How to Smash Face with Big Waaagh!: List Tech
Updated: Apr 27, 2022
Waaagh! What is it good for? Plenty, as it turns out. Big Waaagh is definitely having a moment in the minds of the listbuilders out there, and when Joel Graham tells me that it’s ready to pounce on the meta – I listen.
The first thing that springs to mind is combining the melee power of Ironjawz with the ranged output of Kruleboyz – and if I was a gambling man, I’d say that was what the devs expected this faction to look like on the tabletop. Now I’m not saying you can’t make that archetype work, but in the lists I’ve been messing around with, it hasn’t been something I’ve ended up with nearly as much as I expected I would.
What I’m not going to do
We’ve probably all sat through a bunch of grubby YouTube videos, watching some hack lazily reading out the allegiance abilities. I’ve got no interest in regurgitating the whole book to you – I’m here today to share some little tricks you can pull with Big Waaagh, some combos to look out for in your lists and a few learning points I’ve picked up from putting them on the table.
Ready? Let’s go.
Credit: https://twitter.com/Slowpainterloz
Whaddya got for me?
The cost is steep. If you’re running Big Waaagh, you’ll give up the (excellent) Waaagh abilities from all three Orruks races; the Ironjawz Waaagh in particular will be sorely missed in many matchups, when rend -2 just won’t cut it. You also give up the subfactions – Waaagh is your subfaction now – and a really powerful Battle Trait or two to boot. So no more Smashing and Bashing, no more Tireless Trackers and no more Dirty Tricks. It’s a pretty big deal.
But what you get in return is also a pretty big deal. As already mentioned my goal here is not to rattle through the whole set of allegiance abilities – there are already other sources for that kind of info – but there are a couple of things I’d like to call out:
+1 to hit is still awesome, even in a world of All Out Attack. Just having it army wide saves you a heap of CPs, but equally importantly, it liberates a unit (or three) to receive All Out Defence instead for the best of both worlds