An Uninformed Look at Ludgar’s Loathesome Siegeworks

What is the airspeed of an unladen piggie?

Yes sire, it will in fact launch a 90 kilogram pig over three hundred meters.

Bankrupt the Treasury

So our core rule is both good news and bad news. First off we’re locked out of Black Powder weapons, so we have to take CCW or MIS. CCW is fine but only having access to Missile weapons is going to be tough (tough enough that we might get into the place of missile weapons in another article).

The good news is we get access to a unique artillery follower.

Jambon de Guerre

“Jambon de Guerre in the v03 WIP rules”

Okay so at base we have a tougher stump gun with worse inaccuracy and lose out on grapeshot. In general I’m not really a fan of stump guns because Unstable Icon means they tend to blow themselves up pretty quickly, but that doesn’t really matter here because we’re probably not going to be rolling to hit with this thing.

Gruesome Deluge

This is our actual core rule, instead of killing things we place markers that debuff the inaccuracy and vulnerability of units within 6” of them.

This opens up some really interesting possibilities, even with a bad roll we can put 6+ inaccuracy and 6+ vulnerability units like fodder onto 7+ (so they have to roll a 6 followed by a 4+), and on a good roll we can even put really elite units like grogs onto 6+ volleys or 7+ move and shoots. We can even protect our own units that are in danger of being charged by dumping a bunch of markers around them to swing that fight in our favour.

Not only do we debuff but we also can lay some nice little Dangerous Terrain traps, by piling up some markers behind a unit we’re going to make retreat, and forcing it to take a DT test for each one they move through. Now this way all the tokens are destroyed which is bad for area control.

In general I think this is a very cool mechanic, carcasses are flavourful (one might say ripe), they expand on the design space that guttersnipes’ messenger spuds opened up and they feel turnipy.

However, d3 tokens for one order feels like a high price. We’ve got preliminary bombardment so we can get a couple in for free at the start of the game, but messenger spuds are one per round for no order. Maybe there’s an argument that that cost is valid because they’re “better” than messenger spuds in that they affect vulnerability too, but I don’t think that’s a very easy comparison to make, spuds can buff shooting or be used for teleport tricks.

We also have some timing issues, we can order the trebuchet and drop the tokens, but then our opponent is going to get to react. In general we can expect they will make the decision that’s worst for us, so it’s going to be a lot harder to make those tokens count offensively. That still leaves us with the option of using them defensively and for board control.

Relics

We have another shattered lance cult so we’ve got 25 Norberts to spend.

Rillette’s Leprous Livestock (9 Norberts)

Units gifted this relic gain Fearless if they fight in a melee or shooting engagement with an enemy unit with modified characteristics.

Chaff seem to be to go to for this, skirmish means it’s always on for shooting engagements so we’re less reliant on carcass markers and it helps us stay in position during bad missile shooting engagements. Whelps probably don’t need it because they can reposition after a retreat but CCW bastards being less prone to walking backwards is probably a very nice pick up.

Ortolan’s Blanket (13 Norberts)

Units gifted this relic gain Skirmish if they are within 6” of a Carcass or Objective Marker.

Fodder with Skirmish on an objective sounds like a nightmare to deal with, but more importantly we can make old school Whelps with skirmish, they can’t double cap anymore but they’re still going to be really tricky to deal with.

Bifteck’s ’Orrible ’Orse (7 Norberts)

This relic may only be gifted to a snob. A unit gifted this bubonic relic steed counts as a carcass marker.

This starts to answer some of the difficulties we’ve seen with the action economy of carcass tokens, you’re probably going to be taking this every time, and if you could take it multiple times you would.

Conclusion

In general I think this cult looks very cool, it might struggle to keep up with other cults as it takes an order off to throw down tokens and doesn’t have access to Black Powder, but they might be able to make up for it between making your opponent take suboptimal lines and the extra staying power you’ll get from your relics.

I reckon the first list I’m interested in exploring is:

• Toff
  • Whelps (MIS) w/ Ortolan’s Blanket (13 Norberts)
  • Fodder (MIS)
• Toady w/ Bifteck’s ’Orrible ’Orse (7 Norberts)
  • Bastards (CCW)
• Toady
  • Jambon de Guerre

Unlike my usual setup for bastards we’re trying to make these melee blenders that rely on dragging along a toady for the carcass modifiers, you can probably also sub these for Brutes. Our whelps are pretending to be fast chaff that cap and hold objectives. And our fodder are going to be an annoying midfield presence that stop people running at our trebuchet and try to take advantaged fights with tokens, relying on taking less losses than usual to keep safety in numbers online.

I think this is a very well designed cult but I expect it to be a little behind the curve in terms of general power level, but with a pretty high skill ceiling. They’re going to feel bad every time you roll a 1 on your token generation but that’s turnip baby.

May 1, 2025 uninformed playtest

You Should Play More: Bastards

“Bastards.” - Sharpe, every episode.

Today we’re kicking off a new series of articles on the core units of turnip looking at what role they play and the fundamental math behind them.

We’re starting with the one true unit of the patrician heavy cavalry enjoyer, the Bastards. If you’ve read toff club before you know that I play a lot of CCW Bastards, if you’ve seen me on the list building channel or on reddit you’ve probably seen me tell people to run more CCW bastards too.

Bastards from my Procession of Woe regiment

I love this unit, and I want you to love it too.

The Profile

Bastards as of v17, still the same in v18

So off the bat we have cavalry movement with an average charge range of 19” and a weapon’s range of 18”, this tends to set the default for how you’re going choose to screen and position, even without a charge reroll bastards can sit outside of your 18” weapons range and still make the charge 50% of the time, forcing you to move and shoot instead of volley them.

You start off with 12 attacks, which convert to an average of 4 hits by default, going to 6 hits with CCW, and they can take an average of 9 hits before getting wiped.

So we’re starting off with a very solid stat line but we also get Bowel-Loosening Charge.

Bowel-Loosening Charge

First off, whenever we charge someone in turnip they have to make a panic test, they roll a d6 and add the number of panic tokens they have if it’s 6 or less they hold and if it’s 7 or more they retreat.

Retreating from a charge is bad for four reasons:

• It puts you out of position
• It opens you up to dangerous terrain tests
• If you hit a board edge, you lose models equal to the number of panic tokens
• If the unit can still make the charge after your retreat, you’re unit is completely destroyed

Now let’s look at the text of BLC.

When a unit with this rule charges, their target must re-roll any successful panic tests.

If panic is one of the most important systems in turnip then BLC has to be one of the most important abilities because it fundamentally swings the math in our favour.

Role

Well you’re sure as hell not out shooting anyone, but that’s okay because Bastards are the best core charging unit. Going first in melee you have great odds into everything in the game bar monsters, you have some specific interactions that are very dependant on spiking rolls (particularly probby and scuttlers) as well as some hard counters (fresh lumps and pike blocks). You’re not the most fragile unit in the game but charging into a bad stand and shoot means you can suddenly lose a big chunk of attacks.

