Boneswarm - steaming pile of crap, or hidden gem?

Thought I'd start my Gatorman write-ups on the wrong foot by exploring one of our more controversial (read: bad) models, the very pretty Boneswarm:

 

First of all, the model is stunning, and understandably very easy to paint. It comes from the original IK RPG range of PP miniatures, and was given a set of WM/H rules with the release of Domination. A Maelok tier army featuring three to four of these things looks amazing!

Overview

 

The Boneswarm is a light Gatorman warbeast with no scales, teeth or death-rolling abilities. It in fact appears to be made up entirely of human bones, and is much more man than gator. 

It has 2 abilities of note:

• Bone Picker allows it to gain a corpse token for every living/undead model it kills, to a max of 3. It gets +1 STR and ARM for each token on it.
• Gross Anatomy allows it to spend corpse tokens to heal itself d3 per token.

It is also Undead. True story.

Survivability

 

DEF 13, ARM 15, 20 boxes. Pretty crap, until you start considering corpse tokens giving +1 ARM per token and external ARM buffs.

Damage

 

A single P+S 12 attack, Fury 3. No reach, slow, average MAT. Unremarkable in this department, even with corpse tokens.

Utility

 

Has Swarm for an animus (taken from the Swamp Troll, which is noticeably better than the Boneswarm), which gives it concealment and makes living enemy things within 2" -2 on attack rolls. That sounds ok, right?

The Boneswarm - as pretty as it is useless

Tactica 

 

In theorymachine, the way you use this thing is to charge into a cluster of low DEF, mid ARM models like Stormblades, kill a couple of them, and not die on account of the ARM buff from tokens and possibly Spiny Growth. Then you just repeat the cycle, healing yourself up as required, grinding slowly through a unit and jamming it up.

In real games however, that just does not happen. It is far too fragile to survive any somewhat organized retaliation, and the lack of reach, slow SPD, average P+S and MAT are deal-breakers in getting any legit damage out of it. The 2" range on the animus is also a ballbuster when it comes to protecting anything else in an army of large bases.

The fact is, the Boneswarm is a late-game model which does not do much at all until the late game:

• It is pretty good at picking up loose trooper and solo models after the front lines have engaged. However, the Snapper is much better at doing this due to its ridiculous threat range against living models, sustained attack, and better fury control. The one advantage here is that the Boneswarm gets stronger the more it kills.
• The animus is useful mid-late game when stuff starts getting jammed up, and you can squeeze a Boneswarm in your front line to get the -2 debuff on enemy models. However, it is practically useless until that time, since you are unlikely to get too many melee attacks against your backline early on, and bringing your Boneswarm forward will just get it killed.

In my (limited) experience, the Boneswarm does best in larger points games (>50pts), where you have enough stuff to do the work early on in the game and the Swarm can do its part later on, or have a better chance at picking off loose troopers and solos early on without getting itself killed. In smaller points games (=/<50), you are putting yourself at a disadvantage early game by essentially playing 4pts down (which could get you more Gators, Bog Troggs, solos, another Snapper...) which sets you back in the attrition game.


Understandably, the Boneswarm does best with Maelok, given his focus on attrition and strength in the late-game. It benefits from both parts of his feat: allowing a Boneswarm to position itself in a clump of enemy models to maximize Swarm, as well as getting the +2 ARM for the round.
It does ok with Barnabas in that you can just park him next to an Iron Flesh Barnabas, making your warlock effectively DEF 18, ARM 19 vs melee attacks (not that Barnabas has trouble surviving otherwise). Warpath can also help it set up a good slam or charge and can mitigate its low SPD.

I haven't tried it yet with Elasticity, but I have a feeling I'd pretty much rather but Elasticity on ANYTHING else in my army than a Boneswarm. But who knows, it seems good in theory.


Overall though, the problem with the Boneswarm is that it is worse than everything else you could be taking for the points, and 4pts is not much.  If the animus was RNG:6, it would be a great support piece early on (possibly overpowered in many factions while attached to Wrong Eye?), and a quite decent late game attrition piece. As it stands, it just makes me cry in my cornflakes.

Conclusion

Steaming Pile of Crap  |-------X---------------------------------------| Gorman
                                        

Boneswarm - slightly better than Assault Kommandos!