With each new release in the Destruction family of Army Books I’m always on the lookout for good units that can be used across multiple different builds and (where possible) even across multiple different armies.

Welcome to Woehammer – have you noticed the lovely feeling of no adverts (ads), no pop-ups and no auto-playing videos? Well, that’s the norm here at Woehammer.

But this is only possible because of our wonderful Patreons. So, some articles over 1 year old will now display our Patreon request at the top of the article… like this one! Don’t worry, we are not adding ads – but if you can afford to donate to the site, we would definitely appreciate it. Membership is available from just £1/month (plus taxes!!)

The first of these to get an article were Rippa’s Snarlfangs – the Grot Underworlds Warband for Gitz… that can be used by Orruk Warclans. The second is the topic of today’s discussion – Marshcrawler Sloggoth.

The Marshcrawler Sloggoth is a unit from the new Orruk Warclans book which forms part of the Kruleboyz allegiance – can’t see that all important Keyword in the book… yep; they left it off! Check out the FAQ to see it back in. Unfortunately as an Ironjawz player I can’t bring him along, but like many Destruction players I have a lot of the Kruleboyz units awaiting painting and the Marshcrawler (affectionality called ‘Dobby’ in the Warclans chat) will definitely find a way in there – as well as into any Big Waagh lists I run.

But, as luck would have it the Gloomspite Gitz can ally in Orruk Warclans, and I had a tournament to go to last week (BoBo) and so into a Squig army went a Marshcrawler. You can read about the army here.

Order & Chaos players may not understand the excitement that comes with a warscroll that can be used in multiple armies, with their collation rules, Cities of Sigmar, or Stormcast in general, but Death players will understand the joy that comes with a warscroll that revitalises an existing book – it’s a little ray of light!

The Scroll

For the scroll you can either check out the book – remember that there’s a missing Keyword in there, or the Age of Sigmar app… as a Warhammer+ subscriber I have this so on with the review:

The first thing you’ll notice about the Marshcrawler Sloggoth is that it doesn’t have any of the key Kruleboyz characteristics… it’s not an Orruk, it’s not poisoned… but what it is, is 3 Grotz riding a Troggoth. And it’s great! If this model isn’t also in the new Gitz book I’ll be disappointed. Looking beyond the immediate visual high, he is reasonable survivable with 12 wounds on a 4+ save, the bravery is less relevant and the move (6″) is fast enough to keep up with the foot slogging Orruks & Grotz that he is likely to be with. At 150 points, you’d still need selling on him, but bearing in mind a Loonboss on Mangler Squig is 310 for 12 wounds on a 4+, he doesn’t have to have too much going on to get into lists.

So, at 150 points we do need the unit to do something and this combat profile is not something to write home about. The Grots are useless – but may sneak through 1 damage on an unsuspecting foe, and the Sloggoth is really only a single Troggoth (Troll!) with a poor rend. The 3+/3+ is not bad though, and can work in a pinch and 2 damage means he may be able to sneakily take out a character… but to be honest at 6″ move he’s not getting to them. So with okay base stats, but relatively poor attacks I imagine you’re not sold on him… unless you just love Gitz riding Troggs!

But wait… there’s abilities to come.

First up is the regeneration – this is standard Trogg regeneration and whilst it’s not brilliant it does mean that the Marshcrawler is mostly immune to ‘chip’ damage (occasional mortal wounds throughout the game), and his Troggoth keyword does mean he gets some benefit in Gitz from the Bad Moon. Let’s be fair it a good ability on a 12 wound model, which is a good bonus.

Second, and at the top of the App list is an auto-slay ability like the Sons of Behemat have. This one is the slightly weaker version in that we need to roll twice the model’s wounds – so we’re not killing characters – but it does have a massive benefit… It goes at the end of the combat phase – sure you have to survive and if ‘Dobby’ is in combat you might be in trouble in the wider game, but it is a 2″ reach that can break coherency. So on a 5 model unit on 32mm bases in a line killing one of them can cause another 2 to flee due to coherency problems. Best used as a threat, or as a Hail Mary play but certainly not something to ignore.

And finally, the reason for looking twice at this warscroll, Krew Drummer. It’s so good I’m going to repeat it below:

The Krew Drummer is a superb ability – sure it repeats the ‘All Out Attack’ command ability which Kruleboyz can issue twice anyway, but there is no cost to this – no command point, no spell casting, no prayer required. Nothing – it’s always on…! And that is a dream situation. The 18″ of the model is a huge distance, especially with the move of 6″ and the fact you’ll likely be running it, because you don’t want to charge, and with the smaller tables.

This frees up command points for other command abilities, including in the same turn. If you’re fighting an enemy at -1 to hit, add in All Out Attack to retain the +1, or use All Out Defense on the key unit and then swing back with the drumming ringing in your ears. It’s just great.

I took one of them to BoBo Heat 2 (a 70+ player tournament in the UK last weekend), and it was superb. My Squigs were almost always hitting on 3+ instead of 4+ and that made a huge difference to my output in melee… where Gitz are struggling at the moment. I think it may be even better with Grots, because it allows the +1 to hit and the Loonboss’s I’m da Boss, Now Stab ‘Em Good! ability can be used with it, instead of having to decide. Trogg (Stuart) also used it in his force and said he would keep it in.

What’s not on the scroll

Hopefully I’ve convinced you that the scroll is good and has some play, and that it is pretty much a must take in Gloomspite Gitz lists but what about the Kruleboyz & Big Waagh lists?

Well that’s a strange one… granted I’ve not really tried to write a Big Waaagh list yet because I’m having so much fun with Ironjawz – who can’t take ‘Dobby’ – but also because it plays very differently to AOS2, in that I am reasonably certain it is much slower to build up the Waagh points.

But for Kruleboyz builds it’s tricky – the +1 is melee only so no boosting the Bolt Boyz – which is what all Kruleboyz are taking – and the Marshcrawler doesn’t use the poison rule. I still think there’s a list with only a few Bolt Boyz and more foot troops at which point he’ll be back in the list but it’ll need some practice and missing out on the 9 Bolt Boyz will certainly change the army.

So for Gitz he’s almost a 1+ (although 2 is probably overkill), and I’d definitely take him when I start trying out Big Waagh… but I’m still on the fence with the Kruleboyz and maybe that’s why Games Workshop forgot the keyword… he’s not for them anyway!

Let me know how you get on with Dobby the Marshcrawler Sloggoth and if there’s any secrets you’re prepared to share!

— Declan