Gallery: Blood of Gruumsh
By D&D Team
The next faction pack for Dungeon Command releases on February 19th -- and to help preview the set, we present the minis included in Blood of Gruumsh. Check back as new minis are revealed, and click the name below to view their corresponding Creature Card.
Talk about this article here.
Boar lvl 3 con
Orc Archer lvl 2 con dex (this one is the best in a strait forward way since he offers twenty ranged damage and has 30 hit points)
Wereboar lvl 4 str con
Orc Chieftain lvl 5 str con (this one has the best power; he lets you increase your leadership by up to three as you deploy him)
Orc Drudge lvl 1 str con
Ogre lvl 6 str con
Orc Druid lvl 3 con wis
Owlbear (glitch with link; so I don't know his statistics.)
New Miniatues Revealed are:
Boar lvl 3 con
Orc Archer lvl 2 con dex (this one is the best in a strait forward way since he offers twenty ranged damage and has 30 hit points)
Wereboar lvl 4 str con
Orc Chieftain lvl 5 str con (this one has the best power; he lets you increase your leadership by up to three as you deploy him)
Orc Drudge lvl 1 str con
Ogre lvl 6 str con
Orc Druid lvl 3 con wis
Owlbear (glitch with link; so I don't know his statistics.)
How did you see all this? I never saw it.
When the review first went up they had a ton of the mini's listed with their cards ;) I don't think they ment to have them all up there at the start, they took a ton down.
I think they must have messed up when they uploaded the stuff because I saw those as well (even the Owlbear glitch) and now those are not there. Still, I'm pretty freakin' excited. I just hope this is not the last set.
Orc Barbarian suffers compared to the Bugbear in not having Dex, but is indeed vastly better than the Boar. In general it seems like multiple ability scores are really good and not super valued by however they calculate creature power. Being a Humanoid is also a really good thing. Oh, and he's an Orc so he works with the Chieftain! Man, he is just vastly better, Beast is a non-useful keyword even if you can forward deploy it with the Druid. Basically I feel like if the Boar was supposed to be a decent creature, it could have safely hit for 30 or had a few more HPs or something. Maybe Death Strike will end up being better than it looks? But no, realistically probably he's just a bad creature and should feel bad. Anyway, as for the Barbarian: we might see some of him, but I suspect if you run him over the Bugbear you really are planning to leverage that Orc keyword. Bugbear is +1 level for +30 HP and adding Dex as an ability score, which is a great deal; Stealth, Spring Attack, Shadowy Ambush, and Quick Jab are all things a creature like this really, really likes to have. Basically unlike the Bugbear this guy will never be your primary beater, but if you're on the Orc Chieftain plan, you probably want him in your pile because he's the best way to get +3 Leadership off the ability and because he's got the same ability scores and might find himself positioned for a moment of sublime glory every couple of games.
Other standouts include the Drudge and Chieftain in my mind. Kind of sad the Orc Druid isn't Evil so can't use Blessing of Lolth; the Cleric of Gruumsh can and is super beefy but Blessing seems to interact in unfortunate ways with Tough as Nails and Undaunted Surge so I dunno how I feel about him. In general I'm not wild about either of the extant Wis cards with a level 5 since they're both Standards and I feel like this guy should have better things to do with his time. Of course until we see the new Wisdom cards those guys are much more difficult to assess.
Wereboar gets honorable mention for being a really annoying dude to stick Undaunted Surge on. If he's got that and uses Sieze the Opportunity with gusto killing him could be a really painful proposition.
Also sad not to see any Adventureres, I feel like who gets and doesn't get that keyword is really random.
Finally the Ogre: he hits for 50 which has got to be worth something, but 100 HP makes him the fragilest level 6 in the game and is especially unfortunate since he dies flat out to Sneak Attack/Killing Strike. Gaining a morale on deploy makes him a pseudo-level-5 which I guess is worth something but unless it's better than it looks he's not going to replace the Dragon Knight in most of my builds that want a Con/Str beater. Dragon Knight is just straight up Level 5, has the sweet Adventurer keyword, and has 40 HP more in exchange for -10 damage; the -10 damage definitely matters, but I think the rest of it makes up for it. I guess he's also slower? I dunno I'll probably try this guy out, maybe he'll surprise me, but for now I'm filing him with the Troll in "fine, but please send more Dragon Knights".
