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I am an OK player who just can't seem to drop my gnoblar unit/s. When I first began the army I bought a battalion box and so by default I had 30 gnoblars from the start (plus the dozen or so included with the ogres themselves). Long story short:

How do you guys use gnoblar units?

Trappers? Fighters? Sharp Thing Throwers? Shields? Table side Contesters?

Any reason to ever give them a Banner? Musician?

What unit sizes do you run?

I am also really in love with the old gnoblar horde army from WD. I just don't have the heart to paint that many gnoblars

Dangerous terrain tests are actually pretty nasty. It's like a baby lvl 6 spell. But the cost of a trapper makes the entire unit pricey. If you go that route your dream is to have elite infantry charge them. Or a bazillion TK chariots charge you along with the general.

Unfortunately, I think sabertusks do a lot of what gnoblars do and can do more with their tuskyness. But I do think the option of the terrain test is really nice.

I BELIEVE leadfarters and war machines can shoot over them, so they can be an extra protection in that regards. And can be configured to be much wider and thus block more angles on charge. Deal is, both those units can fight fairly well (far better than Gnoblars...).

My 1 cent. I'm sure other people have some uses.

I like to put gnoblars someplace to deny scouts. Then I forget about them.

I ran 10 units of 10 gnoblars. Deploy 2 wide and 5 deep.
Checker board them on half the table.
Drop your ogre deathstar(s) on the other half.
Don't charge with gnoblars, just run up and stop an inch short. When charged, you hold. With such a narrow front, very few opponents can touch, so very few get to swing.
You lose combat and break, nobody panics as nobody cares.
If you get away, you might rally.
If you get caught, again, nobody cares.
If your opponent chases, he's likely to run into another speed bump.

This has been incredibly effective at tying up half the table for 3 or 4 turns. During those turns, the rest of my army (2250 more points) are focused on ~half my opponents army.
The net effect is 50% of my opponents effort is focused on 10% of my points. Meanwhile, I've got 90% of my points lined up on 50% of my opponent.

By the time my opponent has worked through the 10 throw away units, I've already smashed half his force and made the turn to come back for the other half. I'd love to start this army all over and model up the whole force as Zulu's.

Oh, and 2 or 3 sabretusks are running alone up the extreme flanks.

-Matt

matt...if your going that way, take the trapper upgrade. and run em 10 wide. at least that way the guy charging you might take some damage, instead of just getting a bunch of free movment. plus a unit of trappers makes a big horde really think twice about charging.

 DarthSpader wrote:
matt...if your going that way, take the trapper upgrade. and run em 10 wide. at least that way the guy charging you might take some damage, instead of just getting a bunch of free movment. plus a unit of trappers makes a big horde really think twice about charging.

Trappers double the cost, and going wide means they all might die on the charge.
It's not that much free movement either.
You just march up to stop ~14" away (or however far it would be to force him to make a ~9 or 10 on a 2 dice charge).
On his turn he'll likely move up or fail his charge, and then you march up as close as possible.
Then he charges you and either reforms or over-runs 1", into the next gnoblar unit.
After you've started to engage with gnoblar units, you start to angle out to force the closing the door to face the opponent away from the center of the table.
If he charges turn 2/3 and takes 2-3 turns to clear the chaff, you're looking at anywhere from 4 turns to the whole game with half the board tied up.
If he is running lots of smaller units to deal with chaff, you'll find that ogre units eat those things up like nobodies business.

Here's the list I was running:
Level 4 Slaughtermaster, 2+ armor save, great weapon, greedyfists, tricksters shard, Gut Magic.
BSB, heavy armor, iron fist, Sword of Swiftness, Giant Breaker (+1 Strength).
Fire Belly, level 1, great weapon, flying carpet
7 Ironguts, full command, banner of discipline
8 Ogres, full command, Iron Fists
4 Iron Guts
10 units of 10 gnoblars
3 sabertusks
1 sabertusk
1 sabertusk
4 Maneaters, vanguard and stubborn, standard and musician (gleaming pendant), extra hand weapons x4
2 units of Iron Blasters

Against armies with typically low deployment drops, I'll put 1 cat on each far flank, and then spam gnoblars in the middle. After those 12 deployments, I'll line up my hitters on whatever side looks better, and then line up the cannons for some nice shots through gnoblars.
The Flying Firebelly proved to be amazing. He only gets the 4+ look out, but as a character hunter, he is decent, and for dropping a S4 template, the carpet made him awesome. Picking up swift stride would let me gamble throwing him into units to assassinate, then hope to outrun my opponents pursuit.
Some games I'd swap carpet for hellheart, but that just made me feel bad for my opponents.

-Matt

to each his own i guess. ive tried gnoblars, and i find the 50pts for a trapper unit of 10 is not horrible. i go 10 wide, to simply take up more space and prevent the other guy just moving around me.

making them trappers is also a nice wall. it pretty much stops anything from wanting to charge you, and if you can get up to 1-3" away you can totally stop a unit from moving at all. 50 pts for a nice flank wall and or horde stop is awsome. vrs 10 guys that if charged will probally all die anyway, and or simply run away. i dont care if that happens, but forcing them to take DT checks before that occurs makes them a touch better.

 DarthSpader wrote:
to each his own i guess. ive tried gnoblars, and i find the 50pts for a trapper unit of 10 is not horrible. i go 10 wide, to simply take up more space and prevent the other guy just moving around me.

making them trappers is also a nice wall. it pretty much stops anything from wanting to charge you, and if you can get up to 1-3" away you can totally stop a unit from moving at all. 50 pts for a nice flank wall and or horde stop is awsome. vrs 10 guys that if charged will probally all die anyway, and or simply run away. i dont care if that happens, but forcing them to take DT checks before that occurs makes them a touch better.

I worried about difficult tests for all of 3 minutes in 8th edition, until my seekers of slaanesh charged into the wounds (unit of 12), failed 2 tests, and passed a ward. Wounding 1 in 6 with no armor isn't reliable enough for me. That's while I prefer the gnoblar saturation. I know I'm going to lose combat, I know your options/angles for overrun, and I know nobody on my side is panicking as a result of it.

I might consider trimming some of the fat and adding 2 or 3 units of trappers to lead the gnoblar swarm. But I'm a bit worried about giving up 50 points a shot for just a difficult ground test.

-Matt

It's meant for hordes and non-elite. But if you lost 1 seeker that pays for the trapper itself! Well, more, because you might have to unstable.

DukeRustfield wrote:
It's meant for hordes and non-elite. But if you lost 1 seeker that pays for the trapper itself! Well, more, because you might have to unstable.

But with less gnoblars when upgraded to trapper, they don't hold up a flank well. At 50 points a shot, those seeker units are going to come out ahead in the exchange. If you take enough trappers to protect the flank, I think you might be giving up too many points. If you don't take enough, you aren't really protecting the flank.
Possibly the best is a hybrid of trappers up front, with normal gnoblars blocking in support. That way you can cause problems for the 50 man hordes, but still have enough to tie them up after the first charge or two.



-Matt