Many thanks to Games Workshop for providing us with an advanced preview copy of the new Gloomspite Gitz Battletome and, blessedly, the pitched battle profiles for us to review ahead of time. Nice.

Age of Sigmar’s premier goblins, the Gloomspite Gitz have gone from an ignominious launch to becoming a consistently powerful performer in competition utilising some of the best anvils in the game with troggoths, hard hitting squigs, good spellcasting, and spiders are there too I guess. 

This release adds yet another quiver to their bow, and leaves the Gitz positively groaning with even more keyword soup than Stormcast. We’ll forgive it though, because the range of models for this gitmob release are stunning, even if their rules are lacking. 

Changes from the Faction Pack

The headline change for the Battletome (beyond, y’know, the dogs) is a total rework of the moon mechanic. Instead of having to faff around with table quarters, the effects of The Faces of the Bad Moon are now table wide. Rather than being a mechanic about positioning, it’s now one of timing, and conceptually resembles the old Nurgle wheel. The moon now has four faces: Grinnin’, Scowlin’, Sulkin’, and Cacklin’. Each major keyword of the army then gains an ability under two faces of the moon (Spiderfang get to share moon space with Moonclan). You do get to choose which face of the moon you start the game under, which is a huge quality of life increase over the old Nurgle wheel, and at the start of each subsequent battleround it moves on to the next face. This is a mechanic that is quite hard to explain with words, but becomes immediately obvious with a picture, so let’s nab one from Warhammer Community.

The abilities you get for being Under the Light of the Bad Moon have had some tweaking as well:

• Non-squig Moonclan now add 5 to their control score, which makes the Gobbapalooza a comically effective control piece of 15 at full strength. It does also make Stabbas (assuming a banner is alive) +6 to their score. Amusing, if nothing else. Making heroes like Skragrott, Squigboss, etc a control of 7 makes them great at toeing onto objectives behind trogg anvils helping take and hold points. 
• Spiderfang are the same, getting to crit on a 5+ that also affects companion weapons.
• Squigs don’t re-roll their random move any more, and you can elect to just take a 4 instead. This fits with the goal of this whole moon mechanic change – making things more consistent for the Gitz player.
• Troggs get the only change that’s meaningfully a nerf, and the moon now reduces incoming rend from melee attacks by 1, instead of getting +1 save. Under a lot of situations this is not really a change (most armies will be rocking rend 1 or 2 melee units to deal their damage), but it does render them much more vulnerable to shooting. Rockguts were a bit too good in the faction pack so this change is somewhat welcome, but none of the rest of the Trogg stuff feels like it needed this. Also none of them got cheaper with the nerf, so that’s cool. 
• All new for this Battletome, gitmob can charge and shoot even if they retreated in the same turn. This is mostly good for the Snarlpack Cavalry, who always want to be charging and combines well with the Gitmob Pack battle formation with its own Retreat move. 

There’s some tweaks to the battle formations, to take account of the new stuff. This means that the Spiderfang specific formation is gone. But fear not, single digit Spiderfang playerbase, as the Moonclan skrap has now been renamed to Gloomspite Horde and a tweak to the wording lets Spiderfang in on that ability. 

The new addition is the Gitmob Pack, an ability you pop in your movement phase to let a gitmob unit that’s stuck in combat move and do some mortals to the enemy when it does so. There’s no limit to the number of times you can do this, beyond not being able to target the same enemy unit with the mortals more than once. This ability still has the retreat keyword, but at least you get to flip who takes the damage from retreating and under the right moon facing can charge back in.

A pretty big change has happened to the spell lore, where sneaky distraction is now gone and has been replaced as the unlimited spell by Bad Portents, which casts on a 6 and then gets you to roll another dice with a 3-5 moving the face of the bad moon on one stage and a 6 letting you pick whatever face you like. Power level aside this is a horrible mechanic – I’ve already had to roll to cast the spell and my opponent has probably had a roll to unbind, why on earth can it fail after I’ve successfully cast it? A bit of moon control is nice, but as we’ll come to see you probably have better ways of handling the moon and the total loss of -1 to hit on tap is a blow. 

