He newest incarnation is a lot less, finesse and much more axe - face, in a literal sense. Lets take a look at his raw stat line and his feat before moving onto his spells and innate abilities.
A point worth mentioning straight off the bat is, this guy is HUGE. He stands at all as Ghetorix and has been put on a large base which is one bigger then his prior incarnation. He has terror, which is fairly standard on a guy looking as he does. I mean, if he told me he is now champion of the wurm with blood dripping off Rahtrok, I would be inclined to agree. Pathfinder is a great rule to have so we can hide behind walls, and then charge over them!
So lets start with the speed, SPD 6 is pretty much what we all expected, so nothing to mull over here.
A base strength of ten, paired the mighty axe Rathrok makes for a base P+S 17. This is very, very good for circle. 17 Threatens most warbeasts, and most warjacks to a extent.
Mat 8, the same as his Mat in his prior beast form but can cast spells? Sign me up.
Rat 4, well we have no ranged weapon so again, nothing much too speak about.
Defense of 14, considering the big K went to a large base over a medium base this is very fair, we went up a base size and dropped one defense, but in turn we gained some armor.
Armor of 18, again this is pretty darn good for a circle warlock, and our highest base armor so far. It means those pesky pow 10/11 guns won't bother us without a boost, and low pow charges of 10-11 should not threaten him in a huge way.
Now lets move onto the feat, BLOOD LUST! A primal, without frenzying! This feat is pretty damn tasty. Why writing that statement; Please appreciate i realize this is no Kreuger2 feat, ect ect but we only take models on the merits, never on what they do not supply. Okay, this feat does not supply board control, it does supply any help in scenario play and neither will it stop our paper thin armor on infantry being melted.
But, it does a hell of a lot and we should appreciate what it does do. +2 STR and +2 ARM on our living warbeasts, this is fantastic! Ghetorix stands at ARM 21 when being engaged, a riphorn stands at ARM 21 all the time and kromac gets thrown up to ARM 20. Okay this ARM won't stop you from being one rounded by 2-3 warbeasts, or a raged mulg ect. However it does help you stand there a little longer, and it will hurt a scythean, suddenly -4 rather then -2 is a big deal on ghetorix for example. Throwing Kromac up to ARM 20 is getting to be very tanky, so this should allow for some aggressive scenario play for dominating a zone turn 2 and being able to survive the round after. If you pair this with the winter argus winter coat (+2 armor and immunity: cold) we go up to 22, which is pretty sweet. +2 STR on all living warbeasts is fantastic, and may be a list (I will be trying for sure) that allows us to run 2-3 heavies without a gorax. The feat puts all our warbeasts which crack armor pretty well upto higher standards, and if necessary paired with a gorax to ludicrous amounts of STR. It also puts Kromac up to P+S 19, this is very good. This paired with his base high MAT means he will threaten anything within his 11" threat range, and may stand there next to turn to well.. kill some more!
The last part of the feat affects all living friendly models, and it grants your charge attack rolls to auto hit. This is also, pretty good! Auto hitting blood trackers? They will do some quick work (The puns) indeed! Skin walkers damn why are you mat 6? Boom, auto hit. Tharn ravagers are going to charge at mat 9 and kill a model and get a token and kill and ohhhh.. I missed. BOOM! not anymore. The feat is a great tool to use on those low MAT units that always epically fail, well not any more boys!
With his feat, and raw stats looked at, lets take a look at his spells and innate abilities.
Heart eater? Pretty fitting for tharn king. The cool thing for kromac is we can use the tokens to boost magic attack / damage rolls. All in all, as expected.
Life drinker is pretty neat. If post feat turn, we have taken some damage, we have a way too heal up the damage we have taken. Not game changing, but for the aggressive play style I think we're going to have to play to make most out of Kromac, it's neat.
Spells! Spells, spells oh spells. Kromac has a long list of spells, and it seems one for every occasion!
Lets start with aggravator, Hyper aggressive for your battle group. When i first read hyper agrssive on a bronzerback, I was like - OMG THIS IS CRAZY! People shoot me, and i go closer? How do you kill this thing! Then, i had a few games with ghetorix, and now I've had a lot. The rule is neat, however far from practical. The full advance, directly towards the source of damage is hindered by a lot of things.
A) You bump into models, a lot!
B) People will shoot you, wanting you to hyper agressive to lure you into a charge lane, ect
C) You might just get shot, and die by shooting anyway!
With that being said, it has some use. You may gain a few inches of movement which doesn't lead to your demise, you may be able to advance and engage a enemy model to protect your self from shooting. All in all, not a bad spell to cast and fail charge turn one, but not hugely game breaking.
Awakened spirit, a free animus each turn. This is pretty neat and we have plenty of good targets for it, namely lightning strike and bulldoze. By up keeping you effectively save two fury somewhere else on the board. Useful, but maybe on the turn Kromac2 wants to go in worth dropping for another attack.
Carnage? How about yes! With fury 7 it's very viable to drop down carnage, which is amazing for stalkers, ghetorix, riphorns, anything that uses MAT as it's primary mechanism. Kromac being mat 10 isn't so shabby. All in all, very good.
Primal Howl, a bit of a corner case spell. Giving this guy has a CMD of 4, it won''t be cast every turn. I can see it being used the turn you go in with kromac, if playing against living threats. The -2 CMD is great if you can make a key unit run away, but the spell won't be used every turn that's for sure.
Primal shock! This spell is good, a great spell to snipe out a solo post charge with a warbeast? Neat spell but not a huge amount to say about it. A reason to play a worldwrath maybe?
With that being said, what sort of list can we expect to see? Well i have wrote my own and here it is:
Kromac, Champion of the Wurm
Druid Wilder
Winter Argus
Warpwolf Stalker
Warpwolf Stalker
Riphorn Satyr
Blakclad Wayfarer
Tharn Bloodtrackers (6)
Nuala
Druids of Orobos
Druids of Orobos Overseer
So here it is. The plan is to throw awakened spirit on my winter argus, use my druids for force bolts and or potential clouds to protect kromac after going in. The trackers under feat will deal well with any infantry and will help my list play any scenario which requires a splitting of forces.
Sadly ghetorix will be in my other list pairing, but the stalkers being mat 8 will instantly solve one of there problems, and the feat allows to crack some real armor without auto frenzying. The wilder will help fury management, and the black clad will allow free charges out side of my fuel cache and extend my threat ranges.
Very excited to test the big guy, will keep you all updated!
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