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Monday, September 17, 2012

Mammoth Spoilers!

UPDATE: Now that the Mammoth is more completely spoiled, some of the information below is incorrect. The post below was based on stats that were spoiled incompletely, and includes some guesses made by me and others in the Skorne community. Now that the full spoilers are out I am seeing a ton of hits to this page (somehow my page is in the top 5 on google for "skorne mammoth"), and getting comments about how the stats are incomplete. 

Here are the currently spoiled stats:

SPD:4 STR:15 MAT:6 RAT:3 DEF:?? ARM:20 FURY:5
2 P+S 19 fists, 1 P+S 18 Tusks, crit pitch
gun is Pow 15, RoF 3, AOE 4
Animus is Counterblast (see gun boar)
Bulldoze and Assault

That's the meat of the rumor. The stats should be out in the NQ later this month, at which point I'm sure no one will be coming here for their stats. I appologize for the out-dated stats, I really had no idea people would still be running into this page so long after I posted it originally! 

In Privateer's latest video update, the studio design team talks about the upcoming Gargantuans book. There are a number of spoilers (some have already been spoiled, but other than some concept art from lock and load, this is the first official leak for the new book). Most of the gargantuans themselves have already been spoiled to some degree. The cards for the mountain king and wold wrath have been out for a little while, and are available in War Room, so no surprises there. We already knew that the Archangel would have ride by attacks and consume, so there was very little new info there. The big one was the Mammoth preview!
A mammoth plowing through everblight lines




A few months back at Wargamescon we got the first spoilers for the Gargantuans, and got our first tidbit about the Mammoth. Just the stat line for the gun was enough to get a lot of Skorne players excited. POW 15, ROF 3 and a 4" AOE made a lot of Skorne players very happy. Assuming a point cost of 18-20 points, you could get this big gun for the cost of 2 cannoneers, plus maybe a point or two. two cannoneers drop 2 pow 15 3" AOEs, so this already gives you one more shot and a bigger blast for each of those shots. I would play this guy even if the rest of the rules/stats were crap, just for a big boostable gun like that.



Well, now we have even more to get excited about. Crit Pitch is ok, but not terribly exciting. the huge base somewhat limits the usefulness of pitching models, since it will be very hard to toss them back to your army. Really, crit pitch is just icing on the cake.

Assault is a big deal. most turns you will probably want the Mammoth to hang back slightly and take advantage of using its ROF 3 to clear a bunch of infantry. but on the turn that you do want to get into combat, launching one more pow 15 blast into a big target will be very helpful. you can also pull some long range shots by combining Far Strike and assault to lob a fully boosted shell 21" down the field to soften a target up early.

Bulldoze is the ability I'm most excited about. I haven't even started to wrap my head around all of the fun things that bulldoze will let us do with the mammoth. with all of the movement buffs Skorne has as a faction, we can expect some really long range bulldozes when we need them. the huge base means you can potentially push a large number of models (it also means you might have trouble moving past models you bulldozed, so it's not all good to be huge). bulldoze will make it easier to clump up enemy troops for a sweep power attack. bulldoze is always great for scenarios where you might have to push a few models out of the zone, forcing your opponent to put more guys in the zone and not just toe the edges. then once you bulldoze their models out, you have a giant unmoving elephant in the way of your opponent's army retaking the zone.



That is a big titan!

Also in the video we saw the first  spoilers for the mammoth sculpt. up until now, we had only seen the green sculpt for the mammoth's head, minus the tusks. that is one huge elephant! unfortunately, it's also a huge tusk overhang... If you don't want to be turning your giant model around to fit it into combat, you'll need to repose the whole thing or at least magnetize the tusks or head.

There are still a few items missing before the mammoth is fully spoiled. We still don't have base stats, though we can start making educated guesses based on other models. here is my best guess statline:
SPD:4 STR:15 MAT:6 RAT:4 DEF:8 ARM:19 FURY:5


who needs shoulderpads when you can have Epic Tusks?!

These stat guesses are based on other Skorne models as well as the other two Gargantuans that we have statlines for. SPD 4 is standard for titans, and will likely not be changing. STR is equal to the mountain king, likely with either pow 3 or 4 fists (P+S 18 or 19), and one less pow on the tusks. all 3 of the other gargantuans have P+S 19 melee attacks, and I would expect the mammoth to be the same, possibly one point less due to all our damage buffs in faction. MAT/RAT are both standard for Skorne. I could see them going with MAT 5 like the MK, but I would expect the RAT to also be 5. I would expect either 6/4 or 5/5. I'm leaning more towards 6/4 as I doubt they would give rat 5 to a skorne beast with multiple shots, and 6 is pretty standard on our melee beasts. def is average of current Gargantuans, and arm is stock standard for all of our titans. I'm holding out hope for fury 5. it would be a tougher sell at fury 4, though I could see it happening. I would imagine will all of that, there's no way the mammoth costs less than 20 points. But I will happily pay every point for this guy...

Hopefully in the next few months we'll start seeing more rumors trickling in. the book doesn't come out until Spring, but the rumor is still out there that all gargantuans will be released this year. I would expect to see the full statlines for the Archangel and Mammoth in the next month or two, and maybe some rules or stats for units and warlocks starting in January. We've got a lot to look forward to!

3 comments:

  1. Its ARM is 20. It was mentioned in No quarter as being tied for highest armor so unless the Archangel is Arm 20 it will be this guy!

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  2. actually his rat is going to be 3 ive heard this in many places like a press ganger

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  3. I apologize for the outdated rumors. as you can see above, this post was written back in September. I added an update to the top of the page to help out if people are finding this page now.

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