Lord Carver, BMMD, Esq. III
Template:Minionbox Template:4P
Lord Carver arose from the squalid hordes of the farrow on a tide of determination and violence, leaving behind him a trail of enemies and rivals crushed beneath his sharpened hooves. Carrying powerful weapons wrested from his enemies, the farrow warlord leads his snorting, bloodthirsty army on a campaign to trod all who would oppose them into the muck.
Basic Info
- Minion - In a 2+ warlock game, he will work for Template:Skorne minion, Template:Legion minion, Template:Circle minion, and Template:Trollblood minion
- This model is a Warlock.
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Warlock Rules
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Feat: Hog Heaven
While in Carver's Template:CTRL range, friendly Farrow models gain Overtake and an additional die on melee damage rolls. Hog Heaven lasts for one turn.
Abilities
Weapons
- Sawed-Off Scattergun - 6" spray, ROF 2, POW 12 ranged attack.
- Hand of God - 2" reach, P+S 15 melee attack.
Spells
{{Category: Template:Batten Down the HatchesTemplate:MobilityTemplate:QuagmireTemplate:Rift }}[[Category: Template:Batten Down the HatchesTemplate:MobilityTemplate:QuagmireTemplate:Rift ]]
Theme Forces
- Minions
- Template:Thornfall. He gains Rise in this theme.
- Template:Vengeance of Dhunia. In this theme he gains Attuned Spirit [Trollblood/Minion Warbeast].
- Template:Will Work for Food
- Other Factions
- Trollblood players can also use this warlock in the Vengeance of Dhunia and he gains Attuned Spirit as mentioned above.
Thoughts on Lord Carver
Lord Carver in a Nutshell
He‘s your basic, well-rounded warlock with an emphasis on passive infantry support, while his spell list focuses on his battlegroup. With Batten Down the Hatches you can keep your beasts alive and Mobility makes up for their lackluster movement.
His feat is where things start to shine. With Overtake and additional damage Berserk models such as Maximus and Battle Boar can carve through infantry, and the War Hog extends its threat range drastically as it pacmans through targets. The drawback is the control range, meaning on feat turn Carver will need to be close enough that he is in danger the next round.
His passive abilities boosts all attacks making the RAT of most Farrow units on par with other factions.
Maximising his feat & spells
Feat - Carver's feat is awesome for wrecking both infantry and heavies. It's pretty obvious what it does and what's there not to love about it?
- Batten Down the Hatches - Great for brawling out with the enemy. Obvious what it does.
- Mobility - threat range for your battle group. Again obvious and useful and his other mainline spell.
- Quagmire - his signature spell, Quagmire is effectively a MAT buff that gives the enemy a challenge to kill whatever has Quagmire before they can move.
- Rift - You don't often cast this but don't forget you have it.
Drawbacks & Downsides
- On feat turn he needs to be in the mix to keep the chain of attacks going.
- His spell list and abilities do not really help Farrow at all. He's a battlegroup caster first and his only relevant buff to pig infantry is his Veteran Leader, yet accuracy is the least of the problem plaguing them.
- He's a Fury 6 warlock who wants to go battlegroup heavy in a faction with little Fury management.
- Between Batten Down the Hatches and Mobility, you will often find yourself camping nothing. 13/20 with Tough and no knockdown is nothing to sneeze at, but without transfers you're relying entirely on your stats and positioning to avoid assassination.
- His biggest schtick (Batten Down the Hatches) is countered by anything with Blessed weapons. In fact, Blessed enemies will get to ignore your +3 ARM while still benefitting from your -2 DEF. Sad panda.
Tricks & Tips
- He's Tough and Batten Down the Hatches prevents knockdown. If you're lucky enough, he'll never die!
- He's SPD 6, which is 1 faster than any of the other Farrow warlocks (not including Dr. Arkadius). So that's nice. It just about lets him keep pace with his beasts under Mobility.
List Building Advice
Strategy
Carver is an attrition based warlock who pounds the enemy army to a pulp. He basically supports his battlegroup and the Farrow in his army.
You're going to be casting Batten Down the Hatches and Mobility every turn until you make contact. This means everything will be getting hit with the lowered DEF. As much as his spell list now screams warbeast he is in desperate need of ranged attacks to keep pressure up while his army slowly moves across the board... or not so slowly, thanks to that sweet, sweet Mobility. Between deceptive speed, impressive staying power (thanks to Batten Down the Hatches), and a turn of massive damage, Carver specializes in controlling the scenario and punishing your opponent for trying to contest.
Theme Thoughts
Ironically, he cares little for this theme, despite being the grand General of it in the fluff, due to its less than stellar theme benefits and model selection.
It's a fine theme if you want to go for an infantry heavy farrow army, but outside of Veteran Leader and the feat, he doesn't really support such a kind of lists.
Farrow Units all benefit from Veteran Leader. Because Carver isn't incredibly tough (although he does benefit from Batten Down the Hatches) he wants to stay back, so ranged units get more from his Veteran Leader.
- Farrow Brigands are an excellent all-round ranged unit - and getting an extra point of MAT and especially RAT is really useful.
- Feat, then charge in with the Meat Thresher in Carver's CRTL range. Knock the target down, and watch your opponent's face upon rolling 5D6 + 16 for damage.
- Farrow Slaughterhousers and Maximus. His feat makes Maximus in particular an infantry threshing monster, berserking and overtaking as long as he hits and kills (on 4 dice to damage)... and as long as he stays within Carver's control range.
