Games Workshop - Age Of Sigmar: Orruk Warclans: Gutrippaz

Product Information

For those of you who abhor the written word. We have now included a very basic video for you to watch which will walk through the content of the box and give my (FauxHammer’s) opinion of the contents. As a note, before we get into this, I won’t be using the gaming mat that comes in this box for these playtests. Having reviewed all three Starter Sets, I’ll be swapping the mat out for the board that comes with the Extremis set, as it’s much nicer to both play on and photograph. It seems like a bit of a blunder on behalf of GW. The battleplan designed to teach the use of high ground can’t actually involve any high ground. I do not claim originality in my thinking here, but what I do certainly claim is that the Kruleboyz are not as well-understood by us, the KB playerbase, as we might like to think we do. This army faction is one which truly rewards diversity, clever thinking (which fits the moniker "da finkin' manz' orruks") and avoiding hyper-specialization. Running a soupy skullbugz list seems to embrace and engage all the best elements the army has to offer while affording consistent benefits across the duration of the game. By comparison, the Bolt Boyz hypothesis, which is almost certainly the prevailing zeitgeist, seems one-dimensional, limiting in options, and fragile.

Building these guys was easy. The sprue gates are put on sensible areas throughout. Whilst there is come clean up to be made on the odd curved surface, all the gaps covered by sensible armour joins. Knight-Arcanum

Core Battalions

This is an issue with push-fit figures. One thing some people have suggested doing is shaving a millimetre or so off the very end of the joining peg using a sharp hobby knife or some sprue cutters. There are, however, a few difficult parts to her build. Primarily, these are focused on the robe skirt and the sleeves, where you’ll find some gaps. Using decent plastic glue (Tamia Extra Thin because it has a brush applicator, not a stupid spout) you can meld these joins together . Their main role is to claim objectives however, near or far. They can dish out some hurt but not as much as you may expect for 180 points. To dish out more pain they would need buffs from other units to do so. Combinations Often incorrectly referred to as Stormcast Vindicators (which is something else entirely), this is another relatively straightforward sprue. Unlike dominion, where you get two of this sprue in the box, each of the starter sets comes with only 1 sprue

With the first combat phase now upon us, Lizzie was hopeful this would help keep her Gutrippaz alive. But after as singularly successful Hit and Wound phase from me, and a very unsuccessful Save roll from her, she was one Gutrippa down and another wounded, in spite of her saves. This time, though, instead of military ranks and titles, everything’s got a snazzy high-fantasy name. Instead of the Recruit Edition, we have the Warrior Edition. Instead of the Elite Edition, we have the Harbinger Edition. And finally, instead of the Command Edition, we have this – the Extremis Edition. So, you’ll be able to build either the figure on the top row or the one directly below them. This is great, as it means there’s lots of scope to personalise your new fighting force.

The fancy board and scenery, though, do feel like more of a statement of intent: the board is being set for the pieces to play on. Whilst the other sets had their cheaper mats and carboard trays accompanying their dice and range rulers to encourage gameplay, fancy scenery and hardy gaming boards feel more instructive. This set is definitely placing more emphasis on getting you playing the game than the others do. Now without their commander, there was little the Stormcast Eternals could do in their Hero phase to boost them. Instead, they set about trying to slay the remaining orruks. The Prime and Banner Bearer only managed to do a single wound to the remaining pair of Gutrippaz, but the pair holding off the Killaboss managed to bring his wounds down from 6 to four. Unit of Gutrippaz can be used as screens if necessary, they do have more survivability than Hobgrot Slittaz. They may be a little pricey for this role however. This time, we’ve lost the run-of-the-mill Warhammer 40,000-themed military ranks and gained some glittery fantasy-themed names for these new boxes. We have the appropriately fantastical (and much harder to follow) Warrior Edition, the Harbinger Edition and the Extremis Edition. Some articles like this one go so far as to suggest three units of six boltboyz for a total of 18 crossbows on the table. Then there's this one, which sells the Ranged KB meta by suggesting making your sub-faction Big Yellers " lets you pivot towards a pretty potent ranged gameplan," and even goes so far to say the faction is "a very strong choice and probably the default when running a Kruleboyz army which espouse the army as a ranged threat." This article provides the most level-headed assessment of the Big Yellers hypothesis by offsetting it with a more respectable mix of Gutrippaz and some other elements. And, admittedly, the evidence for why Bolt Boyz deserve your attention is strong:

I’m yanking the reins off FauxHammer for a bit, as the scenery sprues are completely new and, so far, totally unique to the boxed releases that have been introduced with AoS Ver 3.0.

There are, of course, substantial existing ranges for both Orruks and Stormcast Eternals already, so be sure to have a look through GW’s catalogues to see if anything else takes your fancy. We rolled off to see who would go first. and I won with a 6 to her 3. In hindsight, we realised the book actually instructs the Kruleboy player to go first, but we missed this. This would cause a small issue further on it the battle report, as you’ll see.