Rivals of the Mirrored City – Zarbag’s Gitz

Intro

For a bit different of a slant on this release cycle, I’ve copy-pasted my “love letter” to GW for these 4 articles, as I don’t want it to be missed if you end up only reading the ones on warbands that interest you.

Holy new releases, Batman! A very pleasant surprise in the pre-release WarCom cycle was the announcement that not one, not two, but four old warbands would be getting facelifts to modernize their fighter and faction cards, as well as grant them full 32-card Rivals decks for viable play in that format. Of course, this also comes with an opportunity for (primarily) improved performance for the deckbuilding formats, as you now have some additional cards to pull from in addition to the modifications to existing ones. I can’t express how glad I am that they’ve done this. There was some worry that eventually we’d hit warband rotation, or even soft warband rotation via power creep (see Stormcoven and Pandaemonium vs. Cursebreakers and Eyes). However, the recent redesigns of these older warbands I think looks like pretty strong confirmation that they don’t want to leave any warbands behind. Yes, it comes at additional cost for players that already have the models (it is GW after all), but I’m personally happy to pay it if it means my old favorites are relevant again. I was thrilled by the updates made to Sepulchral Guard (and even Farstriders), so I’m glad to see them continuing to work through the backlog of old warbands, as long as they are mostly retaining the identity we’ve all come to know and love. These changes, even the minor ones, feel like they breathe some fresh gameplay into these warbands that are really struggling (particularly in Nemesis), but that are also some of my personal favorites. Perhaps even more importantly, new players will have access to these teams that otherwise fetch outrageous prices on the secondary market due to being OOP. Tenured players don’t have to worry about stomping new players with OOP warbands, new players get to experience the glory of our old favorites for themselves without having to break the bank, and GW gets to make more money off warbands they’ve already released. Everybody wins. I’m honestly not sure there has been a WHU release I’ve been more excited about. Would I love to be able to buy the cards on their own? Of course I would, but honestly the ~$15 markup from a Rivals deck to a warband these days is trivial enough to me that I personally don’t mind it, and the price tag on this box is even less than that. I recognize that is a privilege for myself to be able to say this, and I can totally appreciate if you don’t want to pay this much to just get new cards and/or you’re not interested in all of the warbands. However, I would point out that, if you are willing to split the box with a friend and/or sell off models you already have (which you can likely accomplish on the secondary market), you can help assuage some of these concerns.

With that out of the way, let’s get into this article’s focus, which is Zarbag’s Gitz! Gitz were one of those warbands in Championship that was always teetering on the edge of becoming a top tier meta threat when there is good HO support in the universal card pool, as we saw toward the end of Nethermaze. However, the thing that always held them back in Nemesis was that their faction deck was pretty bad, especially on objective cards. While I don’t know if this update will totally fix that problem for them, I think they are definitely a lot scarier in the format now than they were previously. While I am not a Gitz enjoyer myself, I will do my best to summarize where I feel they benefit and where they’ve lost out in this update.

Fighters

We’ll start with Zarbag of course, and right off the bat, we see that the warband has reverted back to a 3-glory requirement for their “universal” inspiration, which is obviously a big deal for them. Furthermore, you’ll also note the addition of the grot keyword, which is now referenced in a number of cards, but mostly in the updated wording on Scurry, which has gained a truly insane buff. While you previously could not react here if you had a Move/Charge token, you can now do so as long as you only have one or fewer of them. In case you didn’t take long enough turns before, this is just going to open up all kinds of nutty shenanigans, particularly in the HO space. I think you’re going to have a supreme amount of trouble denying them the positioning that they want with this current wording, but this also allows them to leverage their free moves for support more often, having a fine backup plan to just scoot back onto tokens in the next activation. As far as Zarbag himself, the only noteworthy change is that he gained a Range 3, 1 Damage spell attack that casts on swirlies, adding grievous to it when he inspires. While this is relatively small potatoes compared to the warband-wide buffs we just discussed, I’m sure we won’t hear any complaints from Gitz players at having one more tool in the kit with this attack. Straight buffs for him.

