As I mentioned last time, this year’s summer narrative league at The Rogue’s Roost was all about building a custom warjack or warbeast.  Another thing I did differently this year, was allow everyone to play two factions rather than one – this allowed a little bit more variability in what you could play and meant that everyone got to design two models rather than just one if they chose to do so.

For my custom Grymkin warbeast, I looked to the Rattler for inspiration and looked for ways to destroy even more infantry.  The first stop along this path was Death Rattle:

The Great Axe provides a bit of extra reach to the Rattler, as well as giving it one more infantry mulching ability – Thresher.  Thresher is interesting because it does trigger Berserk, but it doesn’t trigger Overtake, meaning you need someone still living in your melee range if you want to trigger the ability to move (because the berserk attack would be a basic melee attack).

As I refined him a bit more, I came up with Last Gasp:

The last few upgrades on this rattler take him out of light warbeast territory and put him firmly into the expensive end, but cranks his ability to deal with infantry to eleven.  First, I bonded him to Adrik, the character warlock that I built last league.  My plan all along was to get him a character rattler, and this was my opportunity to do that.  And, of course, if I was going to run him with Adrik, he really should have some corpse capability.  Heart Eater and Snacking are a good pair and often seen together, while also being something slightly different than the other Grymkin beasts have.  Finally, the trample bundle (Blade Rush, Smasher, and Trample Power Attack) is another tool in his toolbox to deal with enemy infantry.

While I like all everything that Last Gasp does, there are lots of places where he just doesn’t quite feel right – I’m not sure why, so I stuck with it at the end, but I’ll probably be looking for an interesting way to tweak him before the next time he really hits the table.