Hobby Update: Ogre Sergeants with Heavy Crossbows

Spoilers if you haven't read it, but my Battle 020 with the Stormcast Ogres wasn't a great showing for me. I had a lot of fun trying out a more elite army and had a whole lot of fun exploring the quirks of large infantry, but the Ogres definitely require more finesse than I had anticipated.

In the game I was exploring Shooting Hordes. They cost 230 points, and need another horde to unlock them, since they are irregular units. Given the investment, they need to deliver, and I do not have the skills to make that happen yet, so when writing up the report and thinking about what to run next, I looked at shrinking down the Shooters into regiments, so as not to rely on them so much.

Regiments are a little better at 140 points, though they still need something to unlock them. The regiments gets 9 attacks, and with Heavy Crossbows those are at 30" and with Piercing 2, but the unit also has Ra5+ and Pot Shot. The Pot Shot is crippling, as if you move, you need 6's with half your attacks. You do not really want to move these if you have any other available shots.

Sergeants with a Heavy Crossbow cost 120 points, have Ra5+ but also get Steady Aim. The downside being that they go from 9 attacks down to 5. But Steady Aim is still a significant buff. The Sergeant not only has the same Unit Strength as a regiment, but also gets a +1 boost to Waver and Rout values, and is a source of Inspiring as well. 

Seeing all this, I opted to buy some Ogre Sergeants. The minis were second-hand, found on ebay, and were under $20, which is my cutoff for impulsive purchases like this. They came assembled and primed in the Retributor gold color, or something close enough! We've had a few nice days, but I wanted to paint these up quickly and did not want to try any cold-weather priming. The minis look to be a unit of Vanguard Raptors, assembled with the crossbow option, which works very well for me, as the crossbows look the same as the other shooters. These also have neat ornamentation on the helms, which should make them look more like individual heroes.

The new trio. They do look rather heroic, don't they? 

The Sergeants got the same slapdash paint scheme as the rest of the army: Dark pauldrons and hanging skirt strips, a light wood color for parts of the crossbow, and some brown and grey bases with tufts. So long as they are primed gold, its a very quick process, and these were done over a few hours, including the dry time for the basing paste.

I could have just taken a few minis from a unit of Shooters, but figured three more minis for the army would not be too terrible... I think the units and Sergeants should probably fulfill different roles, so new models would let me do some side-by-side testing too and see what those might be. We'll see how that  testing goes and when, and if getting new minis was a foolish call...

At 140 points I think the Shooter Regiments could be good for some light area-denial, and chaff-related duties (clearing enemy chaff, taking a charge, etc). I think my plan would be to set them up early to lay claim to a firing lane, and see how that works for them.

I think the Sergeants here are going to be little anchors and damage dealers, sprinkled around the battle line, functionally similar to the Warlocks, but more expensive and slightly less dependent on  their deployment. The Sergeants can inspire, and with Steady Aim and 30" range, they should be able to put a point of damage where you need it, but probably not much more than that, so if you focus-fire or supplement with other ranged attacks, so much the better for chip damage. As needed they can move up, alongside other units, to extend their own reach, like Warlocks. Unlike the Warlocks though, the Sergeants can threaten things in melee with their CS2.

The Ogres were are a pretty unique army to field. I am looking forward to giving them another try sometime, and these heroes should give me a few more ranged options to explore in the future.