The case for ronald reagan

brothers and sisters,
today i'd like to discuss something close to my heart; a very special fella named ronald reagan.

not that ronald reagan ya dingus. hes a dick. a tiny dick.

im talking about my arachnarok, who is also named ronald reagan. just a quick background before we talk nerd -
when i was living in holloway road, we had a number of orb spiders who would make their homes out the back on the washing line. i had a particular fondness for these type of spiders, and would try and befriend them, by putting food in their webs, and generally hanging out.
yes, i need a real pet. understood. anyway, id name them all after former us presidents, and the spider i enoyed the most rapport (?) with was ronald reagan. and thats why mine is named ronald reagan. anywho..

when the ong 8th ed book came out - after i wiped away my tears of joy and changed my undies - i had a good pore through, and came to the conclusion that yep, roks are pretty good, but with a rare section like the greenskins, there were better choices. 290 teef seemed a little expensive.
so off i went along with the rest, whinging about how local comp wouldnt allow double trouble rare till we started using scgt comp, as it was sposed to be that way, cos its exactly 600 pts lol. when i finally got to use it, i was massively underwhelmed by their performance. back to the drawing board.

internet wisdom offered me little insight, apart from the ol sorcbun horde, no brainer - and blorc one at that stage LOLOL - as if.
so i thought hey, i like the look of this rok. its got 8 wounds, s5 and t6 isnt bad. 4+ as is pretty good for a monster - aint no hpa tho. stubborn and itp are double edged swords tho, cant flee from charges, and stubborn 6 is like the worlds most reliable goblin. ws4 is sweet as though, and 8 poisoned attacks, not to mention the 8 spear crew and thunderstomp, theres some serious scr beating potential. then theres the venom surge. situational - as i would never want reagan in combat with a s5+ character - but has its uses.
swiftstride, strider and terror are all useful, but m7 isnt so much.
bit of a point sink though, this single model is more pts expensive than 23 ahw sorcbuns with fc. but what the hey, ill give it a hoon, i thought.

soon enough, i signed up to 2400pt campaign tourney, ong vs skaven vs dwarves. taking a rok vs dwarves and skaven didnt seem so smart, but i wanted a trial by fire. then like a bolt of good fotune from the blue, ol jd came through with a loaner and we were on.
the 1st game was vs dwarves, and the rok did a lurk for most the game and did little. didnt die though.

the second game of that tourney is shown in the earlier post 'Monsterous Opposites', which was a narrow loss for me. but if you go back and take a look at the rok's progress, he did a pretty fucking good job of killing slaves, crats and war machines. esp if you recognise my opponents army.

next round was vs skaven again. however, my opponent deployed his grey seer not on a bell, not in a bunker at the back of the board, but in the front of a big slave unit, here:

so off i went, on an alpha strike mission to assassinate his grey seer with a giant fucking spider. not the most discreet assassin in the warhammer world

but damn it all the venom surge came through! haha! dead seer, t2. from there it was sweet as. no d13th for ben!

 
last game was a 3 way, and i seemed to have lost the photos. i had to set up in the centre. needless to say, i got horribly horribly smashed, and somehow managed to deploy in a swastika that i didnt even notice till later. anyway, the rok stayed off in reserve this game and avoided the slaughter of the rest of my army, but came on later, caused some havoc up the back

so after that performance, i was sold. against my better judgement i impulse bought my very own rok next time i wandered past the nerd hole, and thus ronald reagan was birthed into the warhammer world.
since then, hes been in every 2400 ong list ive written. a magnet for cannonballs, hellblasters/organ guns and stone throwers alike, reagan laughs at your puny attempts to kill him! haha!
his hobbies include mangler and chariot support, lurking, going walkies with gorks hand, terrifying hordes of s&t3 troops, being a nuisance, eating warmachines and getting baked.

no idea how he can use the lighter though.
as mentioned earlier, the biggest use i have for him, is the synergy he brings to the table with the other fast stuff i field. a fairly simple equation. however, dropping him frees up tonnes of pts in the nasty nasty rare section of the ong book, but would ruin the very synergy ive been fine tuning for months.
as stated, the balance is fast stuff vs easy pts. reagan, the trolls, sorcbuns, and the trukk are all fairly similar amounts of pts - and bar the trukk - any three of those units can still operate after the loss of one.

so yeah. im a big fan. he always has a place in my list, and usually does a good job of whatever hes told to do. please note i am not advocating the use of rok mounted gobbo shaman lords. if you're doing that, you're either fluffy, or imho, you are doing it wrong.