I talked a while back about the new Curse of the Wulfen book and all the goodies in there for Daemons. This week, I had a chance to try out the Forgehost formation and I thought I'd talk about it in a bit more detail, since it's a lot of fun, makes one of the better things in the Daemon book better still, and isn't as restrictive as most.
So, let's look at those restrictions first. You have to take three (not five) Soulgrinders. Two is the number you shall not take unless you then proceed to three. (I'll stop the somewhat dated Monty Python there and get on with it.)
GET ON WITH IT!
Sorry. Anyway, the point is that the Grinders can be Daemons of different Powers, can take any upgrades they fancy, etc, etc. So unless for some reason you really don't want three of them, there's little reason not to use the Formation. The bonus you get for doing this is the
Desperate Competition rule. What this does is that if one Grinder causes a casualty in any phase, the others can re-roll to hit and to wound for the duration of that phase. Since one of the big problems of a Soulgrinder is its rather poor WS and BS of 3, this is big news indeed.
There're a lot of ways to use this effectively. One obvious one is to take three Grinders of Khorne, since they're cheap, and bolt on a Phlegm Bombardment to each. Since it's usually not too hard to kill at least one model with a S8 AP3 pie-plate, this gets you your re-roll pretty quickly, as well as making those snap-firing Harvester Cannons a bit better. This also means, and I'll come back to this, that firing a pie-plate first will give any Grinders who want to try some anti-air work some handy re-rolls, pushing the Harvester Cannons into almost Quad Gun territory.
You can also mix this up by having a Baleful Torrent on a more aggressive Grinder. Since it can't really miss, all you need is something it can kill and you're in business. My personal approach is usually to run bare-bones Grinders of Slaanesh, so I use one as a back-field sitter with the Bombardment and let the other two run up, on AA duty or just getting into combat. The usually ignored Warp Gaze is also worth talking about here- normally a weak choice, since BS3 is not what you want to be relying on for one shot, with a re-roll it looks a lot better and adds some serious (S10 AP1) ranged anti-tank that Daemons usually don't get.
Let's take a quick look at assault. Grinders, as AV13 walkers, are pretty nasty if they get hold of things, but suffer from that WS3 again. Formation to the rescue! Due to Initiative, if your Grinders are in the same combat the rule won't help much, but if they're in different ones you'll want to pick one with an easy kill (like one fighting low LD troops who might fail a Fear test) or one tar-pitting a big unit which isn't in any danger first, before moving on to harder or more crucial fights. It's also important, for once, to remember Hammer of Wrath, since a kill with that will buff all the other Grinders fighting at normal initiative steps, even in the same combat. Remember that the active player chooses the order assaults are resolved in, so in the opposing turn it's largely out of your hands, barring sneaky psychological shenanigans. On a final note, take heed of the new Slaanesh power Maniacal Fervour, a Blessing that grants the target Rage, Furious Charge and Zealot in exchange for them taking a few S3 hits. That on a Grinder is a bit of a no-brainer!
Whoops, out of time! Don't forget to browse the short stories or even
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