It's a pity there aren't more adventurers. Badass adventurers are the only thing that make Valnar Trueblade not totally useless =[
Since I can only think of one Elemental in the game at the moment, perhaps this means be taken as a small hint that we might be getting future Faction Packs?
As for the Druid not being evil: it would be nice to have another Evil Wis, but Druids in D&D are meant to stick to the Neutral Alignments, often losing thier powers if they waver. Since this is a D&D product I'm not suprised they are following those restrictions.
At least there is finally another Evil Wis, might make Lolth's Blessing viable if you don't want to run many Drow Priestesses (who kind of loose value when you aren't playing spiders. :p)
As for the Druid not being evil: it would be nice to have another Evil Wis, but Druids in D&D are meant to stick to the Neutral Alignments, often losing thier powers if they waver. Since this is a D&D product I'm not suprised they are following those restrictions.
Depends on edition; 4E druids don't care and at least rules-wise this game is pretty edition agnostic. But that's a fair point. Just kinda sad because I'm pretty sure using a standard action to make my level 5 dude an even bigger target isn't going to be a good plan.
I sort of considered the fact that Drow Priestesses are pretty weak aside from Lolth's Blessing or Spider Summoning to be the point; the balancing factor. If they made a creature that is powerful AND can use Lolth's Blessing that would be a bit broken imo.
Orc Druid is very similar to Priestess and can't use it, though. He's literally the same creature except an Orc instead of a Drow, not Evil, and with Con instead of Dex.
But not the owl bear, so, moving along...
I think right now I see a real potential for a chief bugbear barbarian warband with some orc archers thrown in for support. Just four of each. Think of the morale! Although orc archers don't have the int toolbox, having access to CON will make them a lot more durable than drow wizards, and without the need to have cards that your other orcs couldn't use.
Con is also one of the strongest abilities in the game, and we can expect a bunch more order cards for it in Blood. Right now though it is powerful based primarily on things that aren't very good on a Drow Wizard equivalent: Tough as Nails, Undaunted Surge, and some sweet heavy-hitting melee cards. Patch Up is also good because it has some ability to interfere with Magic Short Sword or Piercing Strike. In any case, all of the Con cards we have now are good on hard hitting, high HP melee beaters that you expect to be in the thick of things. Block 10 is pretty bad on someone with 30 HP, and +10 melee damage is obviously not where you want to be on that guy either. Whereas Int has all sorts of stuff that functions quite well even if you're way back out of range of the enemy, which is where this guy wants to live.
Basically I'm not convinced Int is straight-up better than other abilities, but it's certainly one of the best and Int's cards just work better with a 30 HP dude with a 20(10) ranged attack.
That's ok, that Cleric of Gruumsh is pretty awesome. I think if you want to go purely for Order cards domination, WIS just showed itself to be the superior attribute. And we haven't even seen the WIS cards from this set. I have to say, though, that Scheme is probably not what you want to be doing with that guy. Keep to Blessings and whatever goodies you get in this set.
Orc Drudge is the sort of card I like, but it doesn't trigger on Goblin Warcry.
I guess I'll have to stick to Goblin Cutter.Boar is Limited fodder, basically.
Still better than Giant Spider. lolSomebody is going to abuse Orc Chieftain. And I will certainly make it my mission in life to be that person. Can you imagine playing an 9 Leadership Commander then playing THAT as your first guy, THEN playing a second one on the Turn 1 Deploy phase AND catching 2x level 3 Orc Barbarians as your adds? Talk about an aggro start. 16 levels in play by turn 2. I don't know about you, but that's roughly an army twice as large as what I typically field by turn 2. You could send half your army after theirs and be evenly matched while the other half scours the land for Treasure tokens... of course you won't do that because you'll be punching through these weaklings with your full might.