With these sort of buffs must also come a nerf, and Snirk has been the one to eat it. Yes, his attack action is actually quite decent now given the ability to so easily run in supports for what is a 1R/2S/3D attack. Yes, he is Move 3 now. However, he is far more difficult to inspire, as he can only do so after he fails an attack action. This will often mean that instead of just taking his free inspiration, he will usually have to charge first, meaning you likely aren’t accessing his action in the first round anymore. He also gained a slight additional nerf in that you cannot make any actions with him besides Wreck. Under the prior wording, he could technically still stun or use a mask action, for example, so that’s all cleaned up now. He will still be an absolute menace, just not for as much of the game as he used to be.

Drizgit and his squigs have the very slightest of changes, but all in the way of buffs. The Herd Squigs action has been buffed in the same manner as Scurry, but it’s pretty rare I see that action used at high level Gitz play. In other interesting news, the squigs both were gifted the flying trait, which previously they had to take an upgrade for, so a slight buff there as well, although I personally wouldn’t want to invest in many blocked hexes for this warband, as they can obstruct your move network and Snirk.

Prog has seen a little bit of a mix of good and bad here. He no longer inspires to 3H and 2 Dodge, but he does gain ensnare and adds ensnare to any attack he supports, and has additionally jumped from Range 1 to Range 3. Overall, this is definitely a nerf to him in general, as he used to be an excellent candidate for additional damage upgrades and the survivability on 1 Dodge is horrendous (just ask Narvia and Turosh), especially on an HO build. I think this, and some nerfs we’ll see in a moment, are fairly smoothed out by the massive Scurry buff, but these adjustments will affect the play lines a bit.

Lastly, we have the newly dubbed Shootas, who have received a similar treatment to Prog. They all stay on 1 Dodge inspired now, but are certainly benefitting from the new Scurry. As some additional compensation though, the Give ‘Em a Volley Ladz! ability lets you do exactly that, dropping up to the three bow attacks if they are all within 3 hexes of the one taking the action. While this is cool and you might as well deploy your fighters to take advantage of this, odds are good that you prioritize scattering them to the wind to hold objectives rather than attempt this. Scurry is simply so good now that I have a hard time seeing this necessarily being one of your activations. On a less important note, all of the grots lost the hunter keyword, which doesn’t necessarily bode well for that keyword support in the future.

Our Favorites

• Mark: Bonekrakka and Gobbaluk
• Aman: Snirk
• Zach: All the Shootas (I love the positioning and Volley shenanigans)
• George: Zarbag

Rivals Deck

Objectives

Chomp! is our first surge, scoring if an enemy fighter is taken out of action by damage dealt by a friendly squig. It’s interesting they worded it this way instead of just referring to attack actions, but notably this would score if they were able to deal damage outside of an attack action. Unless I am missing something, there is nothing that lets them do so in the deck, so maybe this is just future-proofing. In any case, the squigs are two of your scarier fighters, so it’s not totally unexpected that they might be killing something, but I’d rather be activating grots more often than not to support a proposed HO gameplan.

Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2

Next up is a new take on [Infestation] with Gitz Everywhere! Now that we’re out of Nethermaze, this card desperately needed an update, and this is a great way of breaking it out.  The base condition of scoring for 2 if you hold each objective in your territory is very solid and I think worth taking. The additional 2 glory if you also hold each in enemy territory seems unlikely, but the final bit about getting +1 if you hold one or more in no-one’s territory seems like the most reasonable target here. You can potentially put out a pretty typical 3-glory [Supremacy]-esque score off the primary and tertiary conditions, which is attractive given the amount of glory you’ll be expecting to bleed. While I doubt you’ll be pulling off the full 5 glory score any time soon, this should be a pretty consistent 2-3 glory score against most opponents and undoubtedly a preferable option to its original design.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2

Talk about redundant scoring conditions, Lurk-Lair is another one of those 2-glory versions of [Retake What is Ours]. Unlike the case we had with Thorns, I think paying out only 2 here is fair play. I’ve already mentioned how crazy Scurry is now, so very few warbands, if any, can match the mobility/HO potential available to the Gitz these days, especially if they elect to play VCT with them, which is not a bad pairing given the even more absurd movement economy it can generate. This doesn’t make the cut in Championship because you can simply take a card like [Supremacy] instead, but it should be perfectly serviceable in Nemesis.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Speaking of reprinted Sepulchral Guard cards, we next have Mad Scurry, paying out 2 glory in the end phase if 5 or more of your fighters have a Move and/or Charge token. While this is very workable for SG due to their ability to raise fighters, I think you have a lot of trouble scoring it here outside of the first round. Even then, your opponent will often be giving you the first activation and can just target down the fighter’s you’ve already moved. Outside of that, I would not be surprised to lose 2-3 fighters per round with these guys given their low Wounds and now only 1 Defence die on most of them, so I think the odds are pretty decent that you may have less than 5 fighters alive come the second end phase unless you are facing a particularly cagey opponent. Probably fine if this is in your opening hand, but its value really plummets if you draw it later.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1

