Incarnate of Ghur Revealed: Full Rules and Analysis

Praise Gork for the leakers! Thanks to some kind soul with a heart of gold and a camera phone that looks like it was at least produced this century, we now have the full rules for Krondspine, Incarnate of Ghur:

First thing to note is that this thing has the Behemoth Battlefield Role, but is not a Leader – which means it fits neatly into the Monster slot in the Battle Regiment battalion. This is a nice place to be for your listbuilding quality of life and a great start – but Krondy has a lot more than that going on, so let’s really dive into it.

Ready? Let’s go.

How it works

This thing joins your army as an unique enhancement for a specific hero, which means he can’t be bonded to a named character. That’s a shame for Gobsprakk, because he’s crying out for casting bonuses, but probably for the best overall.

Note also that the opening paragraph specifies that this thing does count as a unit for rules purposes.

You can chuck the Incarnate in any army, but if you do so, you don’t get to take any Allies in that army – although note that there is nothing preventing you from taking a Warmaster. Welcome to the era of Gloomspite armies starring Kragnos and an Incarnate, and only 40-odd percent actual Gits. GINO – Gits In Name Only.

Tough Mudder

You can’t kill an Incarnate outright – you apply Damage as normal, and then have a 3Dd roll off in the Battleshock phase against the number of wounds allocated (meaning that shooting and combat damage will both accumulate in a given turn). The more damage you’ve taken, the easier it becomes to fail the roll off (by rolling equal to or below that higher value); and if you do roll below it, the Incarnate drops down a level. The Incarnate starts on Level 2 and when its level reaches zero, it is removed from the game and is effectively killed.

So for example if you put 5 damage into Krondspine with shooting, and another 7 in melee, that’s 12 damage total. In the Battleshock phase you roll 9 on 3D6: that’s less than or equal to the wounds allocated, it brackets down a notch and the slate is wiped clean for damage. The average roll on 3D6 is 10.5, so you’re looking to slap at least 10 damage on this thing to have a good chance of levelling it down.

Krondspine can level up by killing Monsters or eating Endless Spells (more on this below); it levels down by taking damage and failing its roll off. The attacks on its main profile (also covered below) will degrade as it Levels down, as will the range on its abilities (referred to as Domination Range) – starting at 10″ on Level 2.

This means it is almost (but not quite) guaranteed to be around for two turns: you start on Level 2, and have to bracket down twice to reach zero and be Abolished. However thanks to my mate Pat Nevan for pointing out that Krondspine will bracket down with any insta-kill abilities and this is in addition to the above, so if you can apply an insta-kill and some regular damage in the same turn, it will level down from the insta-jib and then take its regular roll off in the Battleshock phase too. So be aware.

What does it do?

First up, it’s a reasonably good beatstick. Its best profile is the same as Kragnos (3+ / 2+ / -3 / damage 4) but with only 1 attack plus the current Level. So you start out with three attacks on this big profile plus a further 6 at rend -2 damage 2. My view is that it will generally be quite hard to level up in most matchups, so I would assume this is your max damage rather than setting yourself up for disappointment with dreams of