A Chanting Conquest Update

 Hey Everyone,

     I wanted to put up a notice quick as it is the normal release day of the Chanting Conquest Podcast.  At the moment I am taking a break from producing regular content.  The project I was currently starting on was a series called the Scion's Scouting Report which was to be a detailed dive into each regiment.  With the announcement that W'adrhun would be getting a comprehensive update I've opted to shelf that for the moment as it doesn't make a lot of sense writing it all just to rewrite it at the end of the year.  I'm anticipating that update will likely result in me needing to rewrite all the chanting resource guides as well.

The next thing I plan on actually releasing publicly is likely to be a state of play podcast post Adepticon.  It does look like I'll be able to attend this year and I've been deep deep in the jank tank since the update trying to come up with something surprising to play.  I'm pretty sure I've succeeded but also now I have to do a ton of painting.  I'll probably continue to sporadically produce content related to any events I manage to get to but for now there will be a hold on regular episodes and articles.

The other thing I plan on doing while we wait in a little bit of limbo is to try to have better integration between the blog, the pod, and quite possibly a YouTube channel.  When I started the podcast I recorded the episode and just dropped it straight away without any real thought on where all it would be posted or how I was going to integrate the content with the blog.  I'm planning on using some of the time while we wait for the rework of the faction to have a better solution to have content easily available.  

I picked up a small camera and am trying to sort out the best way to add some more visual content.  Hopefully some of it will be games, but also it's much easier to show the potential of things like fluid formation with a video.  I'm also working on a better audio solution for the podcast as just using my headset has always been a bit spotty.  

I'm going to start doing some testing with video recording in the next month or two and if those work out well enough I will also have that content available. 

As Always thanks for reading and I look forward to having a revamped look for you soon

-K

Chant Deep Dive part 4: The Cult of Conquest

I know it's been quite awhile since my last post.  I'm going to try to get back to posting at least one or two articles a month.  I have quite a bit to get caught up on at the moment as far as recapping episodes of the Chanting Conquest Podcast and some other articles I have planned.  Today we are finishing the series of articles focused on a specific cult and what it does.

Before we get too deep into what the Cult of Conquest does we need to get into how using it actually works.  Conquest is quite a bit different to the other three options in a few ways.  First you don't really get to choose to have a warband follow it.  Instead Conquest is limited to models with the Bellowing Roar* special rule, the cult of conquest, and any regiment joined by a character with the Teachings of Conquest tier 2 benefit.  The Scion of Conquest follows the Cult of Conquest themself but does not automatically pass that on to their warband or any regiment they join.  The Touched by the Goddess artifact similarly makes a character count as following the Cult of Conquest but does not impact their warband or any regiment they join.  

These restrictions currently make it impossible to have either cavalry regiment or Warbred to count as Cult of Conquest.  Remember a regiment can chant from any cult you have the tokens to activate unless they have the Bellowing Roar or Fanatic special rules so this restriction really just locks you out of ever reaching Tier 3 benefits with those regiments. 

Secondly you don't use Conquest tokens to activate chants from the Cult of Conquest.  Instead Conquest tokens are basically wild cards that are replaced with tokens from a Cult of your choosing when you chant.  You activate chants from the Cult of Conquest by spending tokens from at least two different cults.  This does not ever require you to discard tokens from a third cult although if you have three different you absolutely can.  Three tokens from two different cults is enough to activate tier 2 of Conquest (or tier 3 if you also have Fanatic).

Now they we have the oddities of using Conquest out of the way let's jump into what we actually get out of it.  Like every other cult we have three tiers of benefits and these benefits are cumulative - you get the bonuses from all the tiers below the one you actually purchase.  Conquest focuses a little bit more on mobility than the power benefits of the other cults and that is readily apparent from the first tier.  At tier 1 we get +3 inches of movement to our first March action.  You do have to use an action on March to get the benefit but +3 inches is a substantial improvement for most of our regiments often being more than 50% additional movement on that March.

