# Orcs & Goblins (Book in hand-- this info is 100% accurate!)



## The Son of Horus (Dec 30, 2006)

With the Orc and Goblin book in hand, I thought I'd post up an overview of what's new and what's changed. Enjoy!

*Special Roolz
*
-Animosity.
It works more or less the same way as it has for the past couple editions. Animosity tests are only failed on a 1, and you then roll on a table. On a 2-5, on this table, the unit squabbles—which now means they have to declare a charge if there’s a viable charge target. Otherwise, they sit and pick their noses/fight/whatever as they have in previous editions. On a 1, the unit throws some S3 attacks at a nearby friendly unit (and the target throws some back!), and on a 6, the unit makes a move towards the nearest enemy and must attempt to charge them if it’s possible to do so. 

-Size Matters.
Hasn’t really changed. It’s a little simplified—units are either Orcs, Goblins, or Snotlings. Mounts aren’t factored in—just what’s riding them. So the Arachnarok spider counts as a goblin for Size Matters, which is pretty funny, I think. If it’s running away for some reason, the Orcs don’t care!

-Fear Elves
Little green ‘uns still Fear Elves.

-Big ‘Uns
Big ‘Uns are limited to one unit in the army, period. Not one unit of Big ‘Un Boar Boyz, Big Un Boyz, etc.—just one unit of Big ‘Uns of any type.

-Choppas
A special rule now, rather than a weapon. Works as in the last book, but still works no matter what weapon you’re using—spears, hand weapons, great weapons, even—they’re all choppas! +1S in the first round of combat with a horde of Boyz with spears? Yes, please!


*DA BOYZ
*-Orc Warbosses of all types pick up the “Waaagh!” special rule. Works once per game, when the Warboss charges. All Orc units in the army of five or more models gain +1 combat resolution. The unit the general’s with get +D3 instead.

-Orc Shamans haven’t changed.

-Boyz haven’t changed. Arrer Boyz have a different Boss that has better BS instead of WS, though.

-Boar Boyz haven’t changed.

-Boar Chariots haven’t changed.

-Black Orcs picked up Immune to Psychology, and the wording on Armed to da Teef was clarified so it allows them to use hand weapon and shield despite having a great weapon and two hand weapons. 

-Savage Orcs gain the Big Stabbas option. A unit can have Big Stabbas, which makes the unit cause D3 impact hits as long as there are at least two ranks in the unit. Against large targets, the impact hits are upgraded to S5 and cause D3 wounds. 

-Savage Orc Boar Boyz gain the Wild Abandon rule, which lets them use two hand weapons despite being mounted. They subtract one from dice scores whenever they take a dangerous terrain test, though.

*DA LITTLE ‘UNS
*-Goblin Warbosses haven’t changed. 

-Goblin Shamans haven’t changed. Night Goblin shamans come with Magic Mushrooms. ‘Shrooms add 1d6 to the casting roll, but aren’t power dice and can’t cause irresistible force. There’s also a possibility that the mushroom is bad, though, and the goblin will get seriously hurt eating it!

-Common Goblin units pick up Nasty Skulkers, which work just like Dark Elf assassins. 

-Goblin Wolf Riders haven’t changed.

-Goblin Wolf Chariots haven’t changed. You can buy three for one “special” choice, so you can have –a lot- in the army—i.e., three chariots count as only one “copy” of a special unit for purposes of copy restrictions on special choices. 

-Rock Lobbas haven’t changed.

-Spear Chukkas misfires as a stone thrower if the to-hit roll is a 1. You can include up to six in an army, or twelve in a grand army.

-Doom Divers haven’t appreciably changed. They have their own misfire table now, and use the actual Doom Diver goblin model as a template, but that’s about it.

-Spider Riders gain Creeping Assault, which lets them fight in buildings without dismounting, unlike other Cavalry. They can’t garrison a building, though.

-The Arachnarok Spider’s profile is avaible on GW’s website. The Flinger is a stone thrower that can shoot even if the spider moves, but is Strength 1(3). However, a unit hit by the flinger gains Always Strikes Last until the end of its next turn. It doesn’t misfire—a misfire just means the shot missed horribly or something. The Catchweb Spidershrine upgrade gives the Goblin Shaman riding it Loremaster (Little Waagh!)

-Night Goblins haven’t changed.

-Fanatics work as they did in the last book.

-Squig Herds haven’t changed. They do have a provision preventing characters from joining the unit now, though.

-Squig Hoppers pick up the “Extra Boingy!” rule—if they roll three sixes for their random movement, they cause one impact hit each. They’re also unable to be joined by characters.

