I meant to
originally write this article yesterday but instead decided that since my
argument included elements that were common to all Gargantuans, I figured I’d
address those issues first. While the
comment was made that all of the elements I listed were common to all
warbeasts, I do encourage you to read through each breakdown again because
they’re slightly different with Gargantuans since Gargantuans are much more difficult to kill. They take all of the advantages of having
warbeasts over warjacks to a slightly higher level. I brought up these same issues in my article
Gargantuan Possibilities before we even knew what the Gargantuan statlines
would look like. I addressed issues of
focus, damage boxes, and animi, and why their careful balance was necessary. I’m pleased with how they’ve been balanced in
general (at least for the two that have been spoiled) and I think the Mountain
King is much better than people think. This is a lengthy argument that requires a holistic approach to looking at the entire Troll faction and playstyle and consequently the article is quite long. If you're passionate about this subject, I hope you'll be willing to read all the way through to the end because you need the entire picture to see why the Mountain King isn't terrible.
First, I’ll
share one of the more common examples of why the MK is quite expensive: Whelp Shedding. This has been brought up several times on the
forums but let me reiterate it for those who might not be aware. Every time the MK gets damaged by an enemy
attack, you can place a whelp in B2B with the MK. Note that this can happen from any attack –
melee, ranged, or magic. The point that
was brought up in the forums is that the MK spawns a whelp in addition to other whelps it could spawn if you paid the points
for them – effectively throwing two whelps out there for each time you suffer
damage. These can be placed in such a
way as to prevent enemy models without reach from even getting in range to
attack in melee. It’s also worth
pointing out that the rules for Tramplesmean that those whelps can even prevent heavies from trampling through their
small bases to get to the Gargantuan – the normal tactic for getting up
close
The whelp
blocking tactic has been discussed at length on the forums so I want to bring
up some other issues that differentiate the MK from other Colossals/Gargantuans
that are inherent to Trolls themselves as well as some spells that Trolls have
that can have scary implications. Let’s
start by discussing some of the spells that Trolls have at their disposal to
make the MK fairly scary. The important
thing to recognize with these spells is that either Warmachine factions don’t
have access to these spells, or make much less use of them than the Trolls
will. Here’s a list of each warlock with
the spells, abilities, or feats that help the Mountain King:
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| With STR 15 the Mountain King will love Borka's feat, especially since it can Power Strike |
Grim:
Feat, Cross-Country (very
situational), Return Fire
pGrissel:
Cacophony (very similar to Temporal Barrier pHaley offers the
Stormwall which everyone loves so much, by the way), Herioc Ballad, Calamity
eGrissel:
Feat (Unyielding), Quake, Inhospitable Ground
pDoomshaper:
Feat, Scroll of the Will of Balasar, Fortune, Purification (for removing
enemy buff spells)
eDoomshaper:
Feat, Primal Shock, Wild Aggression
Gunnbjorn:
Guided Fire, Rock Wall
pMadrak:
Feat, Carnage, Sure Foot
eMadrak:
Feat, Killing Ground
Borka:
Feat, Mosh Pit
Calandra:
Feat, Fate Blessed, Bullet Dodger (minor buff), Soothing Song, Star-Crossed (enemy debuff which will save the MK from taking tons
of damage)
Jarl:
Feat (the movement applications for this are scary and hilarious), Quicken
In other
words, literally every warlock has something useful for the Mountain King, and
most of them are in the form of buffing feats. Granted, some will be more effective than
others, but they still all over it something useful and that’s not something
you can say for the Stormwall or the other Colossals. I also want to highlight 3 spells in
particular that will be very very good
with the Mountain King:
Primal Shock – this was the first thing
that Troll players were looking for.
This spell was previously great enough with Mulg hitting STR 13, but now
cast from a model that’s STR 15? Yes, please! For such a low cost, eDoomshaper now has an
even more reliable way of killing you from a distance, and a model to throw out
front while he does it. I would like to
point out that a POW 15 magic attack roll is on the level of Obliteration which is one of the most
powerful spells in the game – and
this spell is much, much cheaper with
a built-in “arc node”.
Rock Wall – this spell is awesome
enough at keeping your models alive but with a Gargantuan on the field it
becomes exponentially better. Clever
placement with the wall means that you can prevent non-Reach models from even engaging you, especially since you can spawn
whelps to block off the exposed edges of your base. The subtleties of this spell are too much to
merely discuss and have to be seen for yourself on the tabletop (hmmm, I sense
an article in the future…). Needless to
say, being able to create terrain at-will is quite significant, as anyone who’s
used Janissa or Gunny could attest.
Guided Fire – okay, this is a spell
that Cygnar has access to, and will make fairly good use of it with the
Stormwall, but there’s a big difference here.
For Hordes players, spending 3 fury to cast a spell is very different
than a Warmachine player spending 3 focus.
