21 Dec 2014
Skrag the Slaughterer
Skrag the Slaughterer (Skrag) is commonly known as the best special character available to us and for the past few weeks I have been reading everything I can on this special character in search for a build that breaks the ‘norm’. I thought with all of my newly found knowledge and a small discussion with Jimmy on alternative army builds I will share
Skrag combines the roles of a Tyrants added leadership and combat ability with the magic wielding of a slaughtermaster. In a new world of 50% lord and heroes we can now take both lord choices but Skrag offers a cost cutting solution. With leadership 9 (10 in our favourite Irongut unit + magical banner); Skrag can either; make your leadership bubble more reliable, open up the possibility of a different banner on the ironguts (Banner of swiftness anyone?) or allow you to run standard bulls instead.
Resilience with a standard T6 and the ability to gain regeneration he becomes a tough nut to crack for rank and file troops. If he is able to be hurt, with Gut magic he is able to quickly recover lost wounds.
Now we cannot talk about Skrag without talking about Gorgers. As soon as your opponent knows you are playing Gorgers they have to fundamentally alter the way they deploy and play. The main thing with skrag + gorgers is not the buffs he gives them, it's that he gives them a good insurance policy to appear early, possibly as early as turn 3. Gorgers are great at negating one of Ogres biggest weakness, opposing shooting. Then there is the fact you can take an indefinite number of Gorgers but I do believe you do not need Gorgers to make Skrag to make him worthwhile.
Skrag has an additional cost to him that may first go unnoticed but in an army of expensive models it cannot go unnoticed. With Skrag’s larger base Skrag is unable to fit in a unit meaning you have to buy one extra unit where a normal Tyrant or stock Slaughtermaster may once have fit. (Important note: Skrag is still able to receive Look out Sir! Rolls)
Skrag does not come without his pitfalls as one of those is frenzy. It can be used to pull him out of a unit (tricky, but doable). This isn’t without a silver lining; Skrag benefits from killing enemy models in CC and being in CC keeps him safe(r) from shooting and magic. Point him and the nearest "squishy" target and kill, kill, kill!
Another one is that in combat he can be ignored by a savvy opponent. Skrag cannot make way into a unit and can only sit on the side so a troll chariot for example cannot be attacked if the trolls did the charging.
My final point is that Skrag restricts you to a Level 4 LotGM where you may have once taken Lore of Beasts, Death or Heavens. Gut magic is compulsory though so there is no harm in taking one of the best gut magic users
I am in no way an expert in Skrag and I look forward to still learning more about Skrag and I hope that my journey with Skrag may inspire and teach other Ogre generals the way of the great Slaughterer
I look forward to reading your thoughts and opinions
Update
Skrags Damnation
With the release of End Times, Skrag can now take Lore of Undeath
"This section describes a new type of spell and presents a brand new Lore of Magic that can be used in your games of Warhammer. Unlike other spells, which can only be used by Wizards who list that spell lore in their special rules, any Wizard can choose to generate spells from the Lore of Undeath."
But here is the key thing, you do not need Butcher tax for him (Which is huge) becasue there is no where that describes Skrag as either a Slaughtermaster or Butcher
"If you field any Butchers and/or Slaughtermasters in your army, at least one of them must choose there spells from the Lore of the Great Maw"
What does this mean?
For the first time ever we can take two different lores and one of them is no LotGM. Secondly, the Lore of Undeath has great synergy with points denial game (Gutstar). To truly understand the advantages of Lore of Undeath in an Ogres army we must understand the Lore itself.
I see your obsession with necromancy continues. Have you considered getting counseling?
What do We Do with It: Like most lores, Undeath has varied spells. The meat and potatoes of this lore is about summoning undead to fight on your behalf. If you are uninterested in summoning undead, this is not the lore for you. Remember you can’t summon someone into combat so you need to plan at least a turn ahead and be able to make an educated guess on what your opponents will do. Though if you summon a missile troop they can fire the same turn you summon them (shooting comes after magic phase).
Unless your local meta is very strict on WIZIWIG, reasonable players are likely to accept most proxies since bringing models for EVERY possibility would be very taxing (unless you are playing a few yards away from your own model shelf). I would recommend having a shortlist ready. Reasonable players will probably not want you to page through books and calculate unit costs. If you do not have access to a copy of Tomb Kings and/or Vampire Counts army books, preparing units ahead of time will be exceedingly difficult. I will do my best to list all the possibilities for things you can summon with realistic quantities of tokens.
