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Post by frozenfood on Oct 14, 2017 5:51:51 GMT
Okay giant fanboys, convince me to take the thick tall towering tattoo boy. How should I use him and what are his strengths and weaknesses?
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Post by Horace on Oct 14, 2017 6:47:06 GMT
The obvious weakness is that toughness is their only defence. Some chaos giants have nicer options and for O&G you can buy them warpaint for minimal protection. They also attract LOTS of shooting attention.
Now for the plus points. They have the ability to absolutely wreck face. The high strength damage they can output is frightening. Hence all the shooting attention. This is not necessarily negative though. Something in your army is going to get shot. Rather my giant than something more important.
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Post by henning on Oct 14, 2017 10:24:39 GMT
I don’t rate giants. I have played against double giant lists and they have never bothered me at all. No armour save means poison shooting just eliminates them and low I means they get wrecked in cc against infantry blocks with poison or high strength attacks. Just an easy 200 points in my opinion.
If they were special and 150 points each I would consider fielding them.
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Post by frozenfood on Oct 14, 2017 10:32:12 GMT
Okay, against a bunch of skaven then, can they kill a lot of those?
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Post by TheREALricksalamone on Oct 14, 2017 15:20:38 GMT
When facing giants with my Empire,chaos, or undead armies...thunder stomp is the thing that gets me.
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Post by henning on Oct 14, 2017 15:25:27 GMT
My skeptic and inexperienced opinion on playing giants.
Probably, but the Skaven will be steadfast for days if you don't have supporting units in the combat. Some of the giants'attacks do good damage but there are others who don't. Notably one result is simply that combat ends and you win by 2 and thus you don't kill any Skaven (though they get attacks against you at a higher Initiative step) so they will probably stick on a steadfast roll. You will probably kill more by dying and falling on them than actually hitting them.
A giant can do well vs other monsters and units with low Initiative and LD but is that what you really want him to kill?
He gets full marks in the laughs department if that helps?
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Post by henning on Oct 14, 2017 15:28:55 GMT
When facing giants with my Empire,chaos, or undead armies...thunder stomp is the thing that gets me. Empire cannon balls it, Chaos don't need to be scared of a giant as you hit first with high strength and you can just charge it with skull crushers or cavalry, Undead can just scream it to death, charge it with hexwraiths, poison it with ghouls or tarpit it with big zombie blocks.
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Post by TheREALricksalamone on Oct 14, 2017 15:29:54 GMT
When facing giants with my Empire,chaos, or undead armies...thunder stomp is the thing that gets me. Empire cannon balls it, Chaos don't need to be scared of a giant as you hit first with high strength and you can just charge it with skull crushers or cavalry, Undead can just scream it to death, charge it with hexwraiths, poison it with ghouls or tarpit it with big zombie blocks. Sure, sounds good.
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Post by Horace on Oct 14, 2017 16:19:17 GMT
Vampires don't beat it on I generally speaking so will be taking some degree of pain. Chaos I would not expect to enjoy a giant. They need it dead before it strikes or will be taking some pain between it's attacks and thunder stomp.
For instance skullcrushers will be hit by (roll of) 1. Yell and ball - the good result, they just lose the combat on -2. 3-4 thump with club. An initiative test on the juggers I (2) or 1 dead jugger, 5-6 an auto wound and the crusher may not attack next turn, followed by thunder stomps. They would not enjoy being hit back.
Giants are not made for soloing blocks, they are made for combo charging and inflicting hideous damage. With my O&G I generally have some target saturation with things like manglers, something nasty will survive
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Post by henning on Oct 14, 2017 17:14:13 GMT
Uhm, you can't stomp cavalry.
That said, I don't believe a giant will survive a charge from 3 skullcrushers with lances (they are faster than he is so he has a bigger chance of being charged). I would put my money with the crushers.
Ghouls can take hits from a giant, 20 ghouls will probably kill a giant and they hit at the same time. Dead ghouls can grow back with invocation.