Conquest can be an excellent chant to trigger as a regiment enters the battlefield as that additional movement gives you a lot more flexibility in positioning.  It's also an excellent buff on things like Tontorr or a Drumbeast as both of those are more than happy to March Charge into an opponent getting a nice increase in their immediate threat range for doing so.

Tier 2 of conquest provides +2 evasion to the regiment until the end of the round with a rather generous cap of 3 total.  Evasion is an excellent form of defense typically trading higher base values for the consistency of ignoring the majority of rules the impact defense values such as cleave, brutal impact, and smite.  Evasion 3 is fairly unusual across the game but factoring in this chant we have several units that can achieve it including some more durable infantry regiments such as Chosen of Conquest or Veterans both of whom have a base evasion of 1.  While not a massive swing in defensive power moving to a very consistent 50/50 save profile makes regiments very annoying to deal with and excellent choices to tie up high cleave opponents such as Varangian Guard or Dragonslayers.

Tier 3 is where the Cult of Conquest gets spicy.  The third tier of Conquest grants the regiment an extra action during their activation.  Normal restrictions do apply so you are not able to charge twice or clash twice but otherwise unconditional third actions are very rare and shift some of the base elements of the game.  Typically this tier is going to provide exceptional mobility either combining with tier 1 to greatly amplify the threat range of a melee regiment or making something like Slingers exceptionally annoying to tie down.  

An example of the potency of this can be easily found with the potential threat range of the Chosen of Conquest.  Chosen of Conquest are a reasonably threatening melee unit with base clash 3, 5 attacks per stand, and cleave 1 for good measure.  On the surface they are held back a little by the somewhat limiting march 5.  That is until you trigger a tier 3 conquest chant.  Now they are capable of an action set consisting of March Charge Clash and you'll get the additional movement on that initial March.  That is an infantry unit with a minimum threat range of 14" on a turn that they will also be able to clash.  This combination lets them threaten clash actions further out than most cavalry regiments.  

Another example is the currently popular Chieftain on Tontorr with the Mantle of the Devoted artifact.  The fanatic conquest Tontorr can threaten 16 or more inches with it's full clash action available or can March March Charge and put its impacts and tramples into a target 22+ inches away.  Doing so will also give it evasion 2 making it that much more annoying to deal with when it dives in (or more reasonably attacks a flank - Tontorrs are durable but most of the time wont survive the aftermath a 22" charge down the middle).

I mentioned Slingers a bit earlier in the article and it is probably worth looking at that combo in a little more depth.  The Predator character does have Teachings of Conquest available to it and for 30 points spent getting to Tier 2 you can make the regiment of Slingers it joins count as Cult of Conquest.  Add on a method to give them Fanatic and the Predator's own ability to give them Fire and Advance and all of a sudden you have a very mobile gun platform that can do things march aim shoot or aim shoot march twice backward or any number of other combinations that let them either extend their threat range, particularly getting into Torrential Fire range, or shoot and move away keeping good spacing to protect themselves.

To recap the Cult of Conquest behaves a little bit differently than the other three cults and is a little more challenging to get regiments into but not particularly harder to actually trigger the chant.  It's worth a refresher on how the chant rules work in general but specifically with this cult every now and then.  The benefits focus more on mobility than raw power buffs but go a long way to opening up options for the savvy W'adrhun player.

As always thanks for reading and I hope you have a great week

-K

*The Bellowing Roar special rule was added to the Apex Predator, Tontorr, Drum Beast, and the unreleased as of yet Quatl to allow monsters to interact with the chant special rules in a little more limited way.  These monsters always count as following the Cult of Conquest, generate a conquest token when their card is drawn, however, may only ever chant from the Cult of Conquest.  Sorry no Death chants for your Apex.

