Tuesday launches – Gunnbjorn rolls into Kithguard

Look sharp, 'cause General Gunnbjorn just rolled in! Releasing today, this tank-riding warlock's here to lead Southern Kriels Kithguard into battle.

We've got Fraser here from the Warmachine dev team to give us a closer look at Gunnbjorn's design, the thinking behind his brutal frontline tactics, and the defenses built to protect the jungles of Alchiere.

Lead from the front

Attention, soldiers! The General is here!

Let’s start with the big question: what does Gunnbjorn bring to Kithguard?

The answer is very simple: traditional front-to-back battle lines.

Gunnbjorn differs from other Kithguard leaders in that he leads a very traditional force into the centre of the table, and defends that position with incredible resilience, brutal medium-ranged firepower and potent melee. Perfect for players who like to keep things direct.

Based on this, you might think “Gunnbjorn must have been simple to design”. And I wouldn’t blame you. The reality, however, is rarely that straightforward.

This takes us to our second question: why go this direction?

This answer takes a bit more explanation, and I’ll start with a boxing analogy. A traditional “boxer” fights tactically, trying to land a punch while not being punched themselves. A “brawler”, by contrast, is fully willing to take a punch if it lets them land a more powerful one.

Kithguard already had plenty of boxers. They needed a brawler.

From here, you might think “simple warlocks must come together fairly quickly and easily”. And once again, I wouldn’t blame you. The truth is, it is usually the opposite that’s true, and doubly so for Gunnbjorn.

Why? Well, because he’s designed to do something so fundamentally different from what a “typical” Kithguard warlock does.

How will he interact with trapdoors? What about all of the squishy units designed to ambush? How will he interact with them? How will the traditional Kithguard “support package” (models like Tunnel Rats) work with him?

How can a faction that’s specifically been designed to spread the play, at the cost of defensive stats, take a punch?

As with most things in game development, the answer to all of these questions ended up being fairly straightforward.

Trapdoors providing passive ARM improvements to nearby models immediately create a reason to have them around your battle lines (unlike the other Kithguard warlocks), and give the Tunnel Rats some good value. Your models will want to move, so the trapdoors need to be repositioned as well.

Models like Throat Cutters and Scrappers aren't exactly going to start randomly deploying on the table from the beginning of the game 'cause Gunnbjorn has a cool tank. It's nice to look at it, but tactically inadvisable to do so when preparing your ambushers to engage the enemy. This means Gunnbjorn will still want aggressively placed trapdoors, in addition to the ones that support his models.

Kithguard Throat Cutters

At the same time, we know that while still being valuable models for the faction, Gunnbjorn will naturally lean on them less than the others. So how do we balance this? By giving him an additional offensive use for trapdoors: Rune Mark.

From here, we were feeling good, but he still needed something. We tried a number of different things — abilities to improve RNG (like Fire Group), various effects on his guns, various spells to buff a plethora of stats. None of it was really hitting right, though. So, we went back to one of the core design principles of Kithguard: thinking about opposition threat ranges differently.

This may be something you’ve noticed in other Kithguard warlocks. You aren't ignoring enemy models’ reach, just putting a twist on the traditional lines of thinking. For instance, the opponent can’t attack a trapdoor marker, so why worry about how far it is from a superheavy?

Also, when everyone’s threat range is 8”, you only need one measuring stick. This brings us to Gunnbjorn’s feat:

Why bother playing around enemy threat ranges when you’re resilient enough to walk in and dare them to engage you? Very direct, and exactly what we’re looking for.

Now, implementing a feat as powerful as this does restrict Gunnbjorn’s design space quite a lot. For example, all of his guns are medium range, he has no speed buffs, and nothing that improves models’ damage output. He gets to rock up to the middle of the table, unleash a barrage of medium-range gunfire, then brace himself for a counter punch.

Very on-brand, and well worth the trade-off to get Gunnbjorn’s playstyle exactly where we wanted it.

So, soldiers. Will you follow General Gunnbjorn into battle?

Fortify Alchiere with Kithguard defenses

Also releasing today, the Kithguard defenses bring the hardened fortifications of Alchiere straight to your tabletop — just in time for Gunnbjorn's arrival. Shore up, roll out, and let the General turn the tide in your favour.