-Mangler Squigs are a “unique” squig unit. Basically, it’s a unit of Great Cave Squigs (as in the monstrous mount from the last book) but behaves more or less like the regular Squig Hopper unit. They’re a Rare choice.

-Snotlings now have “Exploding Spores.” They can make a shooting attack as a thrown weapon which ignores armor saves. They can use it as a Stand and Shoot reaction, to boot.

-The Snotling Pump Wagon has a lot of options. It can be made to ignore dangerous terrain for the most part, ignore armor saves with its impact hits and/or increase their strength by 1, and increase its movement to 3d6. It has the same exploding spores as a Snotling base. It moves the same way it did in the previous book.

*THE UVVERS*
-Trolls of all types haven’t changed.

-Giants haven’t changed. If you’ve got a Savage Orc Shaman or Great Shaman, you can give the Giant warpaint, though!

*RIDY ‘FINGS*
-The points on Wyverns have been significantly lowered.

*DA BOSSES*
-Gorbad removes the limit on a single unit of Big ‘Uns. 

-Azhag is a Level 3 wizard with spells from the Lore of Death. He makes units re-roll failed animosity checks, too, which is pretty handy.

-Wurrzag is back. He can turn people into squigs with a spell that casts on an 8+. He’s also got a bound item that contains Vindictive Gaze, which is from the Little Waaagh! Spell list. He knows spells from the Big Waaagh! Spell list, and always knows his own special spell in addition. He has magic resistance (3) and can re-roll miscast results. 

-Grom the Paunch hasn’t changed.

-Skarsnik hasn’t changed much. Tricksy Traps let Night Goblin units which flee as a charge reaction shoot after reforming as if they were fast cavalry.

-Snagla Grobspit is a new character. He has to be with a unit of spider riders, who gain the Ambushers, Devastating Charge, and Hatred (Empire) rules. 

-Gitilla Da Hunter is a new character. He has to be with a unit of wolf riders, who gain Quick to Fire with their bows and +1 BS. He’s got a 3+ save, a magic bow that lets him shoot three shots, and can re-roll pursuit or flee rolls.

-Grimgor is super king big nuts. Grimgor Always Strikes First at S7; has a 1+ save and a 5+ ward, and has to be with Immortulz—his unit of Black Orcs who gain +1 WS and hate everyone, just like their boss. WS5 Black Orcs? Yes please.
*
MAGIC*
Little Waagh! Features a lot of utility spells and buffs, but also has a really obnoxious big spell which causes wounds with no armor save allowed. Models effected by it take a test (either strength, toughness, or initiative, rolled randomly). It uses the small template to start, but it can be beefed up to use the big ‘un.
Big Waagh! Have a lot of fighty buffs (such as Fists of Gork, which works like 6th Edition’s Flaming Sword of Rhuin for the most part) and direct damage spells. It’s about what you’d expect from the Orcs, really.

There are only eight magic items in the book, and all of them are at least 50 points. I guess they want you to use the Common Items now.


*
GENERAL NOTES*
Points costs have stayed fairly consistent from the last book as far as characters and core choices are concerned. Special units have received a pretty hefty points break, though—Black Orcs are –very- cost effective. The Rock Lobba is a bit more expensive, but that’s not unreasonable given that stone throwers are better in 8th. The Arachnarok spider is almost 300 points, and can easily hit 500 points with a Great Shaman riding it.

I see "savage" armies being very competitive. Pure Goblin armies may not be as viable as they once were-- the spells Orc shamans bring to the table are very useful for Goblin units since they buff fighting abilities for the most part. The beefy Special Units that are very points efficient are all Orcs, too. However, an all-Orc army featuring lots of Black Orcs seems much more viable now because Black Orcs have had a significant points decrease.


----------



## Scathainn (Feb 21, 2010)

Oh goody, better black orks!

I always thought it was a shame such great models had such terrible rules.

Couple questions:

1. Is the rumor of S4 orcs across the board true (with info vaguely garnered from the preview page on the GW website)?

2. Is there still a separate Waaaagh! Magic miscast table or do we use the regular one now?

3. Can you clarify how Gorbad's Big 'Uns thing works; is it still like the current book where he allows an unlimited number of Big 'Uns units?


----------



## The Son of Horus (Dec 30, 2006)

1. Unfortunately, no. Orcs are still S3. But the Choppas special rule being reworked makes it much less of an issue since you get +1 S in the first round of combat no matter what weapon you're using-- even magic weapons in the hands of Orcs are choppas! The playstyle of the army really is to have single overwhelming charges.

