warbeast in your battlegroup to gain Advance Move. Can you believe we’re only at Tier 2? At Tier 3, each Slaughterhouser unit you include will give a Boneswarm 3 corpse counters. And finally, at Tier 4, Midas gets to add a free warbeast to his Battlegroup. Not a warbeast at -1 point, not a warbeast at half price, just a free warbeast. Although… it does begin the game destroyed. Nonetheless, as far as I’m concerned there aren’t many Tier lists that are more of a no-brainer than this one. The loss of AD on Farrow units is easily made up for by the Advance Move on warbeasts. Especially when you consider the fact that its the warbeasts that are the disposable pieces in a Midas army. You want them up front since you can bring them back. Warrior models that die are gone for good.
I really like this guy’s aggressive attrition style. A Midas army can hit like a ton of bricks with Calamity and Battle Lust, and still win the attrition game with Pet Cemetary. He lets you get a bit reckless with your beasts since their death will give you a Fury, and you can always bring them back later. And it’s that ability to bring them back that makes up for his complete lack of defensive skills and spells. And while we’re on the subject of survivability I might as well bring up the fact that it’s Midas’ biggest weakness. This guy is going to want to be up front a lot meaning his somewhat mediocre defensive stats of 14 DEF, 16 ARM and 16 health leave a bit to be desired. Lightning Strike from the Road Hog can help him out if he can charge in and stab something as a prelude to cursing and spell slinging. And he does have access to swarm but that will only go so far. You’ll probably want to do some good old fashioned Fury camping a lot of the time as well. Lucky for you Midas has a way to make a little extra. The fun really starts when you find yourself up against another Hordes player and actually get to use Dismember and Soul Food. Send a Dire Troll my way so I can put Rage up on my War Hog. And did I mention there’s no limit on the number of casts you can get from Soul Food in a turn? Please Legion players send some Shredders over here. I want to cast Calamity and Battle Lust and still have a ton of Fury left over. Oh man I need to get this guy painted. He’s gonna be so much fun.
Rask is our other new Minion Warlock. Spiderbite has already done a write up on this guy here. I’ll just leave you with that so you can check it out for yourself. Here’s a quick summary of it: this guy is great and will win you games.
Razor Boars are another great new piece for Thornfall. They didn’t seem to get quite the warm reception I think they deserve. I think the problem is that that other faction (you know, the one that used to be known for being the only faction with lessers) set the bar pretty high with small based beasts. Yeah, I’m afraid we can’t all get Rabid, Tenacity, Blood Creation, and Snacking on a two point model. But the Razor Boar is almost that good. First up, he’s the sturdiest lesser out there with more Arm and Health than the rest of the contenders. A 2 point model with ARM 14 and 14 hit boxes is pretty special in a game where holding an contesting objectives is such a big deal. While the Brutal Charge ability the Razor Boar comes with is no Rabid, it does help give these little guys a bit more hitting power. The least exciting ability on this lesser is Bacon. Honestly this one is more of a penalty than a bonus. I’d love to go on telling you about how a skilled player can use Bacon to their advantage, strategically placing their beasts in such a way as to ensure that they get healed as the Razor Boars die. Well, I guess that’s always possible, but if you’re fighting against another Hordes player there’s a good chance they’ll be the one reaping the most benefit from it. I’ve seen my poor Brine get killed by a Feral Warpwolf only to heal its Spirit and open it up to buy four attacks against some other models in Reach range. It sucks.
Fortunately the Vicious animus makes up for it. For 2 Fury the Razor Boar can give a friendly Faction Warbeast the Hyper Aggressive ability, allowing it to advance directly towards any enemy model that damages it with an attack. And there’s no limit to the moves you can make – as long as your opponent keeps shooting your warbeasts, you can keep advancing them. War Hogs are painfully slow creatures, and an extra move or two can really help them in dealing with armies heavy on ranged attacks. The only weird thing is that Dr. Arkadius already had a spell that gave Hyper Aggressive to every model in his battlegroup. So while that means these guys aren’t quite as useful with the good doctor, that animus is still good enough that I think its worth trying squeeze at least one Razor Boar into almost every list. If you want to run packs of the little guys, Midas is your best bet. And since I’m planning on painting up a few of them to use with him, I’m also looking forward to seeing how well Lord Carver can do with a pack of his own. Mobility, Batten Down the Hatches, and Hog Heaven seem like they could work quite well with a swarm of lessers. Just make sure they kill any wabeasts they charge. If they don’t the beasts will just heal themselves right back up again with Bacon.
