Been looking at the upcoming releases and whilst I will of course purchase two boxes of Viper legion, one box of Obscenes and Gorgemaw. . I don't actually think I would use any besides Gorgemaw, is anyone else thinking the same?

Honestly, I cannot see a legitimate reason why I would NOT take a 31 point, 20 effective health (possibly even regenerating), terrain abusing, stun and panic token assigning, threat 3, self applicable attack dice re-rolling demon over these two options.

Viper Legion may. . MAY be able to fire out a panic token. . Spined Threshers do it automatically after activation. Trap Master is OK for a 1 point discard but seriously, unless this is a serious meta pick or a casual game for the lolz, I doubt I will ever take them. I hope the other cards change my mind.

2 x 1 Obscene costs 27 points, don't have brutal, don't have terrain abuse/wound regeneration, can't hand out stun/panic tokens and have no native access to a dice re-roll until you spend 47 points, which is now in 2 x 2 Dead Sprint Flesh Ripper territory. What they can do however, is move a unit (shift 1) that they are engaged with. . which hopefully is going to be a white modifier, usable with their melee attack which SHOULD be Initiative 5. This means that you wouldn't be able to punch and shift people away from you before they strike which to me seems fair. If its green, meaning you can do something like a rally or shift or something and then move them away, if it's early in the initiative, it becomes a guessing game between you and your opponent which seriously back fires on you if they guess right and dial in a charge. If they guess wrong then they get hit, which to be honest, isn't really that bad. On a good, natty roll, the Obs could manage six damage. Maybe, if they are not facing Wraiths. If its late, it's pointless and I cannot see that I will ever use it, or them.

Either way, outside of fun, fluffy, casual games, unless their upgrades are awesome, I doubt I will use them.

What also concerns me, is what FFG will have to release before I actually consider NOT taking Spined Threshers.

32 minutes ago, Viktus106 said:

Either way, outside of fun, fluffy, casual games, unless their upgrades are awesome, I doubt I will use them.

What also concerns me, is what FFG will have to release before I actually consider NOT taking Spined Threshers.

This is what we in our group have been thinking as well. Spined threshers are CLEARLY above the power/cost-curve of the rest of the units in the game.

You know you might not, but some people will get them to add some variety to their army regardless of whether they are stronger or not.

I am not even talking function, just visual. It's a wargame. We want our armies to look awesome. Snake bows and sumo-bois are great!

Similarly, why would you take Thuk'tar and Gorgemaw over Ravos? Ravos is clearly the better hero from what we know, right?

Because one is a giant dragon-snake and the other has a 6m long spine whip. Where did he get a 6m long spine? Did he de-bone a tray of berserkers and superglue their spines together? Was it a tapeworm living inside a Thresher's stomach for whom Kethra conjured a spine!?

I don't think it is Spined Threshers versus Viper Legion. Having ranged units opens up builds in a major way, and there's no reason you can't take both.

2 hours ago, Viktus106 said:

Been looking at the upcoming releases and whilst I will of course purchase two boxes of Viper legion, one box of Obscenes and Gorgemaw. . I don't actually think I would use any besides Gorgemaw, is anyone else thinking the same?

Honestly, I cannot see a legitimate reason why I would NOT take a 31 point, 20 effective health (possibly even regenerating), terrain abusing, stun and panic token assigning, threat 3, self applicable attack dice re-rolling demon over these two options.

Viper Legion may. . MAY be able to fire out a panic token. . Spined Threshers do it automatically after activation. Trap Master is OK for a 1 point discard but seriously, unless this is a serious meta pick or a casual game for the lolz, I doubt I will ever take them. I hope the other cards change my mind.

2 x 1 Obscene costs 27 points, don't have brutal, don't have terrain abuse/wound regeneration, can't hand out stun/panic tokens and have no native access to a dice re-roll until you spend 47 points, which is now in 2 x 2 Dead Sprint Flesh Ripper territory. What they can do however, is move a unit (shift 1) that they are engaged with. . which hopefully is going to be a white modifier, usable with their melee attack which SHOULD be Initiative 5. This means that you wouldn't be able to punch and shift people away from you before they strike which to me seems fair. If its green, meaning you can do something like a rally or shift or something and then move them away, if it's early in the initiative, it becomes a guessing game between you and your opponent which seriously back fires on you if they guess right and dial in a charge. If they guess wrong then they get hit, which to be honest, isn't really that bad. On a good, natty roll, the Obs could manage six damage. Maybe, if they are not facing Wraiths. If its late, it's pointless and I cannot see that I will ever use it, or them.

