Giants, Oh My!!!

Today I thought I might cover Giants and all that implies. Giants are now a standard unit in many armies from Orcs & Goblins, Ogre Kingdoms to Chaos and now with the new Dogs of War giants, you can see them in Empire, Skaven and several others.

There are really 4 main types of giants.
Regular giant like you would see in the O&G army and as a Dogs of War
Mutant Monstrosity in a Chaos army.
Slave Giant in the Ogre Kingdoms.
And Bone Giant in a tomb king army.

First lets start with what they have in common and then break it down to individual types.
1. They cause Terror. Of course these big bad boys are scarier than most things on the field. Their big, tough, have lots of wounds, and well, are pretty scary. Anything with a low leadership needs to stay away from these guys.

2. Unit Strength of 6. This is particularly nasty if he can get a flank charge on a unit. It is just all over but the crying if this happens.

3. 12" charge. All giants have a 6" move, so a 12" charge. I don't care which one it is, the last thing you want to do is let any of these guys charge you. And you have to be particularly careful of the Bone Giant who can move 6" and then use a urgency spell to charge in.

4. All of them are T5 with 6 wounds. This is actually their weak point. Toughness 5 is nice, but not the end all and be all of Warhammer. I run 2 spawn and their Toughness 5 is great if I get the charge on some strength 3 guys, anyone else hacks them apart pretty easily. And the same with giants. Anything strength 4 or higher does pretty well against them. And strength 5+ in particular.

5. Little to no armor. Luckily the best thing about giants is their lack of armor. A regular giant or slave giant has no armor at all. While the Mutant monstrosity comes with a 5+ armor. But anything strength 5 or 4 with armor penetration ignores it. Only the Bone Giant with the 3+ armor save has any real chance to save a wound put on it. So poison is their bane.

6. They are big and as such can be targeted just about anywhere on the board. Remember ranks of troops with missile weapons can all shoot at one. And I recommend it.

Killing them before they get into combat is your best option. Using magic or missile weapons is the way to go. Skinks with poison blowpipes is the best option, bar none.

Now barring that, lets take a look at what these bad boys can do in combat.

Bone Giant: He is different than the rest in that he does not roll randomly on what his attack will be. He simply gets 5 attacks per round. And if he charged he gets the Unstoppable assault rule.
What this means is that for every wound before saves he gets an extra attack. When he has finished killing 10+ troops of your unit, you now know why you cannot let this guy charge you.
On the up side he only starts with 5 attacks. If you make it through the first round, or you charge him, there is no way he can win combat against a full ranked up unit. And will begin to crumble like other undead. He is a construct, so you have to win by 2 to have any affect at all.

Regular giants. Now these guys are just fun when they get into combat. You roll to see what they will do next. Anything from Yell and Bawl, to jumping up and down to swinging their club.
They have 2 different charts for little guys and big guys.
With little guys they can Yell and bawl. You take no wounds but you automatically lose by 2. Ouch for those Low Leadership armies. But even a 9 becomes a 7 on the break test. All the bonuses, BSBs warbanners and ranks won't help you when he gets this result.
The 2nd option is Jump up and down. This is the favorite of the giant player, I guarantee it. Once he gets this result he will continue to do it until he falls down. So 2d6 strength 6 hits every round. So average of 6 wounds per round.
The 3rd option is Pick up and ... They then roll randomly to determine what they do with the model they pick up. This can be good or bad. On the giants side, if you are in base with a character you can pick up the character and instant kill it. The bad side is, he gets one attack and if he wounds you, you get nothing.
Final option, and most prevelant because it is 4-6 on the chart, is swing club. This is the giants worst option, as it only does a d6 str 6 hits. So on average he is doing 3-4 wounds and auto losing combat.

The giants are particularly nasty because the bone giant is undead and never breaks, and the regular giant and mutant monstrosity are stubborn Leadership 10. So even with the bad roll, they still almost always around until you kill them.
Only the slave giant will break on a regular bases.

Against Large targets, ogre size and bigger, the giants attacks are much more limited.
They can yell and bawl again.
They can headbutt. Which does 1 wound and stops the opponents next attack.
Or their personal favorite. Thumb with club doing 2d6 str 6 hits against the model.
Very nasty indeed. But the opponent gets to make an initiative test to avoid it completely. Not good for say the big toad, but great for something like the blood thirster.

Finally, the last special attack is the mutant monstrosities, Belly Flop. After they roll on the small guys chart, they roll another d6. If they match the number, so basically a 1 in 6 chance. They get to belly flop instead. They get to fall down but pick the direction. This can be horrible against a ranked up unit of 20 mm models. This can wipe out 2/3rds of a lot of units and easily break them. Even though it will usually cause a wound to the giant and he is on the ground. So he has to stand back up.

And even when you kill them, they are not done as they fall down and can kill your guys anyway. At least you don't have to make a panic test for it.

For only a couple hundred points these guys can make an awesome centerpiece for your army and be very deadly on the field of battle.

But most often they will simply be a distraction for your opponent who will shoot it and magic it to death. Of course now, you have the rest of your army intact when you reach his battle line.

Until next time...