Dread Rots

Dread Rots Grymkin Unit

Prime This model is available in one Prime Army, Grymkin. It can also be used in the Unlimited game mode. You can view the other Mk3 models that made it into a Legacy Army at this page. Note that the rest of this page is about the model's Mark III rules.

"Peter, Peter, pumpkin-headed, by the wicked sorely dreaded."

Myths and folk legends tell of twisted terrors with pumpkins for heads known as the dread rots. Wielding cruel implements with rusty blades, these creatures single out wicked and exploitative mortals living at the fringes of civilization for punishment. Now they serve their masters in battle, emerging from the loamy soil to reap a bloody harvest upon humanity.

Basic Info

Dread Rots
Missing Info
	COST {{{cacost}}} UNIT SIZE {{{casize}}} FA {{{cafa}}} Warcaster 0 BASE Small SPD 5 STR {{{str}}} MAT 6 RAT N/A M.A. N/A DEF 13 ARM 14 CMD 7 ESSENCE {{{essence}}} FOCUS N/A FURY N/A THRS N/A HP 1 F. Field N/A WJP {{{wjp}}} WBP {{{wbp}}} IHP {{{ihp}}} FA 3 UNIT SIZE 6 / 10 COST 7 / 12 1.2 each N/A N/A Warcaster 1 COST N/A N/A Understanding the Statblock

Abilities

• Tough
• Bag Man - (1) A model disabled by a melee attack made by this model cannot make a Tough roll. (2) When this model boxes a living or undead enemy model with a melee attack, this model gains the boxed model's corpse token and the boxed model is RFP'd. (3) This model can have up to one corpse token at any time.
• Victuals You Can Neither Raise nor Buy - At any time during its activation while within 5" of this model, a friendly non-Dread Rot model that can gain corpse tokens can remove corpse tokens from this model and place them on itself.

Weapons

• Farming Implement - 1" reach, P+S 10 melee weapon
  • Weapon Master

Theme Forces

• Bump in the Night. They gain Rise in this theme.
• Dark Menagerie

Thoughts on Dread Rots

Dread Rots in a nutshell

Cheap and hard hitting -- Dread Rots are essentially priced at "Chaff" levels but come with a strong weaponmaster attack and automatic anti tough + Remove from Play. If weaponmaster was to be treated as purely +3.5dmg (which is only true on average...) they out damage almost every other unit at an equivalent price point in the entire game. Apart from their offense, they are not exceptional in any other regard.

Why Should i Include Dread Rots in my Army?

Essentially Dread Rots are brought to be super cheap but hard hitting melee infantry. They are fairly easy to understand. However they are available to both themes and the reason you bring them begins to become more nuanced.

Bump in the Night

Gaining Rise makes their offense more reliable (as toughing doesn't leave them unable to charge). Bump also usually will not run a Death Knell meaning that Dread Rots are the most efficient way of getting corpses onto your heavies, which always has a value even if its just making your upkeeps free.

Dark Menagerie

In Dark Menagerie Dread Rots are not playing as a horde of cheap weaponmasters. They are instead normally used as a minimum unit to feed the Death Knell as well as body block landing spots, and act as Arcana triggers. For example - The Heretic's Arcana requires warrior models, beasts won't do. Dread rots getting to attack in this capacity is treated as a bonus rather than a plan.

Competitive Viability

As of June 2018, Dread Rots are not a unit who can be called a "solid backbone" to grymkin competitive play, but they are seen. There is a mix in the competitive player opinion of if they are taken at all in Dark Menagerie or if the Grymkin player simply seeks to find their corpses from other sources. Furthermore, you will see them in some Bump in the Night lists, but not all. Overall - a competitive unit with some nuance as to when it's taken.

Combos & Synergies

• Delivery - As Dread Rots have very average defensive stats they tend to melt to guns and other abilities. This makes delivery tech an absolute priority
  • The Shroud arcana will give them a turn of stealth on the approach
  • The King of Nothing offers them a powerful cloud wall
  • Old Witch 3 offers them Windstorm to greatly neuter the threat of incoming guns
  • The Wanderer has both a cloud in Veil of Mists, and Fog of War increasing their defensive by a bit.
• Offensive damage buffing - As Dread Rots are weaponmasters, they react fairly well to damage and accuracy buffing
  • The Fortune's Path Arcana helps their accuracy while also giving them a bump in damage. Very potent as MAT 7 is major
  • The Heretic offers them his Trump and the spell Fury. he takes the damage output and dials it up to 11. Its not unheard of to see them charging at effectively MAT 8 POW15 Weaponmaster
  • Old Witch 3 offers them Curse of Shadows, and can use her blind gun and her spell Scourge to help buff their accuracy on occasion
  • The King of Nothing can apply scything touch, and very situationally his own -2 arm aura to their targets
  • Glimmer Imp fixes their underwhelming MAT 6 to an impressive effective MAT 8
• Pathfinder - Dread rots suffer from a lack of Pathfinder and so having a fix for this is a very good piece of tech. There are however, only two reliable ways to deal with it for Rots
  • Isiah, Dread Harvester offers ghostly on the charge is very helpful.
  • Old Witch 3 can tactically choose to machine gun 1 cost boundless charge on key dread rots to deliver some weaponmaster attacks with pathfinder.
  • The Wanderer can abuse veil of mists to grant pathfinder to dread rots
• Corpse Synergy - Dread Rots can collect corpses through the use of their Bag Man ability for the heavies in the faction, the Skin & Moans and the Cage Rager. The thing that makes this synergy particularily powerful is the Death Knell can only hand off corpses once per turn. Whereas Dread Rots hand off their corpses out of activation, allowing you to fill up the heavies more efficiently
  • The Death Knell can also take the corpses off their hands too if it wants to fill up.

