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OK, so reading some people talking about monstrous hordes and now I'm thinking rat ogres.

At only 40 points a piece a horde of them should be doable, but here where I get into a little confusion, where would I put the handlers? I mean they don't have to be at the front like characters or unit champions do they? would I only be able to put them behind one another?

Here is my proposed set up:

____ ____ ____ ____ ____
|000|000 |000 | 000| 000 |
|000|000 | 000| 000| 000 |
----------------------------------------
__ ____ ____ ____ ____ __
|_| 000 |000 | 000 |000 | _|
|_| 000 | 000 | 000 | 000| _|

Or something like that, is this actually an option? if I have additional handlers do they go behind the back rank of ogres? do they get the bonus of additional rank of attacks with whips over rat ogres? So many questions!!!

I would put all the handlers at the back, apart form any upgrade handlers which act as characters. So Rat Ogres at the front...

I like the idea of a ton of rat ogres, though I don't think going horde is going to be too helpful - it isn't until you get to the 13th rat ogre that you're benefiting from the extra rank of attaks. Now going like 8 rogres, there's a concept that doesn't break the bank in points

On the handlers, they'd all go at the back, unless you buy a moulder, in which case he has to muck things up and run in the front, to be punched out. I suggest not taking said moulder and presenting a wall of mad mutant beasts

- Salvage

Here's a interesting question: where do you take wounds from by RAW. Here's the scenario:

I was running my Rat Ogre's in 8x2 formation, which by the way is absoluately hysterical, fighty, and getting stomp on infantry is big. I charge, took wounds, and was asked to remove casualties from the back. Called a TO and realized the following:

Casaulty remove very clearly says "remove from the back." So i was asked to remove the packmasters even though the Rat Ogre's are fighting. What I had was a unit of Rat Ogre's under stupidity awesome.

Raised 2 points.
1. Very worthwhile have the Warlord on the Bonebreaker for the just in case my unit goes stupid.
2. Inter mix your pack masters. Cannot find a rule saying they cannot be inside the unit now. So I use them side by side with Ratogre's making the unit uniform. That way wounds can be allocated by what is actually fighting in combat.

If you had to remove from the back, the Step Up rule would have no purpose. Removing from the back just speeds things up. You actually remove from the front.

There is no "step up" rule, you just remove from the back see the BRB (pages 5, and 51 for CC), its called step up cuz there was a very old rule called that which did the same.
However you do not remove the packmasters (or whatever), since they're like unit champions and only die if hit directly, in this case you would remove RnF models which for this unit are rat ogres.

Agreed with above... same with Slayers etc. You remove non champion, regular dudes, which in this case is Rat Ogres sadly... to be honest I would buy a crap ton of packmasters if I could lose them before Rat Ogres with a Warload on his Rat Pony in there.

3 packmasters = 24 pts
1 rat ogre = 40 pts

You can only use so many packmasters per number of ogres though 2:1 ogres to masters.

So even if you did kill them first (which makes 0 sense) they would still run out pretty quick.
And even so when you start losing ogres your packmasters will move up and start getting whip attacks added in.

But my point is frenzied rat ogres more or less lead themselves, taking the packmasters as a point buffer would be prefered to me. Too bad it don't go that way.