Like A Boss: Solo Spotlight - Raluk Moorclaw, The Ironmonger

Good Monday morning to all of you in Scrum land! Kro here with a brand new Like A Boss column for the week!

Last week we took a look at the Fell Caller Hero, which you can view here. Now over the last few months, I've gotten requests to do some of our Mercenary Solo's. So I figured that I would start with one of our newest addition to the Trollblood family.

The easiest place to start is always at the beginning. So, the reason behind this choice is two fold. 1.) New Solo, New Strategy and 2.) He's still new enough that most players in our faction have NO idea what to do with him.

Moorclaw is the first accessible Trollblood Mercenary Solo with the Jack Marshall ability which is new territory for us as a faction. With this new territory comes a good amount of questions, none of which are easy to answer. For players, the big one is: "Why should I field this model?" secondary to that question is: "What questions will he make my opponent answer?"

Bearing these two questions in mind, I'm going to go into extra depth with this article, and provide additional insight on what to run with Moorclaw. (More on that later)

Follow along after the jump to see how deep this rabbit hole goes!

So now that we are ready, I'll re-state my grading system for those of you who may be new to this series.

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

Raluk has some pretty basic stats, slightly better/worse than your average Fennblade. SPD 5, MAT & RAT of 6. With DEF 13 & ARM 15 with a 9 on CMD. Like I said, only slightly better defensive stats than a Fennblade, but average-ish speed coming in at 5. Lets face it though, you're not taking Moorclaw to fight gobs of infantry or jacks/beasts. You take him to make your Jacks fight for you and do the work.

Score - 2

Abilities

So like every Trollblood, he possesses Tough, and additionally has Jack Marshall. He counts as both a Merc and Minion and he can be used by Trollbloods(as well as Cygnar, Cryx, Khador & Both minion pacts). We'll cover Jack Marshall at the end of this section, because it deserves special attention. His other abilities include:

• Assault - Handy for additional "oomph" on charges, allows Moorclaw to shoot his charge target before getting into melee. Pretty handy considering his weapons selection
• Mechanikally Adept - Allows for repair checks on non-faction Friendly warjacks and battle engines
• Repair - Requires a skill check of 8 or less, repairs 1d6 hit points on a chosen friendly warjack or battle engine.

Now we can talk about Jack Marshall. This one is gonna be a doozy, simply because this is a new area of tactics for us as a faction, and for those of you who only play Hordes, you're going to want to do some homework and be open to expanding your horizons on strategies and combinations. Jack Marshall allows Raluk to take multiple mercenary Warjacks (up to two in total I believe) and can make them do work for him.

Jack Marshall's allow the jacks under their control to do 1 of 3 things each time they activate.

1. A Warjack can use its movement to Run or Charge
2. A Warjack can make one additional attack during its combat action
3. A Warjack can boost one attack or damage roll

Now these three pseudo focus abilities can also be used in conjunction with the Jack Marshall's "Drive" ability(if applicable). Fortunately for us, Raluk has one, and its pretty nice.

• Hog Wild - The Warjack can make one ranged attack before its normal movement. After its normal movement, it can only make melee attacks.

Raluk's Drive skill check is his CMD which is 9 or lower. If he fails a check, that warjack gets neither the Hog Wild or pseudo focus bonuses. This isn't the last time we will visit this ability during this article, because we still need to look at the Warjacks that Raluk has access to, which will happen at the end of this issue of Like A Boss.

Overall I think his abilities more than warrant a 5, simply because he gives us something we've never had access to, and it gives us another out of faction solo with Repair, which can help keep our battle engines alive on the table.

Score - 5

Attacks

Raluk has two attack types, ranged and melee.

His melee attack is a non-reach P+S 13, which is better than a 12, but not as good as a 14 could have been.

For Ranged, Raluk essentially has a dygmy gun. Short range of 4" and a POW of 14. Pretty decent for damage, but at RAT 6, its not going to be super reliable, especially against models with a DEF higher than 12.

Score - 2

Point Cost

He costs a whopping 2 points. For his abilities I think 2 points is quite a steal. While his melee and ranged attacks and stats may be around the "victim" scale, his added abilities far and away make him a solid 2 point solo.

Score - 5

Overall Score - 14 - B Grade (Useful under most circumstances regardless of army composition)

Before we get into the final section where I sum up and close, we will be taking a slight departure from the norm. I'm going to list out the merc warjack that I think work best with Moorclaws drive, and will give you the best mileage.

• Buccaneer - 3 point Merc light warjack that has a range 8 auto-knock down net attack, and a reach weapon for melee. The melee is only POW 10, but with the net causing auto knockdown, that alone can help you get some work done. Again, its only 3 points, so taking two of them isn't an expensive choice.
• Mule - 8 point Merc heavy warjack that has a range 8 AOE 4 POW 15 gun with critical devastation and arcing fire. It's melee attack is a P+S 16 Reach weapon, which is as solid as you can get for merc jacks. The mule also has steam pressure so it can forfeit its movement to gain the aiming bonus and +4 range. At 8 points, you'll likely only be taking one of them, which can be pricey at 10 points for both the jack and Moorclaw, but this is the most common pairing I hear people mention.
• Rover - 8 point Merc heavy warjack with a range 10 POW 14 shield gun. It also has a P+S 12 shield and a P+S 17 battle axe. The rover also has Point Blank, so there is that trade off. It still is 8 points, so likely you'll only run one of them.
• Vanguard - 5 point Merc light warjack with a range 8 POW 12 shield gun. It also has a tower shield(with buckler) for P+S 10 attacks and a reach Guisarme for additional P+S 13. The Vanguard also has Assault, Set Defense and Shield Guard. For 5 points this is a pretty solid choice and it can protect Raluk and keep him from being Snipe shot off the field.

Now I'm sure you're going to ask why I didn't include the Mariner? Well, it requires Raluk to be B2B with it to fire its canon and depending on the circumstances, I don't think you want him to be close enough to be AOE bait. As for the four I did list, I leave the choice to you as to which warjack to take (if you decide to take any at all). Personally I would probably take the Vanguard and a Buccaneer or conversely if I wanted to live dangerously I'd take two Buccaneers. I'll just avoid the obvious choice of taking the Mule, simply because I like to be different, and I want Raluk to pose a threat, but not so much of a threat that he gets killed before he fulfills his usefulness.

My Thoughts

 

Well there you have it. I've broke Raluk down bit by bit, given you my ratings and thoughts. But what do I think of the model in its entirety? I LOVE IT! The fact that we get a Trollblood Merc with repair is awesome! He can potentially survive longer than the Goblin Tinkerer can, and it opens up new tactical choices for our faction, which is always a good thing to have with an ever changing meta game. So far to my knowledge, Trollbloods are the only True hordes faction(other than minions) that can now take warjacks and warbeasts in the same army. I think its a solid game changer for us. Also going forward it opens the door for even more insanity down the road as more warjacks are added to the Mercenary ranks. I love the potential that this one model brings to our doorsteps. Hopefully Flanzer or some of the other top Trollblood players might take him and do even more stupid combinations that haven't been considered. We can only hope!

 

Even though this model got a B rating, I highly encourage all Trollblood players to pick this model up if you ha vent already. Play around with combinations and tricks!
 

What do you guys think? Do you think my review is right on? What jacks would you run with him? Do you think he's over-rated?

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!

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