Episode 2 Recap Hard Mommy

 Alright time to do a recap of episode 2 which is available HERE

    I mentioned that I didn't weight the categories at all during the episode and I think that it is important to look at where value comes from in characters.  Even through I think the Queen's supremacy is basically bad at this point I'm not sure how much that matters to her overall quality because we do have good supremacies available on characters you want to take.  The real drawback to the Queen currently for me is in her Warband.

    The biggest issues are her signature mainstay, Warbred, have aged a bit poorly and aren't nearly the menace of new elite cost brutes AND she can't join them.  This forces you to either take another basic mainstay for her or spend resources to put her into one of her restricted of which the only ones she can actually join are Raptors, for the upcharge of a 45 point artifact, or the Apex Predator which takes both her mastery and is another regiment I feel has aged a bit poorly.

    Realistically her 3 best regiments are Tontorr, Drum Beast, and Raptors.  All of these are restricted and none are particularly easy to get her into.  I do like that she has a couple of light regiments available to her.  At the moment she can join them and give you an early scoring option.  I think that can be very helpful with some lists but also isn't by any means mandatory.  I do question whether or not characters keeping their own classification is actually a good rule in general.  I'd almost rather see them just count as whatever the regiment is much like auxiliary rules do in City States

    My thoughts on the queen are that she isn't unplayable trash by any means but I'd only run her in a competitive oriented list if I had a very specific plan and at this point I think that would fairly limited to take a big brick of braves (or blooded) as a mainstay and then take a Tontorr.  The big brick gives that style of list a durable medium unit to smooth out scenario play a little bit.  For me she is decidedly a secondary character.

Thanks for listening to the ramble and reading the review I hope you enjoyed it.  There is a special Halloween episode coming. 

-K

Thunder Chieftain Breakdown Podcast

 The first episode of the Chanting Conquest podcast is available HERE

    I thought I'd write a quick follow up to explain some of the "grading" system I've been looking at for characters.  As mentioned in the cast I look at Supremacy, Special Rules, Personal Output, and Warband.  When I was looking at this I decided to give each character a score out of 5 in these areas for a potential of 20 points.  

    The Thunder Chieftain ended up with 19.  I only gave him 4 in personal output because while he can get a lot of attacks and has a solid Cleave 2 he lacks is any sort of ranged output so I dinged him a little bit for not being able to consistently do damage over the course of the game the way a ranged character can.

    The score card for the Thunder Chieftain looked like this:

    
 

 

    I do have all the other characters graded and am looking to do an episode on each one.  Maybe I'll actually write some notes or something beforehand so I'm not just rambling.  I can assure you there will be some hot takes on my grades for the rest of the characters.

    I don't actually consider all of these areas equal.  For example I put a lot more emphasis on Warband that anything else.  The regiments you bring are going to be the biggest factor in the functionality of your list so they really should be the first thing you look at.  After that it's probably global special rules/supremacy.  Anything that can effect multiple regiments or general game flow is very powerful. Examples would be things like getting Shock from the Chieftain supremacy on your whole army while he is on the table or Crescendo from the Scion enabling additional chants. 

    The other thing I want to touch on briefly as a follow up to that cast is the idea of primary and secondary characters in list building.  I look at the characters with the better warband options as primary characters.  Those warbands are where you are likely to spend the majority of your points and secondary characters are likely to just have a couple of regiments with them.  The Thunder Chieftain is an obvious candidate for a primary character as it brings an excellent signature mainstay in Thunder Riders and a few very nice choices for Restricted slots.

    I'm not sure what the podcast special will end up looking like but I'd like to do at least one a month as long as I have ideas.  As always thanks for reading

-K

Chant Deep Dive part 3: Cult of Famine

    Famine is a personal favorite cult of mine even if one I don't reach for all that often.  Famine works to improve your threat ranges and the output of march charge and charge clash activations.  The second tier benefit can be useful in a sustained combats as relentless blows does combine nicely with the already good attack volumes we bring but in general this is a cult that amplifies your ability to initiate combats more than sustain them.

