Help me choose Farrow or Crocs?

[Adept Rahn]

I recently got the new Minions book and i am torn between which faction to
choose.
I really like the look of both factions and both look very good to use in game
terms.
Im after a few people just to lend me there knowledge of how either plays.

Thanks.
Chris.

[Reemule]

Crocs have more viability right now. The have a more balanced and better force to pull from at this time.

Thats not to say it doesn't change or perhaps even becomes more pronounced with another hordes book release.

[Gramut]

Crocs eat pigs.
It is the natural order of things.
You have to preserve the natural order.

[Halfhoot]

I don't really know much about the Farrow, but the Gaters are a very fun force to play. They're quite tough, fairly fast, and can put out a lot of melee attacks. The Posse is some of the best front line infantry in the game. When you play with Barnabas, they're usually sitting on 16 defense, 18 armor engaged with 8 wounds. And a full posse can put out 10 power 13 attacks... and those attacks can be re-rolled if they miss if you want. They are incredible.

Barnabas himself has the swamp templates that can be a great denial for non-pathfinding armies almost ensuring you get the charge off. They are also good at being anti-ranged. Overall it's quite a fun faction where you are running across the field with a good chance of getting the first charge off and then tearing people apart with melee.

That's not to say Farrow are not just as fun... I just don't know much about them so I was giving you my perspective on the Gaters.

[mikethefish]

The one thing that I really personally enjoy about playing Farrow is that both casters have very good answers to high-Arm targets right now. I come from Mercs, and dabble a little in Gatormen, and both of those factions tend to struggle against high-Arm jacks and such. Oh sure the dwarf mercs can break things, but that's more an anomaly than anything else. It's very refreshing to break out the Thornfall army and just let some War Hogs smash apart anything that moves.

So if your local meta tends to revolve around jack-intensive armies, you might want to consider Thornfall over the other. Just a thought.

[Reemule]

I've been playing the pigs extensively. They are very fun, and extremely enjoyable. Right now you can't lose playing Dr. Arkadius. Either you win with him, or you lost with the worst caster in the game, and at least you had the stones to try with him.

[PMAvers]

So if your local meta tends to revolve around jack-intensive armies, you might want to consider Thornfall over the other. Just a thought.

Or if your meta has a lot of tough/anti-magic stuff. Calaban seems to fall apart a bit when running up against Menoth, especially since any models with Self Sacrifice that are killed won't be triggering some of his shenanigans.

[MagnustheJust]

I recently got the new Minions book and i am torn between which faction to
choose.
I really like the look of both factions and both look very good to use in game
terms.
Im after a few people just to lend me there knowledge of how either plays.

Thanks.
Chris.

Gators are not very subtle, but do have some subtle elements to their play style. Mostly, they just go forward and eat things! The subtle parts are in their solos and the Bog Trogs, as well as some strategies you can use with their warlocks.

The Bacon Brigade runs similar to the Gators, except that you are shooting the crap out of the enemy till your Warhogs get in there!

Barnabas plays very smash-mouth, while Calaban is very tricksey.

Carver is a beatstick and a half, but can go be sneaky. The Doc is uber squishy, but almost as tricksey as Calaban.


If you are truly having a hard time choosing, ask one of the locals in your area if they will let you field their army to see if you like it.

Failing that... Clear you mind of all thought, take a slow deep breathe, and then run with the first one that pops into your head.

Failing that... Just go Pokemon on their arses!! Get'em all!

[cllone464]

well gators have the most options right now but pigs have the 2 best locks for minions atm running Arkadius with 5 warhogs is pretty sweet. Pigs have more shooty and can have good armour with carver but gators have base good armour and throwing your wrastlers arounds is hilarious. Its pretty much up to what you think will run best with your playstyle

[Sevwall]

Just read the above post. To play pigs you need to buy at least 3 warhogs, and you might want 4. With Gators, you will never need more than 2 of any beast. A year down the line, when more stuff comes out, and you are saddled with 2 useless warhogs, you will be sad you chose pigs ;).

[Neutralyze]

just play crocs until minions next release.

[Sevwall]

Here's the real difference. Farrow are a terrible faction led by one of the better warlocks in the game. They rely on the power of the warlock to gain legitimacy and playability. Therefor, the only real concern with new releases is the new warlocks. If the warlock is merely acceptable, the weak faction behind him will drag him down and make it rally hard to win games. The new beasts/unit entries are of concern, but unless they are mostrously powerful, you will still have a mostly bad faction.