Warscroll Changes

Skragrott’s Loonking’s Entreaty has changed to match the new moon rule, and simply lets you stay on the current moon facing once per game. Most armies want to be on one of two facings for the majority of their units so being able to keep that one buff up for three battle rounds is very strong. Babbling Wand is no longer a minimum 4” redeploy but instead changes the cost to 0CP on a Moonclan unit in range – less reliable, but free, so kind of better? Also kind of worse. You’ll do it every single turn with no downside now, at least, even if just on himself. His spell is unchanged and still a great source of ranged mortal damage output.

Trugg gains Warmaster and an extra pip of rend on his club. Good? He’s still too expensive (unchanged) considering he’s now weaker to shooting and still doesn’t have a built in ward (or way of gaining one other than rolling a 6 on the leystone and forgoing an aura buff). At least now when you’re taking him and Skragrott together you can have a Rockgut bodyguard under current GHB rules, which is a nice option, though if you’re running troggs you’re typically going to aim for the +2″ move on (most of) them. 

Gobbaplaooza’s know-wotz ability is now once per turn (army) – a big nerf to people spamming them (you know who you are) and there’s much less reason to run multiple units, which is good. One unit is still going to be an auto include in basically every list and they’re still an incredible anvil.  

Loonboss on Giant Cave Squig no longer gives +1 to hit on his fight after ability, which is one of the saddest possible changes. We’re guessing that the reason here is to keep bounderz in check, who have had a bit of a glow up, but this makes the Loonboss on squig pretty pointless.

Boingrot Bounderz’ charge mortals have been changed from a 2+ d3 to something a lot better: 1 dice per bounder model in the unit and each 4+ is mortal damage. It’s swingy on 4s, but your reinforced unit getting an average of 5 mortals on the charge is spicy. These also didn’t get any cheaper and there’s no limit on using the ability, so you could if you wished spam these pretty effectively for a mortal damage alpha.

The Dankhold Troggboss rampage has changed – now a 4+ instead of 3+ but larger 12” range and no requirement for the troggboss to be in combat. A 50/50 chance to go off is not great. Troggboss hasn’t been the most popular pick outside of very trogg-heavy lists to start with and is still very expensive for a buff that will go off 50% of the time while having a very swingy damage profile.  

Also, the regular Dankhold’s rampage changed in a way that seems…odd. It no longer needs to start in combat to be used. This is probably an error? Being able to just join a combat by being within 6″ of an enemy unit in any combat phase is very very good. Especially when you consider you don’t need to make a charge move so long as you’re within 6″ of opponents. So, yes, you can run with your Dankhold Trogg and as long as it ends up within 6″ of an enemy unit it gets to move into combat and attack; auto-run 6″ with a command point and that’s a 12″ move, being able to automatically get into combat with enemy units within 21″ when you start your turn; Anti-Charge weapons won’t have any effect either since it hasn’t made a charge move. Also means that in your opponent’s turn you get a 6″ automatic, free, counter charge too. Just incredible if this isn’t a mistake and gets an FAQ change.

The only manifestation Change is Malevolent Moon, the aura now gives all of the effects of bad moon facing at the same time. This might make Dankifestations auto include now, considering how facings work. 

The Bad Moon Loonshrine now only returns units, and has nothing to do with the moon any more. This is bad. Why does it not have an aura of all effects like the malevolent moon? 

What’s New?

Somehow, gitmob have returned. It’s nice to see the wolf riders (and big gun) return to Warhammer, and the release is surprisingly large. Whilst we don’t think a pure-gitmob army has competitive chops (or really the capability of dealing damage outside of Doom Divers) the range does feel complete enough to conceptually do it. 

Droggz da Sunchompa is your named character riding a wolf. With some decent melee attacks (there’s a bit of crit (mortal) in there) Droggz is the best hero in melee on offer here, but is worryingly fragile with just 7 heath behind a 4+ save. At 210 points he is seriously expensive and you really want Droggz out of a scrap and being a utility piece. The standout ability here is an aura that makes enemies inside -1 to hit and unable to use all-out attack. Because this targets enemy models, you can use this to have Droggz running behind your Rockguts and making them even more annoying to shift. 

Other than that, you get a once per game ability to pull an allied unit out of combat when targeted by an opponent and this is again not keyword locked to gitmob, so works on anything. Finally, there’s the customary fight-after ability and this one is locked to gitmob.

