Greetings and Scattergunners

Greetings all,

My first post since joining the Scrum is long overdue, though this is in fact my second attempt at making my first post. The first first post was talking all about the new toys we were shown for Hordes at Lock and Load including my opinions on the Scattergunner UA which personally I thought was an awesome and very well laid out post, but sadly it got eaten by the internet. :(

I will still talk about the Scattergunner UA because I have a lot of thoughts about them, but this post is mostly just about me saying hello to all the Scrummers out there as well as welcoming all our other new bloggers to the Scrum.


Scattergunner Officer and Standard
Personally I have never been a fan of the strategy of bringing out a UA that is bordering on overpowered to patch up a unit that is viewed by the vast majority of the playerbase as subpar at best and outright awful at worst. Unfortunately when it comes to the Scattergunners, I belong firmly in the second camp, if it wasn't for the fact that they share their page in my Forces book with my beloved Runeshapers, I would have used it for toilet paper long ago.

I had hoped that the fieldtest for MkII would see them gain a bump in RAT perhaps to compensate the Fell Caller no longer boosting RAT with War Cry but it didn't materialise. Instead maybe they would have gotten one of the streamlined orders that everyone else got like Assault and Battery or Assault, but no instead they lost their Slaughterfest order and got nothing in its place. Much was made about how they were atrocious for their 5/8 point bracket, PP listened and promised that something would be done to help, we waited and were rewarded with an incredible +1SPD boost...and the whole community died inside a little. Don't get me wrong, I love the models and strategically in the game I love sprays, a unit of sprays is potentially game winning just by themselves, their rules were just terrible though.

The community clamoured for a UA to help boost them in the Forces book but instead the Fennblades (who I personally didn't think needed help) got a UA and what a UA it was, it is one of those UA's that you would always take before finding the points for the max unit size because it was THAT damn good. It is right up there with the Winterguard, Bane Thrall and Gun Mage UAs for it's game changing quality that borders on the overpowered.

Finally in Hordes: Domination we know they are coming, and indeed many people who went to Lock and Load have the Scattergunner Officer and Standard already and for those who were following it the abilities are now pretty well known. Suffice it to say I think that this UA is another one like the Winterguard and Bane UA's that borders on if not actually crosses the line into overpoweredness, every single ability that it gives is top grade and Clear! I think is what pushes it over the top.

The sole balancing factor to the power of spray templates is that it is very easy to catch your own men, and for Trollbloods when your entire army is pretty much DEF12 (10 from rear), 40mm bases and easily taken out by POW12 sprays it is very much a balancing factor to having a unit of 6-10 spray templates. So now for a humble 2 points you give the unit another spray with higher RAT which is fair enough its the norm for an officer, but you also give the ENTIRETY of your own army immunity to their sprays?

Now surely you say "Wow yeah Baka that is pretty amazing, gotta target the officer asap then to get rid of that, after he is gone the sprays are back to sucksville", but no your cunning plan is thwarted before it even begins, as it is a tactics ability! Add onto that Granted: Quick Work and Tactics: CMA and now all of a sudden this 10 point unit provides an answer to almost every counter there was in the game to the Trollblood infantry swarms.

I just can't help but feel now that the Scattergunners+UA are going to be right up there as autoincludes just like Bane+UA plus Tartarus or Winterguard+UA+Joe and it is a trend that worries me.