Characters I love part 2.Skarbrand - The Exiled One.
In the second of this irregular column I want to talk about Skarbrand. I love him and so should you. Now remember this column isn’t about celebrating broken characters, it is about me loving the fluff and the way that the characters fluff is represented on the table top.
It has to be said that his fluff doesn’t make that much sense. We are told that daemons are manifestations of their patron god and are made from the same. So if Khorne as an entity gets stronger that is represented by more daemons of Khorne being created.
So if Skarbrand mutinied against his creator then why didn’t Khorne just snuff him out of existence and create a new bloodthirster? And why would Skarbrand ever lead another Khorne army after that? Those crazy daemons... Who knows what tomfoolery they will be about next!
Any way once we get past this slight oddity of a back story the rest of him is great.
This guy is really, really angry as you would expect and to that end we have a couple of fun rules. We have the Bellow of Endless Fury that is cool but the best one in my opinion is a fun little rule called Rage Embodied, that forces everyone around him to re-roll misses in close combat.
Not just allies, like Gary Oldman said in Leon “Eeeeevvvvvvvveeeeerryyyyyyooooonnnnne!” I love that. Its one of those quirky rules that GW comes up with occasionally.
Now being in a Khorne army those re-rolls should help you more than your opponent but it doesn’t necessarily, imagine fighting wyches or a full unit of ork boys. Ouch!
However that is perfect, Khorne doesn’t care from where the skulls fall, only that they do, and Skarbrand (along with Kharn the Betrayer) is a very good example of the carnage that should ensue from that sort of thinking.
He has enough little things that mean he is different from a vanilla Boodthirster but still competitive. Having fleet but not being able to fly due to his burned wings is a particular favourite of mine.
Now there are a few things that could be added to fill him out. Preferred enemy against Tzeentch troops for example. But I’m being picky now and anyway I love him as he is!
He embodies everything I want from a Khorne character, namely, mindless carnage. Sod all this martial prowess rubbish we are given sometimes, leave that for the vain and egotistical Slaanesh characters. No what I want from a Khorne character is a bat shit crazy, super strong dude indiscriminately hitting things!
Khorne has always been my favourite of the four Daemonic powers and now i have a lord to lead my army that I feel deserves my devotion...
I love you Skarbrand
preferred enemy vs tzeench sounds like a very good idea...!
ReplyDeleteThe re-roll ALL misses in CQC is awesome! What a brilliant rule.
ReplyDeleteEveryone re-rolls anyway. Preferred enemy wouldn't make any difference anyway...?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I reckon khorne smacked him because thats how he rolls. I mean, think of the bad guy in Snatch. If you tried a coup on his criminal empire, he could just simply have you killed but instead he'd sit you down and carefully explain his favourite words in the dictionary before disposing of you in some equally elabourate manner. So likewise Khorne could snuff you out, but I'd reckon more likely he'd be so pissed off with the audacity of the whole thing that he'd smack you really hard.
Oh they do? hmmm not so fantasticawesome then... If it was in 40k as well then that would be something!
ReplyDeleteyou only get re-rolls if you are in range of him, but you could give his whole army preferred enemy against tzeentch marked models. Or a special preferred enemy where they re roll wounds as well against tzeentch?
ReplyDeleteWell since he's somewhat of a black sheep amongst Khornate daemons then surely he'd be pretty good against other khorne servants too. Like I like Asdrubael Vect's rule: He knows the weakness of every living thing and so has universal preferred enemy. Also, he knows no race's weakness so well as his own and so can re-roll wounds as well vs eldar and dark eldar units. Pretty funky eh?
ReplyDelete