Gators have great models. The infantry is some of the best in the game, comprised of two minion units that people actually take in faction armies (unlike Brigands). They have 3 beasts that you will want to take (instead of 1), and two of the animi are highly useful. The solo selection includes one of the most badass combat solos in the game (Totem Hunter), and the only anti-magic solo available to Hordes (the Thrullg). It alos has easy LOS blocking with swamp gobbers. FInally, the warlocks are powerful, if not as blatantly over the top like Carver. Therefor, even a mediocre new caster will be playable, and will open up the faction quite well.

Thats the situation. Gators are an open faction, with potential. Pigs got stepped on by Carver, and his presence will warp the faction for most of its existence.

[crashg1972]

First off. BOTH MINION FACTIONS ARE FUN TO PLAY!!!

Secondly. I play both! That's my first suggestion. If you are bent on playing one or the other, here's my breakdown.

The Gators have a fun hard-hitting close game, on the flip side is they have one of the weakest ranged games of any army with only one type of solo, one character solo, and one warbeast capable of any ranged ttacks. They do sport good variety to troops that are all good in their respective roles. Their heavy infantry is on par with some of the best in the game. Both warlocks are fairly straight-forward to play. The Gators do have a better variety of Warbeasts. The main difference being the ranged critter for the Gators is their second heavy. So, till that gets released in a little under 10 days, they are lacking that additional ranged offensiveness. Their beasts offer little in the line of poseability so duplications are a bit stiff looking.

The Pigs have a more advantageous ranged game versus many other armies but not like Cygnar-spectacular... yet! The Farrow do require some redundancy in purchases. But what you are getting is a lot of solid really good troops that are hard to kill when dug-in, and with combined attacks can do a tremendous amount of damage. Most armies seem to include between 20 and 30 Brigands and 6 or 12 Bone-grinders. Currently you do require 2 to 3 War Hogs and 1 or 2 Gun Boars. But the Hogs relatively pose-able, so you're not producing precisely the same model 3 times over with a little creativity. Carver is a very straight forward caster with a mostly offensive armamentarium of spells and abilities. Their flip-side warlock seems to be quite the opposite, but yet is very fun to play and offers some tremendous abilities as a second-warlock.

Good luck finding the core Gatormen units for a while. Seems production was lacking considerably in anticipation for these armies and the Posse and the Trogs became about as rare as hen's-teeth overnight. Farrow are a bit easier to come by both by ordering, or people willing to part with their used units. I managed to cobble together a full army of Farrow from friends and associates in about 3 days, as opposed to 4 months-and-still-counting for my Gators.

Are both armies competitive? Yes. Very much so.

So far I've seen more Gator armies in production than I've seen Farrow, about 5 to 1 in our local area. You might want to take that in account if you don't want to be playing the army du-jour that everybody else is. There is something kind of decadent about playing the pigs as well. They're dirty, they stink, and they smash a lot of face!

[Sygerrik]

Their heavy infantry is the best in the game.

fixed dat for you

Seriously, there's a reason Circle, Legion and Skorne take Gators over their in-faction equivalents all the time. Having access to in-Faction buffs makes Gators stupid good.

[crashg1972]

Its being quoted a lot that the "Gators are the best heavy infantry in the game." And that willl last precisely till the next rules update or next release comes out.

*LAUGH* Well I do have a problem saying 'X' is THE BEST in the game!!! It turns into an Apostate War of Relative Subjectivity at that point. Everybody has some reason for saying theirs is the best for some reason or another, and I like seeing players take pride in the forces available to them. Far better than them crying the bemoaning the insufficiencies of their chosen army.

They are mighty fine troops though, and the sight of any number of them coming at your army is enough to cause that mamallian reptile-fear response to come welling up to the forefront! Which is why I got six units ready to enter the fray!

[Lord Carver BMMD Esq. III]

Well I do have a problem saying 'X' is THE BEST in the game!!! It turns into an Apostate War of Relative Subjectivity at that point.

I'm tempted to sig that.

[crashg1972]

Be my guest, I'd be honored! :)

[SOUPlex]

To help you out, I'm going to walk you through what made me choose my faction, and why. When the 2nd to last update to the MkII field test came out, it was obvious Farrow and Gatormen were going to be fleshed out more...awesome right? I already loved Wrong Eye & Snapjaw for both their awesome models, and well...I live in south Louisianna, and their gators...'Nuff said. When the Farrow were getting all their shiny releases, and Gatormen were just hopeful specks in the distance, I held out to not get the (awesome) Warhog & Lord Carver models. Now with them both (mostly) out? Farrow have the better looking models, and I'm one of 8 people at my FLGS playing Blindwater Congregation, as apposed to 2 playing Thornfall Alliance. The only thing that keeps me from selling and turning to the pigs, is this: It's a matter of eat or be eatten, and fluff aside, gators have Snacking and farrow have Bacon. One eats, the other IS eaten...

