Rules preview – Gargantuan Fortress King

What do you get when you cross a primordial, stone-faced giant with crazy trollkin ingenuity? You get a walking weapons platform that puts the “king” in “hulking”!

We’ve been keeping this beast at bay for a while, but Kithguard players can finally gear up for gargantuan action with the Fortress King going up for pre-order next Tuesday.

• To prepare you to field — or face — this gargantuan threat, this article includes a gameplay preview from the Warmachine dev team, ready for the rules to drop in the app later today

• For the lore inclined, don’t miss next Monday’s Loremachine where we’ll be dropping the Fortress King’s Heroes & Villains chapter for all app subscribers

• And if you’d like painting tips, Part I of our painting video is already up with Part II coming this weekend

So, why field a Fortress King?

Because aside from the fact you get to put a moving fortress on the table (!) the Fortress King brings a host of unique rules to help the Kithguard.

To start with, that fortress on its back is not just for show. With Moving Fortress, you can choose a rule per turn to fit the situation and adjust as the game unfolds.

Choose Armory to select a nearby Kithguard infantry unit and swap your support weapons. Or bolster units that have taken losses with Reinforce, which brings back up to D3 models. How about Vantage, which lets friendly warriors with 3” ignore cover? Yes, that includes Gunnbjorn and his tank!

The Fortress King also cranks up Over the Top, letting you ambush within 1” of the king instead of from a table edge, giving your ambushers far more tactical nuance. It’s perfect for helping deliver units where you need them, especially if we double-dip into Armory, letting our Kithguard infantry pop up and switch to the perfect support weapons for the job.

Now, it wouldn’t be a very good fortress if it wasn’t set up to defend itself. As the saying goes, the best defense is a good offence, and the Fortress King is no slouch in this department. The Fortress King comes with multiple heads and weapons so you can adapt it to your list and playstyle.

For example, you could combine its heavy gun with some cannon gun emplacements and the grenade launcher, giving you both crowd control and 4 AoE attacks per turn.

Or maybe you prefer volume attacks and accuracy? In that case, choose the Chainguns for volume fire shots combined with the Twin Flamethrower to mow down anything trying to get close.

Speaking of close combat, we have a choice of the Piston Axe, which comes with straight up Brutal Damage, giving the king an additional damage die on all attacks to really wreck face:

Or you could go with the Ripping Axe which comes with the earth-shattering new rule, Critical Wreckage, to automatically hit any model on the same line between the king and the target it hit.

And yes, this means you get to double dip on the originally-targeted model for an extra damage roll! No one gets between the king and its prey.

Finally, we’ve got the Fortress King’s head options, both of which bring great flavour and animi.

First up, we have the Optical Array head which not only gives the king Alchemical Mask so it can see though clouds, but also grants immunity to gas effects. Nice try, Crucible Guard, but you won’t be debuffing this king with your rockets.

The Optical Array head also gives the king +1 to his RAT stat, helping make its ranged attacks that bit more accurate. And to top it off, it also brings the Keen Eye animus that grants your warlock Eyeless Sight to help you get around those pesky stealth models.

Or you can take the Rock Maw head, giving the king an extra melee attack with its mighty bite that comes with Grievous Wounds to prevent all tough and healing once hit. Undergrowth is the animus the Rock Maw grants, which turns the 5” around the warlock into difficult ground and gives a –2 DEF penalty to all enemy models within that range.

If the above wasn’t enough to inspire you, let’s take a look at which Kithguard warlocks can get the most out of the Fortress King.

To start with, Fell Captain Wroughtmourn has some excellent tools to bring out the best in this walking fortress.

Not only can she help make sure the king gets to hit more often, with spells like Descending Gloom to Blind its targets and make them suffer a –4 DEF penalty, it's also possible to stack that with Hand of Destruction, which gives you an extra accuracy and damage boost.

On top of that, we can combine Hunter's Mark with Wroughtmourn’s feat, Rolling Mist. Hunter's Mark lets you charge extra distance and means you have an extra fury point so you don’t have to pay for the charge, while Rolling Mist makes it impossible to target the Fortress King from more than 8” away.

Next up, we have Sergeant Craghorn. Perhaps not as fancy as Wroughtmorn, but devastatingly efficient with Boundless Charge for the free charge and extra charge range, backed up with Carnage to give us a +2 MAT boost. With this combo, there’s not a lot in the game the Fortress King won’t reliably hit.

Not to mention, once the king is deep into the lines with Countermeasures applied, your opponent will have little choice but to try taking it down if they want to shoot while within 5” of its location.

Topping it off, Craghorn’s Attuned Spirit means he can use one of the king's powerful animi on himself for free. What machine-gun-toting trollkin doesn’t fancy a free Eyeless Sight?

Last but not least, we have General Gunnbjorn.

Have you ever wanted to live that power fantasy of the unstoppable kaiju advancing unhindered, smashing everything in its path to smithereens while enemy fire simply bounces off?

If yes, the Gunnbjorn is your warlock.

With his Stronghold feat and extra armor given by a close-by trap door, thanks to the Foundations rule, you can watch as your opponent looks helplessly on while your Fortress King advances, leaving a swathe of destruction in its wake.

Throw in the Rune Mark spell for some line of sight assurance and ranged attack boosting, and you can see why Gunnbjorn and the Fortress King make a powerful combination.

Update your app later today to build those Fortress King Kithguard lists and get ready for the pre-order launch next Tuesday!