The Army Structure & Composition (part III)

A bit more on the Chanty Singer and units with related "risks"...

Being keen to keep the army balanced I wanted to ensure that many units had some sort of weakness or drawback. Those units which did not would be rigourously "points costed" and/or limited in use.

Some examples of these possible drawbacks include:-

The Chanty Singer who sings uncontrollably for pleasure. Sometimes his songs are less than inspiring and result in nearby units losing some of their will to fight.

The Tide Watchers who, while usually expert in throwing their nets, can sometimes entangle their own unit in their enthusiam to get to grips with the enemy.

The Leviathan who becomes increasingly unmanageable throughout the battle until he has tasted the enemy's blood.

The Octopus which is stupid and thus limited somewhat with the need to be deployed near it's general.

The Interceptors which should be excellent when charging into combat but are vulnerable out of combat and when being charged and in subsequent combat rounds due to a lack of armour and no rank bonus.

Giant Crabs which can be excellent in combat, especially against heavily armoured enemies but come at a risk - the loss of one crab could be curtains for the unit.

With lobstrosities the drawback is a lot simpler, they are very slow with a movement of only 3 inches. After constructing a few army lists I realised this made their selection difficult to justify given the alternatives. Not only that but the enemy could all too easily march block them out of the game which is a "no-no" for a high pts cost unit that must take the fight to the enemy. So, I tweaked them slighty and gave them the Dwarfs 'relentless' rule so they couldn't be march blocked.

The exception to my unit drawback philosophy...

The one exception to the above is the Trident Guard. This unit has no notable weaknesses but is limited in use by the number of Lords and Princes the army takes. I wanted to ensure the army could not just "bully" it's way across the battlefield with Trident Guard alone but I also wanted to include one truly effective elite rank and file unit. The Trident Guard should be capable of taking on any elite foot unit in the game such as the Vampire Counts Grave Guard, Lizardmen Temple Guard, Hammerers / Ironbreakers, Swordmasters, the Dark Elves Black Guard, Chaos Chosen etc...

Well, I don't to bore you so that's enough for now.

Thanks for reading,
Sigmar