Rave Review: Grotesques

You would be angry too.
 If someone replaced your pee pee with a steriod injector for lulz
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Hmm Grotesques , I can't really put my finger on it , but I love the 'feel' of this unit , they are essentially ogryns only...not. I feel they have their roots in polp culture characters like Pyramid head and the Abomination or the berserkers from Requiem.

Dunno if these steroid guzzling flesh juggernauts are some kinda DE sick parody of spess marheens or what, but they both delight and amuse me.

This unit is essentially a living battering ram and a wonderful if not totally unsubtle blunt instrument.

lets have a poke around ....

Stats: The stats are pretty nice, more or less direct comparable to ogryns with the main differences being higher I but lower LD and save, no one cares about the save as they come with a free pain point to start with and therefore feel no pain which due to their high tougness will save them from quite alot of stuff, including missile launchers.

They are also a short trip from FC which will bump the 'vanilla' Grots to str 6 and I 5 on the charge  ..... Its fairly easy to start them off with this as due to their pitifully awful LD you are likely going to want a Haemo to lead the unit. Hell bring them up to a decent Ld give them furious charge from the get -go  and bring another liquefier to the party, whats not to like? he'll even benefit from majority toughness 5.

Another rule they come with as standard is Berserk Rampage, essentially , If they are not lead by a character of some description you if you fail a test at the start of the turn another good reason to consider a haemo 'babysitter', the grots go PMT and smash everything within 2d6 for 2d6 str 5 hits... even allies, before essentially dying and they'll hit vehicles on the side facing. I really want to to get a unit to 'go off' in a parking lot ...The only other rule they have understandably makes them count as 2 models for transportation.

Abberation Conversion ?

At 35 points a pop, jury is out wether they are a reasonable price or not , yes its three T5 wounds, but they can still be ID'd with str 10 or ID weps, ten will cost you over 300 points with no toys.

Options-

Liquefier - We like these, may as well get one as small ish units of grots will struggle to kill meq through their saves not to mention the possibility of FnP marines .....

Abberation - 10 points gets you an extra attack and a rather pointless additional point of LD, not fabulous in and of itself but he now gets access to some toys. Its worth mentioning that in larger foot squads you may be better off simply buying an extra Grotesque, he becomes more useful in smaller squads in transports.

Venom Blade - cheap and cheerful and as he has high str you will even get to re-roll those 1's

Mindphase gauntlet - pointless rubbish

Scissorhand - expensive but possibly worth it if you are going the Abberation route , with these on he will potentially get 7 attacks on the charge that wound everything on 3's and re-roll to wound anything T6 or less .....

Scissorhand, early prototype

Flesh glove- This could work , as he gets 6 attacks on the charge anyway that wound everything on 4's which gets the str based poison re rolls, I imagine he will be a fairly serious threat to any multi wound non eternal character /MC.

Its essentially a choice of improved infantry killing with the scissors or character/Mc splattering with the Gauntlet, I think overall the scissors are the better choice as they offer flexibility and are also slightly cheaper.


Transport - They can have a raider, worth thinking about, MoAr dark lances are always nice as is a potential 20 odd inch charge. I think Abberations may go well in transported squads.

There is one more upgrade to consider, In lists which contain Urien Rackarth, Grots can be upgraded to base str 6 at the princely sum of 5 pts per model, Dunno str 7 charges ? Its going to mangle anything thats not a landraider / Lith. I have a theory I would like to test which involves 1 or two large upgraded squads of grots belting out of portals and multi charging several vehicles , or maybe a couple of vehicles and an infantry unit in order to dodge return fire. I think they have the potential to smash parking lots and will playtest them asap, possibly tomorrow down ze club. Also if Urien is in the squad he can act as a sort of medipack for the unit by soaking a wound for them every turn, as he will get it back.

I think Grots will be great in Haemo/WWP focused lists, generally as it stands I can see them being overlooked in favour of other elite choices in most lists. I really like the sheer amount of str 6-7 these guys can pump out, a raider squad can assault out to 20-24 inches and dish out 19 str 6-7 attacks, if your target tank is in range and has not moved fast enough, it be dead.

Grot SMASH !! hur hur hur

There are a few set ups I would like to try with them the usual Haemo with liquifier ,v blade + 4 grots with liqui's plus an Aberration with scissors in a raider , I think these smaller squads may benefit from the Urien Str bonus more than larger squads as they dont have the volume of attacks, it will surely help them VS armour. The above squad with the Str upgrade is over 300 points ..... seems a bit much to me, I'll at least give it a run out once or twice.

The other setup is just a giant blob rushing out of a WWP, even if they dont make combat they are a threat that cannot be ignored , and to have any hope of reducing them sufficiently your opponent may end up using stuff he would rather shoot at your Raiders etc ....

As they are also missing grenades another thing to consider is an Archon with a phantasm launcher , he can also bring a bunch of power weapon attacks which Grots also lack , there is even space in the raider squad above for him, as there is a space for an extra single char, Im not sure vs most enemy objective campers that lack of grenades is a big deal, but its always going to be better to go first with that lovely I5 on the charge.

For me at least an interesting unit , I'm not sure how much they are going to be seen in competitive play I'll need to play them a bit to see how comfortable with them I will be outside of casual /pickup games at the club I think its going to be hard to justify their inclusion in a non haemo style list.

For me, potential massed str 7 hits on rear armour is just plain sexy.

Small update- The first part of my space wolf showcase will be on El D's blog at some point this week.

Next up for Eldar retro are the Rangers and Pathfinders and For DE Its Manderps.

see you soon