So that deck looks like 3x or 4x Orc Chieftain, 4x Barbarians, then Archers and Drudges, maybe some Druids if the WIS in this set is worth his ability being a blank.
The Ogre isn't great but it does hit for 50 unaugmented. I think that's the highest unaugmented attack value in the game. If you see him as a virtual level 5, then his HP is on curve, and he's got that awesome 10 damage per level ratio that you can only get with lower level dudes usually. As an aggro player I like him a lot. I hope there's some Ogre-only or Ogre affinity cards in there to make him more desirable.
As for vulnerability to Killing Strike... that's what Mortal Wound + Tough as Nail/Undaunted Strike/whatever other attachment removal card is for.I guess my point was moreso that you'll be more likely to have a con immediate in your hand if you have lots of con cards in your deck for the purpose of running the strategy outlined nicely by Dark Angel. And they still have dex for quick shot, which is probably all they need in a deck mainly focused on running up and hitting people in the face.
I agree with what you're saying, Ultiville.
I guess my point was moreso that you'll be more likely to have a con immediate in your hand if you have lots of con cards in your deck for the purpose of running the strategy outlined nicely by Dark Angel. And they still have dex for quick shot, which is probably all they need in a deck mainly focused on running up and hitting people in the face.
Oh yeah I think they'll probably see reasonable play, I just feel like you've got to be running the Chieftain plan. Again, it seems like a good plan that I'm going to mess with, but Drow Wizard is just a great all-purpose guy who goes in lots of decks, which I don't think will be true of the Orc Archer; he seems to me like he's primarily going to be good if you use the Orc keyword (via Chieftain). Of course as always we've got 20-odd unique order cards we haven't seen that might change that.
Question about the Chieftan; would his ability apply to the initial deployment phase, the first turn one, or only on subsequent turns?
The Cleric of Gruumsh seems pretty awesome to me. 120 HP is a lot for a level 5 guy, as much as the Dragon Knight. I wonder why they gave the Cleric 120 HP and the Chieftan 90, seems like it should be the other way around.
Question about the Chieftan; would his ability apply to the initial deployment phase, the first turn one, or only on subsequent turns?
I like him too. Presumably the Chieftain has fewer HPs because his "When you deploy..." ability is a lot stronger.
WRT that ability: it works at any time. Interesting fact: so does the forward-deploy ability on the Drow Priestess, Lich Necromancer and (soon) Orc Druid. You can pick the order in which you drop initial creatures, so you can put down one of them and then forward deploy with the appropriate kind of creature.
Yeah seems like it might be borderline broken, a warband with 4 chieftans and 4 berserkers, a couple clerics, ouch =[
Pretty tough warband, certainly. But I don't see why it would be broken. Also, no ranged attacks if you don't include Archers in the warband.
If I'm reading the rules right, that warband has a decent chance of lapping your enemy's leadership within a few turns, at that point does anything else matter?
Yes. Your Morale will not follow, so your opponent won't need to kill all your army on the field, just part of it. That's an important thing to remember. It may not matter much, though, when you trample their puny human faces.
Also, as indicated, the Chieftain himself takes a hit in HPs and has a lackluster attack for level 5, so at least part of the advantage of having extra levels is lost on a character that's technically worth maybe just a level 4, and you also lose creature selection in order to allow it to trigger. Thus if you spend his ability on a level 1 Orc that's kind of a wash, level 2 is only a slight improvement, so you really want to hit those level 3s.
Instead of pushing his ability he may be better as a guy you spawn one of then have die and replace with a Cleric or other better creature. I like the idea of pushing him to the full though.
