Razor Worm

Dragged from beneath the hardened ground of the Bloodstone Marches, razor worms are frightening and voracious monsters. The worms are difficult to track as they burrow through solid rock or the tangled roots of dense terrain. Under the direction of skorne warlocks, the razor worms bore through the surface earth of the battlefield, erupting from the ground as a nightmare of hungry teeth and piercing spines. Those they attack are dragged below the earth and consumed whole, their screams cut short by the choking earth.

Basic Info

• Template:Warbeast

Abilities

• Template:Advance Deployment
• Template:Eyeless Sight
• Template:Pathfinder
• Template:Dig In
• Template:Drag Below
• Template:Long Leash
• Template:Serpentine

Weapons

• Bite - 1" reach, P+S 12 melee attack

Animus

{{Category: Template:Spiny Growth }}[[Category: Template:Spiny Growth ]]

Theme Forces

• Template:Disciples of Agony
• Template:Masters of War
• Template:The Exalted
• Template:Winds of Death

Thoughts on Razor Worm

Razor Worm in a nutshell

The Razor Worm is a light beast with a bunch of different abilities that, in conjunction, make it a decent skirmisher or flanker. While it doesn't have much staying power or hitting power, it can generally be elusive enough to cause your opponent a minor headache. And with a cost bordering on Lesser Beast pricing, you might just find this a worthwhile investment. Additionally, it's a cheap way to give your Warlock access to Spiny Growth.

Combos & Synergies

• Lord Tyrant Hexeris and especially Lord Arbiter Hexeris. If you were trying to invent the perfect light Arc Node it have some combination of low cost, decent speed, advance deployment, eyeless sight, sprint, and long leash. The Razor Worm has all those (and some useful abilities besides) - and just needs Hexeris to allow it to be channeled through.
• Master Ascetic Naaresh It's a mobile light warbeast. It gains a lot from his feat and Naaresh can use Spiny Growth with his Painmonger ability to stack arm pretty high after getting whipped by his boys.
• Tyrant Zaadesh - his control area can be painful at times. The Razor Worm can roam further forward. It can also use Drag Below to set up Zaadesh tag teaming.
• Tyrant Xerxis and Xerxis, Fury of Halaak - the Razor Worm can ignore both incarnations' pitifully small control range, allowing you to have some (poor) beast leverage across a larger swath of the table outside of Xerxis2's feat.
  • Xerxis1 can actually make the Razor Worm into a bit of a threat on feat turn, delivering POW 12 weapon master attacks well beyond the 10" bubble your opponent was likely expecting them to come from, and is cheap enough that you can mostly throw it away on a suicide mission on feat turn. Additionally, you can stack Spiny Growth and feat ARM buff for ARM22 for 1 turn. Another transfer might be better, but the Razor Worm gives you the option.
  • Xerxis2 buffs the Worm through his Field Marshal, and a SPD 8 Razor Worm suddenly becomes a little more worrisome for enemy support pieces. The SPD buff helps on your pseudo-Sprint from Drag Below too, allowing you to get slightly farther away from all the things that want to kill you.
• Makeda2 - because it has AD it can help her get a spellcast off from Reckless Arcana quicker, her feat helps it hit the infantry it should be targeting, deflection takes it's dug in defense up to 'why bother shooting it' levels. Finally foresight helps it maintain peak efficiency.

Drawbacks & Downsides

• It's a support model with low damage output
• The Spiny Growth animus is often best left off of your Warlock because Fury for transfers is usually better than some ARM. However, some Warlocks like Naaresh or Zaal, the Ancestral Advocate both have good starting ARM, and can spare the Fury to cast the animus.
• The Archidon has an overlapping skirmisher role and a much more threatening combat presence.
• The Rhinodon has an overlapping animus, is slower to deliver but hits harder with a stronger frame.

Tricks & Tips

• Drag Below is effectively a free strike immune sprint, but requires that you killed a warrior model to use. Fortunately, that is pretty much all the Razor Worm can kill, so the caveat is likely moot.
• Do not forget that Drag Below is an RFP effect. This is extremely important in some match ups, especially against opponents who rely on recursion to win attrition.
• The Razor Worm is often best off sprinting through the enemy so they can't charge it as it's in their back arc.
• If you choose to hold the Razor Worm back in the early game, you can use it late game as a surprisingly effective scenario piece. It can easily hold or contest zones on the opposite side of the table from your warlock, and the fewer attacks your opponent has, the more effective Dig In and Spiny Growth become.

Other

Trivia

Released in Forces of Hordes: Skorne (2010)