Zogwort's Curse Preview - Warpack 4

By FiendishDevil, in Warhammer 40,000: Conquest

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=5092

I like how the Ork warlord is focused around temporary Snotlings. Kind of like hit and run tactic-ish.

Is this powerful? I haven't played a real game yet...so I haven't wrapped my head around it quite much.

It can be.

Swarms of Snotlings will effectively make opponents "waste shots" because they have to kill ALL of them before they can win a planet. And with the way combat rounds go, taking that shot effectively gives all the other Snotlings the opportunity to poke the opponent while he "reloads." So, for example, in combat between a 3/3 unit and 3x Snotling tokens, the Snotlings are going to win (in two combat rounds) just from the sheer numbers. Unless the opponent is packing Area Effects, the sheer numbers of a Snotling Swarm will be hard to beat.

That said, this new Ork warlord is well balanced by the fact that the Snotling swarm has to be built, from scratch, each round. And it's hard to know if that's going to be easy or not. So I'm going to hedge on a definitive answer of how powerful this will be in practice, but one thing is sure -- it'll be a whole lot of fun.

Meh, the snotling spawning mechanic would better fit some kind of a slavemaster, not a wyrdboy, who is rather expected to dish out raw damage across units, no matter whether they are foes or allies.

I think it'll be terrible versus Cato, as he'll be AoE lapping up piles of resources as he wipes them out.

Hard to say though, as there's a lot of unseen cards between now and then, and we don't know how the meta will evolve.

In terms of core set interactions though, it'll certainly make Battle Cry, Suppressive Fire, Catachan Outpost better.

In fact, all three of those will likely be included in a deck that builds around swarms.

Could also make Ork Kannon better too to hav absolute expendables about. Snotling Attack is a hard call, and dependent on how many good cards we see that make use of the snotling horde, as you trade off permanence but gain more usable units. I suspect it'll likely be a worthwhile card.

You know, so far I have just had the opportunity to play with the core set starter decks. I wonder how effective these specialized Warboss core cards are once you get to the 50 card custom decks.

Like if this Warboss needs certain cards in his retinue to be available for his snotling attack to be effective, you are dealing with the 8 core cards mixed in a deck with 42 other cards. You might not have the right tools in play until 2,3 or even 4th planet is being contested.

Just wondering.

I have to say after a few days to ponder Ol Zogwort, im a bit dissapointed... I think he is by far the weakest warlord released thusfar, in terms of possible strategy/listbuilds. Which is a shame, because i feel that all the others are fairly close in terms of overall power scale.

All of this comes from his forced reaction, "After the Combat Phase ends, destroy each snotlings token you control." This hamstrings his overall tactical ability, mainly due to the fact that you cant stockpile snotlings at future planets.

Basically his one schtick will be (1) Deploy at planet, (2) swell snotlings. (3) pray they dont have any Area Affect. Not saying that it is a bad strategy (especailly when combined with Launch Tha Snots)... but its fairly bland and easy to see coming. There was so much potential with placing his runtherders in a way that you could assign them incremental amounts of damage on planets down the line (Looking at you Ork Kannon and weirdboy maniak!), or simply using Snotling attack to spread out the distribution rather than plopping them all on the planet you are gonna combat at, which telegraphs your plans to your opponent in the deploy phase > :( .

Obviously it is hard to say, because there are 68 cards that will be released prior that we dont know about... but I feel it would be much more reasonable to change the reaction to "Destroy each snotlings token you control at the planet Ol Zogwort was deployed." That would give the option for a little more of stockpiling on future planets and allow you to use fog of war a bit more to hit your opponent where he might not expect it.

We'll see; overall i love the concept, but doubt the viability/execution. However i never mind being wrong when an unforeseen benefit arises!

I think he's great. Second-to-last win planet (or at win planet) you throw him into the fight and pop a battle cry, intentionally get him bloodied (which pops a handful of other snotlings with his support available) then his forced reaction turns off. Now you've got 10 snotlings spawned and the only thing they can do is aoe or warpstorm.

The option to intentionally kamakazee with battle cry with give you either a bunch of snotlings and turn off his reaction or it will make them retreat and win you a planet.