    Jumping into the benefits Tier 1 nets us Shock and +2" to movement on charges.  Shock is a nice special rule and does a fair bit to amplify damage but the real winner here for me is the additional movement.  For an already reasonably pacey faction that extra movement puts a lot of our regiments into cavalry threat ranges which can be very difficult to play around.  Being able to reach out and touch opponents or guard objectives is very powerful in a scoring based game.  

    This combos very nicely with already fast units like Raptors that are now threatening largely whatever they want when you add on fluid formation shenanigans.  Your normal march 6 regiments like Thunder Riders and Warbred are now threatening with the higher end of cavalry movement - Thunder Riders in particular already can march charge in for solid damage being able to get to 14" plus a rerollable d6 on the movement portion of that activation is very solid.  You can also stack this with a skirmisher on Hunters or Blooded giving the infantry pretty surprising reach.

    The Shock part of this is nice in that we have good volume so tend to get good benefit from hit buffs often pushing damage close to finishing off an extra stand vs leaving it on a couple of wounds.  However, there is no stacking with shock so if you take a Chieftain as your warlord you wont really see much of this benefit.  I'd say it's still worth playing Famine with the Chieftain supremacy as the movement and other benefits are still excellent.

    Moving to the Tier 2 benefit this is the one that adds specifically to your clash.  As mentioned already relentless blows is an above average buff to W'adrhun as you tend to already have good volumes.  A minimum unit of raptors for example is rolling 15 attacks base with flurry potentially netting you quite a few extra hits here.  Thunder Riders with a Thunder Chieftain also tend to be rolling a lot of attacks with rerolls.  While this won't always kick on because it will require a clash action it is a sneaky good benefit for several units.

    Tier 3 has one of the more interesting benefits available as it is a +2 impact attacks and glorious charge.  The +1 clash on impact attacks from glorious charge does stack with shock allowing for a few of our regiments to get to Clash 5 on impact attacks and terrifying 1 is never bad as a little damage boost.  The +2 impacts can range from meh if those are the only 2 you are getting to phenomenal on something like Thunder Riders that are now getting 6 good quality impacts per stand.  As this benefit is +2 it does stack with the Death's Gaze banner allowing for 4 impacts to infantry regiments.  That is potentially a future combo with Chosen of Famine depending on how they shake out.

    As far as actually getting this on the table Fanatic Famine Thunder Riders are probably the regiment I would look to to getting value out of this.  Their output is easily among the best if the game with the tier 3 on board and while expensive and relatively squishy compared to Cult of War Thunder Riders they can have a huge impact on the table state.  It's a regiment that you'll need to use carefully but can be an absolute nightmare to account for as your opponent really can't let you get it into anything of value.  A regiment of 4 Thunder Riders plus the Chieftain with Mantle will set you back over 500 points but will be outputting 30(!) impact attacks with brutal impact 2 and clash 5 and then another 10 auto hits from tramples into whatever remains of the regiment they charged.  It's a massive amount of potential damage.

    Cult of Famine, to me, is more like Cult of War where you'll want to build a list that wants to utilize what it does well rather than dropping any list into it the way you can basically do with Cult of Death.  In the case of war that is usually taking the regiments available that already have decent defenses and wounds and pumping that up.  In the case of Famine I think you actually still want to lean toward those picks.  Because Famine doesn't really help your sustained clashes you want at least some of your army to be able to shoulder that.  There are two general ideas I would learn toward with this cult.

    The first is the fairly obvious Thunder Riders and Thunder Chieftain combo.  That regiment takes the bonuses from Famine very well and becomes devastating on the March Charge.  However, you'll still want to combine it with other options to provide durability.  Cult of Famine Thunder Riders need to choose their targets well to avoid being a liability to counter attacks.  This will often result in them starting the game in wider areas so you'll want something like Chosen of Conquest or a Tontorr to help hold the middle.

