Bolton Flayed Men - Ferocious Assault - Pointless rule..

[DevlinBrightblade]

Whats your opinion of the V1.5 change to Bolton Flayed Men, changing the Spread Fear ability to Ferocious Assault?

For me the change seems to be pointless, the Ferocious Assault triggers on a successful charge making the Charged unit Panicked, but then if the Flayed Unit has successfully charged then they have attacked and will in 99% of cases cause wounds which automatically makes the attacked unit Panicked anyway... so what is the point of the Ferocious Assault ability?

[AlxRaven]

It limited the ability to give out panic tokens to just Charge Actions, making them weaker in sustained fights. I don’t have the link handy, but I believe the article about the changes said they wanted the emphasis on the Charge action.

[Alliser Thorne]

... What? Causing Wounds on an Attack doesn't make a unit Panicked, it forces them to make a Panic Test. Becoming Panicked is gaining a Panic Token.

[Oakwolf]

Yeah i think there's a little confusion.

The Flayed Men Charges.

They put a panic token on the target (if the charge is successful successful)

They make an Attack and if they cause any wounds (which usually they will), it'll causes a panic test on the target unit.

That panic test is at -2 to the roll thanks to vicious (plus flank or rear bonus,etc) and you can spend the panic token to re-roll any of the dice (that is, either or both of the D6 dice used to pass the test, and the one used to determine the D3+1 "wounds" lost in case of failure).

---

Bottom line, the 1.5 change made them much less resilient in exchange for more charge-related offense through free panic token generation (i.e. they don't need support from another unit now to generate the sought after token). I can see why they did this, but i still feel that it's only because they are neutral and not a faction of their own.

[Codfather]

I think as Alliser pointed out, I think you're confusing what ferocious assault does (give the charged unit a panic token). This rule has increased Flayed men's damage significantly on the charge

[DevlinBrightblade]

Thanks for all your responses, got it now, played a few games and starting to understand it all better now..