If you read it a bit too quickly, you might have missed that Malicious Kill got the slightest of buffs. Under the previous wording, your warband had to deal the damage to take the fighter in question out of action, but now it just scores when they die, meaning something like a lethal hex or one of your opponent’s gambits doing the job will count. One particularly funny instance where this might occur is if your opponent uses [Maskborn] on a fighter with two or more upgrades. I already liked this as a kill surge prior to the revamp, two upgrades is even achievable in Round 1, especially considering how easy it is for your opponent to scoop up kill bounty from you. While you may still want to cycle out of this in your opening hand, this is one of the more accessible 2-glory surges still in the game.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2

Not So Tall Now is a bit reminiscent of [Pick On a Git Yer Own Size!], with a slight wrinkle in this case. Note that, while this card appears to presume the death of an opponent’s fighter, the wording is such that any fighter’s death can satisfy this, so long as they are at least tied for the highest Wounds characteristic. This means that you can score it when enemy fighters kill you as well, which I am specifically thinking about in the mirror match or against Hexbane’s Hunters if they manage to kill Drizgit or something. That being said, it will still be a super matchup-dependent card. For example, you can score this if you kill Mollog, but that will probably take a while to accomplish. Furthermore, if Mollog is dead by the time you draw this, you could potentially be waiting on your opponent to kill one of your 3-Wound guys to actually get this to go off. It’s not the worst kill surge by any stretch, it’s just quite subject the matchup and draw sequencing.

Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2

Obliterated has gotten a small buff as well, as it is now modal, scoring 1 for a Snirk kill if uninspired or 2 if inspired. Obviously, it is much harder to inspire him now than it once was, so I think there will more frequently be cases where the 1-glory score is what ends up happening, but at least you have the option to decide if you want to take it then or greed a bit for the 2-glory score. You need a pretty high ceiling to offset a warband that yields nine bounty, so I wouldn’t be surprised if many Gitz players still try for this, especially in Nemesis.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 1

Overwhelmin’ Gitz is a slightly worse version of [Supreme Kunnin’] due to requiring a successful attack, but I think the Scurry buff makes this fairly dependable. You do still have the potential issue of needing bodies on the table to score this, so it is much better in Round 1, but not needing to kill something is always nice. I will, however, note that I believe this does not count support from unnamed sources via cards like [Unexpected Ally], as it does state you need two friendly fighters to support the attack, and that just says you are “considered to have one additional supporting fighter.” A small distinction, to be sure, but unless we get an FAQ to the contrary, I think that’s how you have to play it.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Squalid Lair is a 1-glory version of [Siegebreakers], unless it is the third end phase. Is it just me or is this kind of backwards? Even with this many bodies, I usually have an easier time meeting this kind of condition later in the game due to tabling people rather than forcing them out of my zone early. However, now it rewards me more glory later instead of earlier? Maybe it’s fine on a longboard, but even if you do catch me out with this early game, what kind of “gotcha!” is 1-glory? Seems like too much work for too little payout.

Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 1

Stayin’ Safe is a downgraded version of [Gale Force], requiring you to make three Range 3+ attacks rather than just three attacks. This can obviously be trivialized by a single volley from your archers, but that’s basically betting on a Round 1 charge from your opponent into range of all 3 without killing one of them. You do have Zarbag to support this, but I think you still want to prioritize inspiring and subsequently using Snirk to wreak some havoc on your opponent.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Survival of the Gittest falls in the same boat for me as Mad Scurry. It seems pretty automatic of a score in Round 1, but I think it’s pretty tough in Round 2 and near impossible in R3. I suppose it’s nice that they up the reward to 2 glory in Round 3, but I think I’d really only consider this if it paid out 2 in any end phase, despite still being questionable even there.

Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 1

Our last card is You Ain’t Safe, which in this case is just a worse version of [Frozen Fate]. With all your movement economy, this is definitely doable, I just think there are much easier 1-glory scores out there for these guys, and you probably can’t afford to take many of them in your deck anyway. Gitz need that glory ceiling.

Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2

Our Favorites

• Mark: Gitz Everywhere!
• Aman: Lurk-Lair
• Zach: Stayin’ Safe
• George: Gitz Everywhere!

Gambits 

Bite of Da Bad Moon is a rangeless ping card casting on a swirly. You then roll magic dice equal to the Defence characteristic of the chosen enemy fighter, dealing them 1 damage for every lightning or crit you roll. For the simple math, this is a 50% chance to ping a single die fighter as a level 2 wizard without any casting mods. However, on 2 Defence, you’ve got a net 67% to deal at least one and net 33% chance to deal two damage. The fact that this is rangeless, accounting only for LoS, is pretty nutty. With 2 Defence being fairly common these days, I think it’s worth the risk, I just don’t like that this card exists. For 2-Defence fighters, our math suggests there is an equivalent chance of doing 0 damage as there is of doing 2 damage in this latter case. If I don’t like stacking grievous, imagine how I feel about that.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 1

I do tend to like guard gambits a bit more than the average person, so I am definitely intrigued by Chew It Over. 50-50 for guard plus draw or guard plus, effectively, [Sweep the Leg]. We’ve been saying for a while now that guard gambits just need some upside, well I think this is pretty close to what you’d want that upside to look like. It’s not some stupid broken card or anything, but it’s got a very solid floor, if nothing else.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Fungal Blessing is the classic “you were adjacent when you killed me, take a damage” card. With how many fighters you are likely to lose, I think this is about as good of a warband to get a card like this as you could hope for. Voidcursed Thralls can add some consistency here with the move reaction upgrades as well, I like this as a surprise option to support your flex gameplan. The kill from adjacent is the only minor hiccup in the current meta, and I suppose the fact that you can’t react if you get killed by a ping card.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Gang Up is a cumulative +Damage buff for the first attack supported by grots in the next activation, granting +1 per adjacent supporting grot. The adjacency requirement is noteworthy given the ability to put out ranged support via cards like [Stalking Terror], but the new Scurry rules can once again make this pretty nutty. More often than not, playing this card probably results in +2 Damage, which is quite powerful at gambit speed. I am glad they restricted this to only Range 1 though, as it forces you to leave yourself open to a potentially devastating scything in return by surrounding that enemy fighter.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2

Gruesome Grimace is a pseudo-[Skittering Blur]/[Cloud of Midnight] effect, in this case allowing you to protect a single friendly fighter from attack actions in the next activation. While this is not quite as powerful as these two earlier iterations, it can allow you to protect that key Scurry candidate or juiced up grot torpedo, likely forcing your opponent into less desirable targets. This kind of card gets stronger as the game wears on and there are fewer options for your opponent, but a canny Gitz player should be able to consistently get some kind of value out of this one.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

With what is effectively another rangeless ping card, Jealous Hex has gotten a slight touch up in that it no longer requires the chosen fighter to have the highest Wounds characteristic only, they can be tied for it. Not sure if maybe this was how it already got played previously, but the wording is definitely cleaner now. The effect itself is just fantastic though, as now the warband just needs line of sight to pull off essentially two ping gambits at long range. Additionally, unless you’ve whittled it down to just 2-Wound fighters on your opponent’s side, Zarbag should always have the option to cast this.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2

Little Waaagh! is unchanged and is straight-up [Determined Effort]. Always at least a solid card. You might not need it if you’re leaning heavier into pure HO than flex, and for that reason I think it often gets cut in Championship builds, but it will probably make its way into a good number of Nemesis decks.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3

Make Some Noise lets you push each of your squigs up to two hexes. A nice little note on this one is that you don’t have to push each of them since you can choose up to two. However, you can’t just play the card and do nothing, at least one fighter needs to be pushed. These type of “push two fighters 2 hexes” cards are usually staples in horde HO (see [Burst from the Shadows]), but the fact that this is limited to only the squigs is problematic to me, since they are literally the only fighters in your warband that cannot hold objectives. You can maybe try to get cute with [Nothing Special], but there are a lot of push/hold support cards I’m taking before this.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1

Sneaky Step is unchanged and is still in-faction [Sidestep]. [Sidestep] is a good card, therefore, by the transitive property, so is this! There are a lot of insanely good push/hold cards in Championship right now, so there is actually a chance this doesn’t make the cut there, but it should be in every Nemesis build.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3