    The second general idea would be to utilize the Matriarch Queen supremacy to amp up cheaper units like Blooded and use them as disposable missiles to take space and provide threat.  This build will also want some decently bulky options to take advantage of the space the Blooded create and would be a good place to run a Scion on a Drum Beast.  While I'm not super high on the Drummie this sort of list takes advantage of what it does well and you can also bring some Chosen to help threaten larger areas.

    Cult of Famine provides some interesting tactically capabilities and is definitely worth exploring as you tinker with various list builds.  The recent availability of more durable, elite options opens up possibilities that were previously difficult to utilize do to the difficulties W'adrhun had in maintaining space as a game went on.  This shift in options opens up the lesser used Cults and enables a variety of different builds and combos.  I hope that this article helps you consider ways to utilize the aggression that the Cult of Famine can play with in your games.

As Always Thanks for Reading

-K

Raptor Riders - An underrated home for the Thunder Chieftain?

    The flexibility of the Thunder Chieftain warband has been a topic of quite a lot of interest for me since it was announced and after shifting off of the idea of just going Thunder Chieftain, Thunder Riders, Tontorr I think there is a lot to explore.  This is one that I've got to give a shout out to Mike from BonkTable, Kang, and everyone else on the discord that has helped bounce ideas around.  I hope you guys get a laugh out of the list included in the article as I went deep, deep into the jank tank for this one.

    So let's jump in and start looking at some pros and cons to putting a Thunder Chieftain in with some Raptor ladies and why you might want to at least give yourself the option to do so.  The biggest benefits of putting a Thunder Chieftain in with Raptors are that you can get a warlord chieftain on to the table very early to start being able to benefit from Shock basically from the start of the game and to create a light regiment capable of scoring.

    

    Light regiments do not normally count toward seizing objectives, however, Character stands still count as their own type.  So a 3 stand unit of Raptors with a Thunder Chieftain is 3 light stands and 1 heavy stand so that 1 heavy stand WILL contribute toward seizing an objective.  This is similar to using a Matriarch Queen with the Brood of Omgorah artifact to shift her to cav.  The Raptor block with Queen has been a reasonably common choice through out V2 and is quite good.  The Chieftain can do similar but adds the possibility of destroying objective markers in a single round which the Queen can't do.  Let's take a closer look at how that works.

"Objective Markers cannot suffer more than 1 wound per Charge/Clash actions from Light and Medium Regiments"

    The above is relevant because the character does not change the type of the regiment.  So even though both a Thunder Chieftain and a Matriarch Queen are heavies the regiment itself is still a Light Regiment so can not cause more than 1 wound per action to the Objective Marker.  The Thunder Chieftain has the advantage here as its Trample special rule DOES* work on objectives.  This results in an additional 2 hits that have the opportunity to do the third and final wound to an objective marker in a single turn.

    You wont always want to attempt this but against an opponent that isn't prepared to punish you for extending to attack an objective on turn 2 you can get a pretty solid amount of scoring in very early.  Raptor riders can quite reasonably reach an objective on the midline of the table by turn 2 and you have roughly a 75% chance of destroying one with a charge/clash action and the aforementioned tramples. 

    Now that we've looked at why we might want to do this lets look at some considerations that maybe make this less than stellar.  First the Thunder Chieftain does slow down the raptors.  The Chieftain is only March 6 and you are limited to the lowest march in a regiment.  You could, at the time of this writing, take the Brood of Omgorah on the Thunder Chieftain (yes I know that sounds silly) to make up the difference but that is quite expensive as the impact bonus doesn't stack with the base impacts of the Chieftain.

    The Thunder Chieftain's way of war doesn't combo overly well with the Raptors.  Raptors already have flurry so while the Chieftain would still get it and Rapid Displacement is far from bad its a little bit not great.  I'd probably still take Violence of Action mostly on the intention of eventually dropping the Thunder Chieftain back into a unit of Thunder Riders.  Seek New Escort is a whole different rules deep dive to get into with the way it messes with formations but at least with Thunder Riders Impacts and Tramples don't care that you'll likely be forced to be more compact after you move.

