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My birthday is this coming Friday, and the guys that I play with at my local Warmachine/Hordes club were kind enough to chip in and get me some models, since I am just getting into the game and all.

Here is what they got me:

Gorten Grundback
Thor Steinhammer
Ghordson Avalancher

IMHO, this is a great present form the guys! I went up to the shop today and picked them up, but alas none of them were there to tell me what these models can really do. Can any of you guys tell me the good, the bad, and the ugly of these models?

Thanks a bunch!

I only have actual play experience with Gorten but here goes:

The good: High ARM. High MAT. Solid weapons. Dude loves to brawl.

Solid spell list. Rock wall means slams are going hurt, plus you can cut off movement to both guide the battle and give your 'jacks some breathing room by making their fights one on one. Strength of Granite is amazing. +4 STR makes a driller into a truly terrifying weapon. POW 21 sustained attacks. Think about that. Then Laugh

Landslide may be the most amazing feat in the game for Killbox, Mosh Pit, No Mans Land, etc. Take the best part of pDenny's feat (the debuffs) and then combine it with a selective 8" push or pull. You can either shove them right out for the win, or pull them in for the kill. It's drop dead sexy.

Bad: Slow speed. His short little legs just can't keep up with anything faster than a Khador 'jack. He also can't shoot very well, so if you do you're boosting to hit, which brings us to...

The Ugly: FOC 5. Which sucks. 10" control area, and you can either feed your 'jacks or sling a spell. His 'jacks are focus efficient but not enough to support a fair sized battle group.

Thanks for the info man! Really useful!

I was expecting the fact that he is slow. I mean come on, he is a Dwarf after all.

The focus and the control range is indeed a bit crappy. Why is his control range 2'' less then everyone's else?

Metal Head Bard wrote:Why is his control range 2'' less then everyone's else?

I can't tell if your starting out or not so I'm not trying to be snarky with this:

Control Range is defined as bubble around your caster in which they can use control their 'jacks. Control area is defined as 2xFOC in inches. So a FOC 6 caster gets 12", FOC 7 gets 14". Etc.

In all fairness, with what Gorten brings to the table, FOC 6 would be incredibly nasty, and FOC7 would be downright broken. As much as it sucks to have the lowest FOC stat in the game, I can totes see why they did it.

Yeah, all those gun bunnies with powerful shot, especially the spray one are nasty efficient.

Gr3y wrote:

Metal Head Bard wrote:Why is his control range 2'' less then everyone's else?

I can't tell if your starting out or not so I'm not trying to be snarky with this:

Control Range is defined as bubble around your caster in which they can use control their 'jacks. Control area is defined as 2xFOC in inches. So a FOC 6 caster gets 12", FOC 7 gets 14". Etc.

In all fairness, with what Gorten brings to the table, FOC 6 would be incredibly nasty, and FOC7 would be downright broken. As much as it sucks to have the lowest FOC stat in the game, I can totes see why they did it.

I am indeed just starting out >.>

Thanks for the info though!!

Since no one has covered Thor and the Avalancher, I'll give it a go.

First, the Avalancher because it's easier. It's a Rhulic warjack, which means it's slow and easy to hit. However, it has high ARM and a healthy damage grid. It has a shield which brings it's ARM up to 21 which is about as high an unbuffed ARM stat as you'll see in the entire game (Khador's Devastator is the only thing I can think of offhand that's higher). It has a gun with good RNG, good POW, and a small AOE which makes it decent at blowing up infantry or putting some hurt on an enemy jack. It's not going to kill a lot by itself, so choose your targets carefully and focus fire on it if at all possible. Unfortunately, to take the gun and shield, the Avalancher had to leave any melee weapons at home. It can hit stuff with its shield, but that's not as good as, let's say, a drill or a hammer. Try to keep it out of melee if at all possible. Or you could put Gorten's Strength of Granite spell on it to make it respectable.

Thor is a complex little guy. First, he has a blow torch that he can use to burn things at (short) range or in melee. It sets stuff on fire, so that's pretty good. But that's not why you take Thor. Thor is one of the best guys to have around jacks. He can repair Rhulic jacks, which combined with their toughness can keep them running much longer than they have any right doing. His signature ability is called Tune Up. Tune Up can make a Rhulic jack either much more accurate on all attacks or do much more damage. It might take some practice to get the most out of this ability, but believe me when I say that all of the factions are jealous that they can't use it on their jacks. Thor is also a jack marshal which means he can control warjacks without using focus. This is the most complicated part of using Thor, and it's where I will make some recommendations.

1) Practice using jacks with Gorten first. Learn how to use focus with your warcaster and your jacks. Bring Thor along to fix things and use Tune Up, but wait a few games before using his jack marshal ability.

2) After you get comfortable with that, then go to Prime and read the Jack Marshal rules. Then give it a try. Thor is considered to be one of the best jack marshals in the game, but he is pretty fragile and giving him a warjack puts a giant bulls eye on his head.

When you get around to jack marshaling with Thor, you'll finally be able to make use of his last ability, Drive: Pronto. He can make a jack he's marshaling immediately move its SPD. That's in addition to the jack's normal activation which opens up the door to a whole lot of fun.

In the end, Gorten and Thor are two of the best Rhulic models available. The Avalancher gets some flak for its price coupled with its lack of melee capability, but it is still a solid model and really pairs well with Thor. I give you this website to peruse for homework. Good luck and welcome to the machine!

Wow, thanks a lot man for the great info!

Taking a look at that website as we speak!

Just a quick word of warning: While Battle College is great for summaries of abilities (most of the time. It's a wiki and is subject to being downright wrong occasionally), it's usually pretty crappy for anything but the most general tactical advice.

Here's a suggestion for a 15 point Mangled Metal list. You would need to pick up a couple of gun bunnies (Gunners are better in mangled metal, but you're going to want a Blaster or two once you step up to infantry machine) and a Driller. You are going to buy a Driller anyway because it is one of the most amazing 'jacks in the game. A Driller with Strength of Granite can and will kill anything you point it at. That combo will be doing a whopping dice minus four to a turtled Devastator with its drill. Anything less than that is going to either be wrecked or crippled after one round.

Army: Tiny guys, big hurt!
Type: Duel (1 caster, 15pts)
Points: 14
Gorten Grundback (*7pts)
* Grundback Gunner (3pts)
* Grundback Gunner (3pts)
* Ghordson Avalancher (9pts)
* Ghordson Driller (6pts)

I have a regular opponent who always brings 2 Drillers with his Rhulic list, no matter the point level.

I hate those things. Especially because they shred my Slayers without breaking a sweat.

he get's the drop on you?? Something is off

maybe I need to play against dwarves a few times, because this sounds very strange...

He's got 2, I usually only have one helljack.

If he can Pronto one before I can kill Thor, he gets there.
Or if I roll bad on damage, even with debuffs in place.

I've played him many times. He's not able to pull that off every time, but when he does, it really hurts.

Gorten's feat also means you're getting alot closer regardless of how you feel about it. The only warjack I can think of that hits harder than the driller with SoG is a Juggy or Beast 09 with Fury (P+S 22).

The hardest is still Epic Stryker with an average 3 dice overload. Average puts him even dice on a Devvy.