Neigh Slayers

"Hobbyhorses, severed heads, wielding spears of utmost dread..."

Armed with spears and riding grisly hobbyhorses, neigh slayers are gremlins with an outsized appetite for bloody mischief. These obnoxious grymkin scream across the battlefield upon their “steeds” while foes look on in bewilderment. Few understand the peril they face until it is too late, as the neigh slayers trample and impale any foe that crosses their path.

The childish imagination of the neigh slayers takes on a tangible and deadly form. In their minds, they ride not toys but terrifying warhorses. They delight in carnage, giggling at the corpses they leave behind, for the slain seem less real to them than the imagined steeds they ride. The gremlin with the greatest imagination leads a pack from his rocking horse, accompanied by shield and lance bearers. He capriciously dictates to other neigh slayers the ever-changing rules of his favorite games, leaving their victims lit afire or bleeding from mortal wounds.

Basic Info

Abilities

• Entire unit
  • Template:Cavalry
  • Template:Reposition 3
  • Template:Relentless Charge

• Warhorse only
  • He has a very different stat line
  • Template:Officer
  • Template:Follow the Leader
    • Template:Leap Frog
    • Template:Playing Dead
    • Template:Tag!

Weapons

• Leader & Grunts
  • Lance - 2.0" reach, POW 3, P+S 7 charge-only melee attack
    • Template:Armor-Piercing

Lance Melee

RNG			POW
2			14

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• • Mount - 0.5" reach, POW 9 mount attack

• Warhorse
  • He has the same weapons, but he is stronger so they hit harder.
  • Lance - 2.0" reach, POW 3, P+S 9 charge-only melee attack
    • Armor-Piercing
    • Lance
  • Mount - 0.5" reach, POW 12 mount attack

Theme Forces

• Template:Bump in the Night. They gain Rise in this theme.
• Template:Si

Thoughts on Neigh Slayers

Neigh Slayers in a nutshell

Neighslayers are the epitome of Glass Cannons ; they are pretty easy to deal with it, but they have one of the highest damage output in the game for the points. Protect and deliver them, and they will kill even the toughest models.

Why Should I Include Neigh Slayers in my Army?

Neigh Slayers are one of the true "Elite" Bump models. They are highly accurate thanks to cavalry charge rules, and with a massive damage output. They are also the only Grymkin infantry capable of generating multiple attacks, through their ability to make impacts. Another big tick in their box is that they have a pathfinder solution, a key weakness for Grymkin in general.

Essentially, Neighs are brought when the Grymkin player wants a real heavy hitter capable of generating high value attacks rather than another chaff model that needs support. It would not be incorrect to say that Neigh Slayers are one of the iconic faction units due to their at times absurd damage output. However the Grymkin player may decide against them if there isn't a good delivery mechanic, or if they are trying to leverage a wave of cheap models. One example of this would be a list archtype experimented with by some was Heretic running 30 dread rots and 20 hollowmen to attempt to bury the opponent.

Competitive Viability

Neigh Slayers as of the June 2018 Meta are extremely viable and a mainstay in the Bump in the Night theme force. They are considered a staple so heavily that you will struggle to find Grymkin tournament lists that don't run double Neigh Slayers. They are an extremely compelling package for only 12 points. It is hard to ever imagine a meta where Neigh Slayers will not be a staple of competitive Grymkin list building.

Thoughts on the CA

File:Neigh Slayer War Horse.jpg

Command Attachment

Neigh Slayers are rambunctious gremlins who can't tell the difference between playtime and murder. We wanted to give the Neigh Slayers a couple more options than just "run at enemy, hit with lance, repeat," by giving them a menu of special rules to vary up their game play. Each special rule should personify some kind of different playtime activity, and aid the Neigh Slayers in different situations. Grievous Wounds for example, is sorely lacking in Grymkin in general, and this should give the army a good way to handle enemy healing. Conversely, Parry and Annoyance should help them get unstuck from combat and inhibit enemy counter-attacks. Lastly, Play Dead gives them a way of remaining safe whilst edging forward towards key targets.

All of the Warhorse's abilities ignore formation, so you can do some janky stuff. In particular Mad Caps and the Warhorse have a neat interaction:

• Move the Mad Cap boss to within 3" of the Warhorse.
• Run the Leader & Grunts into position. Then use "All Fall Down" (which will affect them even if they're out of formation).
• The trick is that the Warhorse doesn't get knocked down, because the Mad Caps gave it Stumbling Drunk.
• After resolving the Stumbling Drunk move, run the Warhorse into position.
• The advantage is that you've managed to use All Fall Down on a turn that you ran, and you got to run the Warhorse after triggering it. The disadvantage is that the War Horse won't get Feign Death (unless you use something else to knock it down). So mae sure you park him somewhere safe.