    Lastly Raptor riders are a little bit fragile and the regiment gets quite expensive when you add a Thunder Chieftain.  If you opt to go this route you will need to be careful to avoid getting what is likely to be close to 400 pts taken off the table early.  You'll only have 5 wounds per stand at resolve 4, defense/evasion 2 to work with and losing the Chieftain, especially if it is your warlord, early is going to make the rest of your game quite difficult.

    One of the options you do have to try to keep your Chieftain a little bit safer is just how the rules work in general as far as when you attach a character to a regiment before the game.  This isn't done until just before the first reinforcement phase so you will get a chance to see what you are up against before you decide to put your Chieftain in the squishier Raptors as opposed to a regiment of Thunder Riders.

    I promised a list that is probably terrible but probably quite fun so here it is.  It takes the idea of early scoring to the logically extreme so try to build early advantage.

=== The Last Argument of Kings ===

All the Cav? [1980/2000]

The W'adrhŭn

== (Warlord) Thunder Chieftain [190]: War, Mantle of the Devoted, Violence of Action

 * Thunder Riders (3) [250]: 

 * Raptor Riders (3) [210]: Huntress

 * Veterans (3) [180]: 

 * Tontorr (1) [310]: 

== Thunder Chieftain [200]: War, Elder Brontoskalps, Violence of Action, Wasteland Adder

 * Thunder Riders (3) [250]: 

 * Raptor Riders (3) [210]: Huntress

 * Veterans (3) [180]: 

    There is 20 pts left in this list you could probably drop Wasteland Adder to add more but Adder ensures we get BOTH of our THUNDER RAPTORS on the table turn 1.  The best option is probably just to toss a standard or champion on one of the Vets but you could get cheeky and add Marksmanship to the Warlord Chieftain.  It is only volley 1 but it would also be pretty funny and this deep in the jank tank I'm not sure how much we care about efficiency.  You could also drop the Tontorr to take a 4 pack of Thunder Riders in that warband if you wanted to avoid the big dino and take more hats.

As Always Thanks for reading and if anyone opts to try that list I hope they have fun,

-K

*There is clarification that tramples do work on objectives despite saying enemy regiment.  The Clarification statement was that Objectives need to be targeted the same was as enemy regiments so while the objectives can't count as enemy regiments for mechanical reasons they are essentially subjected to attacks the same way.

August 2023 Musings, Ponderings, and Hypotheses

 Now that I'm back to writing some content while my work schedule isn't quite so hectic I wanted to do a longer freeform post just detailing some thoughts I've had while interacting with other community members on various platforms.  This is unlikely to be a particularly regular thing but I think some interesting ideas came up that I'd like to explore a little more.

Topic 1: Why do Veterans feel like a mediocre upgrade compared to Chosen of Conquest

    So now that both units are available and have gotten some table time Chosen of Conquest feel very powerful and a good upgrade over the more basic units like Blooded while Veterans even with their point reduction just feel sort of meh.  Not to say that they are actively bad just not exciting.  I think for me the answer to this is that Veterans don't offer anything that Blooded can't do they just offer a slight discount while doing it.

    What I mean by that is the primary special rule for Veterans - Forged in Battle - basically offers you a free tier 1 chant bonus which is quite nice.  Otherwise nothing else they do is a particularly substantial improvement over Blooded.  From an Output perspective 5 stands of Blooded (215 pts) slightly outperform 3 stands of Veterans + the Chief upgrade (205 pts) and from a Defensive perspective the Veterans are higher defense on account of their shields but the Blooded will have better resolve from unit size, more wounds (25 vs 18) and require more wounds to break (15 vs 12). 

    The primary advantage for the Veterans is that you get the tier 1 every round without having to expend resources.  It's quire a good special rule but less exciting in that Blooded could do the same thing if you are willing to spend the tokens and are more available.  For me I feel like Veterans just don't do anything exciting enough to account for being 180 points base cost and being restricted to basically just a Chieftain.  The only time I'd currently feel like reaching for them in a more "serious" build is if I really wanted a Chieftain with Tontorr Rider and I think for the most part the Thunder Chieftain just offers more.  It really pushes Veterans to the back of the line for me.