2. Greenskins use the regular miscast table-- no more 'eadbangs.

3. Gorbad specifically says that any number of units of Orcs or Orc Boar Boyz can be upgraded to Big 'Uns. The reason this is different than before is because Big 'Uns are more restricted in this book. I expect Gorbad to be a *very* popular army general.


----------



## GrizBe (May 12, 2010)

Two things.... One... its really stupid the an MC counts as a little un.... and secondly, the giant has changed a bit, his 'Pick up and...' rules have changed. Plus, If he picks up a model, that model is now killed, rather then placed back into its unit if it survives being thrown.


----------



## jigplums (Dec 15, 2006)

mc? no idea what you mean


----------



## Wolf_Lord_Skoll (Jun 9, 2008)

I *think* he means Monster, using 40k terminology for Monstrous Creature.

And if so, yes it's really dumb.


----------



## GreenFaceMonkey (May 25, 2010)

A few things you have wrong, or atleast what i read in the book. Orc bigguns are limited to 2 units, and boar boys are limited to one. Atlerast thats what it said underneath their stats and special rules. 
And common regular just "trolls", are now special as oposed to rare.


----------



## MaidenManiac (Oct 2, 2008)

Sweet stuff TSOH. Gonna be grand to have a look in it in the future.

What did you think of the "new format" as a general? Good, bad, borrowed, brewed or something in between?


----------



## The Son of Horus (Dec 30, 2006)

MaidenManiac said:


> Sweet stuff TSOH. Gonna be grand to have a look in it in the future.
> 
> What did you think of the "new format" as a general? Good, bad, borrowed, brewed or something in between?


It's a mixed thing. The book is physically very nice-- it's well bound, the pages are high quality paper, it's full color... but...

It's not worth $40. The hardback may be nice, but it's not necessary, and keeping the cost down for this sort of thing is important. The full color is also not needed-- there are a lot of pages without pictures that are still full color (with orky glyphs and whatnot, and border designs.) They could've had the artwork be full color and leave the army list and text and whatnot in black and white, and include the full color modelling section. I think that would've accomplished what they wanted, without spiking the price further.

That's not a reflection on the book though-- the price tag aside, the book is great. I just don't think any army book is worth $40. I've been playing Space Marines for 15 years, and have far more Space Marines than any one man should-- and I'm not even sure I'd pay $40 for a full-color, hardback fancy Codex: Space Marines. If a hardcore collector might not pay that for their army book, how can you reasonably expect the more casual enthusiast to throw that much down for it? I hope that it's an experiment that GW will realize is doomed to failure.

Piracy is something that gaming companies just sort of have to live with-- it's almost impossible to put a stop to it. Some companies, like Paizo (who make Pathfinder RPG, which is excellent) make their products so good that you -want- the physical book instead of a PDF and you don't mind paying the price for such a high quality product. Other companies just lower the price point so that you don't mind paying for the hard copy. But Games Workshop is doing neither-- they're not meaningfully increasing quality and are raising the price point, which is just going to cause a group to chip in for a single copy and photocopy it or go find it on a torrent.


Back to the actual contents, though. As an Orcs & Goblins player (sort of... Chaos is really more my thing), I like what's in there, the more I look at it. I can see several sort of possible themes for the army that are all equally viable-- a Savage army, a shooty army backed up by lots of boar boyz for a devastating counter-charge, the Green Tide, the classic Night Goblin horde, something featuring lots of squigs and monsters (as there's a new super squig unit and a new monster), a Black Orc elite army... ad nauseam. All of them seem equally viable in both tournament and casual settings, too. 

It's also an excellent starting point for new players, oddly enough. There aren't many special rules to remember, and the only magic items you're really going to use are in the main rulebook (you might use the lucky shrunken skull if you have a savage orc army...maybe... but the other items included in the book aren't things you're likely to use over the common items, I don't think.). Since there's not a lot of exceptions for a new player to learn, not a lot of magic items to keep track of, and the units are just generally solid for what you pay... I'd certainly point a new player towards the new O&G book.


----------



## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

8 Magic Items? Well, fuck Mat Ward and whoever wrote this. Makes Combat Characters even less useful.


----------



## slaaneshy (Feb 20, 2008)

Does it really cost £22.50p???


----------



## Jezlad (Oct 14, 2006)

I don't think thats too much for a hardback book. It's on par with every other companies books.


