This month is bringing a massive host of updates to Age of Sigmar as the setting transitions to Ghyran, the realm of life. Each army is getting two whole pages of additional rules and optional alternative warscrolls for you to use in your games and we are very excited about all of it! Before we get stuck in, we’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with these rules as an early release to review.
It’s been mixed blessings for Ogors in fourth edition, or indeed any edition of AoS (this is a polite way of saying they’ve been mostly bobbins). Gluttons were initially a meta menace off of the back of being underpointed and efficient given their large base unit size, but one points increase put paid to them. Previous battlescrolls have elevated the monster half of the army by overtuning their mortal wounds on the charge. A key problem for the army is that it just… doesn’t really have any rules of note. So it ends up having to play off of efficiency, which is rarely a winning formula, particularly for the infantry build that gets lumped with 5+ save no ward warscrolls.
All this is to say, Scourge of Ghyran is a great opportunity to start to fix all of this stuff, so let’s dig in.
Battle Formations
One issue with the Ogors faction pack is that the army is nominally split down the middle in terms of rules content between the frosty monsters and the infantry, but there aren’t really battle formations to support the latter half. They got a desperately weak boost to their awful Leadbelchers shooting unit and a casting bonus — a decent one to be fair, but one that isn’t screamingly in-theme. Both the Ghyran offerings for new battle formations attempt to redress this.
Mawpath Menaces
Once per turn (army) in your opponent’s charge phase you can pick one of your infantry units that isn’t in combat and on a 3+ they get to move a number of inches equal to the roll (3+ on a d6, so up to 6″). It can move through enemy combat ranges and if it finishes the move in combat, then it counts as charging. This is interesting in that it isn’t just a short range counter-charge, nothing is forcing you to use it to get into combat or move towards the nearest enemy so whilst it can just be a short range counter-charge, it has a wider tactical application. We don’t love burning your battle formation on getting to make five 3+ rolls across an entire game, but it is what it is.
Greedy Eaters
This is yet again once per turn (army), but this time it works at the end of every turn. You can pick up to d3 infantry units that were in combat with an enemy unit that was destroyed (so they don’t have to have landed the killing blow themselves) and return 1 slain model to the unit. Ogors have quite a lot of healing, but can struggle with models getting easily removed thanks to their poor defensive stats. Ironguts and Gluttons both come in surprisingly large units (8 and 12 respectively, reinforced) for big base infantry and can actually kill stuff, so this could push Gluttons back up there a bit. It does still feel like the design team holding back a bit though, the d3 unit selection is mean when we’re trying to boost up a poorly performing army.
Big Names
Conceptually one of the coolest ideas we’ve had introduced in Scourge of Ghyran and very in-theme for the Ogor enthusiasts. This is another kind of enhancement for your heroes but, crucially, is not a heroic trait and so you can take them alongside. Think of them as mount traits for your heroes. Another note here is that the only requirement to be eligible for a big name is to be an Ogor Mawtribes Hero, so the stuff on monsters get them too.
Gutslugger
+1 to hit if you didn’t charge in the same turn. Ogor heroes do hit on a 4+, which is pretty terrible, but this is niche. Forstlords want to charge to get their +1 damage on the frost spear and can all-out attack to boost their mount at the same time, Huskards bring nothing to the party by themselves in a scrap and obviously the wizards and hunters don’t particularly desire this. That effectively leaves us with the Tyrant, who is surprisingly rubbish in a fight and would appreciate the boost. Not really a reason to take a Tyrant in the first place.
Mage-Swallower
-1 to ward rolls for enemy units within 6″. Yeah stick this bad boy on a Frostlord and watch them go to town. Not super complicated, but useful in that the 6″ aura on a large oval base can start debuffing enemy units that are in combat with your other units too.
Megagobbler
A deployment phase ability. You pick one keyword from: infantry, cavalry, monster, war machine and beast. Then each time you damage an enemy unit with that keyword with combat attacks from the Megagobbler hero and that unit is then destroyed in the same turn (but not necessarily by the Megagobbler) you get +1 attack, cumulatively if this keeps happening. Theoretically neat on a Tyrant because they have two combat profiles to boost, though the Frostlord is more likely to be getting stuck in and damaging multiple units.
Honestly, I think regardless of build you take Mage-swallower every time. The other two are nice but each has their own limitation to make them finnicky to use, though I wouldn’t be hugely surprised at anyone taking Megagobbler for the fun stacking upgrade potential.
Warscrolls
There were a lot of warscrolls that could have been up for review here. Honestly, this army bumps up against the limitations of the Scourge of Ghyran format – only a maximum of two warscroll updates! Games Workshop went for a rework on both artillery pieces, fair enough they are both abysmally bad, but it is a very funny selection.
Ironblaster
The hail shot firing mode goes away but the big cannon ball goes up to a flat damage 5 and you get a once per turn (army) ability to give it +1 attack and crit (2 hits). I don’t mourn the hail shot, as this huge bastard cannon should be firing a huge bastard cannon ball, not pellets. There’s a whole other artillery piece for that. It’s below. This is a cool update! The designers were obviously scared of the sins of the past with this unit, but I honestly like the design space of one being a decent inclusion but spamming them becoming very inefficient. I’d honestly like to see more of that in the game for units like this. 170 is still maybe a little spendy but one of these feels like a fine inclusion into an Ogor army now.
Gnoblar Scraplauncher
Gnoblar Scraplauncher? More like Gnoblar Delete the S. This is one of those units that’s been terrible in every iteration of every game it’s appeared in, but the model is so much fun I can’t help but root for it. There’s a pretty massive glow up to the shooting profile here: 4d6 shots has become a flat 12 with crit (2hits) and whilst it still hits on 4s it now wounds on a 2+ and always has a pip of rend. Now let’s be clear: this still isn’t a stellar shooting unit, but the old profile was so diabolical that I had to do a double take looking it up for this review.
Beyond that is another once per turn (army) ability whereby you pick an enemy that you’ve damaged with this thing and roll a dice, if you equal or beat their save characteristic then you half their move until the start of your next turn. Nice! Also, if your roll was a 5+ they get to roll one fewer dice when they charge. Really handy for an army that wants to be charging, not getting charged!
Again, it’s neat that you only really want one of these. The ability is dicey but the platform itself is at least decently likely to sneak some damage through to proc it. For 150 this is actually something decently unique for Ogors in being a control piece. That’s what I want out of my Ghyran rewrite!
Final Feast
The intent with this update was clear so the question is, mission accomplished? Well, kinda. Both battle formations have play if you were doing that style of army already, but I don’t think they push it as a style to seek out. It’s nice that combat infantry Ogors now have some techy rules to interact with, and they’re fun enough that if you play the army it’ll add some spice. The big names are fine. For a cool concept the rules themselves are a bit uninspiring. It would be nice for them to have been Tyrant only and have the designers run wild and free with more pushed abilities, but I appreciate the desire to give something to Beastclaw in this update.
The most interesting part of this update is new warscrolls, both of which feel pretty impactful. They should both have a role in the army now, opening up more avenues of paly for the faction. That said, this is what makes the arbitrary limitations of Scourge of Ghyran all the more frustrating–another page of warscroll rewrites could have really improved things here. Leadbelchers, Gluttons, Mournfang, and Maneaters all could have used the glow up. I like what’s here, but like any good Glutton, I wanted more.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
