Lock and Load Wrap Up: Gargantuans and Beyond

Lock and Load’s been over for just a few days now, and thats been giving us time to collect and digest the announcements, as well as to react to it (be it Hype or Doom), as well as put in some guesses as to what some of the previewed models do. First up though, we need to have pictures! And I’d like to thank the people who made it possible for us to enjoy and experience L&L… almost as if we were there. First up, our US correspondent KK was amazing, managing to catch a lot of pictures and get it to us before most of the interenet… Word’s can’t express our gratitude. Lost Hemisphere and Trollblood Scrum also had a great slew of photos and quick spoilers that were in L&L, and that we devoured. And they’re real good Warmahordes blogs, so check them out! (Chances are you’ve probably seen them before you’ve seen ours tho, lol)

I’d specifically ask you to look at the post where Lost Hemisphere has a video on all the new releases. There were pictures on 4chan (of all places), but if you want a nice video and a good walkthrough, you should check LH’s video.

So on to the discussion!

The good thing about Gargantuans is that it’s a full book’s worth of releases, which allows Hordes to catch up a bit with Warmachine. I’m a bit miffed that Warmachine got a mini release, but I guess in the end it’s a good thing. I rather have Privateer Press tackle what they have on their plate, and do it well, than to over extend and screw up what is a very big (and very fun) part of my life. And besides, it’s not like I don’t have stuff to paint. While they’re on back burner, I still have Khador and Trolls to paint, and I’ve just started to pick up a small army of Cygnar, so I DEFINITELY have stuff to catch up with.

And while I haven’t picked up any new trolls recently, I’m definitely going to add the Hunters Grim to my stash.

Grim has always been (fluff and model wise) my favourite troll caster (even if Hoarluk or Calandra maybe running beasts better), so I’m definitely going to be getting him. His hat covers the tattoos which I never liked, and he gets two pyg tagalongs! While I’m not a fan of pygs in general (I prefer full blooded trolls and trollkin), I do have some dygmies I’m painting up, and I like how these pygmies look (trenchcoats = win).

Also, they’re a character warlock unit, which is a first. Which means new (and probably interesting) rules. I actually went back to the Cryx book to check out the coven; they’re listed as ‘characters and solo’, so we really won’t know what Warlock units will be like.

Speakimg which, Makeda (and her… supreme court? Eternal court?) will be a warlock unit as well. She traded two swords for 1 big sword, and if it gives her reach I’d say it’s a good trade. Also, I hope the guardians that are accompanying her are speed 6, because different speeds would be stupid, and speed 5 (or god forbid speed 4) would make for a lot of sad skorne players.

Morvahna looks like she’s going to either be a Cavalry Warlock or Light Cav. Light cav would definitely be interesting (I don’t think we have a light cav lock/caster yet), and playing to the circle’s strengths of hit and run. The tharn also get a ranged addition, which (iirc) also is a plastic. Nice to see more plastic units.

I guess the most interesting entry in (I’m assuming Gargantuans) is Lylyth3’s Battle Engine Warlock status. She will have to be pretty tough to be able to survive being on a huge base. And I’m nooooot tooooo keen on a sleigh battle engine because the rule of cool isn’t enough to suspend my disbelief. I’d be fine if they magic an explanation on how she can be dragged on normal ground without wheels (like if it generates an aura of ice around her or something). So I’ll just wait and see.

The minions seem to be doing pretty well for themselves too. They have a bogtrog caster (looks to be voodoo and probably pathfinder-ey?) for the gators (and undead bog trogs to boot!) and a Bonegrinder caster (probably casty then) for the farrow. Hope they keep up with the frakenstein theme for the farrow tho. I love me some frankenstein monsters, and considering how undead/voodoo-ey the gators are I hope they can push the technological aspect of the farrow to keep them thematically distinct from the gators.

Warmachine also had a lot of exciting stuff previewed. My favourite book in warmachine was superiority, because they gave us a lot of basic units which really increased the breadth of each faction, and we had add-ons that really changed the usefulness of basic units (ie the vanilla WG to WG deathstar). I mean, I don’t want them to make something broken, but I would like them to give me things that will make choices viable again. From what I see it looks like that may happen.

For example, greylord outriders! Hopefully they have some kind of synergy with basic greylords. The Iron Fang solo also looks good, but honestly we didn’t need somehting that made Iron Fangs more awesome. They did however mention the possibility of Iron Fang axemen, so maybe that’s the direction they’re going. Would help them to push plastic iron fangs too.

The Gun mages get some light cav lovin’ too, but I wish they gave it to the long gunners actually. We have enough GMCA awesomeness.

Bane cavalry are also looking good! I’m not looking forward to seeing them across the table.

Lastly the retribution are also getting a new unit. These guys look like the mobility of the mage hunters but with melee. Elf Kayazy. And eiryss is their UA. As much as I hate to say so, but I hope Eiryss3 is an awesome addition to these guys. Because if she isn’t, I don’t see why a Ret player would take Eiryss3 over Eiryss2 (or even Eiryss1).

I wanted to end up with things that aren’t exactly spoilers, but that I wanted to talk about anyway. First up, I think the decmiator looks good. At first I was worried about the design change from a convex shape on the shield fists to the zig zag shape. At first I thought it looked too flat, but in this picture it looks more bulldozer-ey, which is a good thing. It might actually shape up to be the best seconday plastic chassis yet (right now the best is the crabjack).

The galleon and judicator also looks pretty darn awesome. I can’t wait for the solid sculpts… I think they will blow the current sculpts out of the water. Stormwall is good, but Hyperion, Kraken and Conquest aren’t great.

Welp, that’s it for Lock and Load! Now all we need to do is wait for the models to release… and for Gencon. Lol.