----------



## MaidenManiac (Oct 2, 2008)

The Son of Horus said:


> It's a mixed thing. The book is physically very nice-- it's well bound, the pages are high quality paper, it's full color... but...
> 
> It's not worth $40. The hardback may be nice, but it's not necessary, and keeping the cost down for this sort of thing is important...
> Some companies, like Paizo (who make Pathfinder RPG, which is excellent) make their products so good that you -want- the physical book instead of a PDF and you don't mind paying the price for such a high quality product. Other companies just lower the price point so that you don't mind paying for the hard copy. But Games Workshop is doing neither-- they're not meaningfully increasing quality and are raising the price point, which is just going to cause a group to chip in for a single copy and photocopy it or go find it on a torrent.


I found the last (real) ed WHFRP books (fuck the semi-board-game-shit) to be that kind of books, damn good in both design and content.
I generally think about the time Im going to use a book and then judge if its "expensive" compared to its life length so it doesnt sound totally bad, but its always sad to "feel" like something aint worth its money (like the Beastmen book I still regret buying)

Regarding the "only 8 magical items thingy" Im not that worried. Its like 5th which is an edition I still have lots of both good and bad memories from. Each army has some own items and then the majority is a pool of stuff for everyone. It makes stuff more balanced. Example would be previous VC and HoC books that had no useful magical weapons what so fuckin ever where as Empire were boiling over with them and so on...


----------



## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

Problem is, customizability has ALWAYS been the best thing about fantasy. Everything that I loved about fantasy, is pretty much being tossed off for the ability for 40K players without the intelligence to learn to adapt to a new game.

And now, it's choose a combat hero with a generic magic weapon, OR actually take a Lord level caster.

Fucking bollocks. I've never really got why people give abuse to game systems - particularly Alessio, after I liked what had been made to it for the most part - but with Fantasy, EVERYTHING that I like has been removed. Customizability, the ability to take whatever you want, movement, tactics, combat, magic, war machine guessing ranges...

Christ, the only thing I DO like is Fire in Two Ranks.


----------



## space cowboy (Apr 3, 2009)

While I know that GW doesn't seem to particularly care about game balance, it is easier to find the less variation you allow.


----------



## Khorothis (May 12, 2009)

From the looks of it I'll be seeing some very happy O&G players in my LGS. 

Just one question: how does their magic compare to the common lores? Can they keep up or are the common lores still better?


----------



## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

space cowboy said:


> While I know that GW doesn't seem to particularly care about game balance, it is easier to find the less variation you allow.


Have you ever played 6th edition?


----------



## H0RRIDF0RM (Mar 6, 2008)

I played against my friend last Sunday who has the book. He used the arachnirok.

Unfortunately for him I buffed 6 Dark Riders with +1 Attack from COB and then Mind Razored them for a big splat on the charge.

Trolls are cheaper now so that was nice and there's some kinda of crazed rare squig that seems good at dealing damage for its cost. The Warmachine still seemed crappy though.

They do have a cool little waaghhh! spell that let you move the unit 4d6 inches or something. So you can march up to the enemies face then teleport behind them for some backard chaos. I thought that was intresting. There's also a purple sun type spell that targets random stats and has a lower stat cost.


----------



## Aramoro (Oct 7, 2009)

Vaz said:


> Problem is, customizability has ALWAYS been the best thing about fantasy. Everything that I loved about fantasy, is pretty much being tossed off for the ability for 40K players without the intelligence to learn to adapt to a new game.
> 
> And now, it's choose a combat hero with a generic magic weapon, OR actually take a Lord level caster.
> 
> ...


I'm really hoping this doesn't continue. Bretonnians are already running on a really thinned down Army Book from the previous version with only 3 named heroes and less magic items. If they reduce it down any more I'm not sure Brets would be fun to play at all. Right now we have 3 viable Lord builds, less than that would be a very sad day.


----------



## LordWaffles (Jan 15, 2008)

Khorothis said:


> From the looks of it I'll be seeing some very happy O&G players in my LGS.
> 
> Just one question: how does their magic compare to the common lores? Can they keep up or are the common lores still better?


They're _okay_, but I see the generic lores still being much much better. Not in terms of raw diesel power, but moreso having a balanced availability.

The best spell I saw was the test a stat with the large template in "Purple sun of Xerxes" kinda way. S/T/I pick one and the unit rolls on it. Orks have a wacky 4d6 s5 hits spell that can repeatedly keep activating half the time, but I don't see it being as the equivalent of Lore of Metal.

Arrer boyz are pretty garbage. For the cost of an ork and a point you get an ork with a bow. Neat. With no option for big'uns. You'd be much better off taking the gobbos and giving them bows as most of their wargear costs half a point. Also the goblins are half the price of a standard ork.

