Swamp Troll

Man! I love my swamp troll... he killed quite a few casters for me... doomy 2 rushed and fly up the board, hit the caster with a tongue, drag him in then go to town... I really like the animus too...

I use it more often than one would think. It is not super great but it has a few things going for it. It can often reach two infantry guys and box them to death, and then shoot its tongue at a third. If you boost hit on all three attacks, you can often kill 3 infantry dudes in a round and that is decent.

It has pathfinder, so it can get places, and it can hide in forests.

It forces the opponent to at least remember that it COULD drag his caster out of place.

It is good against light jacks, especially cygnar chargers who do not like being engaged. They can be dragged.

Even without the animus it requires serious effort to kill one. Could be used to offer up for a piece trade.


Then you have the corner cases:
Gunnbjorn can give it snipe, guided fire and kill shot. it becomes a really good infantry killer then.

Doomy 3 can allow it to cast its animus for free, and make him really hard to kill for a round (seriously, with spiny growth and sprint animus both being reduced to cost 1 in CID, i do not see why Swarm should remain at cost 2...)

Borka 2 can give it counter charge. It it has its animus up, and then counter charges something, you can move the -2 to hit bubble to a place where the opponent did not want/expect it. (Winter Trolls can do something similar with him and it is great!)

Calandra can really skew the defense making it super hard to kill. Very good for contesting.


There are basically three set ups where i consider the swamp troll.

In PoD when i have 5 heavies and can only afford a cheap light to fill out the points.
In PoD when i have 4 heavies, and "split up" the 5th heavy in to two lights to have more game against infantry.
In other themes when i have a King, and want a cheap second beast as a fury bank while still being able to take 60 points of infantry/battle engines.


All of this adds up to the point where i have a swamp troll in maybe 30% of my games. That is WAY higher than one would assume looking at its stats.

I have one in my minimal battlegroup under Hunters grim, kriel company (along with a bomber). Love the model and the drag is something the opposing caster can't ignore (especially when grim hasn't popped the feat yet) and the same is true for supporting models given 13-20" of threat. I wouldn't be opposed to run mainly for assassination with KD on the warweagon's pie-plate and pingpong-lickytongueing a caster to death with a horde of swamptrolls, just for shits and giggles.

The animus is really good too, if I had 8 points that I could freely spend that alone is worth consideration (not that I ever have 8 points to spare).

For me it's more a question of what not to like about this beast.

He seems pretty underwhelming at first glance but at 8 points he brings some pretty decent utility. Dual-attack and drag are great for getting to hard to reach solos, against heavy infantry he can pull the unit leader out of formation really screwing up their next activation, I love him for hunting lights like arc nodes or chargers, and he provides a decent cheap beast to initiate trades or as he can sit in zones contesting/controlling forcing your opponent to commit to killing it.

Sounds like you've got a dirty swamp troll.  I do declare!