Focus is much harder to come by and if Kraye is spending 3 focus for Guided Fire, that means 3 less focus to
allocate to warjacks for boosting. For
Gunny, he can cast Guided Fire and
his beasts will still be able to boost to his heart’s content. Why is this great for the MK? A 10” spray that’s entirely boosted on hit rolls is really awesome. “But it’s only RAT 5!” – yes, but sprays are
typically lower RAT anyway since they ignore things like Concealment, Cover, and they can potentially hit models
that aren’t in your LOS. A POW 16 spray
is even more frightening since you
can effectively reach out and kill most warcasters/warlocks with it – even if
they’re hiding behind anything. Hell, it can be used to deal serious damage
to multiple warjacks/warbeasts for
that matter.
I could
continue but I think it’s worth discussing other elements that make the MK a
formidable model that are inherent to normal Troll playstyle. Trolls are one of the most interesting armies
due to their crazy amount of synergy.
While every faction has synergistic elements, the difference with Trolls
is that a lot of their synergy relies on non-magical, non-spell effects. While they still have access to some useful
spells, they also have models that build on layers of synergy that make Trolls
more challenging to play and build effective lists. The key here is that these are elements that you would have anyway and are not
support specific to the Mountain
King. To contrast this, the Journeyman
Warcaster is a 3 point model that would be used almost solely for the purpose
of casting Arcane Shield on the
Stormwall. While he can do other things,
his synergy is directly linked to the Colossal, effectively raising the cost of the Stormwall up to 22 points. The difference here with Trolls is that we’ll
be considering element or features that multiple
models/units will benefit from, and thus are providing a consequential benefit to the Mountain King.
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| Pictured: Knockdown machine |
Models with Knock-Down – I don’t have
the time to prove this but I’m fairly sure that Trolls have access to the most
models which cause Knock-down of any
other faction. Trolls typically suffer
from a lower-than-average MAT on many of their warbeasts – let alone infantry
models – but can knock-down models with even their most basic of infantry. Here’s a brief list of models that can cause knock-down in the Troll faction: War
Wagon, Caber Tossers, Long Riders, Thumper Crew, Runeshapers, Mauler (any heavy
could, but his Chain Attack is
effectively free), Impaler, Winter Troll/Rok (okay, it’s really Stationary but it’s basically the same
thing), Mulg, Grim, pGrissel, Gunnbjorn, Calandra, Borka, and maybe a couple more. The point is that Trolls can easily mitigate
the low MAT of the Mountain King while
they’d still want to knock stuff down anyway. There are ways of preventing knock-down, of course, but that can be
said for most things except…
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| +2 ARM for all! |
The Krielstone – “Yeah, so what?” you
may reply. The highest ARM
Colossals/Gargantuans are the Conquest and the Woldwrath, at ARM 20 each. The Stormwall can get up to ARM 22, but it
needs to receive Arcane Shield to do
so. Khador doesn’t have any ARM buffs
outside of their feats and the Woldwrath similarly won’t be able to be targeted
by the plethora of ARM buff spells that Circle has, so effectively they are
stuck at ARM 20 – and that’s pretty damn good.
The Mountain King, however, can stay at ARM 21 fairly consistently,
thanks to the KSB (Kriel Stone Bearer) and this is better than an Acrane Shielded Stormwall. Why?
It’s not a spell effect. That’s
more significant than I think you realize.
While they’ve dwindled in popularity, spells like Purification and effects like Blessed
are still fairly common – let alone pEiryss, who’s practically an auto-include
if you want an easy way to shut down a Colossal now. Arcane
Shield is great, but as an upkeep, most factions have something that can
make it slightly risky to have. The
lowly Circle Woldwyrd can suddenly start pinging damage onto a Colossal at a
cost of only 5 points. Spells like Lamentation will suddenly become more
popular and punishing for a warcaster who wants to upkeep his precious spell,
and Purification – found on an
increasing number of warcasters/warlocks – will suddenly become extremely
relevant to simply strip off that spell.
The KSB, however, cannot be ignored whatsoever. Your opponent will need to kill off the KSB
in order to prevent the effect, and anyone who’s played against it will tell
you that’s far more difficult than it looks.
Basically, your Mountain King will consistently sit at ARM 21 since you’re going to take the KSB anyway for your
infantry and warlock.
 |
| Read his animus and cry |
Troll Animi – While animi are useful
for all Gargantuans, the big difference here is that Trolls have a wide range
of really useful buffing animi that other factions don’t really have, and/or
they can get it cheaply. Sure, Legion
has Spiny Growth – but that’s on an
11 point model. Tenacity is great and cheap, but a +1 DEF/ARM is not going to break
the game (although it is super
useful). Besides those two animi, how
many other useful ones can you see on a Gargantuan? What about Circle? Circle has Primal, but that won’t work on the Woldwrath. I guess Megalith’s animus could work if he’s
nearby, but that’s pretty much it since
most Circle animi are self-targeting.
