On Pigmans and the Razorboar

The spoilers on the Razorboar, and the ensuing widespread disappointment within the online Farrow community, have made me consider a few things about our other half.

How do  the two pacts differ? At the time of Domination, the answer was that Gators cause problems whereas Pigs solve problems. Gators had the Swamp Pits, power attacks aplenty, shooting denial, Revive threat vectors, armor stacking, and general douchiness, whereas the Pigs had Mobility, Hog Heaven, Telekinesis, Aggravator, Psycho Surgery, Pack Hunters, and general hulk-out damage output. Granted, Pigs could still present some problems like Batten Down the Hatches, Crippling Grasp, Watcher and whatnot, but for the most part the distinction made sense.

This distinction isn't so clear anymore, as Gators now have access to Rask's gun and Fury, which helps solve one of Blindwater's main problems. In a way, he seems like exactly what Gators needed to grow as a faction by helping deal with bad matchups and offer a different playstyle. Pigs on the other hand, have gotten more of the same with the Razorboar - largely ineffective, mechanically plain beast that needs big-time buffs to do alright.

What are Pigs about? Pigs are about a good old fashion scrap - nothing fancy, but violent. Gators are tricky, douchy, tanky and calculating but also capable of bursts of slaughter. Pigs are raw, aggressive, relentless, stubborn and simple. Their animi and spells are about being aggressive and getting into your opponent's face, being chaotic, causing mayhem.

Thornfall - Yays:

Strong warlocks

Carver is potentially the best warlock in the game, with great stats, good personal damage, a feat similar to Butcher1's and a brutally effective well-rounded spell list. He also makes Farrow Brigands quite good with CRA, fearless and AD within Thornfall.
Sturm and Drang is also a pretty strong warlock, with a two-in-one package - one defensive and denial-oriented, and another raw melee assault power. His medium base is a bit of a risk though.
Arkadius is also a pretty bad ass warlock with a ballbuster spell-list, except he is prone to instant death due to his lack of an arc node. A bit like Calaban, but his design issues could be easier to fix than Calaban's (mostly since Carver doesn't benefit much from arc nodes).

Slaughterhousers

These guys are also pretty good in a world where the majority of infantry now appears to be tough (being tough themselves, and denying tough and souls and all that), and ARM 15 is just in that sweet spot of not fearing AoE damage. Finisher may just be a gimped version of weapon master, but it's still pretty stellar.

Cool looking beasts

Everyone likes Bebop.

Great fun to play against

I love to play against Pigs. I don't know why. Maybe because they are pretty bad, maybe because they look cool, maybe because cool people play them. Playing against Carver with Barnabas is quite an uphill battle, but apart from that it's a blast (bada-bing).

Thornfall- Nays:

Few beasts = little list build flexibility

Excluding mini warlocks, at the end of Domination, Gators had five beasts, and Pigs had three. That is a HUGE difference when both factions are still tiny. The level of flexibility in list building is like night and day - most Thornfall players take double or even triple of the same heavy. Now the Pigs have a lesser (which they seem to hate), which basically act like medium infantry meat tanks (but seems to be straight up worse than Posse), and Gators are likely to get another beast. Things will even themselves out in a release or two, but for the past two years, it's been balls for the Thornfall when it comes to building different lists.

Needless fluffy dice rolling

So you have to roll d3 damage to get a STR buff on the War Hog, roll d3 damage to get a SPD buff on the Road Hog and individually roll d3s for each battlegroup model when using Psycho Surgery with Arkadius. On top of all that, it seems like frenzy is a major shtick. That all seems... really annoying. It's a good idea, but practically is kinda janky. Somehow I don't think it would break anything if those additional stats were just base.

Analyzed... with SCIENCE.

Lame beasts and animi

Ok, the models are pretty cool, but how do they play on the table? The beasts look sweet, but like Gatorman beasts,  they also kind suck in the greater scheme of things. That's fine, it's part of the Minion deal. But the difference in design depth between the two factions is significant.
As mentioned above, you can roll a couple of dice every time you activate them to boost their stats. Apart from that... not much excitement going on, either in terms of tactics or in terms of numbers. They look pretty good on paper when combined with some great warlock buffs, but on the table usually don't do anything stellar.

There are no unique animi like Rise or Elasticity, nor faction-defining ones like Spiny Growth, no sweet rules like Wrastler or Torpid. You get Massacre on beaststick pig, Lightning Strike on speedy pig (which only mostly works on speedy pig), and Counterblast on gun pig. Flavourful, but flat. Oh, you also get Hyper Aggressive on wiener pig, but it costs 2. Neato?

Maybe the Boneswarm should have been a Farrow beast - just throw in some pipes and random fluids and there you go. Swamp Troll would be much cooler, k thx.

Oh, I guess healing up your opponent's warbeasts when they kill your squishy beasts is cool (Bacon). I am all for that.

Carver

Carver is awesome. Perhaps too awesome. Awesome to the point where everything Farrow is tuned with Carver in mind, which is not great news to players wanting to play other warlocks, who in their own right are pretty awesome but are not Carver.

Which brings us to...

And then you get the Razorboar. What a missed design opportunity. Current discussion online seems to be at Stage 3 and 4 of the Five Stages of Grief:

1. Denial - "No way, this guy is just trolling. Nothing is confirmed until we actually get the magazine in our hands. O.o"
2. Anger - "WTF PP! That animus sucks! Arkadius does the same thing but better! MAT 5 POW 10 and Fury 2, are you serious?! (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ "
3. Bargaining - "You could treat them like heavy infantry / run them off to die / it's like putting 'no shooting' on your heavies! / they'll be good with Carver / etc. :S"
4. Depression - "Wow, that doesn't work at all. I don't even want to play... should sell my Pigs and go play Cryx, or sell hot dogs at a baseball game..... :( "
5. Acceptance - "I guess if you run 4+ of them they are ok, mostly because we don't have anything else to do that (tank/tarpit effectively). That animus is cool and suits pigs, but I will almost never cast it for 2 fury when I have all these other awesome spells on my warlocks. Bleh. -_-"




Overall, I constantly feel like Pigs are lacking something - something exciting, something unique, something defining. It's like they are constantly being punished for having Carver. I don't think I could summarize it better than this writer on BattleCollege:

"In my opinion, the best thing to say about Thornfall is "nice warlocks, shame about the rest". Let's be clear here; Thornfall's warlocks are quite simply some of the best in the game......... but herein lies the rub; these amazing warlocks have practically no choice for what to take with them. It's not a case of the Thornfall units being bad; they're very good. There just aren't very many of them to choose from. Two [sic] unremarkable warbeasts, some mildly interesting units, and a couple of your standard minion solos? A Thornfall collection is going to have a lot of the same models appearing over and over. Here's hoping that they get fleshed out a LOT in the expansions, so Lord Carver, Dr. A, and their Frankensteinian pets get some nice toys to play with."

And when you come from this position, getting something like the Razorboar and its wasted design space opportunities really really stings. It's a little bit there, but it's also not. Especially right after your sister faction just got an almost perfect model from a gameplay and theorymachine standpoint.