While looking back through my Bloggeries I realised that this time last Year I made a bit of noise about the rebasing of my Abyssal Dwarf Army – Azghars Hellforged Legion of Brass – and I also did a blog in defence of my favourite Abyssal Dwarf Troop type, the Abyssal Halfbreed (see article here). I didn’t manage to complete the project as real life intervened in the form of a rather unexpected house move and all that it entails which brought the Abyssal Dwarf army project to a grinding halt and I had to use the Free Dwarfs for the rest of the Tournament season. Now that slightly more stability has been restored the Abyssal Dwarf project can be re-visited.
In true geek form I decided to look back at the Hellforged Legions Tournament performance so far and so I headed over to the KoW Masters site to look up my past History. This surprised me in a couple of ways, one that my memory of using Abyssal Dwarfs at tournaments was faulty and also that I have had the Abyssal Dwarfs for longer than I thought lol I thought I had got them during Lockdown but apparently I had them a Year earlier than that! Old age must be taking its toll on this Troll. The Hellforged Legion took part in only four real life Tournaments and one Online Tournament since I brought them into being. Their best performance was actually at the Universal Battles Tournament of Virtually Vanguard where I won 3 Drew 1 and lost 1 to come in 8th of 32 overall but the picture in Real life is not as rosy.
Leap of War Feb 20 1/2/2 15 of 18
SpeedKow Oct 21 3/0/3 7 of 12
Welsh Qualifier May 22 1/0/3 20 of 26
Krampus Karnage Dec 22 1/1/1 9 of 12
Most of the lists used for these tournaments were written from scratch by myself as there were not a whole lot of Netlists around at the time that fit my collection of models, so I had to develop the lists from scratch ( if you have read my Blogpost on List writing then you will know this is not my usual method for writing lists) and it was this, coupled with an extreme lack of practise with the Army, that resulted in their lacklustre performance.
So, as well as resurrecting this Army project and blogging it, I have decided to document the list choice and building process as a follow on to the Bloggery about List building. Hopefully this will help my Reader to apply the same process to their own Armies and see more success, at the very least it may result in some mirth as my Reader derides my feeble attempts to improve the performance of the Army. I have already signed the Army up to Two Tournaments in just over a Months time and , while the painting required to get the Hellforged Legion up to spec is limited, the amount of time I need to devote to getting the various elements playtested and also to bring my play back up to Tournament level is also limited.
The first thing to do is work out what can be fielded for the Abyssal Dwarfs currently my collection consists of
2 Regiments of Decimators
2 Regiments and two troops of Abyssal Halfbreeds
2 Hordes of Grotesques
2 hordes of Obsidian Golems
4 Troops of Gargoyles
3 Overmaster models
1 Slavemaster Model
1 Taskmaster on Chariot Model
3 Regiments of Darksouls (Can also be run as a Horde and a Regiment)
1 Greater Obsidian Golem
1 Infernox
1 Grotesque Champion
3 Halfbreed Champions
1 Brakki Barka
1 Overmaster on Ancient Winged Halfbreed
1 Ba’su’su the Vile
2 Ironcasters
3 HexCasters
3 Regiments of Mutated Mastiff Hunting packs
3 Angkor Mortar
2 G’rog Mortar
2 Dragon Fire teams
2 Regiments of Immortal Guard
As can be seen there is quite a lot of choice of what to put into the Army , there are no Abyssal Dwarf Berserkers as I am yet to find a suitable model for them and I am still hoping to get a Hellfane printed from the Mantic Vault, but for now I will create the army from the existing models. In time the Abyssal Dwarfs will also form the core of my Ratkin Slave Army as I have nearly 200 Ratkin models awaiting building and painting, but that, as they say, is another story.
The first thing I need to do is to decide what kind of Army I want to field, do I want to go for a gunline of decimators and warmachines backed up by Iron & Hexcasters or do I want to go infantry heavy with Golems,Blacksouls and Decimators with support, or perhaps have a fast moving army made up of Halfbreeds and Grotesques with Gargoyles and sturdy individuals ?
With the release of the Clash of Kings 24 updates the Abyssal Dwarfs benefited from the benevolence of the Rules Council and several troop types received positive changes, amongst these were the Halfbreeds and Grotesques. I had already been running a significant number of these troops in my Armies and now they are even better, this in addition to the fact I am a Free Dwarf general and have a penchant for running fast moving, hitty armies means that my choice is almost made for me! What is not too like about a fast moving, all crushing strength, all regenerating Army of Purple Gribblies to run across the table and kick some ass!
The Halfbreeds have gained an extra point of Nerve to move them from 14/16 to 15/17 and coupled with their Fury special rule and Regeneration 5+ this can make them a little more resilient to being wavered both before and after they have entered combat. The Grotesques have been given the Strider special rule which makes them less dependent on artifacts to maintain their combat power and allows them a little more freedom on where they can fight.
But what to back the Halfbreeds and Grotesques up with? Both troop types have their own champions, with the Halfbreed champion being an individual and the Grotesque champion being Large Cavalry. I will be running both of these Characters in my practise Games in order to gauge which is the better choice and how many to include.
One of the ways to boost the Grotesques I have found in the past is to utilise a Hexcaster to weakness any prospective attackers in order to effectively make the Grotesques Def6 , this makes them as good in this role than Golems and they can march and are height 4 to boot, but it is a more expensive option and the Hexcaster can only do one other thing, again practise will show if this is a viable tactic or not.
One thing that I saw recently was the use of the Spell Host Shadow Beast (HSB) with Halfbreed Heros as this can give them up to 11 attacks in combat (depending on the level of Host Shadow beast spell taken) and this could be a nice boost to the combat power of the army , a Regiment of Halfbreeds and a champion with HSB could generate 27 attacks on 3+ with various levels of crushing strength and vicious, this level of attack should reliably delete most Infantry regiments up to Def 6 and the fact that there could be multiple incidences of this in the Army may make an opponent worried.
Using Grotesque Champions with Halfbreeds is also a good tactic, although they are “only” speed 7, the Height 4 Nimble large Cavalry model can nimble into flanks or lurk behind the Halfbreeds to then join them in a double charge or countercharge, with 7 attacks at Crushing 2 they add just as much as a Halfbreed Champion, but if they get in a flank or rear they can become devastating and their Fury and regeneration means they can be the gift that keeps on giving! The fact that they are a scoring unit is just icing on the cake!
So the initial plans are for a Fast moving Army of Abyssal Halfbreeds and Abyssal Grotesques backed up by Champions , Gargoyles and Magic Users – the exact composition may vary depending on the play testing that I can get in, but either way there will be further Bloggery on the Progress of Azghars Hellforged Legion in the 2024 Season of Kings of War.
Comments