On the viability of combat characters

Now that the OK army book has been out for a while and the dust is starting to settle, we can see that Ogre Kingdoms really is a well-designed army. The defining trait of any well-designed army is, to me, that you have a good number of units to choose from when look at each and every slot in the army. And by slots I mean Lords, Heroes, Core, Special, and Rare choices. Ogre Kingdoms has this almost everywhere.

You can go with all Bulls or Ironguts in Core, mix it up, and add Gnoblars to taste. Taking just Gnoblars as Core is something I haven't seen an effective list with, but having one weaker choice out of three isn't that bad.

Most Rare choices are also viable at least, and deciding which to pick (and which to leave at home) can be a nightmare. Sure, some choices are better than others, but on a whole there's three, arguably four, very solid choices in the Rare section of the book.

Special choices are the same. Three very solid choices vying for points, with the other three also useful-to-very useful in various builds. Very nicely designed and probably the best section in the book.

Btw, don't think of this as my version of an OK review. I'll do a more in depth one later, this is just superficially what's good.

If we move to characters, Heroes specifically, we see the same thing. Both wizard and fighter characters are useful, although the Hunter and the Firebelly are probably more situational than the Bruiser and the Butcher. Still, you can get pretty tight on Heroes points if you don't watch out!

Where am I going with this, you ask? And how on earth does this all tie in with the post's title?

Special Characters in Fantasy - yay or nay?

Saramoff is doing a OK review over on 3++, where they occasionally take a break from posting cracking 40K stuff to dabble in the Fantasy side of things.

When he wrote his Special Character review (which you can find here), it made me realise there is a fundamental difference between special characters in 40k and Fantasy.

Taking Special Characters is a lot more 'special' in Fantasy than it is in 40K.

Most of the 40k army lists that are out there use Special Characters to one degree or other. Seriously, try googling "Draigowing army list" and see how many hits you get.
Now, part of this is to do with the fact that certain Special Characters allow certain units to be taken in a different FOC slot, like Logan for Space Wolves, Draigo or Coteaz for GK, The Baron for DE, etc, etc. If you want Wolf Guard as Troops, you need to take Logan. Simple as that. And sometimes these unlocks can lead to a player being able to create a very good, or just plain better, list

My OK army - Thoughts - part 3

And we arrive at the final part of my OK army list analysis. With Characters and Core choices taken care of, all we need to do is spend the remaining points on Special and Rare choices.

Let's see what I have so far:

A lvl 4 slaughtermaster using the Great Maw lore with the Hellheart, with an Ironfist.
A lvl 2 Butcher using Heavens with a Dispel Scroll, with an Ironfist.
A BSB carrying the Banner of Eternal Flame, with heavy armour and an Ironfist.
9 Bulls with Ironfist, musician, standard bearer.
9 Ironguts, musician, standard bearer, Standard of Discipline.

That's 1367 of my 2400 pts spent, with 715 of those going in Core. That leaves plenty for some nice Special choices, and I know just which two units I want to take.

My OK army - Thoughts - part 2

After more or less deciding what to do with my characters, it's time to look at the rest of my army.
To recap, so far I have a lvl 4 slaughtermaster using the Great Maw lore and with the Hellheart, a lvl 2 Butcher using Heavens with a Dispel Scroll, and a BSB carrying the great utility Banner of Flaming Wonder aka Banner of Eternal Flame.

One of the things you notice flipping through the new book is that there are a lot of goodies in the Special and Rare sections, and that the Core section seems pretty bland. Of course, this can be said of a lot of Core sections in other books, and at least we get two different troop type (Infantry and Monstrous Infantry), but compared to Special and Rare, Core seems a bit meh.

My OK army - Thoughts - part 1

I thought I might write about how I came about choosing the army in its current form. It's still subject to change while I playtest it, but here is the thought process behind why I chose what I did.

Some general info first: This is the army I will bring to a tournament in a couple of months, and as such I'm bound by the restrictions the TO implements. Nothing too drastic, fortunately.

It's a 2400 point tournament, no special characters, a max of 2 duplicate Special Choices, and a max of 1 on duplicate Rare choices. Which is to say I can only take every Special Choice twice, and every Rare just the once. Nothing too bad, although I would like to have been able to take two Ironblasters. Oh well.