Hordes: Meet Skorne’s New Little Terror
There are few models as iconic to a Warmachine faction as the Agonizer is to Skorne. In the distant future, one tortured baby elephant has had quite enough and is ready to settle some old scores! Introducing The Terrorizer!
Riot quest models continue to roll out, bringing a new zany style to your Warmachine games. This time it is Skorne’s turn for a new look at a very old model that even had its own plushy. Take one of those poor tortured titans, give it a stash of mismatched weapons and a bad attitude and you have the Terrorizer. This little guy looks like an agonizer, and he likely dies as fast as an agonizer, but he plays a completely different role.
Stats and abilities
Oddly, the Terrorizer’s stat line looks like a humanoid infantry stat block. Speed 6, MAT 6, RAT 5, DEF 13, ARM 14. Nothing really exciting here, but very low defensive stats for a beast. He only has 14 hp and 2 Fury, making him very close in stats to the standard agonizer he is based on.
Unlike an agonizer, whose main job is to hide behind things and cry loud enough to make your enemies have trouble hitting things, the terrorizer has special rules more suited to actually making attacks. Parry, point-blank shot and side-step normally belong on a skirmishing melee solo. In addition to these more standard rules, the Terrorizer also has a rule that gives him a third fury while he is injured.
This rule is interesting as it makes him a pretty decent little fury generator for his size, but having him damaged but not dead is not exactly easy. Skorne often just damages their own stuff, but with his low stats the odds are even a paingiver might do more than a couple of boxes of damage if the dice don’t turn out in your favor.
In addition to his other rules, the Terrorizer also interacts with two different warlocks in unique ways. First, he has animosity: Rasheth meaning he can never be taken by the big guy. I suppose an angry agonizer fighting for Agonizer rights isn’t going to be working for the guy literally riding into battle on top of aggies.
Second, he has a bond with Naaresh. As long as he is in Naaresh’s battlegroup he gains an additional die on melee attacks against anything in Naaresh’s control range. Naaresh has generally been considered one of our weaker warlocks. Is this bond enough to make him see some extra play alongside his new buddy? Some may disagree with me, but my short answer is: no. I really wish that he was bonded to someone else instead. I would have loved to see a bonded beast for good old Morghoul, especially since he is carrying one of the torturer’s old claws… and speaking of claws
You just had to abuse them, didn’t you Dominar? No Terrorizer for you!
Weapons
The Terrorizer is just bristling with weapons. He has a sword, a claw, a scattergun and a slug gun! Quite an upgrade from the old P+S 8 claw on the standard agonizer. The guns are fairly low range, but the scattergun is a spray which is always nice on a boost-able platform. Even though he is carrying 2 guns, it is apparent that he is designed to get into melee at some point. With point-blank, he gets 4 initial melee attacks in a round, each with side-step (and parry)!
Before you get too excited, remember that the actual melee weapons are starting at a meager P+S 9. the pow 14 slug gun is a nicer attack of course, but has some limitations. Speaking of limitations, since this is a rule that is a little finicky and not super common, let’s take a look at some point-blank clarifications.
Just look at all those weapons!
First, point-blank makes your ranged weapons work as melee attacks. So anything that affects ranged attacks will not work (offensive or defensive). The difference between these and a normal melee attack is that your model’s STR is not added to the damage, and if used as a charge the damage is not boosted. So using the slug gun as your charge attack is a bit of a waste, and all of the STR fixers in Skorne (enrage, Naaresh’s feat, Rage in DoA, etc) don’t buff the gun’s damage.
Having point-blank does not also give the model any sort of dual-attack option by itself. So if you kill whatever you were in melee with on your first attack, you can’t then make your slug gun attack at range. You can, however, keep using Fury to buy more slug gun attacks in melee, regardless of ROF because it is no longer a ranged attack this turn.
And a final clarification, the scattergun used point-blank unfortunately does NOT get to use the spray template to hit other models. It will only be a spray if you are making ranged attacks that activation, which may be the safer option many times for the fairly fragile Terrorizer.
Putting this together, you’re better off buffing his melee abilities with things that don’t directly affect strength. Things like incite from Makeda, or debuffs like mortality from Morghoul. You can still enrage the Terrorizer to buff his melee weapons if you really need him to do some damage. With enrage and incite up you could be getting (effectively) 2 PS 13 attacks, 1 PS 14 attack and up to 4 PS 16 attacks all at MAT 8 if you don’t spend fury to boost anything. Not bad, but also not terribly amazing.
The Real Value of the Terrorizer
So if he’s easy to kill and not all that impressive in melee, what is the point of bringing the Terrorizer? First of all, his cost. Unless you are bringing him with Naaresh (which you probably aren’t if you’re competitive enough to be reading a whole article about this model), you’re only able to bring the Terrorizer in Disciples of Agony. Luckily, this is a very nice theme list. It also lets you take Agonizers (which this guy is still one of) for free as a requisition point.
Second, you’re taking him for his animus. The Terrorizer has traded in Repulsion from the standard loadout for Rush! Rush, of course, being a trademark buff in Skorne and usually the main way to speed up your beasts and get pathfinder. This is usually tied to the much more expensive Titan Gladiator, which has stiff competition for his points in a DoA list. Now you can get Rush much cheaper!
A look at the endangered species of Skorne: the Titan Gladiator.
Of course, any Skorne player has had one of those games where the opponent goes all in to kill your Gladiator super early and the rest of the game was a major uphill slog. With the Terrorizer this is going to be much easier to do. The little guy can die to any decently high-POW boostable gun, or a couple of shots from a smaller gun. If you want the Terrorizer to be your Rush-bot you need to be very careful about protecting him. Which unfortunately means NOT letting him loose to make all those melee attacks unless things are desperate.
I think the Terrorizer works very well with Zaadesh 1. Zaadesh likes some cheaper beasts to keep from getting too pricey and makes for a good rush option. The Terrorizer and Zaadesh together can rush 3 beasts a turn without using any of your warlock’s resources. I already do this in many lists with a Gladiator, so cheaper is definitely better.
It is even more valuable to use him with Zaadesh because he is a character beast. In my beast-heavy lists like Makeda3 I like to bring a Shaman to help hand out rush (or other animi if needed), but he can’t do that with the Terrorizer because of the character tag. So the only way to get more rushes out is for the Terrorizer’s controller to spend their fury on Rush. Zaadesh doesn’t mind that nearly as much as your actual warlock.
And of course, if things get messy at the end of the game, Zaadesh can throw down Tag Team and the two of them can get stuck in for one glorious turn before they likely both die. Oh well, I’m pretty sure that’s how this little agonizer vigilante would want to go out.
The terrorizer is bringing freedom to agonizers everywhere!
That is the Terrorizer in a nutshell! Give us your thoughts in the comments! What lists are you running the little guy in? Has he completely replaced your Gladiators, or do they still make an appearance? Does anyone out there actually play Naaresh?
