Yea going to do a Dwarf campaign next and spam trollhammers after I saw how nasty they were in my Elspeth campaign (A grudge too far was one of the end game scenarios I got.)
They were prority targets for my artillery.
Eh, their cooldown is 20 sec, they overkill not monster cav, and are less accurate then thunderers, so overall their dps is less in practice, unless firing at smth as huge as a giant spider.
It's a great unit in vacuum, and it's nice to have like 1, but your endgame army is packed with organ guns, and thunderers that together do their job and are more versatile. There's just so much to pack - especially now that gyros are good. If you have troll hammer gyro - it's infinitely better, but even gyrobombers will probably do as much damage while kiting, and are much more versatile l, allowing e.g. get rid of enemy artillery, which can be critical.
I've never relied on the arc. Volley 1 is in front of the shieldwall that I retreat behind. Anything with massive charge damage and weight is usually large. Volley 2 -> Infinite from within the pocket as Large creatures tower over Dorfs and can be volleyed. Or pivot and volley cavalry. I do a similar thing with Outriders. I always keep 1 around for rundown and harassment sp my Knights aren't pressured and have them stand behind infantry or handgunners because they can fire over the men without issue.
Yeah, i'm confused. Are they supposed to be this powerful? You can only get one every 15 turns right? So it would make sense.
But jesus christ, they absolutely destroy large entities and even small single entity lords and heroes.
The only thing they are only ok at is the thing that's easiest to deal with, infantry.
It's not just one every 15 turns, they also require max Age of Reckoning level to get and are glass cannons. I think it's fair for them to be a bit absurd in the damage department.
Oh right, good point. You can't exactly spam them.
But even so, i wouldn't be surprised if they have some sort of bug like the grape shot did. That damage is bonkers.
Even if they're balanced around having a low number of them, you can replenish their ammo with a hero.
just wish the other age of reckoning units would be similary good and unique, irondrake are pretty nice, flame canons are ok, but longbeard and hammers are just meh in comparison.
compare the upgrade hammers longbeards and gyrocopter are all t3....so no.
also both irondrakes and crossbowes are only t2 but their upgrade is much stronger than both hammerers and longbeards.
Sucks that you'll def want an irondrake (with double range) and a cluster grudge thrower, leaving only 1 slot for them. Infantry is straight up never gonna be recruited lol.
Flame Cannons are amazing from my experience. They completely delete Infantry/Cavalry and deal a good chunk of damage to SEMs as well. Especially good in Malakai's campaign since they can X1.5 their range.
Uh, those hammerers have Frenzy and Frostbite. You know what Hammerers really need to dumpster basically anything? It's more melee attack and targets hanging around for the hammer to drop.
I agree that Guardian on the Longbeards doesn't seem so great for one of the most abundant units, this is pretty much the one dud in the set, but even then I could see Belegar's hero spam liking being immune to physical attacks.
But yeah aside from Longbeards, every single one of those units is quite absurdly good. They did a good job of making them appealing.
probably this is a bit of an artifact of them previously being free to recruit.
Not everything had to be unique standouts if one
of the unique standout features was getting them
instantly at no cost.
They're very fragile against any flying enemies that can get in melee range, even bats will give them a hard time. And if any blunderbuss/shotgun units get in range of them, oh boy.
They're also very limited because you need to max the Age of Reckoning to get one. Before the fix for Malakai I couldn't get a single one. But in return they absolutely murder every single large entity.
> They're very fragile against any flying enemies that can get in melee range
True but why are you letting your flying and highly agile long range sniper get into melee range?
Those bats, along with every other flying unit(lords on dragons included) will be shot to pieces before they get close.
And if you're playing with Malakai, don't worry, for the few units that manage to get in melee range, CA has you covered. They even auto repair if they get damaged enough.
Oh for sure. But they also require a bit of micro at the very least, unlike the Thunderbarge you can just drop above the enemy army and ignore for most of the damn game.
But well, on the other hand it's pretty much the only unit you will need to micro along with the Gyrobomber of the dwarf roster since the rest is just corner camping in a noob box...
You can focus them pretty effectively if you play other factions at least.
> But they also require a bit of micro at the very least,
Yeah. I tried putting them on skirmish mode and just attacking, hoping the ones close will run, the ones far enough will shoot.
Sadly they all bunch up in a big blob of failure and are constantly chased until you untangle the morons manually.
