Welcome to the first ever Spent Glory Product Review weekend! Thank you to Games Workshop for providing Spent Glory with an advance copy of this product for review and content creation. I hope to be able to provide something to the community that you all find valuable and different from the other preview content reviews out there. Let me know what you think of this review and what you’d like to see change in the future!
Click here to see a Master List of all warbands in the game
Contents
I’ll open with a brief discussion of what’s “in the box”, which has to begin with how slick the card envelope is. Compare it to the Grandfather’s gardeners one – I really like the luxury direction this is heading.
For those who like sprue pics (you weirdos), enjoy my really high quality photo. It was easy to build and a nice kit.
Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz: The Lore
Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz are a band of grots under the command of Borgit Wolf-Killa, a git who fancies himself a bigtime hunter after he killed that one wolf that one time, and has headed down to Embergard to bag some more trophies. He also is on the lookout for information regarding Trugg, the king of Troggoths, as he’s taken a bit of a dual interest on both trolls and wolves. He’s sporting a wolf pelt cloak, and has another draped over his pet Cave Troggoth that he keeps as a status symbol, hoping for it to grow real big one day, but of course Uglug has yet to do so since they keep having him crawl around in cramped mine shafts. The troll is (ug)lugging around a big wicker basket filled with presumably hunted meat, pelts, and trophies, and delightfully carries a snotling tied up on his waist which I can only assume is for a light snack later in the day.
While Borgit probably considers himself a force of personality that could make even a Troggoth follow him, he really only sticks around because of his pet squig, which is really two goblins in a trenchcoat. Did they kill his real pet, realize their mistake, and this was the solution? Did they invent a pet for him and somehow it worked? We’ll never know, but Rigg and Sham don’t look particularly happy to be playing the part.
An amusing thing about this warband from a visual perspective is that they have the fungal motif we have come to know and love for our grot factions, but they also have some varied textures across the models, including two woven baskets as well as furs, cloth, leathers, wicker, metals, skin, and the most important kind of skin – snotling. The lil guys are packed into the models and while they don’t contribute to the fighters’ stats or abilities in a meaningful way, they do add buckets of character.
Speaking of character, I love how the warband has multiple layers of deception and using one another as bait built into both the theme and mechanics. Very on-brand for destruction to have them all be idiots but also fiendishly cunning, everyone absolutely out for themselves, and all thinking they’re the smartest of the bunch. I imagine even Uglug fancies himself a philosopher in his occasional lucid moments.
I can’t really do this warband justice without mentioning a stellar Black Library book titled Gloomspite by Andy Clark. While there is only one scene from the perspective of the Gloomspite Gitz, and only a few scenes with any dialogue involving our lil grot friends, it does a phenomenal job of building a horror movie atmosphere and left a lasting impression of just how BAD Da Bad Moon really is. While it’s really easy to depict Moonclan Grots/Night Goblins in a ‘Loony’ way and make them comical/unserious, there is a vicious subtext to the faction that makes them as scary as any Chaos faction. After reading it I have an appreciation for their almost Lovecraftian apocalypse potential that would leave the world in a The Last Of Us situation. If you’re looking for some darker entertainment, give the book a read – there’s a lot more there than bouncy squigs and spinning shroom eaters (though there’s that too).
Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz: The Warscroll
Inspire
“After a friendly fighter delves, inspire that fighter”. I have a few thoughts on this, the first of which is Hachi Machi, what a glove-fit for Pillage & Plunder. A Flex deck and a Flex warband, both interested in Delving? I can get behind that.
The immediate thing to realize is that this means you have excellent control over your inspiration and should be able to reliably inspire whatever fighter you want in the first few activations. That fighter is probably Uglug as he gains the most, but it’s nice to have essentially your pick of inspirations on demand.
You may have some trouble inspiring many fighters early though, since you’ll have to get onto a token, delve it, and then possibly get off of it so the next guy can get on and have his turn. Unless you want to risk your fighters running up the field to get to multiple tokens, but beware – delving staggers you, and do you really want to have a 2-3 wound fighter staggered in enemy territory? Maybe if you’re playing Emberstone Sentinels looking to score Stand Firm. At least all your fighters inspired are on 2 defense and will be in cover right after the delve.
The other thing you’ll have to balance here is that your warband theoretically wants to take down Da Trophy/Da Mugginz, and they’ll be much better equipped to do that if they’re inspired, but that means they either move onto a token, then delve, then hope to make an attack, or charge onto a token, attacking with their uninspired profile, and then what’s the point. You’re going to want to pack lots of push cards/out of sequence movement and the like into your deck to be able to do both things or plus dice/rerolls. Hey look! It’s like they’re flex warband wanting a lil’ positional and a lil’ strike.
