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So the troll regen ability seems kinda bad....you can regenerate 1 to 3 hit points, average being 2....when the average hit is going to hit you for more than that? How is it good? Would it not always be better to boost an attack or get an extra attack?

The key use of this is when you just need 1 more turn of beast use. there will be times when your beast is down to 1 branch or even 1 life and if you are lucky enough that your spirit is the active branch you can force the beast to heal your other branches 1 point each (hopefully) and spare your warlock from spending fury doing it. You are right, in a vacuum it sounds terrible. But in practice I can attest to it being the difference between a win or a loss.

That's one of the big advantages Hordes has over Warmachine. If a warbeast is alive, it's never more than 2 circles away from being fully functional at any time, and healing can get thrown around a lot more than repair does on a warjack. That's why you have to make 100% sure to kill the beasts dead! Crippling aspects does almost nothing in the long run (useful words for warmachine and hordes players).

 dementedwombat wrote:
If a warbeast is alive, it's never more than 2 circles away from being fully functional at any time, and That's why you have to make 100% sure to kill the beasts dead! Crippling aspects does almost nothing in the long run (useful words for warmachine and hordes players).

I play against Trollbloods all the time and have learned this the hard way. Never leave a troll beast alive unless you are ok with it killing something on their next turn.

Is it just the troll Battle box then that has problems...It seems that the box cannot win against Cygnar.

J0kerrMT wrote:
Is it just the troll Battle box then that has problems...It seems that the box cannot win against Cygnar.

Battleboxes are designed to learn the game/faction. Not necessarily be balanced against each other for competitive play.

That said I am not familiar with the troll battlebox so cannot comment on how well it plays against others. But from my experience with battleboxes and newbies is that the skill level (or lack thereof) is what casues people to lose, not the contents of the box.

I, and most others, will recommend battlebox games to learn, but you will want to move on to 15, 25 and 35 point games as you get the hang of things. I'd say 35 points is where the game starts to balance out a lot more. And I'd say 50 points is kind of the sweet spot.

The trollblood BB does struggle a bit, mostly because it lacks a heavy, or a lock who likes beasts (pMaddy likes his infantry more)

I agree PMad like his infantry, but just the Axer in that Battle box makes it more then enough to hold its own, plus the two impalers can crit slam beasts back into their casters.

Here CATCH!

I still don't get how it is any good. When the troll takes a hit he regens about 2 points of the 8 or 9 he just took....so he can take another 8 or 9 damage instead of using the fury to attack?

Can someone tell me how regen is good except once in a while under very rare circumstances? Is this the only ability that makes troll warbeasts tought....because it seems they die just as easy as everyone elses beasts.

pMaddy is set up for an assassination run against Stryker, but needs all his fury to be sure. There is 1 damaged impaler left (mind and body out) and there is a charger between it and Stryker. You can force the impaler to regen, force it to boost hit and slam the charger over Stryker, then you get your assassination off. Stuff like that, when you can't spare the fury to heal with your lock

I don't know about you, but I thought what made troll beasts awesome were our awesome animus. Way better than say circle for example.

Because during your turn, you don't need your warbeast to have full health, you only need it to have 3.

Then, your opponent has to waste perfectly good fire power taking it down on his turn, because wounded or not, you can't have a warbeast running rampant on the board without serious risks.

When all of the boxes in a particular arm of a beast's health spiral are filled, the beast gets a really bad disadvantage. Healing just one point on that arm of the spiral will bring that capability back to full.

Regen has two powerful things going for it:

1. it lets you heal an aspect without spending Fury on your warlock, which can be very powerful if you need the Fury, and
2. it lets you heal an aspect without having to activate your warlock first to do it, which is very powerful if your warlock needs to activate later in the turn than the beast.

It's not an ability that lets your beast absorb more damage. It's an ability that helps your beast be useful despite having taken heavy damage.

One more question about Trolls.

People say they are tough...but what actually makes their war beasts any tougher than other beasts or jacks? It seems they fall just as easily.

It kinda seems everything in this game hits hard.

Everything does hit hard, but things like some of the Earthborn's situational buffs, the stone, movable walls (Janissa), and I think another Animus (can't remember) can help keep Troll heavies alive where others may go down. But I mean apply Tibbers or someone similarly hard to a beast and it'll die no question, but that isn't exactly unique to trolls

J0kerrMT wrote:
One more question about Trolls.

People say they are tough...but what actually makes their war beasts any tougher than other beasts or jacks? It seems they fall just as easily.

It kinda seems everything in this game hits hard.

Kriel stone and possibly animus bonuses can mean you get ARM 22+ heavies easily in a troll Brick list, but it's usually the infantry who are tough (quite literally). Base stats, trolls are no tougher than other beasts.

I think the mistake here is thinking that you need a huge payoff for something to be good. In Warmachine/Hordes you will find yourself in situations very often where you only need that one extra health to win the game. The game is very much a finesse game where everything has bearing on whether you win or lose. It sounds like a silly statement, but something I have found to be true about Warmachine/Hordes is you are always 1 turn away from winning when you lose.

J0kerrMT wrote:
Is it just the troll Battle box then that has problems...It seems that the box cannot win against Cygnar.

The Troll box is pretty bad as far as the battle boxes go because it has no heavy and there is almost no synergy between the contents. Plus you'll rarely need duplicates of anything but that is a problem all the Hordes boxes have.

At the very least, it has models every troll player should have. Madrak is a great caster and the Axer and Impaler are awesome utility beasts.

And Regeneration is a great thing as has been mentioned, being able to heal the beast for D3 usually can bring you fully back online unless you have 2 aspects out and only roll a 1. And the best part is it doesn't require your warlock to activate first, so it alleviates order of operation problems.

Troll beasts are tough to kill because of a bunch of things. Regeneration, the stone, and EBDT's Animus, all combine to make them tough to kill. Nothing in Warmachine can be taken at face value, you must consider how something interacts with its faction.

Menoth Warjacks are rather underwhelming by themselves, apart from the Reckoner. They only have average mat and rat. Decent armor but they're also pretty slow and don't have a ton of boxes. But then you add access to Choir, Vassals, soul allocation, and some nice in-faction buffs and the jacks go from meh to awesome.

Don't forget that Troll lights have as many boxes as some faction's heavies, especially Axer. Arm 18 on a light with thresher and reach is nothing to scoff at if facing infantry.

Problem is there isn't infantry in battle box games and even at 15 points all jack/beast lists are still realy common.

Thresher is still worth it if you manage to get 2 models into your melee range.

If regeneration let them regenerate a large number of boxes ( or even as many as a war machine mechanic squad) it would be hugely overpowered or they would all have to increase their point costs to compensate for built in repairs. You can think of it as a built in failsafe (spell that ignores crippled systems) on every beast. That is very good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If regeneration let them regenerate a large number of boxes ( or even as many as a war machine mechanic squad) it would be hugely overpowered or they would all have to increase their point costs to compensate for built in repairs. You can think of it as a built in failsafe (spell that ignores crippled systems) on every beast. That is very good.

The impact is subtle yet powerful and Warmachine has a lot of tricks like that. It's best to not dismiss until every stone has been unturned.

 Surtur wrote:
The impact is subtle yet powerful and Warmachine has a lot of tricks like that. It's best to not dismiss until every stone has been unturned.

yes. Many of the interactions are subtle and not clear early on.