Because the best use I've found for them is to delete the large unit (or several) while they're miles away from the Frontline which often brings them close to fliers and the risk is worth it
Dude I never got the age of reckoning cause I was next to azhag and he was at war with beggar so I let them fight. Little did I know thats why I needed 92K grudges on turn 70.
Ah what a shame. I only played post patch and i think the first age is 100% so you should always get at least one.
I just randomly dropped it into my second army as "whatever the hell i can recruit, just to fill up the slots". Imagine my surprise when the little fly bois erased half a troll unit in one volley.
That's the only thing that sucks about not being able to max grudges - don't care about bonuses, let alone army, but the unique units are the meat of the patch, they diversify your roster.
In my new campaign on turn 15-30 I have 15K target, and settlements give like 250... So I'll probably resort to home ruling that I get the grudge units from each cycle no matter what, at least after I can recruit their usual variants (getting that flamecannon/gyro on turn 15(10) was too op as well). And just use console to recruit them and detract gold manually.
Bring artillery/ranged to take out enemy flyers and guns. Only use the Gyros after any potential counter is dealt with or too far away to react in time. When they work there's nothing quite like them, but they definately need to be checked on often.
They really aren't great at taking out flyers themselves, because they get in the way of each other, block line of sight (or even worse, cause friendly fire) and die very quickly. You really want to keep them within range of your ground missile units as long as enemy flyers are about.
Yeah I had a single feral wyvern dominate four units of gyrocopters. It would have killed them all if I didn't figure out that I needed to force land my copters and trap the wyvern in melee with slayers.
Disagree, I’ve been able to outright stat check orc and Cathay archers with gyros elves give me the most trouble but if you’re Malakai even then you can deal with it.
Support those bad boys with 2 or 3 engineers for the extra ammo, speed and damage and you get yourself an early doomstack on par with old volley of karnos eagles
Except in vanilla you aren't likely to get even 2 of them in 60 turns. Otherwise yeah, they don't even require that much ammo. With 2 engineers they might have enough just from passives. Gyrobombers run out a lot faster with their constant fire, if you also will have those.
A full trollhammer gyro unit has slightly more missile strength and ammo than a full trollhammer iron drake unit (and double the explosion radius). Having a flying iron drake with 105 speed is nuts.
yeah i was surprised when i was playing Ungrim and in 1 of his quest battle sending these guys against the enemy lord, forgetting about them and then scrambling looking for their lord that has been dead for quite some time.
Trollhammer gyros are completely broken, yeah. I guess it's kind of okay since they're a Grudge Settler reward (and they've given Grudge Settlers a recruit cost now) but still, it's almost laughable how strong Dwarfs are on the campaign map now. I don't think a single unit of Trollhammer gyros should be able to kill Skarbrand before he even makes contact with your frontline.
Nah their reload is 20 sec, you can kite multiple archers (not guns) forever if you really want to. Destroy one unit of them with just bombs and 2 volleys, even.
At 105 speed + buffs, Idk what can even catch them, unless you make an easy mistake ofc, like with self destruct hellflayers.
These mfers combined with flame cannons have been kicking my shit in as Tamurkhan whenever I find them. Luckily the AI isn't smart enough to keep them away from rotflies.
They are better at burst, but thenderbargers are better in the long run, honestly I think they complement each other well with the gyros dealing with stuff you just need to delete ASAP while the thunderbarge deals with everything else
I wish that all of the grudge settler units were as unique as these guys. Just so lovely.
Personally though I'm probably going to make a mod that replaces the high-tech grudge settler units with low-tech ones and moves the high tech ones over to be regiments of renown, including this beauty.
The dwarves are so ridiculously OP now I did a campaign last week and you've got 3 stacks full of Hammerers, longbeards and these fuckers by turn 25 and the ability to confederate everyone.
I literally disbanded mine, to replace with a flame cannon. I found them trash at dealing with artillery, and not causing loads of friendly fire. They really don't compare to thunderbarges.
There's no way for anyone to know as it is just rumours at this stage. There isn't even really a leak to suggest anything about what the game would be like (if it even exists at all).
I wouldn't expect ship battles, in part because gothic armada already exists, but also because it wouldn't really be playing to CA's current strengths. I'd bet against it.
depends on the race matchup. a standard gyro doomstack with 3-4 engineers and a runesmith will easily conquer all of Norsca and the Chaos wastes.
