My new favorite toy

In my game against Kev, I was a little disappointed to not be able to take Galrauch. Since then some tweaking has gotten him glued together....but I may not take him anyway.

Since he checks in at a hefty 616 points (why they did not make it 666 since they did that with his stats I do not know), he is pretty tough to fit in anyway.

With the WoC, your lack of shooting creates a big hole. You need magic to take care of two roles; shooting and magic. So getting an effective magic phase is pretty much vital to making the army work, particularly against the vast percentage of armies which currently do not allow armor saves.

So the investment is not just Galrauch, it is the inevitable back-up wizard with the Infernal Puppet to protect against the inevitable mis-cast(s). Unlike the mis-cast proof Teclis/Slann, one bad roll can really ruin your day, so the Puppet is a necessary level of protection.

With my love of magic, it is hard not to take a wizard. With my love of dragons, it is tough not to take a wizard. Galrauch fulfilling both roles meant he was a great choice.

Until the game this past weekend.

As a general rule, I am not fond of putting a wizard on a dragon, even a wizard in Chaos armor. Too squishy.

But...throw the Talisman of Preservation, give him the tzeentch mark, and suddenly you have a 3+ ward save.

Nice.

He managed to stand up to multiple rounds of combat with the H-pit abomination throwing 13, 14, 15 attacks at him. With the back-up wizard Puppeting his mis-casts to a 7, he is in good shape to survive.

Thing is, he becomes a real power-house in combat. The wizard is weak compared to a Chaos fighter-character...or a Doombull, or Bretonnian fighter-character...but put him up against rank and file, between his efforts, the dragon thunderstomping and hacking, and he can deal out a world of hurt.

So he is mobile to get his magic where it needs to be, tough to kill, and deadly when he gets into combat. He fulfills my desires for both wizard and dragon presence. And he is just fun to play.

So he will be a temptation to use in just about every game. The problem is...he can only be fit into games 2800 points plus...so he will not always be around. But it is a build worth remembering.

Funny thing is, I then started thinking. As fun as this is, what would happen if I put together a build to go warmachine/monster hunting? I do not have a lot of faith in this build to consistently do well.

But put a chaos lord up there...how would it look? So I started toying around with various builds. And I found one that may make an appearance at some point.

The Chaos Lord would have 5 WS8 S7 attacks that will go first against all but a handful of enemies. He will have a 1+ save with 3+ ward. Then the dragon will have 6 WS6 S6 attacks, a thunderstomp, and if played right, will save his breath attack.

If everything hit 100% (unlikely, but possible) that is 5 S7, 12 S6 and 12 S4 attacks. Oh, and for a lark if the game is big enough, I gave him the Word of Agony option, another D6 S4 hits. That is a lot of potential output, and he is pretty rugged.

Sure, some things (Pendant of Kalith (sic) comes to mind) shut it down, but it is a force to be reckoned with. Since nobody in the group is currently playing dwarves and our Empire player has abominable luck (1 shot in 3 games I know of...and that after we made him re-roll a mis-fire because it had gotten too ridiculous) I am not really afraid of the cannonball to the face.

Of course, the other problem with this build is it shafts my magic phase. I can spam a couple low-levels, though. Might be fun.

The other downside is it means I pretty much want to play games 2800 points range whereas there is a certain movement afoot in the group to play smaller games. Hmm...