Since I've been following what has been going on in CID, and given that I own both Khador and Legion, and love both Man-o-War and Blighted Ogrun, I did a lot of dojo over the last few months while I was out of actually playing the game.
Now that I'm coming back to play Warmachine again and I've settled back on Trolls, there have been a few things I've noticed as a problem before I took my hiatus as well as the things that have changed for themes and list building in the newer themes that PP has designed. Mostly this is to go over the few problems Trolls face in our themes, most of which is in Kriel Comapny.
Saving Horthol
One thing that other themes have been getting that Trolls lack is that generally their Dragoons count towards the free points. Laddermore adds to the free points counter for Storm Division, Man-o-War Dragoons add to the counter for Man-o-War, etc. One thing that would be a huge quality of life improvement for Troll lists in both Band of Heroes and Storm of the North would be to change it so that rather than just Trollblood Units counted towards free points it could be "Trollblood Units and Dragoons" or just change it to call out the specific unit types to allow Horthol to count towards the points.
This would really be a quality of life improvement for list building and it would get Horthol back onto the table without severely hamstringing what can be taken in addition to the beasts for these unit heavy armies.
Fixing Kriel Company
Trolls have some very strong themes, but Kriel Company is by far our least represented theme force, and for good reasons: it is extremely restrictive. The inability to take any of our beasts without a ranged attack, and thus no access to Rage outside of a Mountain King really changes what kinds of things our lists can play into. This is a very frustrating turn of events since all of our heavies are effectively designed around having access to the Rage animus. We pay a premium for access to ranged heavies because we can turn them into respectable melee threats. The theme has little to no armor cracking unless you go down the Gargantuan route.
What is upsetting is that other factions "Ranged Only Themes" aren't similarly restricted: Sons of the Tempest and Winds of Death can still take their Centurions and Gladiators. Trolls are pigeon holed in that our other themes effectively remove almost all of our ranged options especially ones with "legacy models" that formed the core of a lot of combined arms lists in MK2 and put them all into a single theme (SotN gives us two ranged units and one Battle Engine to make a combined arms list).
It's also not as if our shooting options are inherently good or oppressive. Most if not all of them are fairly average at best, with short ranges across the board. They require specific caster support to be really effective – that's why our "ranged casters" are extremely powerful and synergistic and would be utterly broken if put into another faction (imagine either Grim or Gunny in Cygnar or Legion).
The 'official solution' for getting armor cracking in Kriel Company is to say that we should just take a Mountain King if we want Rage, but then we start working against what the theme wants to get benefits. Once you take the Mountain King you can't afford to take any other heavies without cutting into theme benefits elsewhere and the list suffers for it.
I believe there is a more elegant fix to Kriel Company's problems rather than just allowing Maulers to be taken or by giving something like the Blitzer Rage as a special animus in theme. After all, putting Maulers into KC would make yet another theme where we take "Mauler + Other Heavy" and call it a day before moving on to taking the non-beast options that count towards the free points.
One theory is to make all Warbeasts, Battle Engines, and Units count towards the free points, but up the requirement for a "free" item to 30 points instead of 20. This means KC will still max out at 3 free items, but taking a larger battlegroup or a Gargantuan isn't a huge loss. I think this is warranted given that the theme doesn't have access to any of the really strong melee unit options that are available in Trolls.
It also gives us another theme that would allow more variety if we wanted more than just "Beast Points + 15" worth of Warbeasts without hamstringing the theme. It's not as if Trolls have the fury management to make a seriously effective battlegroup based gunline like Legion or Skorne could, but even if we did we could just build that in Power of Dhunia and have access to Rage via a Mauler right now.
If you wanted to play beasts and have them be powerful in melee you're still playing a "Gargantuan list" where the SR packet still favors multiple heavies vs. gargantuan/colossals. You're still not taking lots of ranged units with our melee beatstick casters that don't support them because they're just not particularly effective without the support from our ranged focused casters.
Overall, I don't think this change breaks the game, or even makes Trolls particularly oppressive. It would just help get our ranged units and maybe even a War Wagon back onto the table vs. having us be a overly melee focused faction.
Please PP, help make those units see the table!
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