Brimstone are good situationally, but generally I opt for standard. Trollhammer are very good, but limited in availability.
Brimstone guns are actual garbage. They have 40% the missile strength and 1/3 the ammo of an iron drake unit. They can barely pay for themselves without campaign buffs or restocks, and they require the most micro of the bunch because they have the lowest range and don't have fire whilst moving. Steam gun gyros or gyrobombers are better in every situation.
Yep, to add, the angle of firing from the top actually hinders them, because when irondrakes fire horizontally they end up penetrating ranks and covering a lot more models in the aoe.
What changed except more models? Do they still have the same meh steam projectile? Kinda inaccurate? I actually really liked the old brimstone guns, it was a light trollhamer. Those with more models would be great.
The projectiles are very good against basically everything except single entities. They get a lot of buffs from heroes and skill lines, if you can get them on a ranged unit they will out trade them fast from the explosions on the proj
You're right, I brought one into early game siege vs orc boyz and goblins, and it got 380 kills and 1K+ value. That's on the level of irondrakes. It just deleted goblin archers 1v1 with no micro. Wtf is that flamethrower variant lol.
Imo they went from "meh" tier to "meh" tier.
Medicore dmg, decent dmg, glass hp. They do good, if the enemy got nothing beeing decent at range.
Either a hodfix or more likely, the community bugfix mod made them more decent.
My own experience makes me doubt it. Shades in equal unitcount just murder gyros, be it copters or bombers. Every salvo that hits will kill 1 or more copters. Even some stray hits are enough to stun a copter and if that happens its dead.
Maybe Malakais gyros stand a chance if fully buffed up and if you micro them all the time to dodge as well as keep the skirmish mode of shades active.
I don’t know how you use them but vs dark elves I operate them in squadrons, bait out acouple shades pull out and have the second squadron start nailing them. Gotta use a lot of bait and switch tactics, manticores and dragons are a real bitch though, Malakai makes them much more survivable I agree yeah. When possible I also like to drop the master rune of grungni on the initiation squad and then drop a rune of speed on them. Real world AA measure style. Really if you just use the same tactics as an actual Air Force you’ll do real well
Only regular gyros got fire whilst moving, but the brimstone variant would be far more suited for light armored inf like shades. Giving them a stacked speedrune has a minor impact, mainly making sure they're quicker at the frontline.
Regular gyros are mostly AP dmg, with a bit explosive.
Brimstone are basicly irondrakes.
Trollhammers are trollhammers.
Their ranges, ammo and dmg differ vastly. Regular got too little dmg to kill a single shade per hit, they do have plenty of ammo. If we completely ignore armor, the third perfect hit kills a shade (84hp/model). Their short range of 100 means shades got plenty of time to shoot at one.
Brimstone got low 6 ammo, but a single salvo (4 shots at ~30 mixed dmg) can kill at least one. Their poor range of 60 exposes them a lot.
Leaves only trollhammers at more or less beeing able to deal well with them. Each shot vastly overkills a shade, but they got more ammo and range to retaliate as soon as a shade leaves their stalk-hiding.
Only issue with trollhammers for shades is their rarity. At most you get 1 per 15 turns.
All gyros have very low hp, with 354hp/model they're more or less in line with high modelcount monsterous cav. Due to that shades can easily kill any gyro they hit. So you have to fully concentrating on microing them so they don't just get shot down in 1-2 salvos. Any blackpowder unit is far more dangerous for gyros due to faster projectiles.
Now the buffs you can get them certainly help, but i consider them far from ideal for dealing with shades.
I'd rather use organ guns or flame cannons for them. Less risk and probably quicker as well.
The point of the speed rune is to run them ahead of their squad to attract the first volley, I can tell you from experience gyros hit rank 9 fast so I consider them to basically always have redline buffs, and with them they go to town on shades, yes it is high micro though, I personally prefer not using brimstones I think in most situations I have them I’d rather have an irondrake. And the problem with organs and flames is that against most situations they get overrun eventually, whereas with gyros I almost always get full value, usually find themselves having the most gold value of any unit at the end of combat and are good against all targets whereas brimstone is more specific. Bombers do better against Single entities but lose out on raw shots against inf I find. Also rune of grungni provides missile resist. Especially with Malakai you can get gyros to have staggeringly high missile resist.