So you have to be clever, you need to position well and think about how far and what directions your screen can retreat, you need to understand where you’re going to end up after a charge, you need to bait and counter. You can win most engagements if you take them right, and with a few tools you’ll even start to win ones you shouldn’t.

Because you don’t need to win in Melee if you can run down the enemy on a retreat.

This is Where the Math Starts

If you don’t care about the odds skip to the TL;DR but you will probably miss about half of this post.

How BLC & CCW Reroll interacts to autokill units

So we talked about how BLC “Fundamentally swings the math in our favour”, but what does that actually look like?

Panic	P(Retreat)	BLC P(Retreat)
0	0%	0%
1	17%	31%
2	33%	56%
3	50%	75%
4	67%	89%
5	83%	97%
6	83%	97%

This dramatically increases our odds of forcing a retreat, in general you can think of it as a 18.5% bump on average, but what really matters is how it changes your breakpoints. Without BLC you don’t hit even odds to force a retreat until 3 panic, with BLC you’re 6 percentage points past even at 2 panic and at 3 panic you’re forcing a retreat 3 out of 4 times.

So now we know how much more likely we are to force a retreat BLC, that’s useful for the positional game, forcing multiple dangerous terrain tests and hurling people into board edges, but where the real power comes from is deleting units wholesale from the board by running them down. Now we need to work out how to reliably land those charges when they’re on the retreat.

Close Combat Weapons

Look, we’ve only got three models and while we’ve got 5+ Inaccuracy that’s not going to be enough to make our shooting matter outside of volley fire plinks against CCW units, save the guns for your whelps.

So with CCW we get a bonus to our to hit rolls, everyone’s very happy with that, but the real killer is the second clause:

A unit equipped with close combat weapons MAY re-roll their charge distance dice. If a player chooses to re-roll their charge distance, both dice must be re-rolled and they must accept the new result.

Just how much does that reroll help us?

Enemy Distance (>=)	P(C)	P(C) w/ CC Reroll
14	100.00%	100.00%
15	97.22%	99.92%
16	91.67%	99.31%
17	83.33%	97.22%
18	72.22%	92.28%
19	58.33%	82.64%
20	41.67%	65.98%
21	27.78%	47.84%
22	16.67%	30.56%
23	8.33%	15.97%
24	2.78%	5.48%

Well pretty substantially, we really tighten up the mid ranges from coinflip territory to very comfortably in our favour, and we only drop to below 50% at the long bomb ranges like 21”.

Putting it Together

So now we know how likely we are to panic someone, and how likely we are to make different charge distances, we can work out exactly how likely we are to run them down based on two factors, their panic and distance.

For example, if a block of fodder has 3 panic and is 8” away, then you know you have a 75% chance to panic them, then they’re probably going to end up about between 15” and 20” away with each of those values being equally likely we can multiply all of those odds from our charge distance with CCW reroll by 1/6 and sum them together to work out how likely we are to make the new charge distance.

Range Min	Range Max	P(C)
10	15	99.99%
11	16	99.87%
12	17	99.41%
13	18	98.12%
14	19	95.23%
15	20	89.56%
16	21	80.88%
17	22	69.42%
18	23	55.88%
19	24	41.41%
20	25	27.64%
21	26	16.64%
22	27	8.67%
23	28	3.57%
24	29	0.91%

Now we can see that we’re making that charge 89.56% of the time, but first we have to panic them right? So we end up with 75% * 89.56% = 67.17% chance to force a retreat and still run them down. Which is great news, but how the hell am I supposed to use any of this knowledge without playing with a spreadsheet.

TL;DR

Here’s the general rule of thumb: if you’ve got CCW Bastards and your target unit is 10” or less away with 2-3, you can force a retreat and run the enemy down ~50% of the time. When you get to 4+ panic retreat distances start getting pretty hefty, which is bad for running people down, but really opens up pushing people into board edges to cut those distances down or just making them lose a number of models equal to their panic.

Fearless

Now for the bad news. Brutes and Fodder have a way to swing the math in their favour too.

Every time a unit with fearless is required to retreat, including after a failed panic test, on a 3+ they do not retreat and are treated as if they passed the panic test.

You might have Bowel-Loosening Charge to force a panic reroll but fearless has better timing and better odds. They don’t care about your reroll, they just make a check when they fail and turn 2/3 of those back into successes.

So how do you deal with Fearless? You don’t, you’re CCW bastards just throw 12 4+ attacks at them, in the general case you’re going to come out on top. Sure you might lose a model or two but don’t stress about it, BLC is still going to work even when your down to a single model.

Synergies

So we’ve talked about how the interaction between CCW and Bastards works and how it get’s countered, now lets take a look at what cults can help us with that. We know that the two factors we care about the most are Distance & Panic so that’s what we’ll focus on.

The Procession of Woe

Fun fact procession of woe was the first cult I ever built and played (and yes that’s a rootshrine, he’s called peebles)

This is probably the first panic generation cult anyone looks at and for good reason, this is a great cult for bastards. We have a consistent way to generate panic, a way to put it on enemy units and bonus attacks on our units with 2 or more panic.

We need to play for control of the centre with the rootshrine so that we can reliably move panic onto enemy units, but we have so much flexibility in whether we want bonus attacks or two more panic on an enemy that we pretty reliably get to pick and choose whichever is best for the current turn.

Knights of Shellwood

I have a lot of personal bias for this cult as I had my best Turnipcon run with it, but the v17 rules were absolutely nuts for this strategy, getting a free 6” on demand basically trivialized every charge roll I had, 20” base charge distance is pretty problematic, particularly at venues where you’re sometimes on a 36”x36” board. That along with whelps to make up your off turns movement and ability to cap was huge.

The v18 playtest has some pretty big changes to how this works, now instead of having two turns of 18” movement you can basically give your snails and cavalry followers 4d6” movement, letting you make a 6d6” charge. Our variance is obviously a lot higher than 12” base cavalry, but our ability to make those long charges looks a decent bit better. I’ll probably have to go do some real math to work out if they get a real advantage or if your just going to be left crying over the variance.

Aunt’s Ascendant

You pick the direction of every retreat, that’s it, that’s the core rule. In the v18 playtest you don’t even need to keep your balloon alive to keep the rule. You can even make them retreat directly towards your unit as long as they don’t end up retreating through them, but even in that case you can just take a slight off angle.

St. Alamei’s Rocket Batteries

You get artillery that fires five shots and generates panic on every hit and as a bonus puts 2 panic on the closest enemy unit too, also get panic generation on retreat. Very few cults put out as much panic as rocket batteries do.

March of the Proboscis

My beautiful turnip con 3 probby

Probby is a bastard with more wounds and more attacks in exchange he can’t cap objectives and he loses a point of innacuracy, that’s still phenomenal trade. If that wasn’t enough you get extra movement on the charge equal to the number of panic on the target unit, essentially halving the retreat distance bonus from panic and you get Boletus, who can give any unit BLC for free at the start of the round.

