Warjack Profile: Spriggan

Imagine a knight from the middle ages, now take his lance and shield and stick them on a warjack, that is the Spriggan. A very versatile jack that inspite of it's stats can be very potent in terms of threat range, tending to be seen as a great assassination jack for that very reason.

In terms of the Spriggan's stats they are the same as the regular Khadoran jacks except it has a point less base ARM (though it makes up for this with the ARM bonus from the shield). Essentially this means the Spriggan should be hunting two things, jacks or casters/locks, at range it has the flexibility to provide some utility to your army, but for the points you pay for this jack you want it for more than just utility.




The Spriggan's weapons are what dictates what you do with it. It's War Lance is the only reach weapon availiable on a non character (and non colossal) jack, add on top of this that it has Powerful Charge and the P+S being a point off the Juggernauts Ice Axe, most models hit by that will have just one thing to say about all that, "ouch...". If the model does happen to be still standing after being hit the Spriggan has it's Assault Shield, whilst it lacks the punch to hurt jacks against casters or warlocks this will likely be enough to finish them off and it does give the aforementioned ARM bonus, which is nice. Finally the Spriggan comes with Grenade Launchers, 2 small blasts with the same range as the Decimator's Revolver Cannon and relatively low POW. The Launchers come with the ability to sacrifice the inital attacks in order to fire 2 targetting flares that remove Stealth, (a great way of dealing with Bane Thralls or Mage Hunters), also having Arcing fire to get around those units hiding behind a sheild wall unit, this means most activations the Spriggan will be using it's action to do something other than run.

The Spriggan also comes with the Standard Clamjack (Devastator, Demolisher and Spriggan) abilitity Bulldoze, allowing the jack to push any models it advances into base to base with directly away from the jack whilst still keeping the Spriggan's Lance in range. It's worth noting this only takes place during the Spriggan's activation, so unfortunately you can't use this in conjuction with spells such as Watcher. Otherwise this ability is great against armies where the warcaster is hidden behind other models in the hope of avoiding a charge. I think my first battle report I put on the blog had just such a situation where a Spriggan would've been excellent (pSeverious hidden behind a line of Cinerators), though it tends not to happen (saying that pIrusk vs eHaley Sword Knight/Lancer blob in front of eHaley... hmm).

So the Spriggan, the most expensive non-character jack available to Khador, but in my opinion also one of the best. It has great potential to work well with most of the Khadoran casters, Strakhov can give the Spriggan so many movement buffs it makes a Full Tilted Stormclad look somewhat overwhelming, pButcher can give it Fury and his Feat to make powerful buffs to his damage output, eButcher can give it Beserk and give it a second sctivstion through his feat, Karchev has another jack to throw into the opponent's face, eSorcha has both her bond and Feat to make the best of it and not forgetting pVlads feat to give the Spriggan an 18" charge range (turn 2 assassination any one?).

Having only used the Spriggan a few times I can say one thing about it, whilst I said it works well with most casters, it does work with others not to the same degree. Think of the Spriggan as the Doom Reavers equivalent in jack form, it either works brilliantly or it doesn't do all that much, for example both Irusks tend to prefer infantry heavy armies and don't bring that much to benefit jacks, Old Witch similarly tends to lean towards infantry given her low jack points and having Scrapjack meaning she doesn't really want to have to throw focus at more than a jack (in most cases Behemoth). Essentially when list building and you just want a Khadoran heavy don't take the Spriggan, only take it if you want a Khadoran jack, with both versatility and the ability to get into melee without much caster support then this jack is what you are looking for. Reach makes this jack a nightmare for opponents to deal with it if they've not experienced what it can do and the Shield is a nice add on, giving the ability to swat an intervening model out of the way before spearing your intended target. As for the Grenades, anything that gets rid of Stealth is always good, also it means that theres no such thing as a wasted activation with a Spriggan.