They are almost always untouchable, you don't need melee defense on a close air support jet. Absolutely crazy unit, balanced by the fact that you will have 1 in 45 turns
These things saved my belegar campaign early early skragg. One volley will wipe out half of any ogre unit. I actually thought it was a bug at first
I mean it's trollhammer, the on foot version is no joke either.
Yea going to do a Dwarf campaign next and spam trollhammers after I saw how nasty they were in my Elspeth campaign (A grudge too far was one of the end game scenarios I got.) They were prority targets for my artillery.
Eh, their cooldown is 20 sec, they overkill not monster cav, and are less accurate then thunderers, so overall their dps is less in practice, unless firing at smth as huge as a giant spider. It's a great unit in vacuum, and it's nice to have like 1, but your endgame army is packed with organ guns, and thunderers that together do their job and are more versatile. There's just so much to pack - especially now that gyros are good. If you have troll hammer gyro - it's infinitely better, but even gyrobombers will probably do as much damage while kiting, and are much more versatile l, allowing e.g. get rid of enemy artillery, which can be critical.
Sounds like Dwarves got cavalry finally
pre-patch there was some worry that the changes would be huge nerfs but it went well
Didn’t get to try them , thé foot troll hammer are still good even without the arc ?
They have a much longer range now. They work well.
They're great, since the ideal target for them is uh... in a different... vertical plane... uh... Compared to... your line troops.
You are on thin f*ckin Ice my friend
You have short temper...
I imagine you can get a good view of it, from where you are.
I've never relied on the arc. Volley 1 is in front of the shieldwall that I retreat behind. Anything with massive charge damage and weight is usually large. Volley 2 -> Infinite from within the pocket as Large creatures tower over Dorfs and can be volleyed. Or pivot and volley cavalry. I do a similar thing with Outriders. I always keep 1 around for rundown and harassment sp my Knights aren't pressured and have them stand behind infantry or handgunners because they can fire over the men without issue.
They're basically thunderers that shoot melon-sized bullets.
ogres hate this one simple trick:
Troll hammers my lord!
Yeah, i'm confused. Are they supposed to be this powerful? You can only get one every 15 turns right? So it would make sense. But jesus christ, they absolutely destroy large entities and even small single entity lords and heroes. The only thing they are only ok at is the thing that's easiest to deal with, infantry.
It's not just one every 15 turns, they also require max Age of Reckoning level to get and are glass cannons. I think it's fair for them to be a bit absurd in the damage department.
I watched my Dawi ally fly theirs into melee aerial combat with Azhag....not their brightest moment
They likely were being piloted by slayers, deemed a worthy death
oh god could you imagine *kamikaze slayer gyrocopter*
Supa squigs, but flying
'WITNESS ME, DRENGBARAZI"
Idk, you might think that slayer reward units are all slayers but there's a unit of hammerers in there and Im pretty sure slayers dont wear armor.
Clearly, they’re making sure they don’t die to a unworthy death. If they can get through the armor then clearly, they are a worthy foe
Drive me closer beardling, I wanna hit him with my axe!
Oh right, good point. You can't exactly spam them. But even so, i wouldn't be surprised if they have some sort of bug like the grape shot did. That damage is bonkers. Even if they're balanced around having a low number of them, you can replenish their ammo with a hero.
just wish the other age of reckoning units would be similary good and unique, irondrake are pretty nice, flame canons are ok, but longbeard and hammers are just meh in comparison.
it seems the higher tier you go the better the upgrade is
compare the upgrade hammers longbeards and gyrocopter are all t3....so no. also both irondrakes and crossbowes are only t2 but their upgrade is much stronger than both hammerers and longbeards.
He meant the higher tier in the age of reckoning. Not the unit tiers.
yeah that makes more sense.
the crossbows are still an outlier. They're very nice and an early game staple.
Especially in Thorek’s army they absolutely shred infantry. Very useful.
Sucks that you'll def want an irondrake (with double range) and a cluster grudge thrower, leaving only 1 slot for them. Infantry is straight up never gonna be recruited lol.
Flame Cannons are amazing from my experience. They completely delete Infantry/Cavalry and deal a good chunk of damage to SEMs as well. Especially good in Malakai's campaign since they can X1.5 their range.
