Hello Everyone!

We are pleased to announce the latest of the supreme commanders today! He’s the meanest, greenest and greatest Prophet of the Waaagh! Ghazghkull Thrakka.

To face Ghazghkull Thraka in battle is to die. Messily. He is a totemic war leader of great kunnin’ and terrifying presence who enjoys the personal protection of the Ork gods, not that he seems to need it! Makari bears aloft the personal Waaagh! banner of Ghazghkull. There isn’t a greenskin living who doesn’t fight harder in sight of that flag.

Ghazghkull has been an infamous part of the Warhammer setting for decades, and it’s exciting to be able to release him in his role as Supreme Commander and portray him as the true galaxy-wide threat that he is! Coming in at 92pts, he is the 3rd most expensive Supreme Commander, close behind the two existing Primarchs. With that weighty points cost he boasts impressive stats. At max level with 445 Wounds, backed up by his secondary trait of Fear, he’s going to pose a serious challenge to remove. For his attack stats, he has 160 Melee and 80 Ranged at max level, but levelling isn’t going to slow him down as he starts level 1 with an impressive 70 Melee and 50 Ranged, making him a threat straight out the gate. With his primary trait of Furious Charge, he’s going to hit the field with a serious impact.

Now, if that wasn’t exciting enough, let’s head on to the main event, his special rule:

When you play a friendly card, deal damage to the enemy card with the highest current Wounds equal to 10% of the current Wounds total of all friendly cards in play. Additionally, when a friendly card is below 25% of its starting wounds, its attack stats are increased by 25%.

Breaking down the first part of this rule, every time you play an Ork card, you will deal damage to an opponent’s card, starting from the initial deployment. The ability will always target the card with the highest current wounds remaining, so this will normally be a large card, but can, of course, mean big wounded cards can sneak under the radar. The other part of the rule is how the damage value is calculated. The current Wounds of all of your cards in play are totalled, and 10% of that value is dealt as damage. 

While a relatively low %, it is definitely possible with large cards to get your current Wounds total over 1,000 and, therefore, deal over 100 damage. However, that will require a full board of expensive cards, and including Ghazghkull himself will leave little room for much else, and so gives minimal triggers. A big deck will obviously mean cheaper cards and fewer total wounds but more frequent triggers. This element of the rule should make deck building an interesting part of how Ghazghkul is played and allows players to choose their own playstyle, be it a few massive hits, a barrage of chip damage, or anything in between. The goal is to make any variety of Ork cards viable and make the same Warlord replayable with different decks, giving a different experience each time. 

For the second half, when a friendly card drops below 25% of its starting wounds, it increases all of its attack stats by 25%. This has the potential to make any card dangerous and also means that relying on AoE traits like Barrage or Psionic Blast may just leave a lot of very angry Orks. As well as this just being a very useful rule to have in any situation it also compliments the first part of the rule well. While you do want your cards to be as healthy as possible to get maximum damage from the deployment trigger, your cards are actually at their most dangerous at low health. This should pose an interesting strategic choice for players both playing as Ghazghkull and against him and where the best balance between the two rules are.

As the attack boost applies to all attack types, there’s no restriction to which, if any, attack you build your deck around. Altogether, this means the rule is very flexible as to how you want to build and play your decks. Small, powerful decks, large horde decks, mono-attack, or multi-attack all are supported and have a way to be worked into a Ghazghkull deck. And that feels appropriate for the true Prophet of the Waaagh!

From a lore perspective, we’ve aimed to capture the Ork mentality of ‘Biggest iz Best’ but also the overwhelming numbers of a Waaagh! and the fact that Ghazghkull has every kind of Ork tool at his disposal. By targeting the enemy card with the highest current wounds, we wanted to capture that an Ork will always charge straight at the biggest threat and chase the best skrap to be had. We hope that with this rule, however, you choose to play Orks, we’ve captured that Orky feel and have done the Greatest Warboss justice in this new incarnation.

Happy Krumpin’!