Either a 15 block, which is a worthy roadblock/porridge unit, or a 5 block as chaff.
I like slayers. The fluff behind them is great. I believe that in the older rule sets of warhammer (I don't know which edition) you lost victory points for your slayers if they didn't die! Vice versa, you gained victory points if they were wiped out. That sounds great to me. Slayers aren't the best unit at the moment, they could really do with a little something extra to spice it up.
A ward save would be nice, but bringing back something fluffy like 'this unit has to die' would be great fun. It would change the unit's dynamic quite a bit. They wouldn't be a priority target for small arms or spells. It's amazing how scared people are of them, when they usually just die horribly in combat, I know I know, it's because they're unbreakable. Anyway.
Your opponent might even go so far as to attempt to avoid the slayer unit. It just really fits in with the fluff, a crazed unit of mentalist dwarves on the battle field shouting for someone to just face ME.
In related news I've started reading the first omnibus of Felix and Gotrek. Love those books. I read them before a good few years ago. They're just good fun, and don't take themselves too seriously.
It is interesting that you say this, I have recently discussed this with some other gamers. I am in the camp of will try them, but at the moment there are better things to put points into.
ReplyDeleteThe older rules you mention were from one list; the Slayer army from the Storm of Chaos campaign. It was awesome. You got VPs back for every slayer killed by S5 attacks or higher. Characters got abilties; such as more attacks based on models in base to base. A 'deathblow' where he'd get to attack once after he was killed. And some more I can't remember. Then there were the Brotherhood, basically a unit of slayers with MR, better S and could take a magic banner. Not forgetting Malaki's goblin hewer.
It was a fun army, but perhaps not terribly balanced.
The older Gotrek and Felix books were good, not read many of the newer ones but I wasn't amazingly keen on some. However, how can you not love some characters - Snorri? :D
I wish I had gotten the set of characters from the books when they were released a few years ago. Some nice models. I have two versions of the couple I need to get painted up.
Ah, so Storm of Chaos is where those slayer rules came from.
ReplyDeleteLove the deathblow, it's genius. It would rarely actually wound, but the stories that you'd get from that one successful time!
I have the goblin hewer, it's a great model but I never really use it. I *do* use the slayer crew from it though, they're slayers but have engineer gear/looks - so I use them for Master Engineer or extra normal engineers for warmachines.
I didn't realise there were a set of character models from the books, they'd be great.
Yeah, GW did have them hosted on their website, but now basically don't acknowledge the whole thing happened. It was a poor end to a campaign. The ending basicaly being:
ReplyDelete- Valten and Archaeon duke it out, both fail until Grimgor sneaks up, smashed Archaeon to the floor, should "I IZ DA BEST!!" then JUST. WALKS. OFF.
- Belakor and an entire host of daemons are exorcisted from the world by Teclis clapping his hands
- Mannfred von Carstein runs away from a mad, old priest (Volkmar) because he was told "You can die just as easy as Vlad".
- The slayer king RETOOK his vow after his son Garagrim took it to relieve Ungrim of the slayer oath. Garagrim died by a chaos giant falling on his head, Ungrim was so sad he took the vow once again.
IT WAS BASICALLY STUPID. Gw made this campaign to be the ending of the world and in the end... NOTHING changed. At all.
*bitter*
The lists were not balanced, the slayers were hard as nails, they even got a 2d6" before the beginning of the game: "Look Snorri, Trolls!" There were more abailities:
- Beastslayer; that slayer's wounds counted as double for CR
- VampireSLAYER; against T5 or high opponent EACH wound caused D6
- Skavenslayer; double attacks based off the number of models in base to base, to max of 10.
Oh, and for each 1k points in the army, it got another Dispel dice.
The goblin hewer was awesome; D3 hits PER MODEL it would hit in a straight line. So, for three ranks deep it would be D3x3. Now, imagine a flank shot...
Yeah, the models I missed out on. I got the first two, but missed the last. It's here:
http://www.kaboodle.com/reviews/pr33--gotrek-gurnisson-pr34--felix-jaeger-pr35--snorri-pr36--max-schreiber-pr37--ulrika-straghov