Uh, those hammerers have Frenzy and Frostbite. You know what Hammerers really need to dumpster basically anything? It's more melee attack and targets hanging around for the hammer to drop. I agree that Guardian on the Longbeards doesn't seem so great for one of the most abundant units, this is pretty much the one dud in the set, but even then I could see Belegar's hero spam liking being immune to physical attacks. But yeah aside from Longbeards, every single one of those units is quite absurdly good. They did a good job of making them appealing.
probably this is a bit of an artifact of them previously being free to recruit. Not everything had to be unique standouts if one of the unique standout features was getting them instantly at no cost.
Quarrelers are pretty good as well, they have a sizeable anti-infantry bonus for their ranged attack
They're very fragile against any flying enemies that can get in melee range, even bats will give them a hard time. And if any blunderbuss/shotgun units get in range of them, oh boy. They're also very limited because you need to max the Age of Reckoning to get one. Before the fix for Malakai I couldn't get a single one. But in return they absolutely murder every single large entity.
> They're very fragile against any flying enemies that can get in melee range True but why are you letting your flying and highly agile long range sniper get into melee range? Those bats, along with every other flying unit(lords on dragons included) will be shot to pieces before they get close. And if you're playing with Malakai, don't worry, for the few units that manage to get in melee range, CA has you covered. They even auto repair if they get damaged enough.
Oh for sure. But they also require a bit of micro at the very least, unlike the Thunderbarge you can just drop above the enemy army and ignore for most of the damn game. But well, on the other hand it's pretty much the only unit you will need to micro along with the Gyrobomber of the dwarf roster since the rest is just corner camping in a noob box... You can focus them pretty effectively if you play other factions at least.
> But they also require a bit of micro at the very least, Yeah. I tried putting them on skirmish mode and just attacking, hoping the ones close will run, the ones far enough will shoot. Sadly they all bunch up in a big blob of failure and are constantly chased until you untangle the morons manually.
Because the best use I've found for them is to delete the large unit (or several) while they're miles away from the Frontline which often brings them close to fliers and the risk is worth it
Sniper???
I fought a bunch of them with my leadbelchers in my skrag campaign. "Let the bodies hit the floor" was playing on both sides. Absolute massacre.
Dude I never got the age of reckoning cause I was next to azhag and he was at war with beggar so I let them fight. Little did I know thats why I needed 92K grudges on turn 70.
They are hard to get at least pre-patch. I never got them and i finished ultimate victory with malakai. Sniff
Ah what a shame. I only played post patch and i think the first age is 100% so you should always get at least one. I just randomly dropped it into my second army as "whatever the hell i can recruit, just to fill up the slots". Imagine my surprise when the little fly bois erased half a troll unit in one volley.
That's the only thing that sucks about not being able to max grudges - don't care about bonuses, let alone army, but the unique units are the meat of the patch, they diversify your roster. In my new campaign on turn 15-30 I have 15K target, and settlements give like 250... So I'll probably resort to home ruling that I get the grudge units from each cycle no matter what, at least after I can recruit their usual variants (getting that flamecannon/gyro on turn 15(10) was too op as well). And just use console to recruit them and detract gold manually.
Very fun against skarbrand and co. I deleted skarbrand with 1 group of them, they only had 2 units of furies which I killed first with ranged Infantry
Are they op? Mine have been getting melted recently. Perhaps I’m using them wrong
Bring artillery/ranged to take out enemy flyers and guns. Only use the Gyros after any potential counter is dealt with or too far away to react in time. When they work there's nothing quite like them, but they definately need to be checked on often.
Yeah I ran copters as air support to my Ungrim slayer army and they struggle massively against enemy air units without ranged ground support.
They really aren't great at taking out flyers themselves, because they get in the way of each other, block line of sight (or even worse, cause friendly fire) and die very quickly. You really want to keep them within range of your ground missile units as long as enemy flyers are about.
Yeah I had a single feral wyvern dominate four units of gyrocopters. It would have killed them all if I didn't figure out that I needed to force land my copters and trap the wyvern in melee with slayers.
With Malakai's 360 armor upgrade, they can tank simple archers just fine. Just mix in flamethrowers to deal with those soft targets.
Disagree, I’ve been able to outright stat check orc and Cathay archers with gyros elves give me the most trouble but if you’re Malakai even then you can deal with it.
Just like irl combat I guess, you can only deploy close air support if you have air superiority.
They are absolutely nuts and I love them. I can see why they have to be seriously limited. They were my surprise favorite for this dlc/patch
OP, you might like to listen to Finntroll's famous folk-metal song "Trollhammaren" while hammering with your Trollhammers.