Trophy Huntaz
“At the start of your first action step in the first round, pick an enemy fighter with 3 or more health and make the Da Trophy. You then get +1 dice against that fighter all game with melee weapons”.
This is pretty nice – your warband is going to appreciate those plus dice since the minions have lower accuracy, and Borgit himself has crit grievous (and a warscroll ability can hand it out to minions later). Pick a fighter and single them out for the whole game as da trophy. You only choose a fighter once, and it only affects melee weapons, but it’s hard to sneeze at that ability. I get the feeling that experienced Beastgrabbaz players are going to have lots of thoughts about who to choose, and people playing against them will have to learn whether they should hold that fighter back or just accept that they’re probably getting scragged.
Da Bait
“Immediately after a friendly minion is slain, push your leader a number of hexes up to their health characteristic and you must end adjacent to an enemy fighter”.
Now THIS is an ability! You have three minions, two 2-health and a 3-health one. This means potentially 3 multi-hex pushes for your leader throughout the game, and he’s immediately in position to clap back at whoever just mulched your minion. Remember how I said it was a bummer to have to move onto treasure to inspire and then you can’t charge? Borgit may not need to feel bad about wearing a move token. Fun fact, putting Great Fortitude on a minion will also make this push go an extra hex when they get slain anyway.
Also, remember how I thought maybe it’s not the greatest idea to have a staggered minion after the delve? But if their whole point is to act as Da Bait…
If you’re playing against the Beastgrabbaz, be very careful about Borgit’s positioning and if his charge token status before you kill a minion. He doesn’t have to push adjacent to a specific fighter, just anybody within range of the push, so while your scary guy might have taken the minion out, he’s hurtling into your territory to assassinate your backfield weakling you thought was safe. It’s generally a good idea to kill enemy leaders before wasting time on their minions, and Borgit might make this even more important than usual. Do you dare take Da Bait?
After a few test games I found that this ability absolutely slaps as expected, but you’ll need to be careful not just about Borgit’s positioning but also the minions themselves. If you cluster up around Uglug with Reassuring Presence (details below), you might block Borgit’s push lane and make it so he can’t actually use this ability.
Gittish Taktikz
“After Borgit or Uglug successfully attacks somebody, once per game you can make the target into da mugginz until the end of the round. Your minions get crit grievous on melee attacks against that enemy for that round.”
Before we talk about use cases and viability, I want to gush about the theme here. ‘I just watched my tough guy homies bash somebody and now I feel emboldened to pile on and finish them off as we mug ’em’. Way to go, brave minions. This is the goblin flavor we’ve come to love.
This ability is good in a vaccum, don’t get me wrong, but it does feel a little limited by the characteristics of the warband. Your two big guys are your most damaging fighters, so presumably whatever they just hit ate 2-3 damage and they probably don’t need a ton more to finish the job.
The minions then get crit grievous against that target, but only with melee weapons. Dregg has his attack printed as a range 3 melee weapon, but I’ll just overlook that since it’s clearly intended to be ranged and therefore not benefitting from this rule. This means you only have two minions that can benefit from this without upgrades, and those jamokes are only throwing two dice uninspired so your odds of even triggering the crit are less than 1/3.
The other thing to consider is that the minions all already have runemarks on their weapons – so you’ll have to drop the Stagger or Grapple to try and fish for that grievous crit. Both Grapple and Stagger are support traits that theoretically would be designed to help set up the hit/kill for your bigger hitters. So then the question is: Do you use your little guys to let your big ones get the kill, or do you lead with the big guys and hope this ability tips you over the edge for a minion killshot?
In any case, I’m sure you’ll eventually find it useful when you do happen to open the round with a successful big boy attack and have minions without something better to do than pile on. The optimal scenario is probably to use this against Da Trophy so you have extra dice to trigger that grievous with, in round 2 once you’ve already gotten a minion or two inspired. And either put on your RAW rules lawyer pants or bring a melee attack upgrade for Hobblin’ Dregg so he can help out.
Reassuring Presence
Hey isn’t this Aemos’ old thing? Well, it has the same name anyway, but I’d wager this one is substantially better from a Flex perspective.
“Immediately after Uglug uses a core ability, once per game you can push each friendly minion up to 3 hexes, so long as they end adjacent to Uglug.”
