Troll Impaler

Pitching enormous spears with bone-crushing force, impalers are the living ballistae of the trolls. Each carries a quiver of massive wood-and-iron projectiles bearing only the most basic resemblance to the puny twigs smaller races call spears. These savage implements obliterate men and knock even the greatest beasts off their feet.

Basic Info

Abilities

• Template:Assault
• Template:Regeneration
• Template:Follow Up
• Template:Set Defense

Weapons

• Thrown Spear - 8" range, POW 13 ranged attack
  • Template:Critical Smite
  • Template:Powerful Attack
  • Template:Thrown
• Battle Spear - 2" reach, P+S 13 melee attack

Animus

{{Category: Template:Far Strike }}[[Category: Template:Far Strike ]]

Theme Forces

• Trollblood
  • Template:Band of Heroes
  • Template:Kriel Company
  • Template:Power of Dhunia. In this theme, when this warbeast casts its own animus the COST is reduced by 1 (to a minimum of 0).
  • Template:Storm of the North
  • Template:Vengeance of Dhunia

• Other Factions
  • Minion players can also use this warbeast in the Vengeance of Dhunia theme.

Thoughts on Troll Impaler

Troll Impaler in a nutshell

The Troll Impaler is a troll that throws spears at people and is a solid single shot ranged option. When using him in a journeyman league, Stack pulverizer and rage from the mauler for a nice POW 18 range 8 attack. With a follow up melee attack. Boost the shot on a charge due to the combination of powerful attack and assault if you slam your target they will hopefully be knocked down or you will follow up into other models.

Before the Vengeance of Dhunia CID these warbeasts where regarded as one of the least cost effective models in the game, many guides from that time will suggest upgrading to the Dire Troll Bomber ASAP if you need the animus and taking an Ice Troll if you don’t need snipe. Now the Impailer sits in a nice middle ground between these 2 beasts, With more emphasis on full on aggression than either of them, it wants to be charging as often as possible, this will put it into danger but at the same time create interesting threat vectors your opponent won’t expect.

Combos & Synergies

• Gunnbjorn1 - Killshot lets it Strike even deeper, you may get follow up twice a turn. Guides Fire isn’t necessary but comes in handy if you need to go light on Fury.
• Jarl Skuld - Swift Hunter is handy as always and if your charge targets dies to the assault shot you cna just use swift hunter to move into melle with somethign else so your activation does not end (a charge only fails if you are not engaged in melee after moving).
  • The Dire Troll Mauler's animus and the Kriel Stone provide said strengh buff. Just keep in mind it cannot Far Strike itself if you use Rage on it.
  • Ragnor can put pulverizer on it
• Dhunian Knot - A boost and a reroll give you decent-ish odds of rolling a critical.
• Helga1 and Helga2 both have ways of fixing its atrocious MAT value.

Drawbacks & Downsides

• Ranged knockdown just gets shaken by beasts or jacks and is overkill against infantry.
  • Its weaponry suffers the same sort of problem. Murdering infantry and not doing much to harder targets.
• It shares an animus with the Dire Troll Bomber is arguably the best warbeast in the faction. If you just need the animus you will always be better off with the real deal, rather than the cheap knock off with assault.
• MAT 5 does not provide adequate melee capability on turns it does not charge. On turns it does charge you are reliant on the knockdown provided by the slam. Crit fixing models like Calandra (feat) and Dhunian Knot help mitigate this.
• If you want a ranged light just go for the Pyre Troll or Ice Troll.

Tricks & Tips

• Try to line up the slams.
• You may slam knocked down models.
• You can use Follow Up on a Critical Smite, not just on a Power Attack Slam.
• Far Strike and Boosting the gun only leave you one more point of fury before it is fully topped of. Consider whether you want to charge, or reload for an unboosted shot, or if you'd rather have a transfer for your warlock (in which case you should nothave it generate more than 2 fury points.

Other

Trivia

Released way back in Primal Mk1 (2006)