In my opinion this is far and away the best cavalry cult, but some of the v18 preview rules pretty substantially change how this cult functions, losing the ability to give your whelps and fodder BLC and instead giving some panic generation. Hard to say how it will shake out until we see the v18 playtest rules for mercenary cults.

Honourable Mentions

• Red Ribbon Society: Pretty cheap access to bonus movement is very good for the rundown, 3 tufts lets us ignore 1 panics worth of retreat distance.
• Feast of Charybdis: Obscene positional advantage with Unburrow, take the best charge angle you possibly can every round. Hell you don’t even need crabs.
• Swellings: Very good for area denial and forcing obscene numbers of dangerous terrain tests.
• Wandering Morris’ Pubcrawlers: Ergot gives us a free 6” and dash, we can take great charges and reposition for the next one.

Conclusion

Use shooting units and cult shenanigans to stack panic on the right units, find a way to clear screens or put them out of position, then abuse cult mechanics that buff your movement to make charges that wipe them clean off the board. This is my central tenet of cavalry turnip: Most of the time, bastards should be running people down, not fighting in melee. It’s not going to win you every game, and obviously you don’t need to run down that single model of chaff with a bunch of panic on it, but if you start thinking about where you need your panic to land and how you can set up your bastards to hit it, you’re going to be stomping the mid game and creating the follower advantage you need to finish with more objectives than your opponent or clear the board of snobs in headless chicken.

That’s why You Should Play More Bastards.

April 23, 2025 yspm v17

An Uninformed Look at the Butcher Brigade

Maybe the sausage shouldn’t have been made.

Come and get yer slop.

Slaughterhouse Yeomen

Slaugtherhouse Yeomen in the WIP v0.2 rules

So we have nerfed Fodder with restrictions to MIS and CCW, no Safety in Numbers and a trick to turn bad combats good.

Well it’s not a great start.

We can turn two thirds of our bad combats into wins, so we’re pretty good at belly bouncing things into nasty retreats, but we’re going to lose every shooting engagement without access to fearless or BP so there’s a real risk that we’re plinked into the backlines from the get go.

This feels like a kind of half arsed todd mechanic recycled into a unique unit. It’s not a bad ability but we’re paying way too much for it compared to normal fodder.

Oh and we have to take two of them and cant take normal fodder?

Well maybe that makes sense, maybe this is a penalty unit that balances us because of our phenomenal cult rule!

A Sausage in Every Pocket

You may spend 10 additional Norberts when building your regiment.

Oh. That’s it.

Well then this must be to fuel our access to super over powered relics!

Relics

The Brigadier’s Blood Pudding (20 Norberts)

This relic cannot be given to a Cavalry Follower. A unit gifted with this relic counts as having +2 models in its unit profile. Remember: Relics cannot be given to Artillery Followers or Lumps unless specifically stated.

Okay so a pretty narrow window then, spending 20 points to bring our Woeful Yeomen back up to fodder strength probably isn’t best option.

8 Man brute teams are pretty good. Ooh! We could bump the chaff squad too… hang on this sounds a bit familiar. Is this just Band of the Wurm’s Lax Paymaster wearing a cheap wig and a pair of glasses? Well not entirely, you could actually make a 6 man chaff squad instead of a 5. So it’s slightly better.

I find the no cavalry restriction a little puzzling. We’ve taken a lot of downgrades and a big ol pile of Norberts and we can’t turn Bastards into a 20 attack 10 wound team? Or buff Whelps into fast brutes? The bastards do look a bit scary on paper but not considerably more than a probby roll. Maybe it’s a little too pushed and could become “or add 1 model to a cavalry follower unit”.

Surely taking two worse fodder units means you could create something a little better than Probby or a crab?

Either way you’re probably sticking this on some chaff and hunting snobs or building a big brick of brutes. It’s a good rule but feels like a straight up rehash of band of the wurm.

Pigstick Palisades (17 Norberts)

You may purchase this relic twice. When a unit gifted this relic defeats an enemy unit in melee, it can shoot the enemy unit before it retreats. The shooting attacks happen before the retreating unit moves any models. A unit that passes it’s fearless save does not retreat.

Oh goody, an opportunity to spend 35 Norberts on additional missile attacks for my yeomen.

I get that the idea here is that my yeomen can get charged, stand and shoot, take a bad fight and still have a two thirds chance to force a retreat and I can get some of the value back from some shooting on the way. Being locked into Missile weapons is rough, MIS is in a tough place in the current rules where it struggles to find a use outside of chaff and whelps, and not being able to take CCW means that this unit is going to be struggling to land its own charges.

Which is a same because there’s something fundamentally cool going on here, but the design of the yeomen make them very unappealing to take this on. So what do we do? We can possibly take it on a squad of black powder brutes, but we lose about half the value when we’re being charged, sure we can stand and shoot but then we’re smoked and can’t shoot on the retreat and we’re not going to be a strong charging piece in the army without CCW, so how useful is it really to be able to charge someone and shoot them once as they run away?

Maybe if there’s a Missile weapons change as a part of this or a neutral relic that gives the yeomen access to pistols and sabres then I’d be interested. But for now I think it’s very overcosted compared to what we’ve seen and doesn’t really fit with what yeomen are doing.

Sausage Skin Drum - (5 Norberts)

This relic may only gifted to a Snob. Everytime this Snob orders a unit, you may transfer up to 2 models to, or from, another friendly Follower unit that shares the same name.

• The model must be placed in coherency.
• The model may not be placed within 9” of an enemy unit.
• The model may not be placed within 1” of an objective, terrain or another friendly unit.
• You may never exceed a units starting size, given in its unit profile.

Well right there it is, you’re supposed to send someone into a bad fight, win it, then top them off. That’s not a terrible line of play, but it’s not a good one either, those bodies are still coming from another unit so you’re not really reconstituting force merely moving it around. It’s not a terrible ability but it really feels like this should probably just be a core rule if you’re making me take two blobs of Yeomen, and spare me the insult of charging me for it out of the extra pocket money you gave me.

Conclusion

Well look, it feels underbaked but there’s a decent concept here, just a very surprising lack of flavour or execution. Nothing about this cult excites me in any way so far outside of the the models we’ve seen on the kickstarter.

Maybe this cult is supposed to really gear off of the neutral relics but before we see those I have to judge it on what’s on the page, and even still I’d expect that I should be more excited about the relics in the cult than I should be about a cults ability to buy more neutrals.

Even the core rule as it stands feels bad, I can spend an extra 10 Norberts, but everything in the relic list feels completely price gouged to force me into choosing between three lists.

• Blood Pudding + Drum
• 2 x Palisades
• Palisade + Drum (which lets face it, isn’t even much of an option)

I’d be interested in either making Sausage skin drum a core rule and dropping Palisades to 15 points. It feels like Drum is supposed to be how this army plays, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to stick a big block of black powder brutes behind a palisade.

At the moment it feels like a bad mashup of Todd and Wurm, Palisades may have something going for them but it feels bad taking a third unit to actually make use of them, Yeomen are already considerably worse than Fodder without Safety in Numbers and dropping two models. They don’t need to have their guns taken away too.

