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So I have been looking at frenzy, and as far as I can tell, ramming a dire troll with max fury on it into the opponents throat and then letting it frenzy, crashing into the nearest model (I would ensure it was one of my opponents) smacking around what ever it hit, leaving my warlock to spend his fury on spells, and sap off my other two or three warbeasts so they DONT frenzy in my back field.

SO dakka, hows frenzy work in your experience. Is it the bubonic plague, or is it a grenade with the spoon flown and the pin out?

When a beast frenzies it only gets to make one attack with its strongest weapon. Yeah the attack and damage rolls are boosted ... but if you leach fury off the beast you can force it to make more attacks (as long as it stays in your control area). A fury 5 dire troll has 2 initial attacks plus another possible five attacks. That's a possible 7 attacks total. You'll do more damage with 7 attacks than one fully boosted attack.

Besides if the beast is outside your control area, you cannot reave fury from it if the beast dies. You also can't transfer damage to a beast that is outside your control area. Those are big deals.

Noisy_Marine wrote:When a beast frenzies it only gets to make one attack with its strongest weapon. Yeah the attack and damage rolls are boosted ... but if you leach fury off the beast you can force it to make more attacks (as long as it stays in your control area). A fury 5 dire troll has 2 initial attacks plus another possible five attacks. That's a possible 7 attacks total. You'll do more damage with 7 attacks than one fully boosted attack.

Besides if the beast is outside your control area, you cannot reave fury from it if the beast dies. You also can't transfer damage to a beast that is outside your control area. Those are big deals.

Gotcha. But to me it still sounds like manageable downsides. And the warbeast looses all of the fury it has at the end of its frenzy. I was planing on running a dire troll mauler up into my opponents grill, and then charging something and throwing it, boosting everything so it will have around 4 fury on it. Then letting it frenzy (worst case scenario) and then worry about it next turn. I could still keep the mauler in my control range and transfer dmg to it. AND im not worrying about it being there for reave purposes because i plan on keeping my two impaler trolls and my bouncer up on fury by boosting their to hit rolls and dmg rolls the entire walk up

If you do what you propose one turn and red line a beast, the threshold check for frenzy will happen at the beginning of your next turn. If it fails the check and frenzies, all it gets to do that next turn is one attack (boosted attack and damage rolls) and then its activation ends for that turn. Getting one attack out of the beast is probably a significant loss of offensive potential compared to what it could output otherwise, but it is not without merit sometimes, depending on what you killed the previous turn to red line it in the first place... You don't want to haphazardly risk a frenzy, but if it happens after a turn that caused good carnage it can be worth it.

haendas wrote:If you do what you propose one turn and red line a beast, the threshold check for frenzy will happen at the beginning of your next turn. If it fails the check and frenzies, all it gets to do that next turn is one attack (boosted attack and damage rolls) and then its activation ends for that turn. Getting one attack out of the beast is probably a significant loss of offensive potential compared to what it could output otherwise, but it is not without merit sometimes, depending on what you killed the previous turn to red line it in the first place... You don't want to haphazardly risk a frenzy, but if it happens after a turn that caused good carnage it can be worth it.

Cool. The only time in which I would do this on purpose would be for the following. Dire troll mauler charges (with zero fury) for 1 fury. Attacks key warjack. Boosts to hit for 2nd fury, hits, dmgs, boosts second to hit for 3rd fury and dmg for 4th. Then uses special and throws warjack/beast into (hopefully) caster, or other target to block a charge lane to my mauler. Boosts dmg on throw for 5th fury. Next turn redlines, makes an advance onto nearby target (if noone charged him) and makes his attack. Because I am planning on ignoring the DT for this turn, he is fine by eating what he killed (if living model) This leaves my warlock free to completely remove all fury from my other trolls, leaving the trolls open to make fully boosted attacks this turn.

Thats the plan anyway, but you know what they say about plans and contact with the enemy and all, I really just wanted to see if other players use a "frenzy bomb rush" on people or if it was to detrimental to yourself. It seems to me as it can be used to my advantage more than my detriment.