What about Skorne? Rush is fantastic, but Trolls have
access to that too. Trolls, however,
have access to a bunch of animi that
will be super useful on the Mountain King.
The best part? A lot of them are
on light warbeasts, meaning they’ll be cheaper to take. Here’s the list of models with useful animi
for the Mountain King: Pyre Troll, Slag Troll, Axer, Storm Troll, Winter Troll,
Bomber (although this is admittedly minor), Mauler, Earthborn, Rok, and my
favorite, the Bouncer. That’s a long list of useful animi and most of
them (five models) are only 5 points and thus don’t constitute a significant
investment of points.
All of what
I’ve just discussed is not the same as just “adding to the cost” of the
Mountain King, as I’ve already established, because you could take these models
anyway for their usefulness. The advantage here is that they offer the
Mountain King something that you would
want to take anyway – thus mitigating the “added cost” – unlike the
Journeyman Warcaster who really doesn’t offer much more than a magical
hand-cannon and Arcane Shield – thus
increasing the cost of the Stormwall.
Granted, there are warcasters who already have Arcane Shield, but like I already mentioned – it’s an upkeep spell
that can either be removed or made expensive to maintain, and focus is more
valuable than fury by the nature of the different game mechanics. The same is true for any other ARM buffing
spell that any Warmachine faction has access to.
Lastly, I wish
to address the question of “What does the Mountain King offer that two heavies
of equal price don’t offer?” It’s
obvious that some of the Colossals/Gargantuans offer their warcasters/warlocks
offer something the faction didn’t have previously and the Mountain King offers
the same thing, just in a different form: Efficiency. That’s right.
Sure, it doesn’t offer a ton of abilities, but it does offer a lot of
heavy-hitting in a 5-fury package.
Trolls are notoriously low-fury on average, with Calandra and Doomshaper
being the craziest of the lot with Fury 7.
The Mountain King packs more heavy-hitting power than an entire suite of
light warbeasts and even offers more heavy-hitting than two heavy
warbeasts. How often do Trolls have to
run their warbeasts “hot” in order to kill something? The Mauler is great but it needs its animus
to have the same hitting power that the Mountain King has natively, and that
fury needs to either be spent by the warlock (preventing them from casting
other spells) or the beast itself (preventing extra attacks/boosting). The Mountain King offers lots of hitting
power in a fury-efficient package. Yes,
Mulg also hits just as hard for cheaper, but with Character Restriction he can only fit into one list and even then,
Mulg is slower, can’t Power Attack:
Sweep or Power Strike. Also, with the huge base, the Mountain King offers a more consistent way of blocking your own bases - which is more notable in a faction where every warlock is on a medium-sized base.
Without any
buffs the Mountain King can deal 49 points of damage on average to an unbuffed
Stormwall, 42 damage to the Conquest, and it can completely wreck the Kraken. An unbuffed Stormwall with 3 focus can only
deal 40 damage on average to the Mountain King and the Conquest can deal 45 –
but we’ve also discussed that it’s much
easier to buff the Mountain King with something
than it is to buff other Colossals.
While Trolls might not have had a problem dealing with Colossals anyway
with such hard-hitting warbeasts, the Mountain King is fairly efficient with
its fury against such high-ARM targets and your five and six fury warlocks will
be grateful.
Here’s a 35
point list that I would hate to face:
pMadrak (+6)
- Mountain
King (20)
- Bouncer
(5)
Krielstone
(full, 3)
- Stone
Scribe Elder (1)
Kriel
Warriors (full, 6)
- 3x Caber
Throwers (3)
5 Whelps (2)
In short, Sure Foot on the Mountain King makes
him DEF 11, provides a huge base for my models to cluster around
to get the +2 DEF and knock-down immunity.
The KSB will allow the MK to sit at ARM 21 when waiting for my opponent and P+S 20 if I get charged first. The
Bouncer’s animus plus the Whelps mean that anyone who gets close to the
Mountain King will have a hard time staying
there, let alone getting a second model in range, thus keeping him alive long enough to heal up from any attacks and then wreck face. Even if they have a way
around it, I can just camp my Kriel Warriors right in front of him and they’ll
be super annoying to remove with DEF 14 ARM 17 and won’t be knocked-down when
they pass their Tough rolls. With the Mountain King sitting at DEF 11 (12
against living models near whelps) ARM 21 with 48 damage boxes right behind the
Kriel Warriors, any opponent will be cautious about charging in there. The Caber Throwers and Carnage basically make the low MAT of the Mountain King irrelevant
and he provides enough heavy-hitting for the entire list by himself, without
Madrak worrying about having too much fury out there.
