Warmachine: Infernal Howlers Come Screaming Into Battle
A new wave of infernal models have come out recently, and the faction is shaping up to be quite strong as a whole. Medium infantry as a whole has not been incredibly popular in Warmachine Mk3, can the intimidating Howlers break the mold enough to see significant play?
The Basics
Let’s take a quick look at the Howler’s statblock. Numbers-wise the howlers are entirely what you would expect for medium infantry. Low speed, low defense, decent armor, high MAT. The point cost is on par with other medium infantry like MOW Shocktroopers and Tharn Ravagers. The notable point on the statblock is that once again we have an 8-box medium infantry model. At the beginning of Mk3 it looked like that was going to be reserved for special cases but more and more models have gotten the extra 3 boxes, including these Howlers.
For special rules, they come with a few standard icons: tough, eyeless sight and soulless. As native infernals they don’t have souls, so will not be fueling your soul economy. Eyeless sight is not super useful on a melee unit but occasionally will come up when you need to charge through a cloud. Tough is always good, especially on a unit with a lot of boxes. They do not have an easy way to prevent being knocked down, unlike some other tough medium infantry.
For their written rules, they get a couple of ways of gaining some additional attacks which is nice on a model with only a single melee attack. They have berserk, and vengeance plus bloodthirst to get a little more threat distance against living things. Berserk is nice, but without in-activation movement has limited usefulness. Be careful not to bunch up your own unit, as 2 inch reach on a medium based unit with only a cmd of 8 means you need to be thinking about berserk while placing your models on the charge.
Vengeance, on the other hand, is all upside, as getting shot a bit on the approach will make them get upfield much faster. With an advance from vengeance and charging a living target, the Howlers threaten 15″ from their starting position. More if you can add in some extra movement tricks from your army.
The weapons of the Howlers are decent but not amazing. They are P+S 13 which is just OK for such expensive models, but they do have a 2 inch reach and automatic grievous wounds. Grievous wounds is always important to have in your lists to deal with tough and auto-healing enemies like Tharn. In any situation, it is also good for crippling aspects or systems and preventing healing.
the models are also very very cool. my favorite medium infantry hands (and weird claw appendages) down!
Weaknesses
The statline of the Howlers is pretty straight-forward, but in examining the models it is also important to look at what they DON’T have. These weaknesses will need to be shored up by other models or played around.
First of all, they are lacking native pathfinder. This is a common weakness in medium-based infantry. In some games, it may never come up, but when it does it can prevent a very expensive unit from doing anything meaningful in a game. Many heavy infantry options that see play either have pathfinder or have an easy way to grant it. For Howlers, you are likely going to need Saxon Orrik or a caster like Malakov who can help out with terrain a bit.
Second, they are tough infantry with vengeance but are still susceptible to knock-down. To get the most out of tough you ideally want a way to prevent that. The easy solution in Infernals is Valin Hauke. He is expensive at 7 points, so ideally if you’re going to take him you’ll have more tough infantry to be in his bubble at the same time. He also brings Tactician, which I have found to be incredibly valuable any time I play with medium-based infantry.
Third, the unit lacks any natural buffs against shooting. They don’t have carapace, shield wall, or any concealment-granting abilities to get them into the fray safely. At 12/17 they are not going to last long against any sort of boostable shooting without help. Shield guards or armor boosting spells will help keep them around, but won’t get them into the super-high armor levels that some medium bases can achieve.
And finally, the Howlers really want a damage buff. Power 13 hits aren’t going to win back the Howlers’ points by killing large models, especially in the current meta full of very high armor lists. Howlers will do well at killing living infantry, but often you will find yourself needing a bit more than that. Luckily, there are a number of armor debuffs in Infernals to help with hitting power, including the Hermit, the Desolator and several spells.
When the Howlers are already an expensive unit you might not want to take these options solely to improve your medium infantry. What you can do is decide on what role you need the unit to fill and bring the support that helps buff that one specific role. Or use models you were going to include anyways to help other pieces of your army.
Synergies
There are a few nice interactions worth mentioning that could take the Howlers from decent to great in specific lists.
The first is the Infernal Gate. The gate is obviously very good in a lot of infernals lists, but the Howlers and the Gate are a match made in… well wherever the infernals are really from. The Gate can spend souls at the beginning of the turn in the Maintenance phase to bring back up to 3 models. These can be small or medium bases. Bringing back 3 of your Howlers per turn is very very strong. The best part is, these souls are spent before the Gate has a chance to fill itself back up in the control phase! So if you have 3 souls on your gate, create 3 new Howlers and then add 1d3 souls back into the Gate. Of course, the major limiting factor here is that the new models come in with 1 HP and can’t make attacks. That brings up the second interaction:
Wretches. These guys gain an additional spell in Hearts of Darkness that lets you heal your own models when enemy models are destroyed, as long as both of these models are in the command range of the Wretch. So you can spawn a few Howlers, then heal them up by killing enemy models before they even get into the fight.
Every party needs a healer
Putting it together
If you really want to get the most out of Howlers, it seems like a good choice would be to run them in Hearts of Darkness. That theme opens up a lot of interesting options by mixing up factions, but the one I want to call out is Lukas. He’s not the most popular caster, but I think he has a good game with the Howlers and will additionally allow the use of some of the excellent models in the crucible guard.
Take Lukas, a battlegroup, 2 units of Howlers, an Infernal Gate, some wretches (possibly as requisition options) and fill the rest out to flavor with the support and solos desired. Lukas is able to give one unit Mirage for even more pre-activation threat extension, give the other unit an armor buff, and then put an armor debuff on an enemy hard target. It won’t take the competitive scene by storm, but it would be a very fun list to play and could be a surprising second or third list in a tournament.
What has your experience been with Howlers, either using or fighting against? Are they good enough to break the medium-based curse and get serious playtime? Or will they be relegated to fun lists while the Horrors take the limelight?