Overall, Droggz seems pretty decent and a surprisingly well-rounded unit. He’s expensive, but his regiment is just good enough (you get one unit each of troggs and moonclan alongside gitmob) and his utility synergises well with the rest of the army. Troggs will love the defensive boost and Bounders will enjoy getting to do their impact hits and then running away before getting clapped. The issue will be that his auras are tight (6” to clip an enemy unit to be -1, and wholly 9” to pull a friendly unit out of combat) so he might not be able to do it all at the same time.

Frazzlegit Shaman is a wizard (1) on a chariot, and so gets the (for a grot) staggering defensive statline of 9 wounds and a 4+ save. Two abilities of note here: a shooting phase d3 mortals on 3 enemy units within 9” – it’s once per turn (army) so no spamming, and an unusual ability that means other friendly gitmob units wholly within 6” can’t be targeted with shooting attacks. You usually want your regular mooks to be the ones absorbing shots for your wizard and not the other way around, but there’s some tech to using the big bases in gitmob to effectively shut off short range deep strike shooting like Prosecutors; unfortunately the aura is just too small to really use it often. For 190 points and a limited regiment, this doesn’t feel overly exciting. Gitz already have good wizards. 

Snarlboss on War-Wheela is your melee chariot hero with some deeply mediocre attacks, a fight-after ability with no extra buff and two abilities of actual worth. One being a once per battle board-wide -1 to hit for enemies attacking Sunsteala Wheelas that also gives a +6” move for Sunsteala Wheelas. Pop it turn one, gum up your opponent’s battleline with chariots and hope the debuff keeps them pinned there. The second ability is a movement one that lets the chariot move through the combat range of enemy units and do d6 mortal to infantry if it passes over them. It’s 200 points, the regiment is bad but it can at least be a sub-hero in another regiment. You’re taking this purely for the pinning gimmick and nothing else, and it’s throwing too many good points after bad for that.

Snarlboss is your Underworlds warband rebox and is 150 points to give gitmob cavalry +2” move and +1 attack to their companion weapons. The companion weapons are the best weapons for gitmob cavalry, but are they really good and worth spending 150 points to buff? No. They have no rend. This is however your cheapest hero to unlock the next unit which might be the sole reason to ever consider taking it. 

Wolfgit Retinue are the other half of that Underworlds warband and are completely busted because they’re a 2-model unit that costs 70 points and don’t require you to take the Snarlboss. Say hello to your new battle tactic bozos. No, really, this is absurdly cheap for a unit that moves this quick. Hell it might even be a reason to consider Auxiliary units just for the sake of having. Maybe. Here at the Goonhammer AoS Office we don’t think that taking aux units is as awful as many have made it out to be; the main issue is adding drops, but sometimes that’s ok. 

Sunsteala Wheelas are actually pretty interesting, being a unit of two for 150 points means you can reinforce them. Getting 24 health that move 12” isn’t a terrible deal there and if you’re taking a boss on chariot (for some reason) then that’s 18″ moves once per game to zip across the board. As is becoming apparent for gitmob, their melee attacks are nothing to write home about but they get a similar movement ability to the boss on war-wheela with the mortals changed to d3+x where x is equal to the number of models in the unit. As mentioned, this is a good unit for gumming up your opponent, and because they can use their movement ability in combat and it doesn’t have the retreat keyword they’re quite hard to pin down themselves.

Doom Diver Catapult is a joy to see returning, a classic grot concept. It’s gitmob keyworded so slightly tricky to fit into all-comer Gitz armies, but Skragrott will help you out there. This seems, blessedly, actually good. You get 4 shots at a 24” range with rend 3 and damage 3, which is amazing. The downside is that it hits on a 4+, but you can re-roll misses – each re-roll reduces the rend of the shooting by 1. We like these a decent amount, being 200 points and tough to fit in regiments and the re-roll ability being once per turn (army) means you probably aren’t going to spam these but you know what? That’s a good thing. Spam is boring. Having solid ranged attacks to force your opponent to walk towards your Trogg line is a boon for Gitz.

Snarlpack Cavalry are two grots sat on top of a wolf and are the ‘heavy’ cavalry of gitmob as compared to Snarlfang Riders (who are unchanged from the faction pack). These are pretty disappointing, to be honest. Charge +1 damage on rendless rider attacks that wound on a 5+ and no rend on the giant Snarlfang is going to have them bouncing off of all but the lightest of enemies. They get +5 control when they charge which is nice to have because their control is otherwise abysmal and they also get to strike-first when they charge (this is also limited to once per turn (army) and that feels like a deeply pointless limitation) but the question remains: what are they charging? At 120 points for 3, I am struggling to conceive of a reason to take these over Bounderz.