Drawbacks & Downsides

• Victim stats - 12/14 is awful. Tough is a decent compensation however.
• No pathfinder, and very limited way to gain access to it
• SPD 5 is quite slow for infantry. they're lacking an inch of threat range infantry normally have and will run 2" less
• Poor accuracy - MAT 6 is their biggest achilles heel when it comes to doing consistent damage.
• Sometimes when taken en masse to leverage how cheap they are, they can really cause a traffic jam.
• They can't be buffed to a point where they are survivable. the +2 ARM of the Death Knell is wasted on them, and The Wanderer's Fog of War barely helps as it does not work vs melee, or quite a number of ranged options.

Tricks & Tips

• Remember in Bump they have Rise, meaning a Dread Rot that has been knocked down by toughing is still as scary as a currently standing rot
• They deny souls and corpses to the enemy, meaning sometimes they are one of the best models to be using to remove key targets
  • If playing in a Grymkin mirror for example, there are arcana that require "destroyed" that dread rots counter
  • Recursion casters such as Testament of Menoth hate remove from play that denies him souls
• Remember that they don't give the corpses in their activation, and the beast does not have to start within 5" of them to receive it
  • Skin & Moans can theoretically pull off ridiculous full heals because of this, it can already heal up to 9d3 on its own power, then you can add it taking and eating corpses off any rots within 5" and it gets a bit silly.
• Placing a dread rot between your opponents best offensive models and your heavies in Dark Menagerie is a great way to force the opponent to trigger effects such as the Ill Omens arcana, or the Heretics Trump

Other

Trivia

Released with the Faction release (2017.06)

Other Grymkin models

Grymkin Index       (Edit)
Battlegroup
Warlocks	The Child - The Dreamer - The Heretic - The King of Nothing - The Wanderer - Old Witch 3 Arcana Warlock Attachment: Baron Tonguelick
Warbeasts	Lesser: Crabbit	Light: Frightmare - Gorehound - Rattler
	Heavy: Cage Rager - Clockatrice - Skin & Moans	Gargantuan: Slaughterhouse
Units, Solos, & Battle Engines
Units	Dread Rots - Hollowmen - Mad Caps - Malady Man - Murder Crows - Neigh Slayers - Piggybacks - Twilight Sisters
Solos	Baron Tonguelick, Lord of Warts - Cask Imp - Defiled Archon - The Four Horseymans - Glimmer Imp - Grave Ghoul - Gremlin Swarm - Isiah, Dread Harvester - Lady Karianna Rose - Lord Longfellow - Trapperkin - Weird Wendell - Witchwood
Battle Engines	Death Knell
Theme Forces		Minions
Dark Menagerie - Bump in the Night		Refer to Category: Grymkin Minion
This index was last updated: 2021.08

Rules Clarifications

Rules Clarification : Weapon Master - None yet. (Edit)
Rules Clarification : Tough - None yet. (Edit)
Rules Clarification : Bag Man - None yet. (Edit)

Rules Clarification : Victuals you can neither raise nor buy      (Edit) A model can collect from Dread Rots multiple times. You can collect from several Dread Rots simultaneously. You can collect, then continue your activation, and then collect again. Restrictions on "Any Time" abilities     (Edit)         [Show/Hide] "Any Time" abilities can be used at any time during a model/unit's activation, except: Before any compulsory forfeiture of movement/action. See step 2 of the activation sequence, appendix A. After the model with the "Any Time" ability has had their activation end "prematurely". By this I mean you resolved something which includes the phrase "its activation ends". Examples include: Running, failing a charge, or failing a slam. Abilities that include "then its activation ends" (such as Reposition and Teleport). In between declaring your charge target and making your charge movement. (Infernal Ruling) In between completing your charge movement and determining whether it was a successful charge. (Infernal Ruling) When you're in the middle of moving. (Note: Impact Attacks count as being in the middle of movement). When you're in the middle of an attack. Which also includes effects that occur "after the attack is resolved". (Although the attack is "resolved" at Step 11, in terms of using an "Any Time" ability the attack is not "finished" until after Step 14. Refer to the first paragraph of Apdx A.) Your opponent interrupted your activation to trigger one of their own abilities (such as Countercharge). Warcasters/warlocks/etc can normally cast a spell or use their feat "At any time". However, there is a core rule saying they cannot do so on the same activation that they run. So, they are subject to all the same restrictions listed above, plus they can't cast/feat before running. Units: See below. In general you can use "Any Time" abilities while you're knocked down or stationary (except Spells and Feats which specify you can't). If you have a gun with a random ROF, you can use an "Any Time" ability inbetween rolling the number of shots and actually making the first attack. (Infernal Ruling) Units with "Any Time" abilities You cannot use an "Any Time" ability before issuing/receiving orders. See step 1 and 2 of the activation sequence, appendix A. A model in a unit can't use an "Any Time" ability after they run (Infernal Ruling) or fail a charge. Because that makes that specific model's activation to end even though the unit's activation is still ongoing, and you can't use abilities on models that are not active. You can use an "Any Time" ability before running, however. A model in a unit can't use an "Any Time" ability after anyone in the unit has begun a Reposition move. (Infernal Ruling)