This cult needs serious changes before release.

March 31, 2025 uninformed playtest

An Uninformed Look at the Beekeepers of Bhir

This time my Grog is bee flavoured.

That’ll be 3 6+ against your lump.

This one goes out to all the Tabernis enjoyers out there.

Horror Swarm

When a Follower unit you control charges a target, before the charging unit moves, and before its target makes any stand and shoot attacks, Every other friendly follower unit within 18” of the target unit may make a set of special shooting attacks. Each unit makes 3 Horror Swarm shooting attacks against the charge target. Each shooting attack has a range of 18” and hits with an inaccuracy of 6+, independent of the unit’s characteristic. A unit can only use Horror Swarm if it can shoot.

So whenever we charge something we’re going to get to plink with any follower unit in range and LOS of the charge target that doesn’t have a powder smoke token. So we a free expected hit per model that can Horror Swarm, a small bonus but that can add up to an extra could of hits when you need it.

What’s more interesting his how much extra panic you add. It looks like we’re making three separate shooting attacks here, so there’s three extra panic on the table. On each given set of shooting attacks you’ve got 42% chance to add a panic, so a 42% chance to add a panic token with one unit in range and LOS, that goes up to 67% chance of one or more panic generated with two units nearby with a 18% chance that you hit a double, going up to a 80% chance of one or more panic if you mange to wrangle all three nearby, with a 38% chance of two or more and a pretty slim 7% for the triple.

So why does the extra panic matter? Well I was saving this for a unit spotlight on bastards but here’s an overview of how much more likely a unit is to retreat with Bowel Loosening Charge.

Panic	P(Retreat)	BLC P(Retreat)	Average Distance
1	17%	31%	5.5”
2	33%	56%	7.5”
3	50%	75%	9.5”
4	67%	89%	11.5”
5	83%	97%	13.5”
6	83%	97%	15.5”

But if they panic they run away which makes my charge harder right? That’s where the CCW charge reroll comes in. Now I’ll definitely save the charge reroll table for the Bastards spotlight, but you should know that CCW cavalry can make 20” charge about two thirds of the time.

And what happens when you make a charge on a retreating unit?

Running Down Retreating Units: If a unit retreats because of a panic test, the charging unit must still attempt to get into base-to-base contact with its target, using the shortest route possible. If any model in the charging unit makes it into base-to-base contact with the target after it has retreated its full distance, then the retreating unit is completely destroyed. Remove it from the table.

And the magic number for this really is 2 panic, that’s the tipping point that says, you kill this unit outright without any fight about half the time. We have a 56% to panic and retreat an average of 5.5” and we have a 92% chance of sticking an 18” charge, so if you’ve targeted something that ends up 18” away and it has 2 panic, you end up with a 52% chance of killing right there.

This is the big breakpoint, more panic makes it easier, and further distances make it harder. In general this is why I’ve had a lot of success with Probby which gives you movable BLC buff each round and a charge distance buff based on panic.

The problem with Probby is you have to do some grindy attrition combats or plinking to get to the panic numbers you care about.

Beekeepers just lets you do it automatically if you’ve staged well. So obviously you need to try and keep as much in range as possible when making your charge to try and ensure that you get three Horror Swarm attacks reliably, and even then your only hitting a double 38% of the time. But who cares, bring a big fodder block with black powder, go make them roll some tough charges their not going to make, just get the extra panic here and there, it’s probably going to be better to make 3 sets of 3 attacks on 6+ for the panic than it is to volley with the fodder.

Hive Brethren

Hive Brethren in the WIP v0.2 rules

Okay so we’ve got some slightly more fragile grogs who we have to spend some Norberts on to get Fearless, and as a bonus we can always trigger Horror Swarm even when powder smoked. Well in my book anything that’s “almost a grog” is probably a good unit. You lose Disgustingly Stubborn but as long as we get access to fearless that’s not a huge problem.

These guys are good, even without 5+ vulnerability they can take a hit from most things and still stick around, even CCW bastards are going to be 50/50 to wipe them while their powder smoked, if your not smoked then go ahead and stand and shoot, you’ve got a good chance of reducing that 12 attacks to 9. Make a fearless save and then stay in position to Horror Swarm in support.

They can’t soak everything and are definitely monster prey, things like probby, crabs, & A&M BP chaff a real threat to them, so you’re going to have to think about positioning when those units get involved.

Relics

Hive Pot Grenades (5 Norberts)

You may purchase this relic twice. A unit gifted with this relic, may shoot targets through impassable terrain as if it wasn’t there. The unit with this relic may use Horror Swarm, even if it couldn’t normally shoot.

So we’re slamming this on our Bastards immediately right? Once they’ve charged they get to keep being useful by throwing bees at any pesky interferers. This feels like the kind of 5 point relic I’m really about, something that enables you to be flexible with your list building and lets you play to your armies strength without being hamstrung over which choices work. Love to see it.

Torture Larvae (10 Norberts)

A unit gifted this relic may make 3 additional shooting attacks when using Horror Swarm.

Pretty plain and simple buff that jumps you from 42% to add a panic to 66%, nice clean and still not able to pile on a tonne of wounds.

Matriarch’s Barb (10 Norberts)

This relic may only be gifted to a Lump. Increase the unit’s Wounds and Attack by 1. The unit gains Fly.

Now I’ve generally been pretty low on the lump since it’s playtest rules came out, it’s an antimonster monster that’s absurdly tanky. Generally I wasn’t really sure there was much to write home about other than that. But this is where the lump really shines. It has 9” movement, which makes it a great charger, and it can sit around and be tanky and with a Hive Pot Grenade strapped to it can sit somewhere annoying and throw out free Horror Swarms.

Does a bonus attack, wound and fly really matter. Possibly if fly interacted with charge in a favourable way, but for now I’m not super sure. There’s a way to make lumps work in this army but it’s tough to say that this helps it in a significant way. I was expecting a little more zest. +1 attack and wound is just a bit of a boring “make it better” relic, and that’s fine to have but it’s not the kind of unit I get hot under the collar for when the raw math changes.

I do however know that I want to build horrific potato sized bumble bee, and that’s what turnip’s all about.

Conclusion

I’m starting straight off with a list here:

• Toff
  • Hive Brethren (BP, Torture Larva - 10 points)
  • Hive Brethren (BP, 5 Norberts spare for a neutral relic)
• Toady
  • Bastards (CCW, Hive Pot Grenades - 5 points)
• Toady
  • Bastards (CCW, Hive Pot Grenades - 5 points)

This is the boring default list, everyone can Horror Swarm, and you’ve got 2 units with access to BLC. You put your death ball as close to the other army as possible and try to kill two of their units outright on turn 1. This is the vaguely magical christmas land gameplan, you try it you see where it goes.

But maybe you find everything is a little too fragile and you need something to sustain in the middle and throw out bees for the duration of a slower grindier game.

