Dwarf Slayers and Ungrim
Oct 26, 2017 20:02:50 GMT
grandmasterwang, frozenfood, and 4 more like this
Post by knoffles on Oct 26, 2017 20:02:50 GMT
I thought the tactics sections were looking a little sparse so thought i'd start to flesh them out, starting with slayers. This isn't per-say a tactics post but more thoughts on why you should consider taking slayers:
Dwarf Slayers
If we are judging units purely on fluff, these guys are hands down my favourite unit but they are also pretty effective too as I found out when using them in our club competition. So what do they bring to the table?
They are unbreakable, so are immune to psychology and basically never have to take a leadership test and will never run away. Even in an army with an average leadership as high as dwarves and with many units having access to stubborn, this is huge. It means you have a block of dwarves that will have to be completely wiped out and can effectively tarpit anything and operate completely outside of the bsb/generals bubble (it is also one reason you find excommunicated beardless dwarves using small darts of them, the shame!).
As with black Orcs, they can also choose each round to use either additional hand weapons (AHW) or great weapons (GW). I would personally only use the AHW's if they manage to charge (as with all dwarves they get +1 to Str when they charge and this would take them to Str 4) and then only against T3 opponents. Against everyone else I'd use the GW to get a Str 5 attack.
Always wounding on a 4+ is not a bad rule and helps against high toughness foes but it doesn’t help vs armour so I’ve consider this more of a situational fluffy rule.
When a model dies in combat, it gets to make a final attack back. Contrary to what I've seen written in some places, it is a single attack, no matter your base attacks and using AHW's doesn't boost the number, though you do get the Str bonus for a GW (or runic item effects). This rule helps to overcome the glaring lack of armour and with the step up rule can mean that you are potentially outputting far more attacks than the number normally available from your ranks.
They are also able to take a 50pt standard. This is more in line with Elite Dwarf units than those with a standard dwarf warrior stat line (such as slayers have).
So this unit pretty damn good, so why is it not seen more? Well firstly, it is highly susceptible to poison and missile fire. There isn’t much you can do about the former but for the latter, it is why I consider the Grungni banner with the 5++ ward vs missiles, an almost mandatory selection when taking a unit. They also have the same limited movement as all dwarf units so it is hard to get favourable matchups. The final reason is probably down to choices. They come out of the same section as Cannons, Grudge Throwers, Gyrocoptors, Hammerers, Ironbreakers etc. That is a lot of quality competition vying for slots and is probably the main reason for their exclusion.
So slayers are pretty good by themselves but there if you are taking Ungrim as general and a slayer centric army, then they get even better. This is for one reason and that is because he allows one unit to take a 100pt banner. This is the largest banner allowance outside of the BSB and means you can place one of the Master Runes on the standard (I tend to use Valaya on the unit). I would love to place banner of the lost holds on them but I read it that this can only go on the BSB as the Ancestral Heirlooms section talks about characters points allowance (not sure if I'm correct on this).
Ungrim
I love the Slayer King almost as much as normal slayers (fluff and rules). Sure he is expensive at 350pts but a tooled up tanky ‘unkillable’ Dwarf Lord comes in at over 310pts so he isn’t too much more. So what do you get for the points?
I’ll start with defence (and compare it to the tanky lord even though they aren’t necessarily built for the same role) and his WS of 9. He has to be one of a handful of characters with a WS that high and it means that most enemies will hit him on a 4+ but anyone with a WS4 or lower will only hit him on a 5+. This is almost as good as having a -1 to hit. He has a toughness of 6 so most elite troops with GWs will only wound him on a 4+. Again this helps reduce the odds of him losing one of his 3 wounds. On top of this, he has a 3+ armour save and a 4++ ward (which increases to 2++ vs fire based attacks).
If I compare is to the dwarf lord. The lord ‘only’ has a WS7 and tends to have a 2+ armour and 4++ ward, so pretty comparable so far. Where the lord outstrips Ungrim is with his T7 (not too much difference) but a whopping 6 wounds. Still, as you can see Ungrim is still pretty tough and not a push over with his defence. It is mainly the wounds that are the difference between them.
So what about attack? Again his WS comes into play. He will rarely not be hitting foes on a 3+. Ancestral Grudge also gives him a chance at re-rolling failed hits in the first round of combat. With Str 6 he will wound most foes on a 2+ and will have a -3 to armour saves. He also has the resolute rule so gets +1 Str on the charge. On top of that, his 4 attacks strike at initiative 5 and also have killing blow (so a chance to ignore armour and regen saves altogether and kill multi-wound enemy that aren’t monstrous). He also gets all the slayer rules, so any successful ward saves made against his attacks have to be re-rolled, against monsters any wounds caused become D3 wounds and the worst he can roll to wound on is a 4+. This is a lot of special rules and why I consider him a bit of a combat monster.
Again comparing him to the dwarf lord, the lord has 4 attacks at Str 6 (or 7 on the charge) due to the GW (so the same as Ungrim) but this also gives him the ASL rule. He does gain 2 WS5, Str 4, I3 from the shieldbearers but as expected, he is at a disadvantage to Ungrim if only down to the sheer number of additional rules the Slayer King has on the attack.
We’ve established that he has a solid defence and attack so does he bring anything else to the table? Well like other slayers he is unbreakable and as mentioned earlier if taken as a general one slayer unit gets a magic banner of up to 100pts. Unlike other Slayer characters, he can be the army general.
