Gremlins, pigs and... no that's it. Oh my.

[Zerous]

So my Vanessa thread was a pretty decent hit! I'll keep the train rolling with a request: The gremlins from book 4! Sadly there's only two technical gremlin units, and one warpig. A shame, but it does mean less typing! So let's start off with

BURT JEBSEN

http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff29/Wyrd-Miniatures/Bk4-Bert.jpg

Behold! I get to be lazy! I like the little fella and will probably get him for my very slowly building Som'er crew. However, I don't quite understand what his All in the Reflexes trigger does. Does it... use his Df flip as a Cb flip when dealing damage? Could someone give me a rundown of how the trigger works?

GRACIE THE WARPIG

Burt's loyal steed, a warpig that has lived far past what a normal pig should live among gremlins by virtue of being useful. She's old, she's smart, she's fat, and she's loyal and always by Burt's side. In fact, whenever a crew hires Burt into it, they can also hire Gracie at absolutely no additional cost past her 7 stone arse, and it bypasses all hiring restrictions! Also of note, she possesses the (1) Eat Anything spell as a normal warpig, but unlike normal warpigs, she has Graverobber and thus can make her own corpse counters.

Ol' gal is slow and fat as Hell, possessing a large Wd stat, decent Df and a startlingly high Wp. I suppose dealing with Burt for so long has made her wise to the dangers that follow gremlins constantly. To make the swine even tougher, she has both Armor +1 and Bulletproof +1, Slow to Die and an (All) action that lets her make two healing flips! (Snooze) This, combined with her slow but steady (she has Shambling) speed, makes her an expert at finding an objective and sitting on it. If you hired her into a non-gremlin led crew, she gains a (0) power much like Eat Your Fill.

She has a few other abilities that can muck with some enemy crews and make her more valuable to Burt, like her 3:aura of Clakin' and Bangin' that keeps enemy models caught in the aura from simultaneously activating, the ability to automatically have herself targeted for an attack if someone attacks Burt and he chooses to use his Slippery ability, and while she's in play, Burt has (0) Link, but can only Link to Gracie.

On the offensive side, she has the standard Pigcharge ability, with a high Cb decent damage Gore attack that gets +1 Dg while in a Pigcharge. However, Gracie takes 1 wound if she makes a Pigcharge. As a (1) she can give a nearby pig the Stank Eye, automatically forcing it to stampede, before casting her only (0) spell, Vintage Swine, which lets stampeding pigs target the poor sucker who fails the resist duel of this spell (which, uniquely, uses their Wk stat as the resisting factor) even if they're not the closest model. Last but not least, she also has a (0) action that lets her take 2 wounds to gain REACTIVATE! Amazing! However, she cannot use this ability and (All) Snooze (the one that gives healing flips) on the same turn.

WONG THE WIZZERD

Probably my favorite of the trio, a 6 stone model with a funny 'stache, funny robes, funny fluff, and incredibly dangerous abilities. Like Burt, he is a Mercenary who hires out his mad talents to anyone who needs them, so long as the one needing them isn't a Ten Thunders model. However, he doesn't hate them quite enough to Come Cheap. Thankfully, he's still on the low side for what is essentially a gremlin anti-mage.

His stat line is pretty good, save for his Df, but both of his weapons deal low damage, even on severe, and have Cb on the lower side. However, they have some tricks that I'll discuss later. First, his stats! While being deployed, Wong can nominate another friendly minion (NOT a master or henchman) to receive his Glowy blessing, making all of the lucky sucker's weapons Magical until the end of the encounter! As another little crew buff, Wong is also a Novice Counterspeller. This works like normal Counterspell, but if you choose to discard two cards rather than a single :tomes card, the discard has to be at random. Yipe.

Poor Wong Hears Voices over the course of the turn, so at the end of his activation he has to make a Wp duel or take a wound and become Paralyzed. Luckly, his high Wp means it shouldn't be TOO much of a hassle making it, but you may want to hold a card back just in case. These voices also make Wong appear Harmless, so they're not all bad.

He has two weapons, both Magical, both with their own tricks. His iron fan has lower Cb but gets to damage flips against Oni, undead, soulless and spirits. It has a pair of triggers, one :tomes and one :crows, which let his fan ignore armor or give poison 2, respective. His Three Demons Bag is likely to receive my votes for both Most Hilarious Weapon and Most Humiliating Trigger at the same time! It has a paltry Rg of 5, and a strange damage arc of 1/3/3, but should the poor sap be struck with severe damage, they're sucked into the bag. In game terms, they're buried until Wong lets them back out during the resolve effects step, or when Wong dies. At that point, he can drop them to any point within 6 inches. Like into a lava pit.