• Toff
  • Hive Brethren (BP)
  • Hive Brethren (BP)
• Toady
  • Chaff (MIS, Torture Larva - 10 points)
• Toady
  • Lump (Hive Pot Grenades - 5 points, Matriarch’s Barb - 10 points)

You don’t even need BLC, you can just stay and grind out by throwing enough panic around that you just walk towards people and they start running away into dangerous terrain.

I think that Beekeepers are an exceptionally well designed cult, they kind of perfectly understand the dynamics of shooting, panic and charging. They give you a a little extra steps to wring out a few more tokens before the important charge or let you play something slow and attrition based as well as any flavour in between.

The lump relic could be a bit more interesting but I don’t care because it’s going to be fun to model.

March 31, 2025 uninformed playtest

An Uninformed Look at the Knights of the Shattered Lance

What do you mean list building requires basic arithmetic?

I wasn’t expecting a second edition of uninformed look so soon, I can’t believe it’s only been- oh, it’s been 4 months actually. Well strap in for another series of takes based entirely on my opinions, gut reactions and just enough math for people to keep calling me the sweatiest turnip.

This time around we’ll be doing the cults one by one instead of that absolutely mammoth wall of text we did last time.

Just before we dive in remember to go and actually play the playtest rules and tell Max how they feel to play.

Relics & Norberts

Unlike our existing cults these use Relics, additional abilities or equipment you pay for with Norberts (if I accidentally write points, please refrain from throwing rotten fruit at the screen).

In general these Relics cost between 5 and 25 points with each cult having 25 to spend (except butchers who get an extra 10 as a cult rule). You can only purchase a max of 3 Relics per regiment, they’re unique unless otherwise stated and a single unit can never have more than 3 relics.

They provide either additional army rules (like taking an extra half-unit of rootlings) or benefits to a specific unit or toff (extra attacks/wounds, special abilities, etc.).

In general they add a relatively small bit of additional book keeping when putting a list together, but nothing compared to contemporary mainstream games (trust me, I’ve been learning infinity).

What I’m extremely excited about is how much additional modelling potential they add. Adding lovingly crafted fat little larvae to your beekeepers or hobby horses and a great banner to your brutes, now that’s the stuff that makes turnip my one true love.

Knights of the Shattered Lance

If you’ve every played turnip with me, you know I play cavalry armies. Be it Woe, Slugs or Probby, I love rolling 2d6 with bowel loosening charge and gobbling up your whole fodder block.

As much as I want to jump straight to a new cavalry unit, we have to look at it’s core rules to understand how they work.

Beneath Contempt

Paraphrasing:

Beneath Contempt: Cavalry Follower units you control may:

• Ignore Unworthy Follower units when checking for line of sight or when checking which Follower unit is closest. The Knights of the Shattered Lance view all Followers EXCEPT cavalry followers as Unworthy.
• NEVER target enemy Snobs. They should be met by your own lords in single combat.

I think that currently the way this is worded means that you can ignore all the stock units except Whelps and Bastards, replacement toffs are still worthy because they aren’t follower units but you can still ignore big scary monsters like crabs, probby and lumps.

This isn’t quite Chaff’s Sharpshooter rule, but it’s a decent impression. What’s interesting is instead of a rule like “You may never win by Headless Chicken” in guttersnipes, we straight up can’t target snobs, which is a bigger loss than expected. I wonder if there’s a reason for that? Deeply unsubtle foreshadowing…

I think that technically at the moment, you must target the closest enemy unit within line of sight, which means you’ll probably run into a lot of situations where you ignore a follower unit, and the closest unit in line of sight becomes a snob which is an illegal target.

It probably needs something in the FAQ for VonSneg to explain that it doesn’t fizzle the charge, just use your brain and pick the nearest unignored non-snob.

Also while we’re at it, I’m honestly unsure if you can pick and choose Unworthy units with the current rules since it’s not a “may ignore any number of”. I’d lean towards it being pick and choose or else you wouldn’t have a cult rule against opponents who don’t bring any cavalry.

Roughshod Riders

Our cavalry followers can move through Unworthy units when charging causing a single dangerous terrain test to each unit passed through at the end of the move.

I really enjoy this design, maximizing multi-test retreats is one of my favourite bits of whelp gameplay, now you can start lining up charges that not only put multiple tests on the retreat, but also on the charge. These kinds of tests are the real lifeblood of turnips positional game so anything that teaches players to think about positioning and staging is a great addition in my opinion.

I think it’s strong, but I think it’s a safe kind of strong. You on average are going to be adding an extra test or two every activation, but unlike a scary multi-test retreat it’s going to be spread out over units that you’re not charging down. Sure if you roll all ones when someone runs over you it’s going to feel swingy and impactful, but that’s just turnip that could have happened to you because you wandered into some mud.

It’s the kind of mechanic that rewards playing well without going overboard.

Noble Lancers

Lancers in the WIP v0.1 rules

Okay so the easiest thing to compare the stat block to is whelps, we gain 2 bodies but gain one inaccuracy. That means in shooting we’re getting 2 extra shots but we’re actually losing about .3 of our expected shots (1.333 to 1), and in melee we’re gaining an extra 4 attacks, but dropping from 2.666 to 2 expected hits without CCW and we stay even at 4 with CCW.

We lose all of the movement flexibility of whelps but gain smokeless shooting. I was hoping it would still be good choice for a move shoot plinking at ccw units to force a retreat, but you’ve got a 65.5% chance to hit one or more times compared to base whelps on 80.2% it might seem like a lot but you’re still going to force a retreat. On the face of it that seems pretty good, but it becomes a lot dicier when you bring units with Fearless into the equation, suddenly base whelps were about a 50/50 but could scoot away if they failed, and your lancers are at 44.3%.

Sure you’re smokeless so now you can at least shoot back if you’re caught out but you’d probably rather not be giving up a free counter charge.

All that said, just look at their key rule, we’re getting an extra attack for each failed dangerous terrain test. We’re going to be taking CCW to reroll charges and to be an absolute melee blender. The best bit is you can even outplay dedicated anti-cav options like the pike block, just run them over and turn those soft bodies under hoof into free attacks.

On average one fodder block is going to turn into 12 more attacks and 4 extra expected hits. Even if you only have one failed test in your entire charge you’re looking at 18 total attacks, and 6 expected hits which is the baseline for bastards.

Don’t forget you can also run over your fodder screen for another free boost at their expense.

The Relics

So base rules they’re looking a light, a unique unit that takes some thinking to get the use out of and some tricks when targeting, maybe if that were all they’d be a decent bit below average for a cult, but now we can get into the meat of it.

’Orrible Oriflame (5 Norberts)

This relic can only be gifted to Follower Units: Units gifted with this blood red banner count as Cavaly Followers.

So we can turn something into cavalry, they’ll gain Beneath Contempt and Rougshod Riders but not the Noble Lancers Chivalric Trampling so no bonus attacks, and no 12” move. Might be nice for brutes to jump over a screen but against a decent opponent you’re going to struggle to make that charge.

I’m not hot on it. Maybe I’d be interested if it gave a little more movement or a limited version of the trample.