[RevolverAdamska]

Just read the above post. To play pigs you need to buy at least 3 warhogs, and you might want 4. With Gators, you will never need more than 2 of any beast. A year down the line, when more stuff comes out, and you are saddled with 2 useless warhogs, you will be sad you chose pigs

Here's the real difference. Farrow are a terrible faction led by one of the better warlocks in the game. They rely on the power of the warlock to gain legitimacy and playability. Therefor, the only real concern with new releases is the new warlocks. If the warlock is merely acceptable, the weak faction behind him will drag him down and make it rally hard to win games. The new beasts/unit entries are of concern, but unless they are mostrously powerful, you will still have a mostly bad faction.

Gators have great models. The infantry is some of the best in the game, comprised of two minion units that people actually take in faction armies (unlike Brigands). They have 3 beasts that you will want to take (instead of 1), and two of the animi are highly useful. The solo selection includes one of the most badass combat solos in the game (Totem Hunter), and the only anti-magic solo available to Hordes (the Thrullg). It alos has easy LOS blocking with swamp gobbers. FInally, the warlocks are powerful, if not as blatantly over the top like Carver. Therefor, even a mediocre new caster will be playable, and will open up the faction quite well.

Thats the situation. Gators are an open faction, with potential. Pigs got stepped on by Carver, and his presence will warp the faction for most of its existence.

Saint words, totaly agree, this is why i'm w8ting till next release for Farrow :)
I do not understand why PP chose to unbalance those two race so much, about release, but i've faith :)

[Soul King]

thats why I was disappointed with the farrow in the Minions Book

I was expecting another warbeast, a unit (we got a pretty cool one, so I was happy there), and some solos, but we got none of those

in addition, the misc. additions for thornfall are all character solos, meaning that I can only take one of each, and that it takes away even more viability, as one has an animosity for the other, and three fulfill similar roles (Alten, Pendrake, and Orrik)

the final thing that just annoyed me was that calaban can take grinders...I almost qqed

[Silopolis]

Yeah, the Farrow are cool as hell, but I have trouble taking the plunge knowing that there's only two different warbeast choices out there. It feels a little as if Blindwater got a lot more dev time than Thornfall, since Blindwater got what, at least one new solo and an additional heavy?

[YabaBaga]

Farrow are a terrible faction led by one of the better warlocks in the game. They rely on the power of the warlock to gain legitimacy and playability. Therefor, the only real concern with new releases is the new warlocks. If the warlock is merely acceptable, the weak faction behind him will drag him down and make it rally hard to win games. The new beasts/unit entries are of concern, but unless they are mostrously powerful, you will still have a mostly bad faction.

Thats the situation. Gators are an open faction, with potential. Pigs got stepped on by Carver, and his presence will warp the faction for most of its existence.

While I think Sevwall is probably correct I would like to give another perspective on how things look for the different factions. While Carver might be top-notch, I think Sevwal is overplaying his overall effect on the farrow. His two most 'warping' spells only affect his battlegroup, so basically they'll limit what kind of SPD and ARM we'll likely see from future warbeasts. For giant pigs, I don't think SPD 4 or 5 and ARM 18 is terribly bad. About Carver's largest effect will be that Farrow will probably never get any infantry with multiple melee attacks, although even that's not certain. The War Hog will probably be the standard melee heavy for the Farrow, much like the Dire Troll Mauler or Titan Gladiator; they might eventually get a super-heavy like the Bronzeback but I think the War Hog will always be a staple.

It's the Gators that I think will have more complications in the future. Unless we see weeny-gators, I think they'll always be lacking for infantry choices. Without access to firearms, their weapon choices will also be limited. I can see Bog Trogs with bows (probably similar to Kossites) and Gators with spears (similar to Ogrun Warspears) but what else can they get? Any melee unit will be compared with the Gator Posse. And for warbeasts? With Parasite lingering around, I heavily doubt that any heavy will get a P+S above 17 or 18. And any light warbeast will have to be compared to the Bull Snapper for points.

My conclusion is that right now Gators are better off than Farrow but I think the main difference is that the Farrow can look forward to their best stuff while the Gators probably already have theirs.

[MagnustheJust]

I have had about a half dozen games against the Bacon Brigade, and I so strongly disagree with what Sevwall said, to the point I think he's blowing smoke out his nether regions!!

The Farrow are ridiculously effective at what they do, and I had a pitched battle every time against them with the Congregation. Dice rolls only factored in to the equation about 15% of the time...

If you want to get better with the Farrow, pick up some military strategy books that detail covering fire and flanking. These two tactics are their keys to victory.