This has so much utility and is a phenomenal Flex warband ability. You can walk or charge Uglug onto a midboard feature token and then immediately surround him with meat shields so they enemy can’t dislodge him as easily. You can take a move action, drag a bunch of minions over to him, and then he’ll get flanked/surrounded benefits for the next few attacks he makes at range 2. You can change him to bash somebody holding a token you want, slay or drive them off, and immediately occupy that token even if you don’t trigger overrun. You can move Uglug up the board and then use this to leapfrog your minions and put them in range to charge Da Trophy in subsequent activations. You can offer up some tasty minions to trigger Da Bait and get Borgit into the action. Play it right and you can use it to help score positional surges like Careful Survey (you ARE taking Pillage & Plunder, right?).
I’m sure it’s easy to use wrong, but with careful positioning and smart deployment it might be the thing that top-level Beastgrabbaz players get the most mileage out of.
Stab ‘Em Good
“Use this immediately after a friendly minion uses a core ability. Until the end of the next action step, the first time an enemy moves, is pushed, or enters a hex adjacent to any of your minions you can deal 1 damage to them”
You’ve moved or charged next to a guy you know they want to activate next. Now they either have to go the long way around, accept a damage as they run past them, or have to activate somebody else. Maybe they take ‘da bait’ and attack the minion in question instead, and Borgit’s a huge fan of that plan.
If used well this can really throw a wrench in your opponent’s operation. Surround your vulnerable big guy with minions (maybe it’s already true after they ran to Uglug with Reassuring presence) and make a mine field they’re hesitant to charge into. Box out an enemy who is against the edge of the board so they have no way past the ping bubble. The opportunities are pretty vast and even the Flying trait won’t help them. Notably, it works until the end of the next action step, so it’s also in effect the immediate power step after your minion action. You can even tag them if they try to use Sidestep to get away from you in the right situation.
It’s a fantasy scenario, but imagine you move somewhere special with a minion while there’s another minion adjacent to other fighters, pop this ability, then play Lure of Battle, Confusion, etc to get multiple pings off in the power step. Anybody you didn’t Stab Good in that power step still might eat a damage in the subsequent action step as your opponent consider all the bad choices you’ve laid out before them. Just take a Focus action, buddy.
Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz: The Fighter Cards
Borgit Wolf-Killa
In fitting with time-honored Warhammer tradition, the biggest hat goes on the boss. Da Wolf-Killa is likely going to be a key part of your warband, as any leader often is, but considering he has the best damage potential in your warband and nearly the best accuracy you’re likely going to want to use him early and often – but beware his low health characteristic of 3. The good news is he starts the game at 2 shield on defense, so you can theoretically risk him a little bit, and he’ll get that much more out of the cover hex once you delve with him to inspire since he’s on two dice.
Position him somewhere in the middle of your fighters so that he’s not immediately at risk of a turn one walloping, but also in range to sidle up and start taking heads once your opponent takes da bait and kills a minion. Inspiration is nice for him as it ups his accuracy 50% and gives you a better chance to pop to 3 damage on crit grievous, but isn’t probably priority 1 since you also don’t want him staggered and easier to hit. Going from 3 to 4 move can be significant though, so depending on what you’re facing you might want to leverage that.
Uglug
The lil’ big man himself, Uglug is going to do a lot of work for you. Opening the game at range 2, 2 hammers, 2 damage with Cleave, he’s your most accurate fighter and has the reach to offset the move 3 he starts with. Inspiring to gain Grievous on his attack and more importantly upping to 2 shields on defense, Uglug is the fighter I want inspired first. That 5 health doesn’t last as long on 1 shield, and it’s likely your opponents will target him early since he’s big, he has accuracy and damage, and he won’t trigger Da Bait. He will, however, trigger Gittish Taktikz and Reassuring Presence, so you want him in the action early on. Ideally he can get onto a feature token in your first activation, delve it, and sit pretty like his board-space dominating cousin Mollog.
Poor guy doesn’t know they’re playing him for a fool with Rigg and Shamm. And the internet thinks his eyes are in his mouth, but they’re not. They’re just under his nose like his Uncle Trugg. All bodies are beautiful.
Rigg and Sham
These poor blokes have to put on that ridiculous costume and play the part of Uglug’s loving pet, but that’s the Grot life for you. The scam-pack combines to 3 wounds and starts with 2 dodge, so they’re a decent choice to place up front since they’re likely to survive an early attack, and if they don’t that was an attack your opponent probably should have pout into one of your big guys instead so you’re still winning (and triggering Da Bait should you so please).