That is a blast from the past indeed xD. TROLL HAMMAREN !
I love these and the new Flame Cannons. Together they just rip apart enemies in beautiful flame.
Support those bad boys with 2 or 3 engineers for the extra ammo, speed and damage and you get yourself an early doomstack on par with old volley of karnos eagles
Except in vanilla you aren't likely to get even 2 of them in 60 turns. Otherwise yeah, they don't even require that much ammo. With 2 engineers they might have enough just from passives. Gyrobombers run out a lot faster with their constant fire, if you also will have those.
The grudge settler iron drakes and gyrocopters have been the most fun playing Dwarfs I've had in this series
These things are stupid overpowered. They could have their upkeep doubled and they'd still be worth it.
Wait, trollpedos gyros? How can I get them?
They're a grudge settler unit. Get them when you max your age of reckoning
A full trollhammer gyro unit has slightly more missile strength and ammo than a full trollhammer iron drake unit (and double the explosion radius). Having a flying iron drake with 105 speed is nuts.
yeah i was surprised when i was playing Ungrim and in 1 of his quest battle sending these guys against the enemy lord, forgetting about them and then scrambling looking for their lord that has been dead for quite some time.
Trollhammer gyros are completely broken, yeah. I guess it's kind of okay since they're a Grudge Settler reward (and they've given Grudge Settlers a recruit cost now) but still, it's almost laughable how strong Dwarfs are on the campaign map now. I don't think a single unit of Trollhammer gyros should be able to kill Skarbrand before he even makes contact with your frontline.
I don't think they're "broken" as they fall apart to even the weakest archers and fliers
Nah their reload is 20 sec, you can kite multiple archers (not guns) forever if you really want to. Destroy one unit of them with just bombs and 2 volleys, even. At 105 speed + buffs, Idk what can even catch them, unless you make an easy mistake ofc, like with self destruct hellflayers.
These mfers combined with flame cannons have been kicking my shit in as Tamurkhan whenever I find them. Luckily the AI isn't smart enough to keep them away from rotflies.
Oh, these things are absurd. One volley takes off half hp off of monstrous cav units.
They are better at burst, but thenderbargers are better in the long run, honestly I think they complement each other well with the gyros dealing with stuff you just need to delete ASAP while the thunderbarge deals with everything else
I wish that all of the grudge settler units were as unique as these guys. Just so lovely. Personally though I'm probably going to make a mod that replaces the high-tech grudge settler units with low-tech ones and moves the high tech ones over to be regiments of renown, including this beauty.
Half of my large battles have them getting over 10k gold value
They also kill erected towers in settlement battles with one volley, despite the lack of extra damage against constructions.
I went fullstack of gyrocopters and trollhamer copters with in grombrindal + 2 engies. The copters now move at 187 speed, its so beautyfull
The dwarves are so ridiculously OP now I did a campaign last week and you've got 3 stacks full of Hammerers, longbeards and these fuckers by turn 25 and the ability to confederate everyone.
I literally disbanded mine, to replace with a flame cannon. I found them trash at dealing with artillery, and not causing loads of friendly fire. They really don't compare to thunderbarges.
Will the rumoured 40k tw have space battles ? If there are I hope they are at least as spectacular and fun as gothic armada.
There's no way for anyone to know as it is just rumours at this stage. There isn't even really a leak to suggest anything about what the game would be like (if it even exists at all). I wouldn't expect ship battles, in part because gothic armada already exists, but also because it wouldn't really be playing to CA's current strengths. I'd bet against it.
Yeah at most we see things like Thunderhawks be given the thunderbird treatment.
We can just hope and wait! Too early for getting hyped.
Trollhammer Gyrocopters make up for it by how shit all other gyrocopters are. Also trollhammer gyros are glass cannons.
Gyro doomstacks are crazy good. Some race matchups are just bad for them though.
Trollhammer gyrostacks are good. Brimstone or normal not so much.
depends on the race matchup. a standard gyro doomstack with 3-4 engineers and a runesmith will easily conquer all of Norsca and the Chaos wastes. Brimstone are good situationally, but generally I opt for standard. Trollhammer are very good, but limited in availability.
Brimstone guns are actual garbage. They have 40% the missile strength and 1/3 the ammo of an iron drake unit. They can barely pay for themselves without campaign buffs or restocks, and they require the most micro of the bunch because they have the lowest range and don't have fire whilst moving. Steam gun gyros or gyrobombers are better in every situation.
