I am just starting an Ogre Kingdoms army (love the models) and I have a question about look out gnoblars. How come no one takes them? Aside from the fact they don't wanna take banners? (100pts lost for fleeing)

It seems to me that the enemy will just cannon your characters as they will not benefit from the look out sir rule without look outs. (most players seem to field squads of 3) They would also be vunerable to any other from of missle fire.

Can someone explain to why this is or isn't a probelm?

Ussually the situation is that you are toughness 5, 6 if you have maw seeker and that you have 4 or 5 wounds. With a statline like that protecting you people tend to just take the risk. In fact with regular missile fire we would prefer shots to go on our higher toughness characters. The main reason why I don't play with Look Out Gnoblars is that I never put my characters in units. I find that their strengths are more easily utilized as a seperate unit where they have options open to them. Butchers can turn to see anything without penalty for brain gobbler and bone cruncher as well as the bang stick. Tyrants can spread the leadership without worrying and Bruisers have the option of combats to join. I love the concept of look out gnoblars but my characters wouldn't take advantage of them very often. Wait until I finally play against an army with a few cannons though. Then I might start crying and wish I had a look out gnoblar.

I take 1 LoG in my army. If need be I will put multiple chars in that unit. Problem I have found is that when facing armies with at least one template weapon warmachine is that there is usually multiples. Meaning leaving the character out in the open he will be targeted more than one. One LoG is about all you need. After the second turn the chars can pop out of the units and do what they do because by then your usually looking at combat and they should be safe.

IMO People that say that they use terrain to shield their chars are limiting themselves in flexibility of deployment. I don't want the terrain to dictate my deployment. Besides a good opponet will be able to exploit that and I don't like starting at a disadvantage.

having a LoG lets me deploy fairly freely by giving me the option to hide from warmachines even on boards with little terrain. Just remember it only protects you from templates. It won't protect you from non template shooting because unelss you have 5 or more rank and file ogres it will be randomized. That means if your tyrant is in a unit with 3 ogres every fourth shot from a repeater boltthrowers, organ guns, salamanders, handgunners, archers, etc will hit your characters even though the are in a unit with a LoG.

More than one is a waste of points. Actually more than one banner probably is too in most situations.

I think that the main reason there are no LOG is that most lists run very few if any standards. With the current wisdom being that Ogres are best utilized in MSU it comes down to A) being pt. cost prohibitive to buy standards for the units(3 standards with Gnoblar is the same a a Gorger) and, B) VP prohibitive because whenever your unit flees it drops those VP's in the middle of the battlefield. If you are planning to put your characters in one big unit(DeathStar approach) then there are enough bodies for LOS without needing the gnoblar. So, while they may look good on paper they do not really add much to your army.

I think that the main reason there are no LOG is that most lists run very few if any standards. With the current wisdom being that Ogres are best utilized in MSU it comes down to A) being pt. cost prohibitive to buy standards for the units(3 standards with Gnoblar is the same a a Gorger) and, B) VP prohibitive because whenever your unit flees it drops those VP's in the middle of the battlefield. If you are planning to put your characters in one big unit(DeathStar approach) then there are enough bodies for LOS without needing the gnoblar. So, while they may look good on paper they do not really add much to your army.


Just to clarify on the DEATH STAR. There needs to be more than 5 Rank 'n File in the unit to get a LOS role. A unit of 4 Bulls with 3 butchers and Tyrant, while still having more than 5 models, will not provide a LOS. It will however help when randomizing hits from non-template shooting.

Furhtermore with a large unit of ogres it's also easier to take out mulitple ogres with one shot. Lets say you have 8 Ogres. I would think you would put these in two ranks of 4. 1 cannon at a slight angle will be able to hit at least 3 ogres with one shot. Lets assume the worst and they all wounded at D6 wounds. chances are that's 3 dead ogres and there's your 100 vp's from fleeing. 2 cannons and we might be talking about 6 dead ogres.

Remember the only bonus VP's you give up is if your unit flees from combat. Unless I am mistaken you don't give up points for fleeing a charge unless you a run down.

your a little off kobolster. Lookout gnoblars allow you to take lookoutsir with three models (special ogre thing). Also the original unit must consist of said ammount of models. Characters do not count for this limit. Sucks but true. Im not home atm but ill site reference when i get home

Originally Posted by kbolster12345
Lets say you have 8 Ogres. I would think you would put these in two ranks of 4. 1 cannon at a slight angle will be able to hit at least 3 ogres with one shot.

Actually if look at pg89 a cannon firing at the frontage of unit of ogres would only hit 2 models. 1 per rank.

@kbolster: -I would not consider 4 Bulls with Characters to be Death Star. I would say 8(at least) troops plus any characters. You are looking for a US of around 30 or more to be sure of outnumber, even if you are fighting against two opposing units.
-Cannons only hit one model/rank
-Standards are only dropped if defeated and fleeing from CC or destroyed in CC. The point is still the same. With units of 3 we will be losing units, we are counting on number of units to pull through combat via flanks and multiple charges.

@Loki: I think that kbolster is referring to having Look out Sir without a Lookout Gnoblar. Then we would still need 5 models in the original unit before any character additions.

@kbolster: -I would not consider 4 Bulls with Characters to be Death Star. I would say 8(at least) troops plus any characters. You are looking for a US of around 30 or more to be sure of outnumber, even if you are fighting against two opposing units.
With this you still need to get first tunr to avoid cannon sniping. Any Empire player with 2 cannons (and there usually are at least 2 around here) will get the original number below 5 first turn. That means turn two you better be in combat because 2 cannon shot are coming your way with no place to hide.

-Cannons only hit one model/rank
I will look this up but I thought cannons were considered a template in which a straight line off to one side could clip the front corner of one model and hit a back corner of another. I will check this out when I get home to my BRB.


-Standards are only dropped if defeated and fleeing from CC or destroyed in CC. The point is still the same. With units of 3 we will be losing units, we are counting on number of units to pull through combat via flanks and multiple charges.
Right. That's kind of my point. So chances of loosing that 1 unit with LOG are pretty slim. You can avoid unfavoralbe combats by fleeing and not drop the banner.



@Loki: I think that kbolster is referring to having Look out Sir without a Lookout Gnoblar. Then we would still need 5 models in the original unit before any character additions.
Exactly what I was talking about. Yeah I think that if you re-read it it's pretty clear. I was stating exactly what you said. I was also pointing out that it does help if facing off against units that need to randomize the shots between RnF ogres and characters. Then it hleps having more chars because it spreads the number of hits out.

With this you still need to get first tunr to avoid cannon sniping. Any Empire player with 2 cannons (and there usually are at least 2 around here) will get the original number below 5 first turn. That means turn two you better be in combat because 2 cannon shot are coming your way with no place to hide.

Agreed, which I think is why DeathStar is not used by many. Even Boltthrowers can pick apart large units like that.

Right. That's kind of my point. So chances of loosing that 1 unit with LOG are pretty slim. You can avoid unfavoralbe combats by fleeing and not drop the banner.

If you only have one unit with LOG. If you are running 4 units of Guts with a character in each unit that is 4 Standards and 4 LOG. I guess it depends where you want your characters to be. If you want them all in one unit then that works fine. If they are spread out then you need one for each unit.

Sounds like we are thinking similarly. It just depends on how you are setting up your units and where you place your characters that would dictate if the LOG(s) are worth it or not.