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Oh and to that, if the dire troll survives, he has no fury, so I could easily repeat the tactic again.

One major flaw in your plan is that now you have a Dire Troll deep in enemy territory with little support. Sure, you've killed one enemy beast/'jack, but now you've got an entire army ready to smack the living crap out of that troll, which shouldn't be too hard.

Once you lose that Dire Troll, it becomes harder for your Warlock to gain fury, you'll have to force/rile your other beasts more, which might result in undesirable frenzies. Frenzy can be powerful if used correctly, but it has many negatives as well.

Great, you killed my Seether. My 10 Mechanithralls would love to have a word with you, with the help of Crippling Grasp from pDeneghra.

As it has been said there is never a time where it is more advantageous to lose control of your beast than to have control over it, as the damage output is greatly reduced. By the same token there are also times where it no longer matters if you lose control of your beasts. For example, what Fury allows horde armies to do is to throw your beasts at the opponent and try to cripple their ability to retaliate by maxing them all out if need be. Even if you lose control of your beasts after this it doesn't really matter anymore as there might not be anything left that can significantly hurt your army.

To be honest, it baffles me that you are able to see a upside on your beast frenzying and to be even more honest, i guess that you might get at least one aspect of the frenzy rules wrong.

Just to show you what i mean:

The Mauler end its turn full of fury near your enemy. In both cases it somehow survives the enemys turn. Now we got 2 scenarios:

1. You dont leech its fury. The mauler frenzies, charges the nearest enemy ( likely some random grunt) and slaps it once. After that it does nothing for the rest of the turn.

2. You leech all the fury and it does not frenzy. You now have control of your mauler and it is able to do pretty much anything. It can charge a target you decide on, trample, whatever. It also is still able to use all its initial attacks and use all its fury and is therefore able to take down pretty much anything.

Please explain how 1. is better than 2., im extremely curious.

Vombaticus wrote:To be honest, it baffles me that you are able to see a upside on your beast frenzying and to be even more honest, i guess that you might get at least one aspect of the frenzy rules wrong.

Just to show you what i mean:

The Mauler end its turn full of fury near your enemy. In both cases it somehow survives the enemys turn. Now we got 2 scenarios:

1. You dont leech its fury. The mauler frenzies, charges the nearest enemy ( likely some random grunt) and slaps it once. After that it does nothing for the rest of the turn.

2. You leech all the fury and it does not frenzy. You now have control of your mauler and it is able to do pretty much anything. It can charge a target you decide on, trample, whatever. It also is still able to use all its initial attacks and use all its fury and is therefore able to take down pretty much anything.

Please explain how 1. is better than 2., im extremely curious.

Well, the situation in number two is coming up behind the dire troll mauler is p/EDoomshaper, 2 Impaler trolls and a bouncer or axer. 10 Kriel warriors with UA and various other gribbles. So the mauler is hardly all by his lonesome here.

The upside here, is the Mauler is a huge threat and my opponent wont know what I am doing until its already done. If I dont worry about removing nothing but MAYBE one fury from the mauler my impaler trolls, and the axer will all have 3 fury to go this turn. Doomshaper will have leached a full 7 fury from all the light trolls, and will be able to toss out an animi or two, and even pop off a huge spell.

IF in this instance, I take fury from my mauler instead, the previous turn I will have had to play light with my other 3 trolls in order to not have some frenzy-able trolls RIGHT next to my warlock. And this turn the light trolls, again, wont be able to go completely full out, because they will likely already have fury on them.

The way I see it, in my VERY new eyes, is by letting the mauler blitz in, completely wreck or severely disable its target jack/beast and then chucking it to block a charge lane, burning ALL of its fury, leaves me free over two turns, to have 2 impaler trolls hitting things with animus up two turns in a row and i STILL have a useful Mauler who moved and hit something else.

Now you're talking about your whole strategie and not only about letting a heavy frenzy for no good reason. Thats something completely different and would have made a lot more sense from the beginning.