Either way, outside of fun, fluffy, casual games, unless their upgrades are awesome, I doubt I will use them.

What also concerns me, is what FFG will have to release before I actually consider NOT taking Spined Threshers.

If you only care about MathWars, you are right. Threshers are the best at Farkle.

Use the Rule of 8. It’s hard to reliably get more than 8 trays width of melee on target at any one time. Take 4 Zoidbergs so you have that 8 wide at 124 points. Now what?

If I’m you, I add more Threshers for redundancy. I don’t really increase the damage output per turn if the army as the 2 extra Zoidbergs won’t reliably engage until one of the first 4 dies.

If I’m not obsessed with Threshers: How about 46 for a 4 tray Viper Legion Dispatch/Rallying battery? Cool, you still have 30 left for something. How about a 2 tray, Rank Discipline Viper Legion for 22. You now have 8 points for upgrades and bid. The army now puts out more damage reliably than spammed threshers. Didn't take much.

Obscenes:

I won’t bother with this argument as the unique slot and dial will give us a lot of needed information to judge them. Per the fluff, they should be fast, unlike threshers. So more capable of winning long charges and actually getting into combat. Where threshers are a meat and potatoes unit, these seem more specialist.

Funny thing, Gorgemaw is the one unit I don’t see a strategy for yet. I see a place for Obscenes, Viper Legion, and Beastmaster. If Gorgemaw doesn’t get two melee attacks a turn, then his uniques must be amazing or his command dial crazy.

2 hours ago, Church14 said:

Gorgemaw is the one unit I don’t see a strategy for yet. I see a place for Obscenes, Viper Legion, and Beastmaster. If Gorgemaw doesn’t get two melee attacks a turn, then his uniques must be amazing or his command dial crazy.

Beastmaster without Gorgemaw is good at turning Berserkers and Fleshrippers on a dime. Useful when facing a mobile force.

Personally, I suck at ranged units ( I get their line of sight blocked by my own units on the regular ) and the group of 6 - 8 people I get to play with, ranged units don't get off more than two shots, maybe, before they are engaged. The only exception to this is when someone has a 2 x 1 Reanimate Archer unit which contributes squat or it's a Maegan Latari DeathStar with ALL THE SHIFTS which likely get's charged on turn 2 or 3 . . 4 if it's a good day for Latari. So you can see why I don't have much faith in Viper Legion.

Obscenes, I know zero of lore wise. If they are meant to be silly quick, how quick are we talking? Are we talking Dead Sprint Flesh Ripper fast here or Aggressive / Warsprinter Berserker fast ?

Reason I ask is that my present list (3 x 2 Berserker with Aggressive / Warsprinter / Dispatch Runner, 2 x 2 Flesh Rippers with Dead Sprint, 2 x 2 Flesh Rippers with Dead Sprint, 2 x 1 Spined Thresher with Devouring Maws and 2 x 1 Spined Thresher with Devouring Maws 198 points), likes to engage, very, VERY quickly and from three different fronts, so swapping out one of those units for something that is going to get left behind and contribute very little damage wise doesn't seem like a good fit. If anything it's either going to just sit on an objective or it's going to fire at units I'm engaged with and just cause me to take severity one morale test.

As for Gorgemaw, i'll use him because I like the idea behind him. I don't like Ravos because I hate his stupid, smug, face and how much salt he generates against Death Knights. I like Keth'ra because I use a lot of Flesh Rippers and it kind of reminds me of Jurassic World where all the Raptors are charging forward, Keth'ra is essentially riding Blue.

Don't get me wrong, I WILL USE the new units but when it comes to Regionals, Nationals, etc, I won't. My current list has gotten me an impressive win streak and I think the addition of Vipers to it would hurt the list more.

50 minutes ago, Xelto said:

Beastmaster without Gorgemaw is good at turning Berserkers and Fleshrippers on a dime. Useful when facing a mobile force.