Basic Principles
1) Most Undead capable of being summoned cannot survive long unsupported.
2) Troops can’t be summoned into combat, that means they won’t be able to help fight until next round. Longer if they are in a bad position.
3) Make sure you have a place to put something before summoning it. All spells have 12 inch range, and units cannot be placed within one inch of another unit, inside a building, within one inch of impassable terrain. They must be fielded five wide, so you can’t use conga lines to get around placement limitations.
4) Shooters can shoot the turn they arrive
The Lore
I have set guidelines for use for various summoned units below with this simple rating system.
Green: This will probably help you no matter what the table circumstances are.
Blue: This can help you if you have a good setup or need a niche covered fast.
Red: I won’t say never summon these guys, but you need to either have a strong fondness for the model or some unusual extenuating circumstances.
Raise the Dead (Lore Attribute): Every successful Lore spell cast gives you a counter. Some spells give you extra counters as part of the description. You can cash these tokens in to add 10 points/counter to the value of a summoned unit. Many units may ONLY be summoned with the expenditure of counters.
Ryze – The Grave Call (signature spell), 9+/14+/16+: This spell summons up to 50 or 100 points of infantry or up to 150 points of Monstrous Infantry (MI). In most cases, you should use this spell to create a speed bump for your enemies rather than for offensive reinforcements.
50 point level
10-12 Skeleton Warriors depending on equipment: Your best roadblock if you have no tokens.
20 Zombies (with one token): As the cheapest point cost per model, this should be your go-to unit when all you need to do is stall an enemy.
10 Skeleton Archers with one Token: Skeleton archers do not hold up well compared against the Ironblaster, Scraplaucher or Thundertusk, but they compare favorably to Leadbelcher shooters on the condition that enemies are hiding behind lots of penalties to hit.
100 point level
10 Grave Guard/Tomb Guard with one Token: If you decide you want offensive backup, this is best you can get with Ryze. These will provide more bang for your buck than ghouls. They have better WS and saves than most undead, but mostly you want them for the Killing Blow. A token or two more and you can upgrade their weapons. Grave Guard are the slightly better of the two.
16 Skeleton Archers: The comments for summoning 10 archers above apply here.
30 Zombies with Standard and Musician: If you need a really big roadblock and don't care about not killing your enemy, this is your unit. It should hold things up better than 20ish skeletons will.
Cairn Wraiths with five tokens: This takes a lot of tokens, but a unit of three ethereal troops can really ruin your opponent's day if you can summon these guys near someone without magical attacks. By the time you have five tokens to burn, most of the units will likely be engaged so it should be relatively easy to pick an ideal spot to deploy these guys. I wouldn’t recommend burning this many tokens on one unit unless this is your only summoning spell and you need a good spell to clinch your endgame push.
20ish Skeleton Warrors depending on Equipment: Not terrible on the surface but it doesn't have the sheer body count of zombies or the immediate available attack of Skeleton archers.
10 Ghouls: Can be used for flank support by the desperate. Two Strength 3 poisonous attacks each, but they have no saves at all and poor leadership so they will likely die very fast.
150 points
3 Ushabti with any weapon option: A couple strength 5 attacks is nothing to sneeze at. You can opt to swap their great weapons for two hand weapons or a great bow (like a regular bow only Strength 6), but I recommend using the great weapons in most cases. If you have to hack at something tough, these guys will be adequate.
3 Vargheists with a unit champion: They are not as resilient as Crypt Horrors or as hard hitting as Ushabti, but Vargheists can fly and are one of the few undead units that can always march. A good unit to summon when you are fairly far away from the enemy.
4 Crypt Horrors with one token, 3 Horrors with no tokens: They hit reasonably hard and have poison, but they more for durability than offensive might given their Regeneration and high TOughness. That’s presumably a good thing because Ryze is generally used to stall an enemy as opposed to killing it.
2 Morghast Harbringers with one token, 2 Morghast Archai with 3 tokens: Great for VC and TK, a poor choice for us. The real reason to take these things is because of the passive buff on friendly undead units. If you are an Ogre player, you probably don’t have enough undead troops on the board to justify the need for the buff.
Morkharn, Breath of Darkness, 6+: This spell heals 1d3+1 wounds on an undead unit and gives them a free non-charge move. While not completely useless, an Ogre player should usually drop this spell for the signature spell most of the time unless you have an allied or mercenary undead force in addition to your summoned troops.
