Age of Sigmar: Gotrek Will Wreck You
Games Workshop has revealed Gotrek Gurnisson’s stats and abilities. This Duardin is the new definition of Murderball in Age of Sigmar.
Hopefully by now you know who Gotrek is from Warhammer. The greatest monster slayer ever from the World-that-was is back and kicking in the Mortal Realms. And by “kicking” we mean kicking everyone’s butt! If you don’t believe in Gotrek, you will – check out his stats:
For starters, his base stats are somewhat typical – a 4″ Move, 4+ Save, 10 Bravery and 8 wounds – he’s got the stats of a tougher hero, no big deal! Except it doesn’t end there. His weapon, Zangrom-Thaz, is one of the best ones in the game. Hitting and Wounding on 3s with 6 attacks – already great. -2 Rend and 3 Damage a pop? Okay, now you’re just talking crazy. But wait, there’s more…
Abilities
Avatar of Grimnir basically makes him multi-damage attacks as he only ever takes 1 wound per attack, spell or ability. Furthermore, if an ability would slay him, he takes 1 mortal wound instead. Sorry Nagash, even your Hand of Dust only causes 1 mortal wound! At the same time, he’s got some deployment restrictions which mean you have to deploy him and he can’t be in reserve. Darn.
Krag Blackhammer’s Master Rune is what takes him from “okay he’s crazy” all the way to “straight-up bonkers!” Re-rolling hits AND wounds on a 3+/3+ weapon that kicks out the damage like Zangrom-Thaz? Get ready to go to Murder-Town. Oh and if you happen to roll an unmodified 6 to hit, you get a BONUS D6 mortal wounds – you know, just cuz.
Did you like the sound of all that Murder-Balling? Well guess what, thanks to Unstoppable Battle Fury, he gets to attack TWICE in a round. And if you were thinking “oh well, I’ll just keep shooting him with mortal wounds… somehow” well, check the details of the Shoulder Plate of Edassa. Because Gotrek has a 3+ save against every wound or mortal wound assigned to him.
Weaknesses?
Does he have any flaws?! Yes – two that really stand out. First off, he’s got a lack of key words and basically will only ever be taken as an ally – that means he won’t ever get the benefits of Fyreslayer lodges or cool stuff like that (not that he needs it). Secondly, he’s only got a move stat of 4″ and can never be redeployed. If you can stay away from him, you’ll live a lot longer.
The last thing isn’t so much a weakness as it’s a fact – he costs 520 points. That’s slightly more than a quarter of your points in a 2000 list. Now, is he worth 520 points? Yeah. It becomes a question of “can you earn his points back” and if you can get him in there, odds are you can. Oh, and if your mission is Duality of Death, well, you might have just auto won that game.
Games Workshop did a “What if” article where they played out a bunch of fights with Gotrek. Now, they did actually roll dice – so there was probably some luck involved, but Gotrek managed to do quite a bit of damage to some pretty big named characters. I won’t spoil it here, but click that link if you want to read about the fights. One of them involved all 4 greater Daemons vs Gotrek…
Gotrek is absolutely insane on the tabletop. If you see him across from you, my advice: Play the objective and RUN from Gotrek.