I see bigun's in every single list ever written for tournaments. It's stupid not to take them. Black orks still seemed bad in comparison to chaos warriors. (you get a 2 point discount) But in that two points you lose an armor, 3 ini, 1 ws, and 2 ld. Maybe you're seeing something I'm not but they just seemed really mediocre.


----------



## MaidenManiac (Oct 2, 2008)

LordWaffles said:


> ...Black orks still seemed bad in comparison to chaos warriors. (you get a 2 point discount) But in that two points you lose an armor, 3 ini, 1 ws, and 2 ld. Maybe you're seeing something I'm not but they just seemed really mediocre.


I guess Black Orks are 2 pts less then a stock Warrior? That still need to get shield and halberd to be dangerous?
But still its not overly impressive. On the other hand theyre not near half as bad as Bestigors (aka best-yesterdays) that (probably) only cost 1 pt less...


----------



## olderplayer (Dec 11, 2009)

The review missed some important things. They increased by 1 the points cost of Orc Boys, what's with that? Then they made you pay additional fixed points to add nets to a unit of night goblins? Finally, they took away all those interesting and flavorfull low cost magic items and banners that actually made O&G characters decent in 8th edition and gave the army some decent magic defense. To compensate, the gave us a few better rules; lower costs for orc boar boys, squig hoppers, and trolls; better rules for squig units; black orcs are a bit better for the cost; a new type of wild squig unit might be worth playing; and an arach spider may be a nice addition but may simply be too expensive to play for what it does. But they did not make the changes that most O&G players agree needed to be made and really took a lot of the flavour out of the army by removing all those neat magic items available in the old book. Why doesn't GW actually listen the the players and their comments as to the changes that would be reasonable and fun without destroying what was good and interesting in the past books? O&G was struggling to be competitive even with the benefits of 8th edition rules, but this book does not improve the army because it makes characters less able to kill and more able to be killed with the loss of key magic items, the army is now less able to defend itself against magic than before, and the most popular core models are now more expensive than before. Maybe I'm missing something, but (maybe with the possible exception of an army focused on a squig units, night goblin hordes, maybe some spider oriented units; and a general and BSB mounted in an Orc Boys unit screened by trolls), I'm not convinced the 8th edition army book will help O&G armies become more interesting to play or more competitive in 8th edition.


----------



## space cowboy (Apr 3, 2009)

Maybe that is the direction they are working towards with all armies. Considering this is the first 8th Edition army book, we really don't know the direction they are trending with their future development other than Gav Thorpe (or whoever) supposedly playing their first games of 7th edition Fantasy, hating the game for what it had become, and deciding that they needed to be more heavily involved in the development of 8th edition.

This could mean trending away from characters as the focus of armies (as if we haven't heard that before) and towards focusing on the other selections in an army (as would seem to be indicated by the horde rule, fighting in extra ranks automatically, removing models from the back of the army, etc.) It sucks that O&G have to be the first to get a new book trending in this direction, but everyone will get there eventually (in theory.)


----------



## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

Trending away of characters. The first army I see which doesn't have a Maxed L4 caster or 2 in a 2K list, I'll shake their hand.

Meanwhile, I want to see 12 army book releases done a year, so that we can finally get to work on 9th edition, and have a proper game of warhammer.

If people would like to see how Warhammer should be played, play Warhammer Ancient Battles - no magic items, limited heroes, actual damage not overbearing to combat resolution, while combat resolution not overbearing to actual damage, emphasis on engagements with proper units of infantry, that aren't majorly unique in their rules - while points are balanced properly for their skills.


----------



## HiveMinder (Feb 8, 2010)

While I don't have a problem with the number of magic items persay, I do have a problem with the points cost of the items. Nothing below 50 pts really blows and severely limits the customization of items.

I'm going to assume for now that the O&G have so few magic items for fluff reasons. They aren't an artisan race by any stretch of the imagination, so they wouldn't have many magic items unique to their race. Most of their wargear is pillaged from other races, so they would have an myriad of unfamiliar magic items at their disposal, in this case represented by the Common Magic Items table.

Only time will tell if this is a gaming trend for WFB, or if its something unique to the O&G. Im' hoping for the latter, but I wouldn't be opposed to the former as long as some of the magic items are cheaper than 50 pts. 

In either case, my Skaven don't have to worry about it for a while.


----------



## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

It's a trend. There is no other customization in the list, and the game is turning into 40K in Historical Fantasy. It's a trend.


----------

