Solo Profiles: Wardog

A dog is a mans best friend, never has that been more true than in the Khadoran army. I've had many games where my opponent has put more attacks into this one model than my entire army and for very good reason.

The Wardog is the cheapest model in the entire Khador force that can be fielded on it's own (in the sense that you don't need to buy a unit to take it) it's only requirement is that it must be attached to a warcaster, and this is where it's use shines through. It is possible to use the Wardog to run and charge a unit or model alone, although the only reason I would ever suggest you do this is when you plan to charge your Caster in after the dog, the defensive buffs the dog offers only occur when the caster is in close to the dog, so charging the dog after the caster is largely pointless.

The first Ability the dog brings is Guard Dog, while the dog is not knocked down, the Caster it's attached to recieves a DEF boost in melee and is immune to free strikes, this makes the melee focused Khadoran Casters (Butcher, Sorcha, Vlad and even Karchev) nigh untouchable when charging and in melee, especially if you charge the dog in first so that the moment your Caster enters the bubble of the effect no one will be hitting you unless they divert some of their army to take the dog down first. This is where the dog's second ability comes in Tough, on regular infantry this is a pain, on models like the dog that are buffing your Caster as they are it's essentially like the what happened at the end of Men In Black 1, your opponent puts in so much effort to kill this one model, thinks it's dead before it turns around and takes another chunk out of something. Although it rarely happens, when you succeed a tough roll on the Wardog expect a fair bit of cursing from your opponent, because of this next abilitity.


Counter charge, the main reason for taking the Wardog, if an enemy model advances within a certain distantce and line of sight of the dog, the dog immediately may charge the offending model, combine this with Hunter, you've got a model that whilst it doesn't have Pathfinder will be able to still charge through a forest, take a kill a model, (or in extreme circumstances rip the arm of a Warjack, this has happened at least three times for me, every time on heavies) then and this is what makes this model so good, the abilitity Return kicks in and the dog makes a full advance towards the controlling Warcaster. Esentially your warcaster has a tough yo-yo that he flings at anything too close then pulls it back to him, Return also works on regular charges as well so expect to get quite a lot of usage out of it.

The only issue that arises with the Wardog is being that it is a warcaster attachment, it may have to fight for it's place given  some of the other attachments out their such as Reiholdt (Who few Khadoran casters benefit from given not many of our 'casters actually use their guns, so his reload abilitity is a little wasted) or Slys Wyshnalyrr, who will more commonly be the model you're considering taking over the wardog, in most cases I would suggest you take the Wardog, however in the cases of Zerkova, Old Witch and Casters reliant on offensive spell casting I'd have to push Slys on the basis that he gives too much for you not to have him and also if that is the kind of caster you're taking, they wouldn't be wanting to end up in melee so for the most part the Wardog's abilities would go to waste.