Sulekhim, Hand of Dust, 7+: A wizard can sub all of his attacks for a single über attack that inflicts d6 wounds and ignores armor saves. I’d normally drop this spell as Skrag is pretty handy in combat alreadyand i believe his normal attacks are more reliable to do some wounds, consistantly pumping his cauldron
Khizzar, the Soul Stealer, 8+: Kind of like a stronger but less focused version of Spirit Leech. Very handy against low Ld targets, especially tough ones like Monsters. Inflicts 2d6+2 minus enemies Ld wounds with no armor saves and grants you d3 bonus tokens if you inflict any unsaved wounds. Not bad on a level four Undeath wizard. I would probably lose it if I was only using a level one or two wizard.
Razkhar, the Abyssal Swarm, 10+/16+: This summons 75 points of Swarms or Warbeasts or 150 points of Monstrous Beasts. Per usual, these troops are used best as speed bumps or reinforcments, not stand alone units. The augmented version is pretty lackluster as there are not a lot of undead Monstrous Beasts out there.
75 points
1 Spirit Host or 2 Spirit Hosts with 2 tokens: They fight pretty poorly, but they are ethereal, so that means they can hold up and eventually beat almost any unit without a static CR or a character unless they get smacked by a magic missile first (and I’d rather lose a summoned Spirit Host to a magic missile than have troops I actually spent points on get shot).
9 dire wolves: For a very cheap spell you get 9 wounds to die for you, and 9 WS3 S3 attacks. Not overwhelming but respectable. This is best Razkhar option for soak troops.
3 Carrion: These flyers have 3 Strength 4 attacks each and they have two wounds a model. Thus they hit harder, take hits better, and have a smaller footprint than Fell Bats. Best Razkhar option for damaging troops.
2 Bat Swarms: In terms of raw combat power, Bat Swarms are pathetically weak, but they bestow Always Strikes Last on enemies in base combat. I wouldn’t bother with this unless you were playing elves or someone else with ASF.
4 Fell Bats, 5 with a token: These guys have 2 Strength 3 attacks each, but at only one wound a piece, Carrion will get you more bang for your buck barring augment spells, but the difference isn’t huge (and more people own Fell Bat models than Carrion).
2 Tomb Swarm with one token: Swarms in general are weak, and their special ability is only useful in deployment. Therefore they are nigh useless when summoned.
150 points of Monstrous Beasts
3 Supulchral Stalkers with two tokens: Their close combat stats are mediocre, but they have an 8 inch ranged attack that is devastating to low Initiative enemies. Since the shooting phase happens after magic, they can attack right of out of the gate.
Tomb Scorpion: A Scorpion costs way less than 150 points, so you are not getting your money’s worth out of this spell. Its grab bag of assort special abilities does not make up for its underwhelming stats.
Kandorak, the Harbringer 10+, 24+: This spell summons a 65 point character or a 200 point Monster, Chariot, or War Machine. The augmented version is the nuclear option of the lore. You pretty much have to six dice it to get a 24+.
Characters
Cairn Wraith: An ethereal character is nice in many circumstances and this will cost you no tokens.
Necrotect: If he can survive long enough to join a unit, he can give a unit Hatred. He also comes with 5 points to spare so you can build him up with magic items with relatively few tokens. I wouldn’t recommend him unless you already have models with the Animated Construct rule on the table.
Tomb Herald: Tomb Heralds are nice and cheap with Killing Blow, but in most cases I’d rather use Ryze to summon a small unit of KB troops than a single naked character.
Necromancer: Poof! You now have a L1 caster with Lore of Death, Vampires, or Undeath. For 2-5 tokens you can buy yourself a caddy for your favorite Arcane item provided you don’t have it on your regular list. Downside? Your Necromancer is going to be very vulnerable until he can join a friendly unit. Generally speaking you want Death or Undeath, but Lore of Vampire has some spells that don’t need undead nearby to work. Also, the Lore of Vampires lore attribute works exactly like Lifebloom and can be used to heal Ogre units (cough cough Ironblaster) as easily as undead units.
Liche Priest with one Token: When any cheap wizard will do a Necromancer is better, but Liche Priests can take Lore of Light which is something useful in even L1 casters. Especially if you are running Council of Light. I would not recommend Lore of Nehekhara ever.
Banshee with three tokens: Worth the three tokens if you are facing low Ld enemies and have a relatively low risk your spooky lady being picked off by a magic attack.
Wight King with at least two Tokens: A tough soldier with KB is worth the tokens if you can keep him alive between now and when he can enter close combat.
Tomb Prince with many tokens: Regardless of how they are equipped, it will cost many of your tokens and Tomb Princes are only really good when leading a unit of TK soldiers. Inconvenient since you can’t summon a character inside one of your existing units.
Vampires with many tokens: Vampires are strong fighters, but you need an Elector Count’s ransom in tokens to pull this off, even if you field the guy naked.
200 points
Terrorgheist with three tokens: If you are going to spend multiple tokens on one spell, this is probably the one. It’s strong enough to fight by itself, it flies and you can use the scream attack immediately next phase with the right positioning.
Khemrian Warsphinx with one token: Fairly potent monster on offense that is Toughness 8 to boot. For two more tokens it breaths fire. That’s a lot of damage very quickly, assuming you have the tokens on hand.
Black Coach: Black Coaches are potent units. Summon this guy early and you can enjoy multiple turns of him powering up with new special abilities in subsequent magic phases.
Casket of Souls: I’d recommend summoning it ASAP, so you can enjoy bonus power dice in all subsequent rounds. As an added bonus, these things are very hard to kill. Note, they do explode violently if destroyed, so try to put them in an isolated corner.
Necrolith Collossus with great weapon or Bow of the Desert: It lacks the punch of the two sphinxes but it costs no tokens.
Mortis Engine with two tokens: The buff only applies to undead but the Dark Aura can smite your enemies in a wide radius. Better late game than early game because it’s Aura’s damage is dependent on the turn number AND late game you are likely to hit more enemies in your radius AND if you summon it late game you are less likely to have it die and explode on your friendly units (or at least you’ll take out the other side with you).
Necrosphinx with three tokens: Nice and all, but I think for three tokens I’d rather have a Terrorgheist or fire breathing Warsphinx.
Varghulf: It doesn’t do anything exotic (unless you consider marching exotic), but it’s a strong monster with a small footprint that costs no tokens.
Corpse Cart with either upgrade: Way under 200 points and the buff is not worth much unless you have LOTS of zombies on the table.
Hierotitans: Sadly the magical boost only applies to undead casters, so it’s main claim to fame will not help you.
Skull Catapult with Skulls of the Foe: Pretty lackluster compared to the cannons
Akar’aran, the Dark Riders, 16+: Summons 150 points of cavalry, monstrous cavalry or chariots.
5 Hexwraiths: If you can summon these guys early in the game you can have a lot of fun with ethereal units that can run through enemies and burn them. Or you can run interference with it and make the Pistol Korps mad with jealousy.
3 Skeleton Chariots with two tokens: If you are a TK player then you probably like chariots, and nothing I can write can dissuade you from using them. Just make sure you get the impact hits or you’ll be a sad necromancer.
7 Black Knights, or 5-6 Black Knights and some upgrades: When you just feel like you need one more units of knights. My preference is 5 knights with barding, lances, unit champion and standard, all for no tokens.
9-10 Skeleton Horse Archers with command option(s): Something we do not have anything like, but i feel in most situations other units maybe better suited
4+ Blood Knights plus at least five tokens: Black Knights fight almost as well without costing an emperor’s ransom in tokens.
10-12 Skeleton Horsemen: Medium cavalry isn’t that impressive, particularly when you are used to 1+ save WS4 cavalry. They aren’t the worst unit in the world, but you probably can find something better to summon.
3 Necroplis Knights with five tokens: These Knights are strong in close combat, but they are not my first choice if I’m going to burn through that many tokens. Particularly since you can’t use their special deployment rule but are still paying for it.
Corpse Cart with either upgrade: Still under 150 points and it buffs things you probably don’t have.
Broad Strategy
With a 12 inch summoning range (subject to the unit having to fit in the space somewhere), this is not a lore to use on a wizard hiding in the back. You need to get at least relatively close to the enemy to make this work.
I think you get your best mileage out of this lore in general is with a L4 Wizard. The way I see it A level 4 wizard will summon cheap roadblocks with Ryze early on and then pull out a whammy spell with a stack of tokens to summon something extra nasty late game.
There we have it, i will be working on a List in the next couple days
Samurai Ogres of Nippon