Rootling Squires (15 Norberts)

We get free rootlings that we can run over for a little bump to our damage, sure it’s nice that they respawn, but for 15 Norberts I’d expect a little more than a 42% chance to get a boost. I get the feeling that it’s a three pack so that we can’t come out of the gates with 36 attacks but I think it’s way below what I’d be interested in paying 15 Norberts for.

It’s going to feel good the few times you roll 2 or 3 ones, but more than half the time it’s just going to be funsized sized bag of rootlings that waddle around. Maybe let me pay 20 to make it full fledged snickers bar. Hell if you give me 2 units of three I’d pay 25 points for them.

I want to love these little guys but they just aren’t doing it for me.

Tournament Helm (5 Norberts)

Well gosh, if it isn’t that deeply unsubtle foreshadowing form earlier. You can toff off toadies as well as toffs. Isn’t that just a quintessentially turnip sentence.

The snob restriction keeps it from getting out of hand but it’s a bit of a shame that your lancers can’t take this as I’d love to see Viscount Archibald the Thick get jumped by 6 of his nephews.

As it goes it’s a neat trick and good for creaming some toadies but not something that’s going to let you go toe to toe with the big scary toffs. I can take it or leave it, and as we’re about to see. You’re probably going to leave it.

The Shattered Lance (25 Norberts)

Well guys this is the one you pick. Turn that Toady into an cruise missile and throw it at the scariest thing at the table. It’s one hell of a trick and I’m glad as all hell that you can only reliably do it once before it get’s shot to death.

30 attacks translates to 10 expected hits on a Snob’s 5+. Not having access to rerolling charges hurts a bit but you’re probably just walking this in behind a screen until it’s time for murder or getting into Toff Off range as fast as possible.

Conclusion

I have a pet theory that a lot of people latch on to one rule in their army, or at least one specific interaction that they’re looking for, and if a cult does that well and lets you express yourself, then it’s a good cult.

I have a bit of a sour taste in my mouth that the cruise missile snob detracts pretty heavily from what excites me about Shattered lance. I can’t decide if it feels a little out of place or if I’m just sad that the biggest moment of any given game will be me waddling a fat man with a chainsaw into a pack of idiots, instead of my masterstroke perfectly angled charge.

But then again maybe that will be what someone else loves about Shattered Lance. Either way I hope that the other options will come up a bit more in line with 25 point Shattered Lance.

Not super sure about Pistols & Sabres but I at least want to test them out. If we end up in a world where you can consistently get the attack buffs to good numbers without CCW then I’d be very interested in them.

In general I think the core rules are very cool, Noble Lancers getting access to pistols and sabres is a very cool too but I think since you have no ways to buff charge distance you’re going to be going for CCW on them for the reroll.

As down as I sound about them, I’m probably going to man out a bunch of games with them anyway with something like:

• Toff
  • Noble Lancers (CCW)
  • Fodder (BP)
• Toady
  • Noble Lancers (P&S)
• Toady (The Shattered Lance - 25 points)
  • Chaff (BP)

On the whole it’s quite interesting to see a cavalry cult that’s a mix of melee blender and dangerous terrain tests instead of melee/panic. It will be interesting to see if it’s worth going all in on killing instead of auto-deleting with failed panic rolls and distance.

Thanks for reading! - Toff Club

March 31, 2025 uninformed playtest

An Uninformed Look at the v18 Playtest Rules

The Whelps are dead, long live the Whelps.

Well there’s some new playtest rules out for the core book units and cults, and we’re expecting a follow up for the mercenary cults shortly.

You want some uninformed opinions before I’ve played any of the new rules? Well here you go.

Core Units

Whelps

NERF Whelps can no longer capture 2 objectives at a time with Dash

There’s a bit of an awkward formatting issue here, it’s not in the rules block for Whelps (which will probably cause some confusion during games). Let’s peek at the actual text under the objective rules.

Only one objective can be captured in an order. If a unit moves within 1” of two or more objectives in a single order, such as with the Whelps Dash special rule, the player must choose which objective is captured.

Whelps have fundamentally shaped how the game works for quite a while, and have done it on an axis that’s pretty difficult to affect otherwise. I really struggle to think of a top-tables opponent I’ve faced that wasn’t running at least one unit of BP/MIS whelps and I’ve ruined a few people’s games on Bountiful Harvest scenarios by running 2 units of them.

I genuinely think that this is by far the biggest change of the lot. The obvious impact is suddenly whelps become a lot less mandatory, they still have a lot of utility as positional shooters who can force a scary retreat and reposition but I expect they will now find themselves competing with chaff as their roles start to overlap more.

Stump gun

BUFF Stump Gun Grapeshot increased to 18”

This is a very welcome change, cavalry can no longer lurk outside of grapeshot range waiting for your stump gun to get a powder smoke token so they can swoop in with a guaranteed charge on 13 inches. But 18” inches is still a very doable charge, you make it 72% of the time, going up to 92% of the time with CCW. While I want to say that there’s a big difference between 100% and 92% and that you’ll actually be able to punish a bad roll with grapeshot, I don’t think it makes up for how punishing the Unstable Icon rules are.

I think that grapeshot is a trap outside of the panic token manipulation cults, Harry and Woe being the ones that come immediately to mind, and even then it’s a bit of a stretch. Grapeshot generates 2+ panic on its own about 53% of the time and 3+ panic 26% of the, this might not seem like a lot but on my tables I’d say it’s pretty common to see a stumpgun blow it’s self up on turn 3 if one of those shots was grapeshot.

Lump

Lump in the v18 Playtest

Three 5+ attacks (including the CCW bonus) is usually only a single expected hit but the Murderous Violence rules give us 2 auto wounds instead, and theoretically can spike most of the single model threats in the game (“Just roll all sixes.”, advice as old as wargaming).

But where Lump really shines is Impenetrable Bulk, it just soaks hits. Save on Panic+ is a very fun rule that tries to make sure that it sticks around long enough to do something, while increasing how much relevant design space their is for stumpgun style attacks.

I like the design a lot and it’s nice to have some high save monsters, but putting this thing out in front to soak up shots feels like a trap. It will just get shot by chaff and waddle backwards into the rest of your army or some dangerous terrain (this will probably feel very familiar to all pike block enjoyers).

Maybe the answer is to screen it with chaff and waddle it in behind them? Possibly, but 2 expected wounds on activation is a bit lackluster compared to our other melee blenders, but it’s very likely to win a fight and has a good 9” movement for a charge.

I’m struggling to work out where this thing fits, it feels like a useful tool against other monsters that just throw sheer weight of dice at you, but is that a better solution than just shooting them and making them walk backwards?

Cults

Strangling Harry’s Wretched Recruits

NERF Rootlings Cannot capture objectives the round they are placed back on the board with uproot.

Rootlings are a wonderful pile of disposable infantry and this change takes away some of the free upside without affecting their core identity of being something annoying that your opponent will have to deal with. Definitely a drop in power but it continues the theme of toning down the less interactive ways to cap objectives. I’m here for it.