With a trash attack the inspires to only slightly less trash, their best use is probably to claim forward tokens for scoring purposes. Charge them up somewhere and throw a ‘why not’ two swords to hope to trigger that stagger and let somebody more useful finish them off if you can, but “get on token, delve token/stay on token” would be their primary use case. Play it right and they can be useful for Stab ‘Em Good in some scenarios too.
Snagz
The first thing to be said is this dude is carrying the warband’s symbol, and therefore is the Grabba of Beastz that Borgit named his crew after. This should be a clue to you that he’s the most important Minion, because he totally is. His attack is at range 2, so he can more reliably reach targets even while on feature tokens for inspiration/scoring purposes. He sports the grapple keyword, so he can be useful to dragging people into range of your more dangerous fighters. He also has a 2 hammer profile even uninspired, so he’s going to be pretty accurate as far as minions go. Perhaps the biggest thing to take note of is that Snagz inspires to 2 damage even at range 2, and goes up to speed 4, so he’s definitely worth committing a feature token to delve on earlier rather than later.
While he’s on two dodge, he does only have two health and might go down pretty easily so be cautious about how early you expose him! You wouldn’t want your banner-bearer to disappear too early, and just look at those poor snotlings he has with him. They’re too cute to risk. Pets must be protected at all costs. Especially since these ones are wolf bait.
Hobblin’ Dregg
I’m going to call it now – Dregg’s attack profile is supposed to be listed as a ranged attack. Expect a change to this in the next errata/rules update. Don’t be that guy who pretends it’s cool have this attack qualify for Gittish Taktikz’ crit grievous against da mugginz. This warband doesn’t need the help.
He’s probably your worst fighter, and a prime candidate for Da Bait. If he manages to survive to inspire, the 3 swords with stagger at range 3 isn’t explicitly bad and can help set up a crit grievous out of Borgit or minion attacks against da mugginz. That said, some objective cards just need you to be making attacks, and range 3 with movement 3-4 makes that easier, so depending on your goals you can still get some use out of him. And he has a nice lil mushroom on his headpiece, in a callback to Redkap from Zarbag’s Gitz. So it’s not all bad.
In Practice
Doing some brief testing in Rivals format, I found this warband to be quite powerful, perhaps even too much so. They worked marvelously with Pillage & Plunder as expected, but also did quite well with Blazing Assault, tabling the opposing warband and scoring Annihilation in round 2, even. They did decently well with Countdown to Cataclysm. Putting Uglug in cover and delving in your first activation, then surrounding him with minions makes him effectively immortal at least in Rivals, and it’s absolutely nutty that his profile has range 2 and cleave to start the game. And he goes to two shields effectively immediately! And he only gives up 2 bounty!? I know GW historically has never changed the stats on fighter cards, but aside from the Gorehulk’s still-too-busted card, Uglug might be the lowest-hanging fruit in Embergard to hit with a rules update.
Generally the warband hits hard enough and pretty accurately, is relatively mobile, and surprisingly survivable. It doesn’t have any glaring weaknesses at all in honesty, and I expect to see them pretty prevalent in the meta for some time. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them podium or even win a grand clash this year. While I didn’t take the opportunity to put together a nemesis deck for them, I expect this warband to be very strong
To be frank, I wonder if their looks-too-high power level is a symptom of them being released alongside (and presumably tested with) Edge of the Knife, which I think is a somewhat underpowered deck and also not a great companion for this warband. With the normal goal of a warband and a deck of the same flavor being released together (Flex and Flex in this case) – this might be the first ‘miss’ of second edition for this scheme. RF and Jaws felt right, Wrack and Gardeners is great, but these two products don’t pair as well. In isolation though, Borgit looks like a monster. If you have to fight him, pack plenty of cleave and pings, kill the leader early, and then avoid the troll if possible. Easy as that, right?
Wrap
Personally, I’m pretty intrigued. Maybe it’s because I like positional flexy aggro, maybe it’s because that moon shield is hardcore (it being a waxing crescent like The Old World Night Goblin’s rather than the more common waning crescent in AOS is a nice touch too), and maybe it’s because of the mind games that some of your abilities are going to play on your opponent. How about you? What do you think about this warband, and how do you plan to use them or take them down in the coming weeks? Let me know by emailing SpentGlory@gmail.com or by commenting wherever you found this article, and I’d also like to hear your feedback on my review structure in general so I can better serve the community in future release previews.
Until next time, I hope you enjoy spending your glory (in da bad moon’s light!)
Be sure to check out Spent Glory’s other review articles here
Thanks again to Games Workshop for providing me with this product so that I can produce this review content.
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