They don't have damage prevention do they? That's what ruined 40k when knights came in. All these wounds and they have feel no pains and special shields.
150 wounds is not that absurd at all, especially against models with seemingly no reroll saves or ward saves etc. If your army cant deal with that, Im not sure how your army is dealing with the vast majority of armies out there. You dont even have to wipe the table - If you kill 2 of the big dudes Im not sure how you can lose the objective game, unless they have some rule where each Mega-Gargant counts as 30 models and once they have taken an objective it is theirs until they die.
What i am saying, is that in an all comers list, you can be able to deal 150 wounds, but the target matters a lot. Speaking for seraphon, a kroak list or a list with purple sun and some anti-horde spell, will be able to do that damage, but not to an army of only 6 models. And we don't know all their abilities... they can just smash terrains, so i doubt you can hamper their move. I think this is an army that can give you problems, unless you know you are going to face them and prepare accordingly.
Still being able to play the game is fine, still having a potential output of 20 damage/round of combat with an average of 8-9-ish unsupported when your unit has suffered 25-30 wounds already (and not healed back a significant chunk of those) I'm a lot less fine with. Usually if a single unit has suffered 25-30 wounds it's no longer a credible threat. These however are still powerfull enough to take on and easily kill quite a lot of opponents. This is probably the biggest issue I have with them. They have some very clear weaknesses, and are probably going to be fine(-ish) in tournaments in terms of overall performance. But due to the weird quirk of having all that power concentrated in a handfull of models they're probably going to end up being super frustrating to deal with for certain armies/playstyles simply because they don't really have the tools to deal with an opponent like this. Essentially, if you know you're going to face them they don't seem super difficult to deal with (though it might still be boring/frustrating) but if your army isn't tailored to dealing with their weird quirks and you're playing with a more general all-comers kinda list you're liable to struggle a lot. At lot of the normal tools you'd use to pump out damage, like endless spells or anti-horde spells simply don't work very well against 1 model with 35 wounds.
SoB won't really change the meta game in my opinion. To go 5-0, Armies Currently need to be able to kill 120 Clanrats, deal with 60 blightking spam, fight 30 eels, counter the teleportation shenanigans of tzeentch flamers, weather the shooting of lumineth and KO, and the the magic of Seraphon to win. Adding a 6 model giant army into the mix shouldn't really change how people play. If you plan to wipe out 40 rats or 30 blightkings a turn, then you can wipe out a giant a turn as well.
Fair point. I did it once with DT kroaknado. Took double salamanders, kroaknado, stellar tempest, purple sun, tide of serpents and a 2nd slann for spell buffs and extra endless each turn. Took everything I had and some lucky rolls in my favor but I did it lol. But that was just an example. My point was The things people are preparing for now seem like they are serious enough threats that everyone should already be prepared to deal with that many wounds in a few bodies.
Totally, i guess my point was just you generally don't beat PBK spam by trying to kill 240 wounds of models. Still agree with your larger point tho.
Not having the perfect tools to deal with every army isn't a problem. Its the way the game is meant to be played.
That is an interesting take... Would he have a tail like that? or a tip of his wings perhaps? Grrr, Imrahil
Of course your tools don't always have to be perfect. But gargants are so different from the "average" opponent you'l face that some lists will find the tools they normally rely on to become significantly less relevant, or at least lose their flavour. A great example of this would be our magic. Our magic has a couple of strong points: 1) we've got a bunch of anti-horde spells 2) we've got a decent amount of AoE (celestial deliverance, comet call, endless spells hitting multiple targets) and 3) they're good for sniping (wounded) characters. All 3 of those strong points aren't super relevant against gargants as you'd just want big single target nukes to deal with them. Removing a significant part of what makes our magic special and strategically important. And yeah, our magic isn't useless against the gargants, it still does decent damage and its still our primary source of mortal wounds. But since we lack strong (or even interesting) single target spells and are stuck with spells that at best do D3 damage against targets that have 30+ wounds you end up with what should be the core strategy of certain lists being fairly blend and rather underwhelming. Despite this strategy working perfectly fine against basicly every other army we could possibly face. I saw someone suggesting it could be a kroxigor tail for the underworlds warband, which seems a bit hopefull
yes they are a hard counter to our magic just like our slann are a hard counter to half the magic in the game. so what?
Are they really that different though? Stonehorn spam is very real and the amount of wounds with their 3+ save and 5+ ward save ontop isnt that far off. People usually spread their army out far, but with so few models it should be easy to tag at least 2 dudes with Geminids and Blazing Starlight ontop which basically means 1 Mega is doing nothing having -2 to hit. The bases on those things are huge - Getting almost your entire unit of 40 Saurus, Skinks, Knights or whatever into combat is very realistic. Honestly I expected them to be stronger.
I think that at tournament these giants will be dealt with relatively ease. But honestly, they will be a real problem when approached in casual games. There is a difference between a (let's say) skaven list made for tournaments, and a skaven list made by a not competitive player (the majority of the games between friends at the local club, i think?). unoptimized lists can be faced by unoptimized lists. But i don't think there will be a difference between a gargant tournament list and a gargant casual list. Those guys are hard to kill in the same way. So, they will have an impact on casual games, and frankly i expect a lot of questions, here on Lustria, that will sound like "help! how can i beat Sons of Behemat? I've got 2 start collecting and i'm not able to kill them before I'm wiped away".
I don't like hard counters in general. And in this case especially as it basicly kills what should be one of the core foundations of a faction/list. It's not like it's a hard counter to some some fairly lame cheese list, like say salamander spam. Stonehorns at least only have 13 wounds per model, so those relativly puny D3 damage spells actually do some significant damage. Kroak unloading his entire arsenal into a stonehorn will kick him down a row or two on the degradation table, and if you're lucky nearly kills the stonehorn. Unloading his entire arsenal against a gargant isn't even enough to go through the first row on the table (you need 13 wounds) even if you roll perfectly. Also an unbuffed stonehorn has about 45 effective wounds against regular damage (no rend) and 15 against mortal wounds. An unbuffed gargant has 70 wounds against regular damage (no rend) and 35 against mortal wounds. Killing a stonehorn is significantly easier, especially when it concerns mortal wounds. This a 100 times, especially as not only do they break a lot of casual lists, but even some of the more competitive lists suddenly fall apart against them because they rely for example on anti-horde mechanics to pump up their damage. Even if those lists are at least functional, if suboptimal, against most of other armies. I mean yeah, stuff like salamander spam will deal with them just fine. Buffed up hordes of saurus and skinks should also be able to pull it off (provided you manage to attack first and then basicly oneshot them otherwise your hordes will be decimated before they do much.). But for example a magic based list loses a good chunk of what makes it powerfull & interesting since the most powerfull tools in our magic arsenal simply aren't all that relevant when you're facing an army with 6 models. And our big dinosaurs just seem flat out useless as they can neither tank their damage output (even when the gargants are wounded..), nor do I think can they really do enough damage to actually take a gargant down without rolling perfectly, even when fully buffed. And neither magic nor dinosaur-centric lists are exactly weak super casual lists.
I think you will see them competitively as a 1 of in armies like skaven or gloomspite. Armies that can spam a lot of bodies and swarm objectives. Then you give them a gargant that is tough and takes a lot of dedicated firepower to bring down. Force people to have answers to many different questions. Some armies can't answer both at the same time and will lose.