Sunday, March 2, 2014

"I'm a Grolar Bear and it's ok . . . "


"I work all night and I sleep all day."

Ok just in case you play Warmachine but don't follow Warmachine news, the last of the spoilers are in from Vengeance. I'll admit that a number of things are somewhat disappointing to me, I don't mean to complain really, I would argue that Khador is the winner of this book, (with Retribution coming in at a strong second place.) I'm merely a little dissapointed because I was hoping for more. Maybe that is just because most of the "new" models being released in the book are already out. In fact of the 5 entries that Khador gets, 3 are already out, and one was spoiled ages again at the Warmachine Tactics Kickstarter. While I didn't mind getting access to all this stuff before the book is released to find out that there was only 1 thing left in the book that belonged to Khador that hadn't already been spoiled was a bit disappointing, I was at least hoping we would get the warjack of renowned and then a character Jack. But oh well, it is what it is, and this may give me time to catch up and get all the vengeance models before a new book comes out.

So without further ado, I give you the Grolar. . .
No I am not kiddin, that is it's name. . .  Grolar!!! And no it is not fictional. Turns out a Grolar is what you get when a male Grizzly Bear decides it's ideal mate is the largest living species of terrestrial predator known to man, the polar bearOh I see this isn't the picture of a Grolar you were looking for, well how about this.


The art on this thing is pretty cool. Stat wise we have the following info from http://www.belloflostsouls.net

He has Kodiak stats of course, and like a Kodiak, has the Pathfinder rule. No Double Boiler though. Instead he has the fleet rule. If he spends a Focus he'll get an extra 2" of movement for a round. Some of the more outrageous rumors I was reading about this guy are true. He does indeed have a RoF 5 gun: the Auto Cannon. It has the Double Strike rule allowing it to make two extra attacks per focus spent. The downside is it has a mediocre RNG and POW of 8 and 12 respectively. It also has Gun Fighter rule which means with it's open fist and Piston Hammer it can make three initial attacks. And to make it even sweeter it has Virtuoso as well. As for the Piston Hammer, it's a nice solid P+S 18. No Reach, but it has the Ram special rule. It's like Beat Back but also knocks it's target down. I feel like there's another model out there with this rule but I'm blanking on it... At 9 points, this is the most expensive warjack [in vengeance] so far.
I've seen a lot of discussion on this jack just in the few days since info on it has become available, and it seems like people are of a mixed mind on how good it is.  As to how good it is or will be I will leave that for another time. But I want to suggest an axiom to live by for this game. I will probably come up with others as time goes on. Proof is in Practiced Play-testing. Anything else, any other theories or dojo are just that, theoretical. If there is one thing that you see way to much of online and in the forums it is theorizing without ever giving it a chance. If you want to know how good something is, don't trust anything anyone else says. Take it and play-test with it. Multiple times, not just once, this game has enough complexities that just one run through is not enough to know how well something works. This is something that Khador players in particular seem to struggle with on occasion. (Probably stemming from the fact that most of us were originally attracted to the big stompy robots and quickly forced back to reality.)


All this being said I fully intend to do a quick comparison that is entirely theoretical because the model just came out. So here is my magical, mythical, sparkly Grolar theory.

The Grolar is the best 9 point jack that we have in Khador. Not to say that is will see a lot of play or replace all other jacks. Not even saying that it will replace the other 9 point jacks in every list. But by straight up comparison it just has so much utility. As a refresher the other 9 point jacks available to us are the 4 D's: Decimator, Demolisher, Destroyer, Devastator. Enter the Grolar. For arguments sake lets say that you have exactly 9 points left for your 1 warjack. Lets do a quick comparison here. All 5 jacks are speed 4. But only one has a built in way to gain +2" movement. . . GROLAR. Only one of these has a built in pathfinder. . . GROLAR. They all have the same MAT/RAT but only one has gunfighter and virtuoso. . . GROLAR. So only one of the 5 jacks gets 3 initial Melee Attacks. . . GROLAR. In terms of Utility only 1 jack has an auto knockdown weapon that also has built in beatback, and can easily target either hordes of infantry or a hard target, or both, in a given turn. . . GROLAR

Decimator will still be better at shooting hard targets from range. Demolisher and Devastator will likely still be better for scenario play as they can be ARM 25 wrecking balls you swing at your opponents army. Destroyers, well Destroyers will forever be sad, so we don't talk about them lest we get depressed. But the Grolar, for my money play-testing will prove Grolar to be an excellent choice of Jack. I'll follow up on this more once i've had a chance to prove it through play-testing. 

Untill then. . . GROLAR BEAR I CHOOSE YOU!!!


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