Like A Boss: Solo Spotlight - Troll Whelps

Well, it's Monday again! A new week, and a new edition of Like A Boss, this week, we will be taking a look at Troll Whelps.

The goal with this ongoing series will be to give an insight on how I rate our varying faction units/solos/warlocks, and hopefully provide some fun and informative topics for discussion and debate.

Follow along after the jump for all the juicy details!

Last weeks episode introduced my thoughts on the Chronicler, and boy was that a doozy! This week, we will be taking a look at what I think is one of the most underused solo's in our entire faction (not including the Skinner).

Whelps are an interesting dynamic, they provide our faction with a much needed means of fury manipulation and add other shenanigans that allow them to be both annoying and awesome at the same time. Not to mention, they are the life blood of our Gargantuan.

Grading System

For a rating system, we will be grading four aspects of the model itself: Stats, Abilities, Attacks and Point Cost. This will be done on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best, and 1 obviously being the worst. Each aspect will be looked at individually to determine a score. After all of the breakdowns are complete, I will issue a final grade based on the total number of points on the following scale:

• 0-5 Points - D Grade (Probably useful in some random 1 time occurrence)
• 6-10 Points - C Grade (Useful under certain circumstances with the correct army composition)
• 11-15 Points - B Grade (Useful under most circumstances regardless of army composition)
• 16-20 Points - A Grade (Auto-include, the best of the best that you can bring

I will try to keep these as objective as possible going forward, and remember, these are my impressions and opinions. Your mileage of course, may vary.

Stats

Whelps have victim stats. Plain and simple. DEF 12 makes them easy to hit, and ARM 11 means they will die if you look at them the wrong way, or sneeze. Average SPD of 5, the other stats they possess really don't matter.

Score - 1

Abilities
Okay, so here is where the whelps shine. They have more abilities than you can shake a stick at! Lets break them down!

• Alternate Food Source - Go ahead and give any beast within 1 inch a free 1d3 of healing. Every beast can use this!
• Annoyance - Living models within one inch suffer -1 to attack rolls. Essentially its a free debuff built into the whelp model that will force your opponent to either go for a whelp or kill the target the whelp is next to.
• Big Brother - Fearless if within 10" of a friendly faction war beast. I'll take that.
• Comfort Food - Our only fury manipulation ability in the entire faction. If the whelps are within an inch of a beast, they can clear any number of fury. This is just worth its weight in gold.
• Spawn Whelps - Afraid of deploying fragile models? Good! They can deploy within 2" of any faction beast each time the beast takes damage.

Overall, none of the abilities that the Whelps possess are bad. They all have a use in making this solo beneficial in multiple avenues, from infantry/beast speed bumps to being able to melt away tons of fury after you've run hot for a turn. Throw in the extra punch of gaining fearless, and being able to be eaten by friendly beasts to heal makes them a game changer. I've had beasts go from half dead to fully healed after a hard turn. There's no substitute for the look on your opponents face when that happens.

Score - 5

Attacks

No attacks at all. Nope, none. These are not the combat solo's you're looking for. Move along.

Score - 1

Point Cost

Whelps are FA 3, and cost 2 points for 5 solo's. So for 6 points, you receive 15 solo's. That's 15, 1d3 heal rolls. I don't think any other faction has a 5 for 2 option. You can't get any better than that.

Score - 5

Overall Score - 12 - Grade B (Useful under most circumstances regardless of army composition)

My Thoughts

So there you have it! A grade of B for the Troll Whelps. I personally love using these guys in lists. Most troll players use them with the Mountain King, to give his healing ability a bit of a boost. I use them in conjunction with beast heavy lists. If for no other reason than to give my power hitters the chance of surviving a nasty alpha strike, or gun line.

When the Whelps spawn, they can be used to block off additional incoming charge lanes, or help to jam up a control zone to contest it. The annoyance debuff can be useful against some armies as well, so it's not something to idly overlook.

Sure, with no attacks they cant really do anything offensive damage wise, but if they could, Whelps would be broken. While attaining a grade of B, they don't exactly fit into an A bracket, although an argument could easily be made for it. I'm not entirely sure there is anything I could add or adjust to these guys that wouldn't just make them broken.

What do you guys think? Do you use Whelps?  What lists do you run with them?

As always, have a comment/question/suggestion? Leave it below! Agree or disagree with me? I want to hear it! Articles you'd like to see done here on the Scrum? Speak up! I can't write it if you don't tell me you want it!

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Till next time kin, Stay tough and remember...