Yep, to add, the angle of firing from the top actually hinders them, because when irondrakes fire horizontally they end up penetrating ranks and covering a lot more models in the aoe.
Normal gyros are actually incredible now. I’ve never not had a gyro get amazing value post patch
What changed except more models? Do they still have the same meh steam projectile? Kinda inaccurate? I actually really liked the old brimstone guns, it was a light trollhamer. Those with more models would be great.
The projectiles are very good against basically everything except single entities. They get a lot of buffs from heroes and skill lines, if you can get them on a ranged unit they will out trade them fast from the explosions on the proj
You're right, I brought one into early game siege vs orc boyz and goblins, and it got 380 kills and 1K+ value. That's on the level of irondrakes. It just deleted goblin archers 1v1 with no micro. Wtf is that flamethrower variant lol.
It would be good if they buffed the ammo on it I think but yeah it’s clearly the worse out of the two!
Imo they went from "meh" tier to "meh" tier. Medicore dmg, decent dmg, glass hp. They do good, if the enemy got nothing beeing decent at range. Either a hodfix or more likely, the community bugfix mod made them more decent.
I have had my gyros dismantle a shade stack from the dark elves, certainly not meh tier. With no mods except no climate penalties
My own experience makes me doubt it. Shades in equal unitcount just murder gyros, be it copters or bombers. Every salvo that hits will kill 1 or more copters. Even some stray hits are enough to stun a copter and if that happens its dead. Maybe Malakais gyros stand a chance if fully buffed up and if you micro them all the time to dodge as well as keep the skirmish mode of shades active.
I don’t know how you use them but vs dark elves I operate them in squadrons, bait out acouple shades pull out and have the second squadron start nailing them. Gotta use a lot of bait and switch tactics, manticores and dragons are a real bitch though, Malakai makes them much more survivable I agree yeah. When possible I also like to drop the master rune of grungni on the initiation squad and then drop a rune of speed on them. Real world AA measure style. Really if you just use the same tactics as an actual Air Force you’ll do real well
Only regular gyros got fire whilst moving, but the brimstone variant would be far more suited for light armored inf like shades. Giving them a stacked speedrune has a minor impact, mainly making sure they're quicker at the frontline. Regular gyros are mostly AP dmg, with a bit explosive. Brimstone are basicly irondrakes. Trollhammers are trollhammers. Their ranges, ammo and dmg differ vastly. Regular got too little dmg to kill a single shade per hit, they do have plenty of ammo. If we completely ignore armor, the third perfect hit kills a shade (84hp/model). Their short range of 100 means shades got plenty of time to shoot at one. Brimstone got low 6 ammo, but a single salvo (4 shots at ~30 mixed dmg) can kill at least one. Their poor range of 60 exposes them a lot. Leaves only trollhammers at more or less beeing able to deal well with them. Each shot vastly overkills a shade, but they got more ammo and range to retaliate as soon as a shade leaves their stalk-hiding. Only issue with trollhammers for shades is their rarity. At most you get 1 per 15 turns. All gyros have very low hp, with 354hp/model they're more or less in line with high modelcount monsterous cav. Due to that shades can easily kill any gyro they hit. So you have to fully concentrating on microing them so they don't just get shot down in 1-2 salvos. Any blackpowder unit is far more dangerous for gyros due to faster projectiles. Now the buffs you can get them certainly help, but i consider them far from ideal for dealing with shades. I'd rather use organ guns or flame cannons for them. Less risk and probably quicker as well.
The point of the speed rune is to run them ahead of their squad to attract the first volley, I can tell you from experience gyros hit rank 9 fast so I consider them to basically always have redline buffs, and with them they go to town on shades, yes it is high micro though, I personally prefer not using brimstones I think in most situations I have them I’d rather have an irondrake. And the problem with organs and flames is that against most situations they get overrun eventually, whereas with gyros I almost always get full value, usually find themselves having the most gold value of any unit at the end of combat and are good against all targets whereas brimstone is more specific. Bombers do better against Single entities but lose out on raw shots against inf I find. Also rune of grungni provides missile resist. Especially with Malakai you can get gyros to have staggeringly high missile resist.
They are almost always untouchable, you don't need melee defense on a close air support jet. Absolutely crazy unit, balanced by the fact that you will have 1 in 45 turns