Games Workshop - Warhammer Age of Sigmar - Gloomspite Gitz: Bad Moon Loonshrine

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TOTAL: 2000/2000 WOUNDS: 142 LEADERS: 2/6 BATTLELINES: 3 (3+) BEHEMOTHS: 4/4 ARTILLERY: 0/4 ARTEFACTS: 2/2 ENDLESS SPELLS: 1/3 ALLIES: 0/400 The Moon-biter Squigalance takes a lot of the guess work from this process, you can pretty easily include it without much problem and it contains mostly everything you’d want anyway. Allegiance: Gloomspite Gitz What the bad moon does is provide a benefit to any unit under its light, which means wholly within the large quarter that the moon is occupying, or the entire board if it’s in the centre. It provides a flexible basis for an army at a good bundle price, but may not be the right way to start if you want to double-down on a particular theme, like Squigs or Troggoths.

Improved Moon Mechanics – The bad moon isn’t going to be immediately flying off the board before you can use it anymore, and there are new ways to count your models as under its light even when they aren’t. There are a mountain of warscrolls here, so this isn’t an exhaustive list of everything in the book and everything that’s changed. HeroesThere’s 3 kinds of Trogg units, plus a leader and a named leader. While not a ton of variety, lets try and keep it in theme as best we can. Allegiance: Gloomspite Gitz You can reroll the roll used to determine a SQUIG unit’s movement speed. One of the “fun” mechanics of running Squig units is the 3D6″ movement, which fluctuates on bigger squigs as they lose wounds. This gives you an out if you just make a bad roll. As per the rules, when rerolling a roll you do have to reroll them all so if you got two 6s and a 1, just keep it. Command Ability: ‘Get Some Loonshine on ’em!’ Grimscuttle is a total rewrite from the old White Dwarf rules and feels like it still doesn’t quite get there for what is one of the weaker standalone parts of the army. This now lets you deploy up to two spiderfang units off the board with each skitterstrand that you have already deployed in ambush from beyond – bringing all the units on together when the skitterstrand deploys onto the board. It’s certainly an interesting way to keep some of your units safe from early alpha strikes, but can leave you at the mercy of multiple 9” charges. Battalions

If you’re familiar with the last two subfactions released in White Dwarf, the pattern for this release follows pretty predictably. As before, this faction is focused on one specific group of units within the Gloomspite Gitz battletome, and while it doesn’t restrict you to those units, the new battle traits heavily emphasize a list that leans on them to get the most effect. In this case its the Spiderfang units who get to shine. Overall the faction, other than being dedicated to the spider theme, seems to be focused on anti-magic powers which certainly can be very useful. Allegiance Ability: Deff Grotz of Shyish The Badmoon rises again with another Tome Celestial augmenting the Gloomspite Gitz. Recent issues have given us The Jaws of Mork, dedicated to Squig heavy lists and Troggherds for Troggoths. The third (and final?) Tome Celestial for the faction is centered around the Spiderfangs, giant arachnids that the Gitz lead into battle to help compensate for their diminutive size. The faction probably needs a new battletome written from the ground up. The original was written fairly early on in Age of Sigmar 2.0’s lifespan and so the designers had not yet worked out all the kinks. It seemed, frankly, absurd to ask for a new book before but now Slaanesh is getting a new book after already getting to spend almost a year as the top competitive army, and gitz didn’t even get that. Ideally it’s something that can be worked on in the near future, whether through a new battletome or some hefty new additions in a future Broken Realms book.The star of the article, the Jaws of Mork. Up until now, Gloomspite Gitz were one of the few 2.0 books to not get any subfactions so this is actually their first one. If it wasn’t clear by now, this is for people who want to use lots of Squigs, a fairly popular choice for many Gloomspite players. Most of the abilities serve to benefit squig heavy lists in some way and the options here aren’t bad. Like most every book to date, subfactions grant you a new allegiance ability and command ability at the cost of a new relic and general trait you’re required to take. Allegiance Ability: Running Riot Regardless it’s still nice for them to see some sort of subfaction when they previously didn’t get one and it couldn’t hurt to give them a few more for good measure. They really need the help. There’s 2 major reasons people generally like the gitz: They like the underdogs, or they like the silliness (or both!). Gitz have been seen as the underdog army basically from Age of Sigmar’s inception. Their rules have always been a bit haphazard, weaker than equivalent units and subject to a lot of randomness. This does have a certain appeal to a kind of person who didn’t really care about winning and just wanted to cause some chaos on the table. Spiderfang Grots worship gargantuan arachnids and can harness spiders of ever more terrifying size to ride to war. Their Spider Riders are swift cavalry, able to scuttle up and over terrain, and their potent venoms cause mortal wounds on to-hit rolls of six. Gitz were notorious for the fact that for a long time they didn’t have subfactions, until they did. The Battletome did not launch with any, but they’d eventually get some through White Dwarf, then reprinted in Broken Realms. They were…fine, in a ‘better than nothing’ sort of way.