Absolutely. So Beastmaster makes sense. Both his Call To Heel and the skill make sense and have a place to me.

Gorgemaw gets banked shifts and variable speed marches. He also get allies gain Wound==Inspiration after setup. I get MoI Rippers, but the rest of it doesn’t look good yet.

So your complaint boils down to spined threshers are to broken so I cant take my new powerful but more reasonable units, got it!

In tornaments I agree, it is hard to justify not taking the broken spined threshers but I am glad that they didnt create the new units at spined thresher power levels, it would just add to the problem of power balance between uthuk and everyone else that currently exists.

36 minutes ago, Viktus106 said:

Personally, I suck at ranged units ( I get their line of sight blocked by my own units on the regular ) and the group of 6 - 8 people I get to play with, ranged units don't get off more than two shots, maybe, before they are engaged. The only exception to this is when someone has a 2 x 1 Reanimate Archer unit which contributes squat or it's a Maegan Latari DeathStar with ALL THE SHIFTS which likely get's charged on turn 2 or 3 . . 4 if it's a good day for Latari. So you can see why I don't have much faith in Viper Legion.

Obscenes, I know zero of lore wise. If they are meant to be silly quick, how quick are we talking? Are we talking Dead Sprint Flesh Ripper fast here or Aggressive / Warsprinter Berserker fast ?

Reason I ask is that my present list (3 x 2 Berserker with Aggressive / Warsprinter / Dispatch Runner, 2 x 2 Flesh Rippers with Dead Sprint, 2 x 2 Flesh Rippers with Dead Sprint, 2 x 1 Spined Thresher with Devouring Maws and 2 x 1 Spined Thresher with Devouring Maws 198 points), likes to engage, very, VERY quickly and from three different fronts, so swapping out one of those units for something that is going to get left behind and contribute very little damage wise doesn't seem like a good fit. If anything it's either going to just sit on an objective or it's going to fire at units I'm engaged with and just cause me to take severity one morale test.

As for Gorgemaw, i'll use him because I like the idea behind him. I don't like Ravos because I hate his stupid, smug, face and how much salt he generates against Death Knights. I like Keth'ra because I use a lot of Flesh Rippers and it kind of reminds me of Jurassic World where all the Raptors are charging forward, Keth'ra is essentially riding Blue.

Don't get me wrong, I WILL USE the new units but when it comes to Regionals, Nationals, etc, I won't. My current list has gotten me an impressive win streak and I think the addition of Vipers to it would hurt the list more.

There have been successful lists that run things like 2x1 Berserkers with Fire Rune, so I think it's fair to say there is room in SOME lists for ranged support. You've specialized in Uthuk's aggressive nature, particularly with those Rippers, so you'd probably have to change the whole nature of your list to get dividends from the new stuff. Which is pretty cool! It's great to be able to mix things up.

Also, @Church14 has talked in the past about his observation that it's tough to get really good use out of more than 8 trays worth of melee units. Obviously more don't go to waste, but I think it's reasonable to start thinking of 8 trays as a bit of an inflection point, after which further investment has diminishing returns. Maybe you pivot to something like this:

Let's use Viper Legion: 197/200

Berserkers [37] 3x2
Warsprinter [3] Aggressive Shrieker [5]
Total Unit Cost: 45

Flesh Rippers [38] 2x2
Dead Sprint [4]
Total Unit Cost: 42

Spined Threshers [28] 2x1
Devouring Maws [3]
Total Unit Cost: 31

Spined Threshers [28] 2x1
Devouring Maws [3]
Total Unit Cost: 31

Viper Legion Archers [33] 2x2
Dispatch Runner [7] Wind Rune [6] Simultaneous Orders [2]
Total Unit Cost: 48

Now that's just something I threw together, but it's freed up the modifier dial on the Berserkers and reduced the crowding on the frontlines in exchange for a unit that can be firing and repositioning while handing out dispatch runner attacks. Between wind rune and warsprinter's army-wide ability, the archers should have no trouble keeping up, and especially on units near a Thresher, they put out pretty respectable damage. Maybe you find they're not for you, but additional options are always good.

As for Obscenes and Beastmaster... they bring a weird, technical style of play to the Uthuk that is extremely difficult to analyze without considerable table time, never mind dials.