Combos & Synergies

• Extra damage buffs make Neigh Slayers happy. They can kill a heavy in 2-3 charges alone with a damage buff.
  • Fury from The Heretic lets them trash heavies, especially when combined with the Heretic's Trump arcana.
  • Scything Touch from The King of Nothing helps as well
  • Curse of Shadows from Old Witch3 helps them the same.
  • Grave Ghouls really help to round out the threat of a limited charge of Slayers. Additionally, the low defenses & high priority of Slayers means they tend to supply corpses to nearby Ghouls. This can help to offset the potential losses from bullshit.
• Due to how much damage they dish out, they love delivery tech. If these glass cannons reach their target there won't be a target left
  • Windstorm on Old Witch 3 protects them from blasts and guns
  • The King of Nothing can generate a cloud wall with Burning Ash clouds
  • The Wanderer grants his entire army concealment through Fog of War - However Concealment has a lot of answers so it’s not the strongest tech.
  • The Malady Man is the premier support for Bump, and at least one will be taken in every Bump list. His particular synergy with Slayers boils down to the tremendous offensive potential of Desperate Pace coupled with the defensive zone created by the Monkey.
• They play well in tandem with other, cheaper bump infantry such as Dread Rots and Hollowmen. They act as a counterpunch to the powerful models that come in to kill their screen.
• Twilight Sisters offer them a valuable recursion. Neighs are the strongest model in faction to bring back (although not technically the most expensive at 2.4p compared to the Piggybacks 3p).
• Speaking of Piggybacks, both them & Neigh Slayers love the same kind of support models & casters and thus slot into lists together nicely. Pigs serve as a great anvil while Slayers can serve as the hammer. However one major difficulty is the points cost of both units is so high the overall list tends to be somewhat restricted in terms of options.

Drawbacks & Downsides

• They have to charge to gain value.
  • They have the lance rule - meaning they are stuck with only a pow 9 mount attack without a charge
  • They have relentless charge - meaning no pathfinder if they don't charge
  • Their melee range is based on the lance rule
• They're super easy to kill. 13/14 models go down like a sack of bricks to most attacks
  • Grave Ghouls are the best way to absorb the resultant corpses.
• They are vulnerable to armor stacking due to the way Armour Piercing works. Imagine an Arm 19 model, with a shield, under a +2 armor effect to bring them to arm 23. If Armour piercing treated this normally it would bring it down to Arm 12 (23 halved, rounded up), or dice-5 for our brave Neighs. However how its actually handled is halving the 19, so Arm 10 and then adding the +4 from the effects. This is Dice-7 instead. It makes standard armor buffs better against them
  • This is also why seemingly minor damage buffs can have such a radical effect on the effectiveness of Slayers. Fury from the Heretic for example would bring the above dice-7 to dice-4, nearly doubling the expected damage per Slayer.
• Very vulnerable to being jammed. They can't survive free strikes from any model essentially and then wont be able to gain their lance and charge the targets they really want.
  • Note that the Warhorses' Leap Frog provides Parry, allowing you to ignore free strikes. The downside is that a unit of Neigh Slayers using Leap Frog is one which is not using one of its other, more potent abilities.
• They aren't fond of Tough. Having their main powerful attack negated 33% of the time is really bad for them
  • The Warhorse can negate Tough by providing the unit with Grievous Wounds. Unfortunately this cannot be paired with Leap Frog, making Tough targets behind chaff with decent free strike potential effectively immune to Slayers.
  • The Four Horseymans can remove Tough from enemies within 3". This is most useful on Tough targets with larger bases, such as Legion Cav or Trolls generally, with ideally the Slayers able to approach the target from the opposite side of the target than the Horsey.
• Hazards - standard cavalry can usually ride straight through pow 10/12 or auto point damage hazards without much complaints. It kills neigh slayers.

Tricks & Tips

• Slayers love cycle charging. The front Neigh Slayers charge a target and deal heavy damage. They are killed by the opponent, and then on the following turn the Slayers that died are returned to play at the rear of the formation. The front Slayers (who were in the middle / rear last turn) then charge, leaving the rear Slayers who can't take a combat action in safe positions to survive until next round. This cycling repeats over as many turns as the Grymkin player finds it viable, letting a single unit of Neighs Slayers potentially gain a lot of value.
  • Don't employ this tactic against Remove from Play heavy armies. The Slayers will have to be treated preciously and need to connect with high value targets only in a decisive manner against such armies.
  • It's theoretically easier to do with Two units of Neigh Slayers, but table state can be messy in reality
  • Old Witch 3 can amplify this strategy by offering the forward models Boundless Charge to give them a threat range boost, while protecting the rear models with her Windstorm.
• Neighs Slayers enjoy being in the rear ranks to allow you to charge a target that came in, and then spread out through Reposition[3]
• They are your go to answer to high-DEF targets in Bump as they are the most accurate Grymkin infantry unit (before buffs).
• Make sure you spread out using Reposition after piling into a heavy, Neighs Slayers clumped together are easy targets for retaliation.
• Don't forget they can make Impact Attakcs! It's only MAT 6 POW 9 but that will still kill infantry models. It's worth noting the impact attack can be made much stronger:
  • Fury and the Heretic's Trump both benefit it as its a POW buff to melee attacks. Its possible to have MAT 8 POW 14 impacts if they are impacting the Arcana target, and have Fury placed on them.
  • Fortune's Path arcana benefits the impact, making it MAT 7 POW 10

Other

Trivia

File:LilFenris.jpg

Lil' Fenris, Mini Crate exclusive

• Base unit released 2017.06
• CA released 2019.03
• The first (and so far only) cavarly models that are small-based and single-wound.
• Template:LES