Every turn, Troggoths can attempt to regenerate D3 wounds on a 4+. This adds +1 to the roll, making it a 3+. This makes for reliable healing which will make the fairly tanky Troggoths far more frustrating. Command Ability: Oblivious to Sorcery The lore section notes that members of the Destruction Grand Alliance have a curious ability to adopt the traits of the realms they live in, allowing them to spread more than other races. The Gitz of Shyish carve out an existence in the hellish afterlife realm by becoming predators in its dark and nefarious landscape. The Grimscuttle of Shyish worship a deity who’s true name is unknown, but goes by The Spider God, The Feaster of Beyond and the Scuttler in the Void among others. Like the Gloomspite Gitz other deities, it’s impossible to tell if this being is real or the product of too many ingested mushrooms. Regardless, the Grimscuttle Followers are a very real threat, appearing in the night under a full moon to ensare victims to sacrifice to their god. Loonshrine Update, Spider Rider Edition The Loonshrine is a sacred icon to the Gloomspite Gitz and carries a sliver of the Bad Moon’s power. Gloomspite Gitz units wholly within 12” of the shrine count as being bathed in the light of the Bad Moon. Moonclan units get Frothing Zealots for everyone’s favourite 4+ rally and Lunar Squigs still provides the excellent ability to run and charge for squigs. Spiderfang Venom upgrades the spider venom of your spiderfang units to trigger on an unmodified 5+, and Moonlit Hide is your trogg buff for +1 to save rolls.For veteran players, going from being a surprisingly magically powerful army to a fairly mediocre one will sting. But that old army was the worst in the game for most of its lifespan. In trade, just about everything got better on a base warscroll level, the keywords are easier to work with and the core moon mechanic will be better to play with. Found in the realm of Hysh it seems, this grants a 5+ Feel No Pain for mortal wounds for the bearer. Troggoths are already tanky so this is in line with their M.O. Battalion: Stomping Megamob

I was pleasantly surprised by this faction. At first blush it felt very lazy, they created two factions before for the Gitz which were just focused on a specific type of unit, and this isn’t any different than that. If anything, it’s working from an even more restricted list than the last two, and with a unit type that definitely doesn’t carry the same fan fervor as a list of all Squigs would. Given the strict limits on what units can be used, they made out pretty well, and there seem to be a handful of legitimate playstyles at work depending on which of the Behemoth units a player chooses to favor.Squigs are fang-filled mouths on legs that bounce across the battlefield. All squigs move a random distance, so neither you nor your opponent can predict quite where they’ll end up. Some grots are brave, foolhardy or insane enough to ride squigs into battle like lethal space-hoppers. Glogg’s Megamob boosts how often Troggoth units can regenerate lost wounds. Grimscuttle Tribes are spider-riders who follow the massive Skitterstrand Arachnaroks as they burrow through holes in reality. In game terms, this allows units of Grimscuttle Spiderstrand units to arrive from reserves almost anywhere on the board. Four, including the now ubiquitous ‘have ever battle tactic you complete be from your faction list’. Protect da Shrine! Could potentially see some use, requiring you to have no enemy models within 12” of the Loonshrine at the end of the game, and for it to have not been smashed to rubble. Superior Spell-flinger has a Tzeentchy flair and asks you to have two of the Gitz endless spells on the battlefield when the game ends. You don’t have as much control of that as you might like, but the Scuttletide at least can be quite difficult to dispel. Jaws of Mork Loonboss on Mangler Squigs or Giant Cave Squig, 0-3 Loonbosses on Giant Cave Squigs, 1+ Moon-Jumper Stampedes, 1-3 Jaws of Mork Mangler Squigs 0-2 Squig Herders. This review was completed using a copy of Battletome: Gloomspite Gitz given to us free by Games Workshop.