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.