In that case, yeah if there is no way to get rid of the fury and there are other beasts that are more useful, it is completely okay to risk the frenzy of a beast, depending on the situation.Its still not the best solution, but if the lights are more useful for your overall plan get them to peak capacity first.

This is generally a bad strategy regardless.

thakabalpuphorsefishguy wrote:
Well, the situation in number two is coming up behind the dire troll mauler is p/EDoomshaper, 2 Impaler trolls and a bouncer or axer. 10 Kriel warriors with UA and various other gribbles. So the mauler is hardly all by his lonesome here.

Actually, he is all by his lonesome. There is nothing that you have there that will make the piece exchange you will get into worth it after the fact. You are losing a fury 5 beast which will rip it's way through about anything in the game. Either Doomshaper does not want to be anywhere near the lines. He's a beast support caster, not a frontliner. If he's near the front, you're going to be making a tough roll. I'm guessing that you're relying on the Impalers to get knockbacks since you have two of them. Do not bet too much on them doing any kind of crowd control. Neither the bouncer or axer will be able to tangle with a heavy once you lose the DTM. The Axer will still eat his way through infantry but you have nothing left that will kill a heavy. None of what you have left are front line combat banging units or beasts. They are units that either tarpit or are support beasts.

The upside here, is the Mauler is a huge threat and my opponent wont know what I am doing until its already done. If I dont worry about removing nothing but MAYBE one fury from the mauler my impaler trolls, and the axer will all have 3 fury to go this turn. Doomshaper will have leached a full 7 fury from all the light trolls, and will be able to toss out an animi or two, and even pop off a huge spell.

They will wonder why you are going all in with your only heavy and realize that you're intentionally starting to fury starve yourself by throwing away a heavy beast. Killing warbeasts is the way that Hordes armies get whittled down. What beasts you have left will not last against any kind of attack.

IF in this instance, I take fury from my mauler instead, the previous turn I will have had to play light with my other 3 trolls in order to not have some frenzy-able trolls RIGHT next to my warlock. And this turn the light trolls, again, wont be able to go completely full out, because they will likely already have fury on them.

Your opponent may not allow you to go light on your other beasts. They may go for a jam on your beasts, be faster than you and get the strike off first and kill off your support beasts, or just ole the heavy and let it stay back there and focus on killing what's in front.

The way I see it, in my VERY new eyes, is by letting the mauler blitz in, completely wreck or severely disable its target jack/beast and then chucking it to block a charge lane, burning ALL of its fury, leaves me free over two turns, to have 2 impaler trolls hitting things with animus up two turns in a row and i STILL have a useful Mauler who moved and hit something else.

Here's how this will really go down. You fling the DTM out there and it will die and will not block a charge lane. Reave or don't reave, doesn't matter. You're faced with two problems now. The first your lights will have to run very hot from here out to be able to keep Doomie in Fury. This means that you are going to be limited on being able to transfer damage. The second is two heavy warjacks/warbeasts and any hard combat infantry will own the rest of what beasts you have left and you won't stop it and then you are extremely fury starved. The warriors are a tar pit but will struggle to kill anything. You are intentionally losing a battle of attrition, which is what the trolls excel at winning.

There are only two circumstances (off the top of my head) where I would think about intentional frenzies as being an integral part of my strategy.

First, eThag and shredder spam. If I am jamming a bunch of shredders down your throat, then sure, I can afford to have a few frenzy each turn - it's not a big loss to my overall effectiveness. I'd still rather control them, but if 2-4 frenzy, it's probably not a big deal.

Second (and much more likely) - Dr Arkadius. And only once. One feat turn. Then, I will intentionally frenzy as many beasts as I can, because it is part of his feat.

Primal as well but that's usually reserved for ending the game though.

I would love an opponet do this to me.. But then again.. If you send a heavy beast alone into my lines.. Ill just 1 turn kill it with 1 Warjack back and not care.

Heck.. You wont make me even have to advance into threats to kill him this way.