Sporeblade Sting hits your opponent’s fighter with -1 Dice and -1 Defence until that fighter fails an attack action. While it does require you to be adjacent when you play the card, the effect and persisting condition are extremely attractive to me. While not everyone is on two dice these days, this is a card that can really punish those 2H/3D types, especially if that key fighter has already charged. You can get off multiple activations worth of swings against them (at potentially reduced defensive capability) and they are going to have at least one attack and/or activation that in which they are fairly unlikely to hit. While you don’t have access to much of the 2 Dodge Defence you used to in order to really leverage this, this has a bit of that [Freezing Venom] feel with less severe consequence, but with the upside of not being as easily shaken.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Our Favorites

• Mark: Gruesome Grimace
• Aman: Gruesome Grimace
• Zach: Sporeblade Sting
• George: Gang Up

Upgrades

Starting off our upgrades, we have Dug In There, which is restricted to your shootas, putting the equipped fighter on guard when they are within two hexes of another shoota. If they were still on 2 Dodge, I think you might actually consider this one, but I feel like this needed to have an aura effect if you wanted to take it on just 1-Dodge, as you’re likely going to need lots of crits to defend anyway.

Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2

Fiery Brand is unchanged besides the fact that they have updated the wording to reflect that this is just grievous. I feel like if I want to take any card in this fragile warband that’s restricted to only a single fighter, it needs to be a lot more enticing than a conditional + damage. You’d maybe consider this if it were a restricted [Great Strength], but grievous on only Range 1 for a single fighter is just too inconsistent for me to be worth it.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1

Leashed Spite is a sort of single-use [Cryptic Companion], with potential to miss, but still a big improvement on [Sniffer Spite]. I think that the card breaking should’ve made it fair play to just work all of the time instead of only 66% of the time, but I think you could definitely still make room for it. We’ve already gone on at length about the glory bleed here, so non-objective glory is a great for them, I just wish it were more dependable, although I do like that you don’t necessarily have to wait until the third end phase for this one like with the keys.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Overconfidence is a flat +1 Dice in exchange for -1 Defence. Given that many of your fighters dropped to 1 Defence die anyway, there’s mostly no downside here with the exception of a fighter or two, and even then, you might take that tradeoff if it means better dice fixing on an important kill. Probably taking this one in every Gitz deck now.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 3

Ravenous is another unchanged card and is squig-only, this time for +1 Damage on their Range 1 attacks. I don’t think this saw a whole lot of play in Championship beforehand due to the greater flexibility and upside on cards like [Great Strength] and [Dark Parasites], so I still doubt it’ll be included often, but I could see some merit in it for Nemesis, providing an additional 3 Damage threat besides Snirk. Still, most people know by now to kill the squigs before Drizgit, so they shouldn’t be able to get going too much.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1

The Sharp Stikka is an upgrade on [Really Pointy Stick] and [Nasty Stabba], losing some base damage for improved accuracy and some potentially insane grievous upside. If you really want to manufacture two or 3 supports with this warband, it’s very doable, so there’s a very legitimate chance of this bumping to 3 or 4 damage on a crit. This card just has NPE factory written all over it. You’re going to have a bunch of damage 50-50s where one player is not going to be happy with the result, and there’s really no middle ground. I’m not going to drone on here, but I cannot stress enough how much I dislike the stacking of grievous. Pair this with Gang Up some +Dice cards and Mollog players will be thanking their lucky stars that Mighty is a thing now.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 1

Sneakiest Sneak is your classic “take an action for a teleport” card, in this case dumping you in an edge hex and gaining a Move token. I historically have been down on teleports that don’t come out at gambit or reaction speed (or Shadow Ambush), and this one is no different. It’s just not worth an action, especially when Scurry provides you so much activation economy.

Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 1

Sneaky Shuffler is basically a 4-fighter restricted [Quickening Greaves]/[Ethereal Immunity] combo. While you can’t use the push at the beginning of the round, end of round is the prime window for this push anyway to help your HO gameplan. The defensive buff is some nice little gravy on top, but is not such a huge deal without 2 Defence. Even with the fighter restrictions though, I think this is really solid, I think it quite possibly even merits a coveted Championship upgrade slot.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Squinty Glarin’ is Zarbag-restricted and really turns your Scurry up to 11. If being able to use it even when you already had already had a Move token somehow wasn’t enough for you, how about being able to use it no matter how many tokens (Move or Charge) you have? I think it’s always been a point of etiquette for people taking high movement economy warbands to tournaments to be quick in their decision-making process out of consideration for their opponent. That is pretty much out the window with this card. I think even the most experienced of players is going to have some serious analysis paralysis with this down due to the sheer number of options it opens up. This plus the change to how Move tokens work in general is going to make it very difficult for opponents to stop Gitz from positional scoring. In conjunction with a couple of the powerful gambit spells the warband has access to, I think Zarbag has become a very high-priority kill.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2

Lastly, we have Very Hungry, which is squig-restricted +1 Move. I could forgive them for this if it were just a reprint of an original card, but honestly what is this doing in a modern Rivals deck? This would still be bad even without a fighter restriction. Upgrades that give +1 Move need to do something else significant to even be worth considering, let alone ones that can only be used on a couple of fighters. Even at +2 Move, the fighter restriction would make sure this never sees the light of day.

Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2

Our Favorites

• Mark: Sneaky Shuffler
• Aman: Sneaky Shuffler
• Zach: Leashed Spite
• George: Squinty Glarin’

Conclusions

As I mentioned at the top of the article, I am not really a Gitz enjoyer myself, but as an outside perspective, they look better to me now than they were, maybe marginally so in Championship but significantly so in Nemesis. The change to Scurry, especially if you get Squinty Glarin’ online, I think is plenty to make up for the loss of most of their 2-Dodge Defence, especially when you factor in that they’re back to their 3-glory inspire. The difficulty in inspiring Snirk I think does make for an overall nerf to him, but having him as a potential 3 Damage beatstick is a really nice secondary option now. Overall, I think they’ve had a fairly light hand here, and that’s a good thing. Gitz were always on the precipice of just dominating (as we saw with the Nethermaze season), and even this may be enough to push them over the edge of dependable HO scoring. In Nemesis, I still like the Fearsome Fortress pairing the most, as you can easily start squigs on feature tokens for the purposes of [Bold Sortie] and [Earthworks], as well as leverage your insane mobility for consistent end phase scoring in [Conquered Domain], [Stockpile], and [Underground Fortress]. I do think Voidcursed Thralls is also worth a look, as the free moves synchronize extremely well with Scurry, especially with Squinty Glarin’. [Uncounted Cost] is about as close as you get to a universal version of [Pure Carnage] in Nemesis, and [Threatening Presence] should basically be free on most board configurations. Finally, and I think I’ll be saying this quite frequently soon, I think the new Rimelocked Relics deck breathes a lot of life into hold/flex strategies like this and is certainly a good candidate here. While I won’t be playing these guys much myself, I think Gitz players have plenty to look forward to, especially if you’re looking at the Nemesis format, where they’ve struggled due to having such a poor original faction deck. Let’s see what the rest of the crew has to say about them:

Zach: Goblins! Gitz still hold the distinction of being the only 9 model warband after all these years, and now they have the deck to make a good showing in Nemesis. I was really interested to see what if anything was changed in the faction, and I find myself pleasantly surprised with the update! I think the team is now just chock full of interesting and unique tools, even on top of what it had before, and I love this trend of just giving under-utilized Upgrades as flat abilities on Fighters. Very excited how these little gribblies perform now.

Aman: I played a lot of Gitz back in the day and so I write this with mixed emotions. While I am sad roughly half the fighters lost their coveted 2 dodge, the changes to Scurry, their inspiration (a revert) and the access to an early, if unreliable, source of 3 damage makes for a very interesting design. We’ve really leaned into the hold objective goal now more than ever and I’m here for it. I’m particularly interested in figuring out how to toe the line between being overly aggressive with Snirk, Zarbag, Drizgit, and his squigs and committing only when absolutely necessary. Gitz will always give up a ton of bounty, but I think this iteration of them have some excellent tools to mitigate that. Hopefully!

George: Another old favorite, this is a warband that I think requires a harder look as first takes may be misleading! While the warband paid a hefty stat-tax on the defence dice of the smaller goblins and Snirk got harder to inspire, you gain massive benefits from the updated Scurry ability as well as slightly more useability on uninspired Snirk. On the whole, much like the Sepulchral guard before them, (some) raw stat value was traded for massive mechanical synergies to support a hold objective playstyle.

Thanks for reading and best of luck on YOUR Path to—oh dear there’s Gitz everywhere—Glory!