So is he worth taking? Yes definitely. Especially if you are a player who normally takes a Lord character and are planning on taking slayers and so a more themed list. The main drawback is like all dwarf lords, he is still only M3, can only join a unit of slayers and costs the same amount as a block of dwarves or 2 runed up war machines.
Dwarf Slayers
If we are judging units purely on fluff, these guys are hands down my favourite unit but they are also pretty effective too as I found out when using them in our club competition. So what do they bring to the table?
They are unbreakable, so are immune to psychology and basically never have to take a leadership test and will never run away. Even in an army with an average leadership as high as dwarves and with many units having access to stubborn, this is huge. It means you have a block of dwarves that will have to be completely wiped out and can effectively tarpit anything and operate completely outside of the bsb/generals bubble (it is also one reason you find excommunicated beardless dwarves using small darts of them, the shame!).
As with black Orcs, they can also choose each round to use either additional hand weapons (AHW) or great weapons (GW). I would personally only use the AHW's if they manage to charge (as with all dwarves they get +1 to Str when they charge and this would take them to Str 4) and then only against T3 opponents. Against everyone else I'd use the GW to get a Str 5 attack.
Always wounding on a 4+ is not a bad rule and helps against high toughness foes but it doesn’t help vs armour so I’ve consider this more of a situational fluffy rule.
When a model dies in combat, it gets to make a final attack back. Contrary to what I've seen written in some places, it is a single attack, no matter your base attacks and using AHW's doesn't boost the number, though you do get the Str bonus for a GW (or runic item effects). This rule helps to overcome the glaring lack of armour and with the step up rule can mean that you are potentially outputting far more attacks than the number normally available from your ranks.
They are also able to take a 50pt standard. This is more in line with Elite Dwarf units than those with a standard dwarf warrior stat line (such as slayers have).
So this unit pretty damn good, so why is it not seen more? Well firstly, it is highly susceptible to poison and missile fire. There isn’t much you can do about the former but for the latter, it is why I consider the Grungni banner with the 5++ ward vs missiles, an almost mandatory selection when taking a unit. They also have the same limited movement as all dwarf units so it is hard to get favourable matchups. The final reason is probably down to choices. They come out of the same section as Cannons, Grudge Throwers, Gyrocoptors, Hammerers, Ironbreakers etc. That is a lot of quality competition vying for slots and is probably the main reason for their exclusion.
So slayers are pretty good by themselves but there if you are taking Ungrim as general and a slayer centric army, then they get even better. This is for one reason and that is because he allows one unit to take a 100pt banner. This is the largest banner allowance outside of the BSB and means you can place one of the Master Runes on the standard (I tend to use Valaya on the unit). I would love to place banner of the lost holds on them but I read it that this can only go on the BSB as the Ancestral Heirlooms section talks about characters points allowance (not sure if I'm correct on this).
Ungrim
I love the Slayer King almost as much as normal slayers (fluff and rules). Sure he is expensive at 350pts but a tooled up tanky ‘unkillable’ Dwarf Lord comes in at over 310pts so he isn’t too much more. So what do you get for the points?
I’ll start with defence (and compare it to the tanky lord even though they aren’t necessarily built for the same role) and his WS of 9. He has to be one of a handful of characters with a WS that high and it means that most enemies will hit him on a 4+ but anyone with a WS4 or lower will only hit him on a 5+. This is almost as good as having a -1 to hit. He has a toughness of 6 so most elite troops with GWs will only wound him on a 4+. Again this helps reduce the odds of him losing one of his 3 wounds. On top of this, he has a 3+ armour save and a 4++ ward (which increases to 2++ vs fire based attacks).
If I compare is to the dwarf lord. The lord ‘only’ has a WS7 and tends to have a 2+ armour and 4++ ward, so pretty comparable so far. Where the lord outstrips Ungrim is with his T7 (not too much difference) but a whopping 6 wounds. Still, as you can see Ungrim is still pretty tough and not a push over with his defence. It is mainly the wounds that are the difference between them.
So what about attack? Again his WS comes into play. He will rarely not be hitting foes on a 3+. Ancestral Grudge also gives him a chance at re-rolling failed hits in the first round of combat. With Str 6 he will wound most foes on a 2+ and will have a -3 to armour saves. He also has the resolute rule so gets +1 Str on the charge. On top of that, his 4 attacks strike at initiative 5 and also have killing blow (so a chance to ignore armour and regen saves altogether and kill multi-wound enemy that aren’t monstrous). He also gets all the slayer rules, so any successful ward saves made against his attacks have to be re-rolled, against monsters any wounds caused become D3 wounds and the worst he can roll to wound on is a 4+. This is a lot of special rules and why I consider him a bit of a combat monster.
Again comparing him to the dwarf lord, the lord has 4 attacks at Str 6 (or 7 on the charge) due to the GW (so the same as Ungrim) but this also gives him the ASL rule. He does gain 2 WS5, Str 4, I3 from the shieldbearers but as expected, he is at a disadvantage to Ungrim if only down to the sheer number of additional rules the Slayer King has on the attack.
We’ve established that he has a solid defence and attack so does he bring anything else to the table? Well like other slayers he is unbreakable and as mentioned earlier if taken as a general one slayer unit gets a magic banner of up to 100pts. Unlike other Slayer characters, he can be the army general.
So is he worth taking? Yes definitely. Especially if you are a player who normally takes a Lord character and are planning on taking slayers and so a more themed list. The main drawback is like all dwarf lords, he is still only M3, can only join a unit of slayers and costs the same amount as a block of dwarves or 2 runed up war machines.