So yeah, following the rather successful 550point outing of my Winter Troll on Monday night, I have been thinking about trying to include more spray templates in my army, so barring the inclusion of an army of Winter Trolls the only other option for me to look at is the oft maligned scattergunners. But how terrible are they really? Lets take a look...
SPD6 is great for Trollbloods, its on the upper end of the scale in an army where the most effective units are predominantly SPD5. They have average MAT and RAT, values that are easily boosted by our fell callers and by certain debuffs thrown onto an enemy (Grissel and Grim). DEF and ARM wise they suffer a little but in reality they should never end up on the front lines until you are ready for them to go out and do their thing.
So now we come down to their weapons, spray templates have a fixed range of 8 inches, but get to ignore cover, concealment and screening. With good positioning you could spray your own models to attack invisible units (though you would need to roll high to score a successful hit on most such units), but the obvious tactic is to hit big units at an angle, scoring multiple potential hits over and over again. POW12 will kill most single wound infantry on averages, even most shield walled units only reach ARM18, with Grissel (my current lock of choice) you can be hitting POW14 against a unit with calamity, even warbeasts and warjacks will start feeling the hurt.
The true flaws of these guys? Sadly there are two, as well as suffering the eternal curse of being medium based models and thus getting in each other's way when it comes to lining up your attacks, they also suffer from being hideously expensive, 10 points less than Long Riders for a unit which can only hack it in melee if they charge and is as fragile as Pyg Bushwhackers.
Is it possible to make them work? Perhaps at 950 but currently at 750 I just cannot see what I would drop besides the Long Riders, who were just as integral to my victory at 550 on Monday night. Without my Kriel Warriors to provide them with cover (and being cheap enough that I wouldnt mind sacrificing by shooting through them if needed) I start swiftly running out of options regarding what to drop.
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I use a min unit of them to great effect with one of my Madrak tourney lists.
ReplyDeletetrollbloodscrum.blogspot.com/2009/04/all-medium-based-brick-except-for.html
I agree and have only played them 3-4 times at 750 pts and below, usually with mild regret. Have yet to try Calandra's feat allowing them to survive their advanced positioning for the next turn's 8" spray.
ReplyDeleteI believe the MK 2 rules set and the possibility for much larger spread of their formations will make them less apt to be decimated in one opposing turn. I've seen a significant increase in the survivability of Bile Thralls when I've spread them thin on approach to the enemy.