First Look: Kruleboyz Warscrolls

  Written by Benjamin Lolmaugh

OVERVIEW:

I wanted to give my First Look thoughts on the newest greenskins  to enter the Mortal Realms, the Kruleboyz. I am a peon and did not get an advance copy so I had to wait until July 3rd just like the rest of you. Like last post, this will be off the top of my head, I have a 1 1/2 year old toddler wrecking havoc behind me while I type this and a 2 month old trying to take a nap in front of me, so I have very little time!

GOOD: The Kruleboyz Allegiance Ability

Venom Encusted Weapons: This makes hit rolls of a 6 from attacks from non-mounted KRULEBOYZ ORRUK model deal mortal wounds equal to the damage of the weapon used. AND the attack sequence ends. This is great. Frightful Touch basically on everything is pretty good. Sustainable and reliable mortal wound output is a great way to grind your way through heavy armor, which seems to be the new norm. With this effect you're going to want to get a +1 Attack buff from somewhere, the only way I can think of is Big Waaaagh Waaaagh ability. 

BAD: Gutrippaz Profile

This is pretty bad. This is basically worse Spider Riders for Orruks. Or worse Stikka Savage Orruks. Compared to Ardboyz, the Gutrippaz are straight worse in every single way. They aren't good anvils and they aren't good hammers. The in-built situational sometimes maybe dicey -1 to Hit is okay but not likely to be consistent. With the new off Gutrippaz getting regular hand weapons, I think I rather stick with a good ol' hacka, I'm hoping for a 3+ to wound or -1 Rend or a decent Bravery buff for the banner-bearer. Looks like a cash grab from GW yet again.

GOOD: Man-skewer Boltboyz

Orruk themed Jezzails. That's pretty cool. I think I'll be running at least 6 of these with a Swampcalla Shaman for a cool 5-8 damage from 24" away or 8-11 damage from 12" away.  Point for point the Boltboyz are more efficient and deadlier than the longer ranged Skaven Warplock Jezzails.

BAD: Lack of other Battleline Units

Being stuck with a sub-standard Battleline unit is not cool in my book. I love my large blobs of units fighting over objectives and if that unit is bad, I want to choose something else. That's just bad design. Hopefully in the new Orruk Warclans book, we will see some "Battleline Ifs". Part of me thinks that the Beast-Skewer is going to be a Leader that unlocks Boltboyz as Battleline, but I may be chewing the wrong mushrooms.... As much as I love the design of the Hobgrots I hope they are Battleline in the upcoming Chaos Dorfs book instead of the Orruk Warclans book. Maybe being added to the neutered Gloomspite Gitz might help.... They sure need it. 

GOOD: Morale Mitigation

All Part of the Da Plan is easily overlooked but I think will have a massive impact on every single game. In AoS 3.0 we are going to be throwing command abilities all over the place. Sometimes that means that our units won't be able to benefit from another command ability or we simply run out of command points or used Inspiring Presence on another unit. Having this safety net on the foot Killaboss and the mounted one is going help our Bravery 4 & 5 units from disappearing after taking a volley or two to the face.

BAD: Murknob w/Belcha-Banna

This whole warscroll is pretty bad unless you discount the abilities and just take this handsome guy as a foot hero that swings his sword around a few times. TOTEM is good, yes.. but your army is already going to have 2-3 Swampcalla Shamans and a Killaboss or two, you're going to have almost all your units under someone's control. Breath of Mire-Drakes is the most boring ability in the whole set so far and I think will be forgotten more than once. I'm hoping for some cool banners you can give this guy to carry around, or you could just give this guy the Arcane Tome artefact and the Levitate spell to actually be useful. 

Well that seems like enough for now. I still have 40 Hobgrots to build and a metric ton of painting to do. I love all the new orruk love that Games Workshop is giving us. The models look great, they are really exploring the game space with some of these warscrolls but to be honest some do look half-baked. See you next time!