Armies of Renown

Droggz’s Gitmob

Has to include Droggz da Sunchompa as your general and then you can only take gitmob units. You get an ability deploy units into reserve without any restrictions, and then a corresponding ability to deploy them in your movement phase wholly within 6” of a battlefield edge and more than 9” from enemy units. In addition you get a pair of once per turn (army) battle traits. Glowering Light lets you pick an enemy unit in combat that charged in the same turn and on a 3+ the can’t pile-in. That’s neat, anti-piling tech is always nice to have and it will stop your opponent being able to do some cheeky plays, but being limited to one use a turn renders this not astonishingly powerful. Dis Fight’s not Fer me only works in the enemy combat phase and gives you a 4+ to retreat a unit if it’s only in combat with units that charged this turn. It would be nice if this turned off the retreat mortals, and to be quite honest if your once per turn (army) ability triggers on a 4+ then ditch the requirement for everything it’s in combat with to have charged. This is too many requirements. 

There’s two heroic traits on offer, both passives: Stick ‘em and Run does 2+ d3 mortals to a unit it’s in combat with when it retreats or uses careening destruction and Plucky Git provides a 9” aura of ward (6+) whilst it has taken no damage. These are both fine, I quite like the ward option but 9” is quite tight with Gitmob having chonky bases. 

The spell here is Frazzleblast which casts on a 5 and gives a friendly unit crit (2 hits). The “good” weapons in Gitmob are companion, so I’m not feeling this doing much of anything at all. It’s unlimited though! Finally, as an artefact there’s just Glareface’s Grin which gives you some mortal wounds in a 3” bubble once per game. 

This all adds up to a whole lot of nothing. The deployment shenanigans are cute and there’s some mild tech in there to frustrate your opponent but what’s on offer is worse for Gitmob than the default moon + Gitmob battle formation and in return for that you sacrifice your ability to have anything else in the army at all. 

Pointless.

Da King’s Gitz

You’ve got to take Skragrott and he’s got to be the general, then you can take any Moonclan units, a Loonshrine, and 0-2 non-hero Troggs. So you’re rocking 12 Rockguts and some squigs, basically, with Skragrott. You don’t get the Bad Moon, instead Skragrott gives a 9” wholly-within aura of the same effect, but only for Moonclan and Squigs. That’s right, no defensive buff for Troggs in this list. 

An army list that I at first thought “oh I have the models for this, basically it’s what I’ve been running, this could be fun” and then each time I’ve come back and looked at it realised it’s just not something I can see myself ever running over a normal army. Why? What’s it got? Well, not much. 

Friendly heroes get a 4+ ward when next to Troggs, which act as a bodyguard for them, but then the Troggs suffer some damage without wards. Also D3 of your heroes get to take an enhancement during deployment, really this is a roll to see if you get to take just two of the available ones or all three, but either way none are great, really, so it’s not something you’ll miss when you only get one extra. The one decent one is the Wotnot of Prestige which does a 2+ D3 amount of mortal damage to a few units within 3″ of a point chosen within 9″ of the user; that’s a 12″ range basically. Happening at the end of every turn is nice. The next is a 6+ ward improved to a 5+ ward while contesting an objective without any other friendly units on it, best use here is for a Mangler Boss. Lastly you get +1 attack on a non-Companion weapon and an additional +1 attack that stacks throughout the game…each time the hero retreats. That hero is still going to take D3 mortal damage for having done so and typically won’t even survive a round of combat to start with; best use is a Loonboss of Giant Cave Squig but as mentioned before, that’s not really a hero you’re rushing to take.

The Heroic Traits are cute and might have been fun just as general options for the army and there’s two to choose from. First off a Once Per Game (great start) ability to bring back a unit through your Loonshrine without spending a command point; you can still then spend a CP to bring back another unit through it, which is cool, but the hero has to babysit the shrine to use it. Second is actually fun and gives an infantry unit within 3″ a +D3″ to their move for that turn making Rockguts a potential 11″ move on a good roll paired with the GHB season rules.