- Farrow Commandos are a stealthy advance deploying unit.
Carver is all about his battlegroup and this was, for a long time, best realised in WWF and still has the huge advantage of handing out Overtake to all his beasts. You can still bring Maximus and Valkyries here to make use of every aspect of his card.
Mobility makes Carver's battlegroup extremely quick on the first turn. Add, potentially, dialing up speed on your Road Hogs, and you can have beasts sitting in the middle of the table on Turn 1. Your exact milage may vary, but there's something to be said for threatening your opponent with POW 12 sprays for just leaving their deployment.
- Feralgeists and Gremlin Swarms are excellent Quagmire targets and can help him in in the scenario game, since he is otherwise very battlegroup heavy. As they are incorporeal, they are a nightmare to get rid of for models without magical weapons, so they can be held in place by Quagmire'd models.
- The Hermit similarly is very hard to kill even by models WITH magical weapons and provides a slew of other buff to his army.
- If you really wnat to rub it in, run two Dhunian Archons and use them to heal your Quagmire targets.
- In addition, you can choose from utility supports not found in Thornfall, such as the Bog Trog Mist Speaker for Magical Weapons of your own and the Gatorman Soul Slave to upkeep Quagmire for free and fling out boosted Rifts, which actually allows you to have all 4 of your spells in play at once.
- There's also the dirt cheap Bone Shrine which allows Carver to actually play with transfers if he so chooses, and Batten Down the Hatches mostly makes up for potentially being cursed by the Shrine.
- Of course, you're not getting much use out of your Veteran Leader in this theme, but even the available Farrow Valkyries or Rorsh (of Rorsh & Brine) will appreciate the buff in a pinch. Additionally, the ubiquitous Overtake means you can always use your feat strictly for damage, rather than potentially debating using it for infantry clearing.
- Now you can even take Underchief Mire here, giving you access to Rage, Elasticity, and more as well as being able to make a small cloud wall of your own. Honestly, however, its debatable how useful this really will be as it begins further cutting into the points that may be better off building a bigger Farrow battlegroup to benefit from all Carver's exclusive benefits.
Ironically the shared trollblood theme is Carver's best, even better than WWFF. If you're playing a beast brick thanks to Batten Down the Hatches then the +2 ARM from the Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes is an amazing boost to thins. He also can bring most of the Farrow (alas Maximus and the Farrow Slaughterhousers need to be left at home - but he probably shouldn't be far enough up the board to veteran leader them.
- Troll Bouncer is a light that's ARM 19 thanks to the shield - or ARM 24 with Batten and a Krielstone.
- Earthborn Dire Troll possibly doesn't hit hard enough, but can reach ARM 20 before buffs with good use of terrain.
- Pyre Troll, Slag Troll, or Dire Troll Mauler for when you want damage buffs.
- Troll Axer is Rush on a stick.
- Farrow Brigands and Farrow Commandos are useful advance deploying weapons - and if they are shooting they might be far enough back to benefit from his Veteran Leader.
Here are some of his other favourites, available in any theme:
- Farrow Valkyries can help protect things from shooting.
- While Rorsh & Brine will not directly benefit from Carver for most of the game, he sometimes appreciates the load they can take off of his own battlegroup burden. Rorsh enjoys standing in Veteran Leader range anyway, making his 3 ranged attacks per activation potentially a little more accurate, and Brine gets turned up to 11 (or 12, or 13) between Pig Farm and Carver's feat.
- Swamp Gobber Chef for when you need Fury management.
Battlegroup
With both Mobility and Batten Down the Hatches available every turn, and with the ability to send your damage up on feat turn, Carver goes very well with ... just about everything.
- War Hog - Kill! Maim! P+S 18 Weapon Masters.
- Road Hog - what was that threat range again?
- Battle Boar - With no hit buff of his own, Primal is as important to Carver as it is to any other Farrow warlock. And making your own beasts frenzy is kind of like Fury management, right? Right??
First Seven Purchases
A few veteran players have put their heads together in 2020.06 and tried to figure out the seven best things to buy for this specific caster. This is not designed to add up to a nice round points limit, nor be balanced vs other "First Seven" lists you find on this website. It is simply going to give you some of the essentials this caster needs most of the time.
- Warbeast: War Hog
- Warbeast: War Hog
- Warbeast: Battle Boar
- Solo: Hutchuck
- Solo: Lanyssa
- Unit: Slaughterhousers
- Unit: Brigands + CA
Other
Trivia
- Released in Forces of Hordes: Minions (2007)
- BMMD stands for "Bringer of Most Massive Destruction".
- "Esq." is an abbreviation of "Esquire," an antiquated honorific indicating that an individual practices Law and holds a license to that effect.
- His cleaver/sword is called Hand of God. Or "H.O.G." Haha.
- Template:LES
- His limited edition sculpt is based on the events of the 2019 Lock and Load narrative event. The Minions player used Carver to take over one of the airships at the culmination of the event.
Warbeasts he can take
Template:Index Farrow Warbeasts
Video Battle Reports
Other Minion models
Rules Clarifications
Template:RC Both Barrels Template:RC Magical Weapon
Template:RC Warlock Template:RC Farrow Warlock Template:RC Tough Template:RC Veteran Leader
Template:RC Batten Down the Hatches Template:RC Mobility Template:RC Quagmire Template:RC Rift