    Chosen of Conquest on the other hand are 15 pts more than 5 stands of Blooded but offer a couple of more difficult to replicate advantages.  Firstly they have impacts and innate cleave 1 allowing them to actually do more damage than the 5 stands of Blooded especially into higher defense targets.  From a bulk perspective you do still give up 4 wounds total (21 for chosen vs 25 for Blooded) but only give up a single wound in break threshold (14 vs 15) and will still have +1 defense (this time not conditional on shield) and equal resolve with the Chosen's base resolve 4.  

    Lastly Chosen are innate Fanatics with cult of conquest allowing them to chant more and get better benefits from doing so.  In particular this makes Chosen of Conquest one of the few regiments in the game that can be consistently taking a third action that is only restricted by normal action rules.  This means that Chosen of Conquest have surprising mobility being able to march 8, charge, and then still clash leveraging all of their rules.

    To me this is the sort of upgrade that makes for an exciting elite option vs just a maybe slightly more efficient version of the basic unit.  It is actually possible to make Blooded Fanatic Conquest as well but it takes a lot of resources and a character staying in the regiment to do so.  Chosen are expensive but they feel worth it for the capabilities they bring.  It is worth pointing out the Chosen do give up some of the flexibility of chants for this potential power spike but that drawback with Fanatic in general feels reasonable and not crippling.

Topic 2: Is the Tontorr actually that good or are we better off just playing more Thunder Riders

    So this one needs some explanation.  This is assuming you are using the Thunder Chieftain and the warband consists of an minimum unit of Thunder Riders for him to join.  The thought here is it's better to take a 4 stand regiment of Thunder Riders as your second regiment vs taking a Tontorr as your second regiment.  

    The four stand regiment of Thunder Riders costs 20 pts more than the Tontorr at a whopping 330 but it is quite good.  As far as output goes the Thunder Riders will substantially outperform the Tontorr if they can spread out and will slightly outperform the Tontorr if they are in a 2x2 formation to conserve space.  They are also much more flexible as far as chants go as they aren't restricted to conquest, have similar wound totals (24 vs 26), similar base defenses (r4 vs r3 oblivious isn't a massive difference), don't take up a restricted slot leaving a few more options, and won't take up your free reinforcement on Turn 3 as they already have Flank.

    The downside to doing this is losing out on Monster advantages namely not degrading through wounds.  Losing stands of the Thunder Riders will absolutely change the equation on output while the Tontorr fights at full strength on 26 wounds and on 1 wound.  You do avoid being punished by fiend hunter regiments with the Riders for a little bit of a bonus.  There are a few more niche considerations here such as the Thunder Riders being better base clash and not necessarily needing the Chieftain's supremacy as much as it feels like the Tontorr probably does.  Otherwise they end up being pretty similar with the Riders offering additional options.

    I'd love to hear more opinons on this as I feel like the Thunder Riders are likely to just be better. They are also notably cheaper to purchase with 2 boxes of riders (6 stands) being about 75% the cost of the Tontorr at the time of this writing.  I can certainly understand playing the Tontorr because Big Dino is awesome but in a strict list building sense I'm struggle to see where it is super compelling comparatively outside of the lack of degrading profile.

The above image is a monster stand vs 2x2 cav stands.  I put that in there because the mobility advantage of monsters and terrain is not insignificant.  The stand isn't that much smaller than the narrow Cav formation.  This is also why I looked at running the Thunder Riders in a 2x2.

Here are the output comparisons into a variety of targets.  The targets are mostly chosen at random but I think its fairly representative of a wide array of profiles.

That's all I've got for today.  If there is a topic you are curious about and would like me to explore let me know.  As always thanks for reading

-K