It may be the first band I put Reinforcements in only for the shuffling effect and not the "bring back all my dead level 1s" effect. -Order cards
-Positioning
-Morale
-Extra Actions (Quick Jab, Heroic Surge, etc)
You're talking about a warband that's Str/Con with maybe a level 5 evil Wisdom guy or a level 3 non-evil Wisdom dude. That means you can't draw order cards particularly effectively, you can't use any of the good positioning cards (ie, ones that do something else other than just letting you move about, so Dex or Cloud of Bats) and you're running all level 3+ creatures that move 6 so you're not going to be able to go and loot many treasures. You also don't have Dex, Cha, or Adventurer, so you can't use any of the things that give you extra actions, unless you assemble the doomsday device with Level Up whcih seems like a poor plan when you don't have card draw. So you're basically all-in on the Leadership plan, with maybe some virtual card draw based on the persistent Con effects (Tough as Nails/Undaunted Surge). It might get there, but so far all of the decks I've found to be highly effective have at least two of these things. Not being able to turn orders into actions with Quick Jab etc is especially unfortunate when you're on the Leadership plan because you rely on having more activations than your opponents. You certainly will over the course of the long game, but you still might not be on particularly good footing compared to say a Dex/Wis deck, or a Str/Int Adventurer one, both of which can draw order cards, turn those cards into actions, and have either Dex's mobility or Int's infinte ranged attacks to make sure that those activations are able to do what they need to do.
The big variable we haven't seen yet is the orc leader card situation. Right now perhaps you are comparing this orc band to other warbands that will be getting a good advantage from their leader card; presumably the orcs will also be getting some kind of advantage from their leader cards. If the orcs have a leadership 9 (or even 10?) guy with a good special ability for orcs only this warband will be serious trouble. But on the other hand if their leader cards are both low leadership, regardless of their ability, this warband will take a looong time to get going and be vulnerable to fast-attack crews big time.
Agreed, the orders will matter a lot too. We have literally no idea what Wisom's slice of the "color pie" involves except card draw, let alone whether there will be game changers for Str or Con or some Orc-specific Any's. I do think that specific build isn't going to be able to run Blessing though; dropping an early Cleric is just too far at odds with whatever else you're doing. Of course a Ld 9 leader that likes Orcs might change that.
Sure, the Chieftan gets up to 3 extra levels out quicker, but that's because everyone knows orcs fight in hordes, it's well themed
OTOH - the chieftan needs protecting - he's got as many hits as a L4 bugbear but gives away 5 morale when he dies, and he will be a target because of that
Build 4 x chieftan into a pure orc deck and sure, youll have a horde, but...
your extra mobility is move 6 or 7, take 10 damage to shift 5 or portal stone, which could be mage chomping tastic
(unless of course, they bring out another ANY, STR or CON mobility card
plus
your ranged attack is, shall we say, limited?
bad mobility and bad ranged attacks tend to spell disaster
which means it's sort of handy that orcs have woods to hide in and a big choke point to swarm around (which could be bad if it reduces the orcs own attacks more than their enemy's)
sure, having CON is great if you have the cards (where defensive advantadge will help), but swarming together with bad mibility will be weak vs. decks packed with AoE like fireball, Tomb Guardian, Half-Orc etc.
If I was playing vs. orcs from what I've seen so far, I'd be playing defensive with a fire trapped tile between my deploy and them with plenty ranged so they have to come to me, then when they're all nicely packed tight unleash a couple of fire traps and a couple of fireballs - I'm sure we'd be seeing crispy orcs as far as the horizon...
Really looking forward to seeing what they do with WIS.
And I second that they've actually done a great job of game balance so far, so why anyone would assume they'd spoil it now is ungenerous...
Really hope we get more after BoG.
Personally, I think the drudge looks like a gorrilla
Thoughts:
Beast warbands with lots of lots of "whip" (wis standard attach; all beasts get plus 2 speed) and "beastmaster" (wis minor attach; all beasts get +10 damage) cards will be popular. For example, a spider and giant spider warband based around priestesses, lloth's blessing, and dex cards like piercing srike and shadowy ambush. Immagine the speed! Speed 13 spiders and giant spiders seems easily atainable with Aliszandra.
Cure serious wounds will be a nice tool for clerics as a minor action
Perhaps an uber-knight with undaunted surge, then a magic shortsword, then a vorpal blade attached will see some use. Obviously this would be cool since it would automaticall kill any unit no questions asked. This could also be possible on a wearboar with either some beastmaster support or a fury of gruumsh attached. Not to mention the ogre! Or a horned devil with undaunted surge... lots of possibilities
For reference:
Commanders
Con
Str
Wis
Any
Here you go old man:
Show
Name Quantity Level Ability Type Effect
Name Quantity Level Ability Type Effect
Savage Demise 2 1 Con Immediate Make a melee attack that deal melee damage against 1 tapped creature. Destroy this creature.