Don't get me wrong, giants are fun but they compete with better options in the rare slot
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Post by TheREALricksalamone on Oct 15, 2017 3:07:00 GMT
Uhm, you can't stomp cavalry. That said, I don't believe a giant will survive a charge from 3 skullcrushers with lances (they are faster than he is so he has a bigger chance of being charged). I would put my money with the crushers. Ghouls can take hits from a giant, 20 ghouls will probably kill a giant and they hit at the same time. Dead ghouls can grow back with invocation. Don't get me wrong, giants are fun but they compete with better options in the rare slot Does anyone really arm Skullcrushers with lance though?
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Post by mottdon on Oct 15, 2017 4:30:12 GMT
Giants are a great choice for O&G because most people playing O&G are looking for the exact kind of craziness Giants bring to the table.
First off, like Horace said, you never take a Giant solo. You send him and something else like a horde of Savage Orcs in behind a couple of Mangler Squigs. What's the Empire Cannons going to shoot first? Probably the things that can bounce all the way through their tight formations and cause untold havoc before randomly doing it again. Once that Giant reaches close combat...well good luck average human troop. And even if they do manage to somehow get lucky enough to kill the brute, well then he'll just fall on what's left and kill them too.
As for WoC, if those Skull crushers manage to survive their charge through those Mangler, I think the Giant would be more than able to take the rest out.
The thing that would bother me about the Undead are Ethereal units. He can't hit them. But that the case with most units.
I also try to take more than one Giant whenever possible. Two Giants Yelling and Bawling can cause quite the uproar! Lol!
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Post by Horace on Oct 15, 2017 5:13:22 GMT
Uhm, you can't stomp cavalry. True dat, but you get the idea
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Post by henning on Oct 15, 2017 9:09:41 GMT
I think we can agree to disagree 😊
When you take him just know your miles may vary from game to game. He is inherently random.
To get back to the OP’s question of how to play him:
With regards to list building, know he is a support unit so take him in a list where he can support units that he can benefit. Those units are ones that don’t generate static CR such as chariots, pump wagons, solo characters and even small units of boar boys. The giant will be able to come in and help with stomps and yell and bawl. You also want to take him in lists where you want to overload on threats. I would also always upgrade him to have warpaint if you have a savage orc character. It’s only +10% to his cost for +16% survivability
He does have a very significant strength in the OnG army in his high LD. This means you can safely run him on the flanks to provide some backbone and stability. Thunderstomp is also a great strength so make sure you put him up against units where he can use it...
His weaknesses lie in the fact that he has no armour save, he has a big base and he is random. No armour save means you need to keep him away from poison. He will go down really quickly to poison so if you want him to do anything then stay away! The big base is an issue because of cannons. I suggest using the terrain to your advantage when you face cannons to prevent them from shooting at him. If you find you struggle using terrain and you lose your giant regularly to cannons then add in some trolls to screen for your giant. They can stop a cannon ball quite effectively with regen and the fact that there will be multiple W3 bodies it has to travel through before getting to the giant. As for the randomness, sometimes it can work in your favour and sometimes it won’t. This is why he is a SUPPORT unit and and you should not run him all alone. Always have some units around him that he can help and vice versa.
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Post by askaval30 on Oct 17, 2017 13:12:01 GMT
Chaos Player here.
If you've taken a giant in a chaos list it probably means we're looking at a friendly match, so at this point why not take two? add in some chariots, spawn and forsaken... with perhaps a chimera sprinkled in for good measure.
The trick for me is target saturation: have plenty of fast moving threats reach the enemy before he has a chance to cannonball/magic/shoot too many of them off the board.
Nurgle giants are the way to go, run on the flanks to act as support units or monster hunters, then pray the gods of randomness and chance are on your side.
To be fair a pair of giants in a monstrous horde with Throgg are both thematic and effective, if only because your opponent will be too worried by the giant block of trolls bearing down on his guys to worry about giants.
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