The Slug’s Lament

NERF Grogs V5+ changed to V6+

We had seen some proposed changes in v17a that halved their attacks to bring them more in line with BP brutes in melee and retain their abilities as crack shots. This time around their vulnerability is going up, but they get to keep their shooting and melee.

Honestly a bit surprised by this one, Slug’s have generally been very strong, in part because of Grogs being great at shooting and melee. Losing 17% more of your saves is rough, but they’re generally the hammer not the anvil.

NERF: Old Guard’s arrival restricted somewhat.

Previously Old Guard came on within 6” of any table edge, excluding your opponent’s board edge. Now they come in touching a board edge and no model may be within 6” of your opponents board edge.

Maybe they get wiped on a few more off angle shooting attacks than usual and it restricts their ability to charge key targets, but they’re still generally 4 free hits the turn they come down.

In general I think Slug’s got off pretty light, I think this tones them down in a way that makes them feel a bit more sane but they’re very much still in contention for best cult in the game.

Tod’s Folly

BUFF: Tod Off!: Tod wins if he loses a Toff Off!

My brain is not large enough to be a Tod player but this is extremely flavourful. Todd is a pretty abysmal toff so you’re likely to win almost any toff off in the game. It’s a buff that gives Tod a bit more of a edge in headless chicken and can open up some matchups with cults like Alice and Mol, but I don’t think it will have a tremendous impact.

That said, this will make someone bring a Tod to tourney, and you will forget this interaction exists.

The Fungivorous Herd

NERF: The Herd Vuln changed to 6+. Stampede Changed to +6” Movement.

Thinning the herd looks a lot easier now which I think keeps it a bit more interactive, and you can pseudo bracket them by taking them below 10 models now.

The stampede change is more interesting, lets assume on your first activation you march through deadly terrain, you go up to 6.7 models on average, second activation you charge and you make it, you go up to 11.1 models. So we’re making 22ish attacks on 4+ so we have 11 expected hits. This is generally what the herd is trying to do, get to 12 models as efficiently as possible and delete something.

After the change we need to walk through two pieces of dangerous terrain to make a charge with the same number of models, but we gain the same movement as cavalry after. But we’re also losing out of the fact the unit we’re charging doesn’t make a dangerous terrain test, so we don’t have a 1 in 6 chance to just delete their big single model unit, or trim a couple extra bodies from a big fodder block.

I think these changes mean that the herd requires considerably more setup now and have to play into things like being frightened through multiple enemy units. The extra movement is nice, but I think this significantly lowers the power level of our little piggies.

QUESTION: Should Stampede add +1 A as well?

Is there really a substantive difference between 20-24 and 30-36 attacks? Yes, 10-12 expected hits and 15-18 expected hits is the difference between usually wiping everything in the game and pretty consistently wiping everything in the game. Obviously you have to work for it and there should be a solid payoff but I think. It’s probably overkill but not in a way that I think is harmful, and it feels great to roll a small bucket of dice on the table.

The Grand Bombard

NERF Grand Bombard: Can no longer take Stump Guns.

This is the most confusing change to me, the only reasonable strategy I’ve seen with GB is using chaff and/or Whelps to grab two or so early objectives and then rolling one or two 50/50s. So in general not great.

I guess that this means that you have to use Aristocratic Ammunition more often, because you don’t have the option to use another stumpgun. Which means they play into idea of the theme a lot more but, it also means your ability to actually cap points becomes a lot worse.

I do wonder if this is a pre-emptive nerf as with Backward Observers bombard is the only cult that can still double cap with Whelps (Cap first objective with a Snob, cap second with Whelps).

I’m surprised to see a cult that’s generally considered quite weak get such a substantial nerf.

The Brotherhood of Greed

NERF: Mutations:Bulbous -1 V instead of -2, Tuberous Tendrils +1 A instead of +2.

Obviously a pretty clear nerf here. I Like Bulbous going down, it stops 4+ V fodder block, but you can still have 4+ on smaller model count followers. Tendrils dropping is a bit sad as it removes some of their ability to delete units entirely, but is still a solid thumb on the scale to turn a lot of fights in your favour.

I like turnip being about multiple engagements between units and building panic, so I’m happy to see that some of the ways to build crazy melee blenders being pulled back a bit.

Procession of Woe

BUFF: Rootshrine: U Shrine increased range, from 18 to 24”. Wounds increased to 5 (from 4).

A nice little quality of life change to make the Rootshrine a little easier to use and more resistant to getting plinked is quite welcome. Particularly as now we can throw panic tokens onto units that can’t shoot our Rootshrine without a move and shoot.

Red Ribbon Society

REWORK: Tuft Tokens generate with panic tokens. Upgrade your units every turn, grow a lump. QUESTION: How is the economy? Does the trigger and placing of Tufts slow down the game too much? Can you remember all the upgrades?

This is a big rework, I may have to cover this in a separate post after some games, persistent buffs are potentially massive but it all depends on panic generation.

BUFF: PLOTS now DEF (defensible terrain) for friendly units.

Damn, this is pretty huge and really adds a whole new dynamic to Ribbon. As a Shellwood enjoyer, I expect this ability to be very strong.

Extremely interested in trying something like 2 BP Chaff, CCW Bastards & BP Fodder with Ribbon.

Feast of Charybdis

NERF: Scuttlers: Movement 10 -> 6”, more interactive.

Any Scuttler movement nerf is a blessing, finally we’ll be able to out position crab charges! Right?

NERF: Rise From the Silt: Burrow limit to 1 unit a round. Counts as an order.

Okay great, I’m only dealing with one crab jump a turn. What could possibly go wrong? Why are you all looking at me like that?

BUFF: Can unburrow anywhere outside of 12” with blunder risk.

Remember when I said that for cavalry they can make a 18” charge 72% of the time, well this is the same math. If you were paying attention you might remember that I said with CCW you make this 92% of the time with the reroll. Crabs have CCW. They can teleport behind you and make a charge 92% of the time.

EVEN. IF. THEY. BLUNDER. They will just take D3+1 wounds. If you blunder a normal charge they’ll be stuck on M+D6”.

Not only does this work on crabs, but you can just do this with bastards to have a 100% chance to make the charge.

This is a level of consistency we have never seen in Turnip and it’s honestly terrifying.

Knights of Shellwood

NERF: Lumps exist now

This is very true, even worse Lumps are 9” Movement. But the reason why Shellwood is one of my main armies isn’t them being super tanky, it’s their interesting dynamic of staging round, go round. They’re a great army to play because they live and die on how you position them and when you decide to trigger mucous manoeuvre.

They’re a resource dependant combo army that reward patience and positioning.

BUFF: Snail Knight: BP Snail fires mini cannon shot, counter to Lump.

50/50 on a stand and shoot to do 2 wounds, without a preliminary bombardment option. It’s cool that there’s a decent BP option for a single model follower, and I’d like to see more of this kind of design in future, but I’m still taking the CCW for 4+ in melee.

I’ll counter lump by pinging it with chaff if it starts to get into threat range.

BUFF Mucous Manoeuvre: Every Turn but less reliable.

So instead of having 2 turns of getting to press the 18” button, we get random movement that averages a little higher than normal cav.

Kind of struggling to see how this is a buff honestly. On demand 18” movement with a 30” threat range was the reason to play this army.

CHANGE: Extra Turn Removed (was a bit of a pain for tournaments).

Honestly this change is fine, winning or losing with this faction you know how it’ll end on turn 4 either way.

Lopers of the Maudlin Marsh

CHANGE Lopers: 6 -> 4 Models, V7-> V6, Can take any equipment.

Losing 6 attacks hurts a hell of a lot on a 5+ model, but I must profess I haven’t played with or against lopers much. Taking any equipment is very nice on a profile with dash for some shoot and scoot, but I’m tempted to stick with CCW just to convert more attacks to hits. V6 is a hell of a lot nicer than V7 though.

Though, walking through a BP screen and the melee threat their trying to protect just to shoot it in the ass and watch them take a big dangerous terrain test and wind up out of position. That’s whelps on steroids, probably the best scoot and shoot in the game.

I think they wind up in position where they have solid options with multiple loadouts and that’s pretty ideal for making the game more diverse and interesting.

Retreating over units cause DT tests for that unit.

Extremely fun and flavourful, and awkwardly how I thought Lopers worked before this playtest.

BUFF: BOTH armies’ followers are exposed.

Congratulations, you are the new designated shooting army. Exposed is particularly great for stand and shoot fodder, who don’t want to pour their dice into chaff, and particularly nasty on a stump gun, who can make sure their always pointing at a good target.

Gets into some awkwardness where there’s a real incentive to base models individually instead of as a block.

Aunts Ascendant

NERF: Balloon: Movement reduced to 12”. Can’t cause unlimited DT tests.

Very sad about losing 24” movement but it was definitely a bit silly and limiting the DT tests to once per unit per move is just the sensible interpretation of the rule.

BUFF: Snarky Tourists: Moved to global ability. Mirror match tweaked.

Nice that you keep the core ability of the army even if the Balloon is off table, removes the feel bads when you suddenly become a vanilla army.

Flipping the mirror match to be you only control your opponent’s retreats is a lot more fun in my opinion and extremely turnip.

Leech Lovers

REWORK: OH NO! Another attempt to make em fun. Theme is panic tokens cause wounds combined with lifesteal. QUESTION: How does this feel when fighting Cults that manipulate panic. Is it too oppressive?

Okay this is a biggie and might get it’s own post.

TL;DR:

• Toff looses 4 attacks and two wounds
• Swole toadies are gone
• Lifeblood is at the end of the fight using the numbers from the last melee bout (still works for shooting as normal)
• All your followers start with 1 panic (this was tested a couple turnip cons ago but didn’t change much on its own)
• Every round start units lose wounds for each panic they have, every 2 panic removed from a unit deals one wound to it.
• No more action economy cheating.
• Toff healing now a single wound per round with no condition.

Damn, that’s a lot. Definitely something that I need to play around with to get a feel for, my instinct is that this guts the faction. But lifeblood and new panic wounds might be strong enough to make them into a proper attrition cult.

Uprising of the Louse

REWORK: Attempt to make the Tall Man more interactive. 4 years of horror and sacrifice have brought the construct to some limited form of life.

Terrifying. But mainly a way of manipulating your aura now that it’s 24”. Nice that it can charge with some attacks if needed.

Aim to make blundering theme more consistent. Now Rabble is just a generic theme for your units, old rabble were fun, but broke the activation economy. QUESTION: How does this play with scenario blunders?

Max: Gosh, rabble can really skew the action economy.

Also Max: What if they could just do two orders every activation?

I’ve been waiting for some kind of Dragoon faction for a while, the vibe of firing then charging is peak napoleonics for me. Stacking a little extra panic before a BLC is very appealing but opponents taking two retreats might be difficult to capitalize on.

Units of Rabble never lose models, instead the entire unit is essentially treated as a single model with Wounds equal to the total of every model in its unit profile.

Unbracketable Bastards. Unbracketable Fodder. Unbracketable Brutes.

I’m so here for uprising of the louse.

A phenomenal rework and probably the one I’m most excited about.

Saint Alamies Rocket Battery

BUFF: Rocket Battery: Rockets can move, and are less likely to explode, 7+ to 5+ Vuln.

I’m liking this new 0” M non-immobile statline for opening up options, but I can’t see myself giving up a volley fire for it. And V5 means that it’s a lot harder for it to get picked off by some sneaky whelps.

BUFF: Pocket Rockets: Trigger on retreat and only target enemy followers.

This is very nice, incidental panic build up on enemies is extremely welcome, 2 panic every retreat is a lot better than 2 panic when your unit gets wiped.

St. Alamei’s Rocket Battery considered to be equipped with Missile weapons.

I’m sorry, what? We no longer generate a powder smoke token and can always stand and shoot. This one might actually be a typo so expect an amendment soon.

We do however seem to lose the ability to torch a model in exchange to clear two panic tokens but that seems a fair price to pay to improve our ability to generate panic tokens on enemy followers.

I’m extremely interested in this one too. Yet another secret cavalry regiment ready to feed my bowel loosening charges.

Temple of the Swelling

NERF Swelling: When placed no longer kills a model. Tendrils cause panic tokens instead of DT tests.

Loosing out on killing a 2W model is a shame but not a huge problem. No more DT on placement is a tough hit, but building panic is going to help us in the long run with more retreats, so maybe not the end of the world.

NERF: Its Everywhere: NERF single model units only fail DT test on a 1.

This may be a pretty big nerf, but losing 8 wounds one in three times was a devastating feelbad.

NERF: Rootlings cant cap when they return (see Harry), can only take 2 max.

As we previously discussed I think this is fine and removes some of the less interactive elements of the game. Capping to two is good and stops unkillable skew lists.

Conclusion

These are some very spicy changes. A lot of winners and a lot of losers. I’m not as keen on the Lump as I want to be but I’m sure someone’s going to find a cool way to use it.

In general I’m definitely going to test the following:

Knights of Shellwood

Very sad to see these changes, but worth seeing if we can salvage something from it. Maybe there is potential in it being a tanky high variance cavalry army. I’m tempted by Snail Gunners but I don’t think they’re really going to move the needle. Hopefully I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

St. Alamei’s Rocket Battery

God I love spamming panic, and this is a cult that can really spam panic now. Double Rockets are for sure, but I’m tempted to go for the BP bastards and rely on running people down on failed panic tests.

Uprising of the Louse

This is a faction I’ve avoided playing for a long time, there’s been a good few versions of it but this is by far the one that has appealed to me the most, I’m probably gonna wind up taking more cavalry than I should. If this is the only way I get to run dragoons I will probably play it to death.

All in all I like how bold the changes are, it feels like there’s some core goals with these changes, particularly around reducing the less interactive elements. Which is why I’m so confused about the crab changes, board wide teleport with a 92% charge is not what I was expecting at all.

Crabs can go do one.

Thanks for reading! - Toff Club

December 13, 2024 uninformed v18 playtest