A tank of a dwarf

Today sees the pre-order release of the latest Gotrek Gurnison figure by Citadel, his first appearance in styrene.

Gotrek grew out of a character in the play tests for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and, over the years, and 30 years' worth of novels, novellas, short stories and audio dramas, he met, or his stories even introduced, almost every major character in the World That Was. Thanquol became a running nemesis. Felix Jaeger went from a young buck looking for adventures that he could turn into stories, since he was an author, to a middle aged veteran, with more stories than he could ever write. Through all of this, Gotrek continued to be the best, or worst slayer dwarfs had ever known. He slew trolls, giants, dragons, daemons, some say even gods, and still refused to die.

The world ended. An apocalypse literally tore the planet apart in a magical explosion. Still he kept going.

BoLS, Spikey Bits and so on have coverage of the rules side of things, and can comment more meaningfully on that than I can, since I've not played Warhammer Fantasy in over 10 years, so I won't go into that here.

When I heard that there was yet another incarnation coming, the fifth model of this venerable ancient, meaning that he now surpasses Chapter Master Marneus Calgar (4), in having more models than any other special character, i joked to a friend that, at this rate, he's going to be seen as an Avatar of Grungni. I thought it a joke. I extrapolated some sort of rule whereby he gave a morale boost to nearby units. I was half wrong.

The datasheet dropped, and, sure enough, there it was: "Avatar of Grimnir." I got the Ancestor wrong. I suppose Grungni, the spirit of Stoicism is more Grombrindal (who's had far more models than even Gotrek, nine, at least, five of which - issue 200, 30th Birthday, 40th Birthday, tech priest and aviator, are in my collection). Grimnir, the spirit of War, seems to fit. How it manifests, though, is just mental: no attack can cause more than 1 wound. With 8 wounds, a 4+ armour save and a 3++ save against all wounds suffered, Gotrek isn't going anywhere unless a LOT of stuff is aimed at him (and I say aimed, because once he gets into close combat, he's going to chew up anything that you set against him.

Of course, at 520 points, he's not cheap, but still...

...and, at £20, that's 2.4p per point. I really doubt that there'll be anything that can top that from Citadel for quite some time.

Fantasy games tend not to have tanks, Steam Tanks and such being obvious exceptions, but this guy is a tank with a lawnmower attached.

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