Defiant Stance 2 2 Con Immediate Prevent 20 damage to this creature from one source. Gain 1 morale.
Tactical Block 2 3 Con Immediate Prevent 30 damage to this creature from one source. Untap this creature.
Scent of Blood 1 1 Con Minor This creature heals 10 damage for each enemy creature adjacent to it.
Furious Bellow 2 3 Con Minor Tap each enemy creature adjacent to this creature, and slide each of those creatures 2 squares.
Victorious Surge 2 3 Con Standard Make a melee attach that deals melee damage + 20 damage. This creature heals 20 damage.
Stomp 1 4 Con Standard Shift 3 squares. Deal 30 damage to each enemy creature adjacent to this creature.
Deflect 2 2 Str Immediate Prevent 30 damage to this creature from one source.
Unexpected resistance 2 3 Str Immediate Prevent 10 damage to this creature from 1 source. Choose one adjacent tapped creature. That creature's controller loses 1 morale.
Tide of Iron 2 1 Str Minor Slide 1 adjacent creature 2 squares. Shift 2 squares.
Charge 2 1 Str Standard This creature moves its speed. Make a melee attack that deals melee damage + 10 damage.
Hurl Rock 2 1 Str Standard Choose 1 creature within 5 squares. Deal melee damage to that creature.
Slice 2 2 Str Standard Make a melee attack that deals +10 damage. Draw one order card.
Hacking Frenzy 2 3 Str Standard Make a melee attack that deals melee damage +40 damage.
Bone Chilling Rally 1 3 Str Standard Lose 1 morale. Gain 2 leadership.
Change of plans 1 1 Wis Minor Draw 2 order cards, then discard 1 order card.
Cure serious wounds 2 3 Wis Minor This creature or one adjacent ally heals 40 damage.
Beastmaster 1 3 Wis Minor Attach this card to this creature. "Beast creatures you control deal +10 damage with melee attacks"
Turn Undead 1 3 Wis Standard Deal 20 damage to each undead creature within 5 squares.
Overseer's Whip 1 3 Wis Standard Attach this card to this creature. "Beast creatures you control have +2 speed"
Fury of Gruumsh 2 1 Any Minor Requires Orc. Attach this card to this creature. "This creature's melee attacks deal +20 damage. At the end of its activation, this creature takes 20 damage"
Vorpal Sword 1 4 Any Standard Requires Humanoid. Attach this card to this creature. If the target of this creature's melee attack takes at least 50 damage from that attack, destroy the target.
Thanks a lot!
Sadly no Magic Short Sword answer, but still a bunch of neat stuff.
Only criticism is lack of any high level WIS cards as a boon for the Cleric.
Can see Charge and Hurl Rock seeing quite a bit of use.
They, and the move through difficult, should help this deck an awful lot.
Did someone say Bellow (into fire) then Stomp? Ouch.
CON is shaping up to be an uber stat, morale gain, card draw, shifting...
And a boar that's deploying adjacent to a druid, getting extra move, stackable bonuses to damage, and hits you when you kill it? Tasty.
Can very well see Dispell Magic being a staple in any deck that can play it now.
Can see the look of relief when the other guy realises how lucky he is that the orc leaders have average to low hand sizes (as that will be the main limiting factor on losing morale to play yet more Orc Chieftans).
Can't wait...
Hurl Rock....can that be dodged? While you are in theory making a ranged attack, it doesn't mention so rulewise since you use [sword symbol] attack......curious.
RAW on the card, it isn't an attack of any type. It just says to pick a creature and do some damage to it. This matters in a few weird cases like dodging due to cover (can't, it isn't a ranged attack) and Faerie Fire (doesn't boost it because it isn't an attack).
Lokar:
The last creature has been revealed: