My last post was jumbled: what I meant to say is that outside of stormvermin all the top armies only have infantry with 1 inch reach for their 25 mm base models: daemonettes, daughters, most death units, etc..
Except for Plague Monks w/Woestaves, Skeletons w/Spears, Clanrats w/Spears, Stabbas w/Spears, Sisters of Slaughter, and Eternal Guard. All of which make moderate to frequent showings at competitive events. Sisters and Eternal Guard less frequently since the demise of mixed order. There are also a ton of 32mm based hordes with 2" reach as well that show up often. Hearthguard Berserkers are scary even with their weapons blunted to damage 1. Grimghast are also very potent.
I was curious how many 25mm based models could actually attack Gotrek. I have a bunch of blank bases at my desk and set them up. Turns out you can get 28+ models in range to fight a model on a 40mm when the attacking unit is on 25mm bases and has a 2" reach. This is because those units can actually fight in 3 ranks. 50MM is 1.96". Meaning if the first rank is touching Gotrek, and the second rank is touching the first, and the third rank is touching the second, then that third rank is in rang to attack by .04".
Looking at Grotek just now, he is very cool. However like everyone has said here, that 4 inch move is pitiful and it does mean that he would get pincushioned by good shooting. In all honesty though his combat stats are broken, and really should be reconsidered as they are super powerful.
Right- 2 inch reach on a 25mm would be the majority of the unit when attacking Gotrek- I get about 14 models at 25mm bases with 1 inch reach considering 2 ranks will attack him. Don't get me wrong there are some matchups where he's just bad- like Skaven, despite clanrats and plague monks have weaker profiles at 2 inches- death frenzy and the potential for double death frenzy just makes him sunk points at 520. Death is a toss -up skeletons will wreck face but grimghasts actually won't be super great considering no re-rolls and a 32mm inch base.
Ultimately I don't think he will work out in our army but I think what he does is good enough to try out certain missions as an ally
Exactly this. He isn't event worthy, but he is match worthy. This is why I say he is valid in casual games, but not competitive. It isn't that he can't shine in the correct circumstances. It is that those circumstances won't carry the totality of the event.
Agreed, and I do have another huge limiting factor for him. At most he will only be in a round or two of combat, as he will struggle to close, win and then be unable to catch up with a new opponent
So I actually think his points are more prohibitive then his movement if you have cogs active. 6 inch move with an average 9 inch charge Is good enough in most scenarios to get from one objective to the other or within range of enemy units capping objectives.
They are both factors. Unfortunately his points can't be too much lower or he will see significant event play and be the smash captain of AoS.
Chronomantics cogs + idoneth with ionrach = Gotrek with tide of deaths He saves +1 in turn 1, can run and charge in turn 2, attack first in turn 3 and in turn 4 can retreat and charge xD
he save +1 in turn 1, can run and charge in turn 2, attack first in turn 3 and in turn 4 can retreat and charge xD
So, I played him last night (proxy) against my buddy's (not yet optimized) Nighthaunt army. He rocked the game pretty well. Chainrasp Horde did some good damage on him, but together with my summoned Scar-Veteran on Carnosaur he wiped them, while I bound substantial parts of the rest of the army using Skinks. My Terradons killed the enemy black coach and the Slann unbound most of Lady Olynder's magic.
Just had a look at Gotrek. To be honest I think he will be great with the Dwarf armies, Fyreslayers and Kharadron - Fyreslayers because they are used to having similarly slow movement and he will be able to advance with them, and Kharadron because they will be holding back at their own edge of the board anyway. You all keep saying that he won’t be any use in an objective game except when heroes are scoring, but he will be great as a bodyguard unit to help protect a unit on an objective (especially a squishy missile unit like Arkanauts) - keep him within 3” of the objective and the scoring unit, and if your opponent is stupid enough to send a unit to charge the objective, Gotrek will be able to pile in and hack them to pieces - even if the charging unit defeats your scoring unit, Gotrek will destroy them in return so your opponent will still fail to take the objective. Don’t worry about him being shot at because he has a 4+ Armour save and a 3+ Ward save, meaning your opponent will still need to fire a lot of shots to take him down, and if your opponent tries to throw 25mm horde units at him, support him with one or more of your units to stop him being surrounded. I do like how they’ve balanced him by making him slow and impossible to deep strike, and also if I did take him with my Fyreslayers it would mean I couldn’t take a Runelord to help them dispel magic (and would have to give my Runefather the Alchemical Chain), but I still think he has more uses than several of you give him credit for.
The thing is: if he has only that limited amount of roles he can fulfill, then you might ask about his price. What I often do is: Look at your army and compare point cost. That guy is as expensive as two Carnosaurs or about 80 Skinks. And I am not sure he is worth that.
Well he can certainly kill 2 Carnosaurs as he romped through 4 Greater Daemons (all of which are a good deal better) in the Warhammer Community article, and bearing in mind he killed 40 Night Goblins in that same article, if he managed to get to the Skinks he could tear through them without a second thought (although they would have an advantage in the shooting phase before he got to them).
Sorry but comparing them in combat to each other directly is not a good way of comparison at all. That's like saying a Slann or Lady Olynder are worse than two Orruk Brutes because the Brutes can kill the Slann or Lady Olynder in melee and they are cheaper. Or take six Kurnoth Hunters. Sure he will trash them in melee. If he ever reaches them (they have a better move and 30" shooting so they can kite him all day). Putting models just against each other, trying to bash their faces in, that's not how you should compare balance, it will never work. And some of our units are the best examples for that. If my enemy brings Gotrek then I just send ten Skinks against him every round. No problem at all. He can never move so he cannot threaten me. Sure he will kill all of them. But my enemy will spend 520 points killing chaff. The game last night was 1500 points. Sure, Gotrek won the game for me, but he made up more than a third of my army. And it depends on what he fights. He is a monster killer, but against rend immune Nighthaunt horde units for example he is pretty bad. He does kill a lot of them, but they get replenished and 280 points of Chainrasp Horde bind him there for three rounds. Had my opponent not been held up by my summoned Skinks and had Gotrek not been supported by a Carnosaur I would have lost the game. So I could just as well say that my Slann or my Skinks won me the game. I am not saying he sucks, but he is of limited use against many units in the game, so very often it might be worth it to instead use some other units for the same point cost.
Well, for a start, when comparing the two Carnosaurs with Gotrek, comparing their combat abilities is the only way you’re going to do that as neither of them can shoot. As for the Skinks, I still mentioned that they had an obvious advantage in the shooting phase, so no, I wasn’t simply just comparing them in combat. Your example of comparing a Slann to two Brutes is invalid because they have a highly significant points difference - 80 Skinks on the other hand are 560 points, only 40 points more than Gotrek, meaning that they would still have a slight advantage against him but it should be a close-fought thing if the two sides are meant to be balanced. Concerning the Kurnoth Hunters, firstly they only have a 5” move, only 1 inch more than Gotrek’s, so they won’t be outrunning him by much of a margin (also Gotrek can run while if they want to shoot they won’t be, which balances that out) and the effectiveness of them shooting at him will depend on the deployment distance - if he’s placed 30” away from them, of course that’s going to be an advantage, but if you were to put him, say, 10” away, that’s much more of an advantage for Gotrek. In addition, remember Gotrek’s 3+ Ward Save? That will Because I believe those two scenarios are highly dependable on such factors, I wouldn’t say Gotrek is as limited as you say he is. However, GW probably intended for horde units to have an advantage against him in order to again make him balanced. Certainly in Warhammer Fantasy, GW generally designed the rules for monsters in one of two ways to make them more balanced - some monsters were designed to massacre infantry and cavalry units en masse, but these struggled against other monsters, while others were designed expressly to be monster killers but could be bogged down by infantry - Gotrek was thus designed to be one of the latter type units. Besides, the horde units that seem to have an advantage against Gotrek struggle to do anything against the massive deathstar characters like Nagash and Archaon that have become more commonplace since AoS arrived, which in turn are easy prey for Gotrek, meaning essentially he’s been designed to be the last piece in a rock-paper-scissors puzzle where each thing has a speciality against something else but has its own weaknesses. Essentially what I’m saying is that Gotrek was designed to walk all over things that before now had relatively few counters, even if he has a commonplace counter himself, which essentially is there to stop him from becoming ridiculous. It just so happened that in your game you were up against one of those armies with more counters available to them. I imagine against other armies he’ll be a lot better, and I think you should try using him against other factions before you dress him down too much.