[felixcat]

Conjecture is not fact. I've no idea what might be in store for Gators but already they are a viable pact to field. My problem with Gators is that are fast becoming a common sight - so common that most players are well versed in all of their tricks and nuances and are prepared to counter them. They really exploded onto the scene. They are fast becoming the most popular force at our LGS. Not that this is inherently bad but I picked them because i wanted something that was not going to be seen as often and now I'm looking like a follower of the latest trend. You know - "not another Gator player." That said there was a shift at one time towards Khador at the shop, then Legion and then Cryx and Ret. I foresee a lot of Gator forces up for sale in about three months when people move on to the next "new thing".

What I like about them though is that I found I could build a list with every one of their options for a lot less money then the established factions and still have competitive lists with two decent casters. I'll admit I never was tempted to play Farrow. I just don't see them as a very good force. No outstanding solos, mediocre infantry ... well my opinion anyway. Now I've only been playing a short time. I transitioned from 40k and fantasy because frankly I'm having more fun with WarmaHordes so I'm not by any definition expert at the game although I've years of wargaming behind me and the rules are pretty easy to follow for my Gators. The fact that I've been able to win about 40% of my matches as a newcomer makes me believe that Gators are indeed a good choice though.

[Sevwall]

Were those half dozen games against Carver ;).

Carver makes them good. So if you want to play one caster forever, play Pigs.

[HRViolation]

Here's the real difference. Farrow are a terrible faction led by one of the better warlocks in the game. They rely on the power of the warlock to gain legitimacy and playability. Therefor, the only real concern with new releases is the new warlocks. If the warlock is merely acceptable, the weak faction behind him will drag him down and make it rally hard to win games. The new beasts/unit entries are of concern, but unless they are mostrously powerful, you will still have a mostly bad faction.

Gators have great models. The infantry is some of the best in the game, comprised of two minion units that people actually take in faction armies (unlike Brigands). They have 3 beasts that you will want to take (instead of 1), and two of the animi are highly useful. The solo selection includes one of the most badass combat solos in the game (Totem Hunter), and the only anti-magic solo available to Hordes (the Thrullg). It alos has easy LOS blocking with swamp gobbers. FInally, the warlocks are powerful, if not as blatantly over the top like Carver. Therefor, even a mediocre new caster will be playable, and will open up the faction quite well.

Thats the situation. Gators are an open faction, with potential. Pigs got stepped on by Carver, and his presence will warp the faction for most of its existence.

Wise.

However...

The War Hogs are perhaps the coolest looking model PP has produced.
The Blackhide Wrastler is perhaps the worst looking model PP has produced (He is a member of Disney's Country Bears show and comes out after fat Trixie descends from the ceiling).
The Gatormen models which you will want two units of, are very bland (at best).

Now Barnabas and Calaban look fantastic and Snapjaw is totally awesome (but so is Brine, perhaps a little less awesome than Snapjaw).

[Exemplar's_Gaze]

You think the Wrastler is a great beast? It is mediocre with a great animus.

The Warhog is a great beast.

Granted, I think Farrow got a little hosed in the Minions book, but I blame that on Carver being too proud and thinking he is too good to take any help from the Predator.

And Arcadius in a good player's hands is scary indeed, so I wouldn't dismiss him.

I think Farrow have two great options with Carver and the Warhog, whereas Gators have two great options with Barnabas and the Posse. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

[MagnustheJust]

I agree completely with what Exemplar's Gaze has said, although with one additional caveat...

I would put Calaban in the same groups as the Doctor - scary good in the right player's hands!!

[Zenzi]

go Gators............................................ ....... wait nvm Go pigs us gators need more bacon lol.

[RevolverAdamska]

thats why I was disappointed with the farrow in the Minions Book

I was expecting another warbeast, a unit (we got a pretty cool one, so I was happy there), and some solos, but we got none of those

in addition, the misc. additions for thornfall are all character solos, meaning that I can only take one of each, and that it takes away even more viability, as one has an animosity for the other, and three fulfill similar roles (Alten, Pendrake, and Orrik)

the final thing that just annoyed me was that calaban can take grinders...I almost qqed

It is true about no presence of tier inside the Min book?

[Fellio]

Hm; the gators have more options. If you pick up pigs, you pretty much have a set list, and everyone's list looks the same.
I mean, its a good list, but kind of boring.

I love playing the pigs though; the brigands are tough and deadly (though, this is under Carver...), and the War Hogs are some of the best beasts in the game (also under Carver w/ Mobility. I mean, Forced Evolution is good, but I think it just adds additional fuel to the fire, rather than Mobility, which is the match to light the fire.)