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.