But what about that humiliating trigger? Well should Wong flip a :tomes on his attack flip with his bad, anyone damaged by it has to win a Ca duel... Or be Transformed into a PIGLET. The Bacon Curse can turn anyone, from a lowly rat to the mighty Avatar of Justice, into a squealing Piglet until the END OF THEIR NEXT ACTIVATION! I can't tell you all the ways this made me giggle evilly when I read it. It's not all bad for the reborn pig, though: They retain their Wd stat, cannot be loaded onto the Pigapult, and cannot be buried by the Three Demons Bag for the duration of their transformation, but I doubt that's any consolation.

While I'm on the subject of triggers, Wong's Df and Wp both share the Bounce Magic trigger, which goes off, again, on :tomes. Should Wong fail the resist duel for a spell, he can make the caster suffer with him. He and the caster suffer the effects of the spell at the same time! 'Use the difference in casting and resist totals if a difference is required.' Naturally. This has the added benefit that if the caster would be immune to their own spell, neither model is affected by it!

And of course he has a few spells under his belt, as all wizzerds should. Two, in fact. One requires some up-there cards and a :rams, but gives him a wide aura that keeps all allies within it, including himself, from being Terrified. His other spell is a damaging spell which is pretty nice, but the CC is even higher (but thankfully requires no suit). In addition to zapping the target with lightning, every model within 2" of the target has to flip a card, with the lowest taking 2 damage. If there's a tie, they tie-ees both take damage! And if the Black Joker is flipped, Wong takes damage! ...Wait. Damn. Well, he has a pretty good trigger called FZZZAP! that makes the TWO lowest-flipping models take the damage, and ties still damage everyone involved in them.

Wong also has (+1) Reckless, as all good gremlins should. Except Bert. He's good without being Reckless.

And that's them! Can't say I'll run Bert too often, but Wong is almost always going to be an auto-include in my gremlin lists, and will 100% be an auto-include versus any spellslinging masters.

[Omenbringer]

However, I don't quite understand what his All in the Reflexes trigger does. Does it... use his Df flip as a Cb flip when dealing damage? Could someone give me a rundown of how the trigger works?

It means that the ammount the Defense resist is successful by is how you determine the modification for the Jack Knife Damage flip i.e if Bert successfully resists by 1 then the Damage flip would be at , if he succeeds by 6+ then there is no modification and if by some miracle he succeeds by 11 then the damage flip would recieve on the damage flip.

[Dumb Luck]

I believe Gracie will see the most competitive play out of the three since she is another heavy hitter for the Pig list, something it was badly lacking.

Not that Wong and Bert aren't great (I think Wong is the most fun Gremlin ever) but Gracie fills in a hole the Gremlins have had.

Edited September 12, 2012 by Dumb Luck

[nublet]

Question. I just noticed Jebsen's ability "Intractable." When used with a nurse, does this mean that the massive dose sacrifice does not kill him?

[DarcXON]

Question. I just noticed Jebsen's ability "Intractable." When used with a nurse, does this mean that the massive dose sacrifice does not kill him?

Exactly right

[nublet]

On my end...excellent. That does seem a bit much that the nurse can shoot him up with all three and turn him into a wrecking ball each turn.

[Barbagianni]

I wonder how well could they work with the viks (and vanessa).

[Talisinbear]

Any talk of when they will start to hit shelves?

At least not a pricey expansion for grems

[Zerous]

Oh snap. I forgot about the Nurses completely! This is going to get real interesting, real fast.

[nublet]

Yep, a walk 7, charge 10, combat 10, damage 3/4/5 (crit strike) guy with reactivate and reckless...should be pretty fun

[Zerous]

Mr. Burt doesn't have Re-- wait. Wait a minute. Well, I'll be damned, it's right there. I must have been too caught up in his other, new rules to look at ones I've seen before.

I do believe he just became twice as useful to me!

[nublet]

New rules? I was just using that picture of the card they threw up on the forums earlier.

[Zerous]

I mean the things I didn't know about, like Slippery and Too Dumb to Run, rather than looking at stats I already knew, like Reckless, Hard to Kill or Animosity. I just glazed right over Reckless.