Your new spell lore gives you: the one good Dankifestation (Malevolent Moon) and two other spells that are head scratchers, at least they’re low cast values? First gives a unit +1 control score, +1 dice on a Rally Command, and +1 attack but only for Champions. Goblin champions are famously great in combat so clearly a very strong buff there, it’s even Unlimited! The other is more useful at least and gives a unit +1 Rend (Hero) with all of their attacks, both shooting and melee.

That’s it, that’s all of it. It’s cute.

Regiments of Renown

The Shinestealaz

This is a hefty regiment with a Snarlboss and Wolfgit Retinue, two units of Snarlpack Cavalry and a unit of two Sunsteala Wheelas, for 540 points. As a regiment ability, you can choose to deploy all the units in the regiment in reserve, and then once per battle in your movement phase they all appear anywhere more than 9” from enemy models. Having 500 points of dogs appearing in your opponent’s face is quite funny, but we’ve got an issue in that the cavalry isn’t very good, and the value of the retinue is in being cheap. Two units of the cavalry instead of one reinforced unit also immediately runs into the issue of their strike-first ability being once per turn (army), so only one unit gets to do it. 

Skulkrik’s Loonladz

A Loonboss, 20 Stabbas and five Loonsmasha Fanatics for 340. Everything in the regiment gets Anti-charge +1 rend, which is only really of any use on the Fanatics, as they naturally strike-first. Rend 3 Fanatics is actually spicy but that’s pretty much the start and end of the good news and this regiment just suffers from the way regiments of renown never reinforce units and come packaged with a junk hero. I can imagine a regiment of 40 Stabbas and some fanatics being attractive to other Destruction armies, but not this.

Conclusion

Chimp: I’m a bit conflicted on this one; the army is probably on the whole stronger but with a change in where its weaknesses lie that could throw players off for a while. The change to the moon mechanic is hugely welcome as that has been one of the worst designed bits of battle trait since its introduction. Gitz players will need to switch from thinking about positioning to thinking about timing. Expect to see Skragrott and the Gitz endless spells stapled onto a lot of lists going forwards, just for the control over the moon.

There’s still a lot of ways I wish they could have gone further. We’re long enough in the tooth of this edition now that the obvious internal imbalances in the faction pack really should be getting addressed in the transition to Battletome and there’s been no meaningful attempt to do that here. Beyond this, the further sidelining of Spiderfang does make me worry that the range will shuffle off to the Old World next edition (unless there’s yet another massive wave of Gitz incoming), they really do stick out as a ‘well we had to include them somehow’ and a shrug.

AoS4 is developing a bit of a rep for the new units coming out in these battletomes just being a bit rubbish and whilst there’s good stuff in the gitmob range, I think a lot of people will be disappointed that these are clearly designed to complement a wider Gitz army and meaningfully aren’t a Thing like mono-squigs or Troggs can be. Finally, with an army this wide it feels criminal that there just aren’t any extra lists of heroic traits, artefacts or even spell lores – they’ve built a modular system, let’s actually use it! 

Bair: Look, the army hasn’t really actually gotten worse overall. The new stuff isn’t good (Doom Diver and 70 point wolf unit aside) which is frustrating. Trogg-heavy armies (hey Stuart) are a little weaker to shooting-heavy armies but with their defensive buff being board wide from the outset you can play more aggressively with them; I’ve only really ever lost units of Rockguts when I was outside the range/quarter of the bad moon. Also, the bad moon no longer being an entirely random roll is so nice. Squigs are still great (not you, manglers) and there’s a lot of play to be had in a slightly mixed-arms approach for Squigs and Troggs. Spiders seeing virtually no updates of any kind is a little disappointing but also not wholly surprising. 

I’ve had a great time with Gitz so far in 4th with a combined Trogg+Squig army and I don’t think that this really changes much at all. Losing the -1 to hit spell hurts a bit but also the amount of times I’ve been in a less-competitive setting and had to go “ok yeah so those Rockguts are -1 to hit, +2 to their save, and have a 5+ ward” watching my opponent roll their eyes as they maybe kill a single Trogg this feels fair enough. 

The army is still very fun, which depending on how you’re approaching the game is probably the more important aspect anyways. 

The army is still competitive, you just might have to do a little more thinking with it to win games. 

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