About Trident Guard and Wavebreakers

Breaking Waves over the Tridents...

This post continues from where I left off on the crest rider post underneath this one.

A concern has arisen about the power "gap" between Wavebreakers and the famous (probably to become infamous) Oceanic Trident Guard.

Trident Guard are good, let's make no bones about it. They're probably one of the more combat effective rank and file elite units in the Warhammer world.

Just saying that has probably given a lot of ammo to the Nautican army detractors. Afterall, nobody likes a unit that, on the face of their profile, might seem just too good.

The thing is, when taken in context of the whole army the Trident Guard are far from overwhelming. The reason I say this is because there are two restrictions on their use (special unit and bodyguard rules). Secondly, the army is very reliant on them and as a consequence becomes vulnerable in other areas if the Nautican player piles too many points into the Trident Guard units and uses up all their special unit slots.

It shouldn't be too difficult for enemies to conjure up a plan to deal with the trident guard so I wouldn't expect an army full of trident guard to perform particularly well against well balanced enemies. If for example an army included 4 trident guard units then it could have no magic users or special characters or any other special units.

On top of this, take into account that the Nautican Lords and Heroes are not that great and you must take one for each trident guard unit you deploy. They are roughly the equivalent of elves but with fewer useful magic items on offer.

So, we've decided to try to bridge the gap between the Trident Guard and the other Nautican core units.

Rather than including a new unit we're going to tweak the Wave Breakers a little.

A final decision has yet to be made but they will probably gain +1 strength. My buddy was thinking maybe +1 to their weapon skill too but I'm not so sure about that.

I have been rifling through the other army books and I now think the Wavebreakers were slightly too expensive before (compared to say Chaos Marauders or the Empire rank and file when you take into account their detachment rule benefits). So the Wavebreaker points cost will probably remain the same.

As soon as we've decided I'll update the army list.

Thanks for reading,
Sigmar.