If I were, the King of Pigs

I am not the king of pigs.  But if I was.

The following article contains opinions. You have been warned.

So, in a moment of pure self indulgence I wondered to myself: “if I were given a keyword to rework, what would I do?”.  What changes would I make? Why would I make those changes? What would I be seeking to achieve and why? And this got me thinking. A lot. 

I was also thinking about a blog that young Tarquin wrote, which you can find here about why he was no longer playing his beloved Sooey/Pig keyword.  It was in many ways a bit of a shock when he stopped playing pigs, firstly he’s from Norfolk (say no more) and also he’s been playing them since I first met the man a decade ago.  Equally it was a bit of a relief because I wanted to see my friend enjoying themselves, and they weren’t. The source of his lack of enjoyment he expressed, as ever, in meme form:

Rightly or wrongly, this is how my friend felt. He felt his crew were a bit below average and he had to work hard to make them average, a view he confirmed by switching kewyords and seeing how the other half live.  Now whereas of course he doesn’t profess to be the greatest Sooey/Pig player in the world he has poured countless hours into them over the years to a level comparable to Farmer Skittles (there’s a deep cut from a long time ago to see who’s been around for years) and I believe him.

So if I were in a position to help my friend have more fun by redesigning his favourite keyword, what would I do?

Part 1: Core philosophy

So what is the current design philosophy of Pig/Sooey? What are the things that make it stand out? What is the high end concept? What makes it thematically distinct to other keywords in the faction? I think it’s the following (you might disagree, if so please leave a comment in the doobly doo! I would like to hear from you).

• You have a division of support (Sooey) and Output (Pig) models. This is a generalisation, I accept that and that’s ok. 
• Pigs are a bit unruly. This is represented in their 0” engagement, the need to always declare triggers. It’s not quite at the extent of the Bayou Rampage ability from M2E (thankfully) but it is still there 



For those that don’t remember *shudder*



• There is a theme of self harm (self ham?) for benefit, be that in the form of reckless (1hp damage for Fast) or Stampede (1hp damage to inflict 1hp).
• Growing. Both Ulix variants have the ability to grow their piggy minions into bigger piggers.

As a massive over generalisation I am happy with the above 4 core design principles I can observe in Sooey/Pig.  

I like 3 of them. The support/output split between the gremlins and the pigs, the unruliness of pigs/handling requirements from gremlins, and the growing mechanics.  I don’t like the self harm for benefits.  Why? Well, because of this guy.

The idea of turning damage on your own models into bonus effects exists already within the faction, and frankly it is done better and in a more interesting way in Wizz-Bang.  I am not a big fan of Wong, it’s not for me (ymmv ofc) but I recognise it for what it is. So Stampede? Reckless? They gots to go. Pig/Sooey should have a uniqueness to them, and right now they’re competing within their own faction on that front and they shouldn’t. They need something of their own.

Another problematic area with their design, and I accept this may not be a popular thought, is Old Major. Specifically his Hog Wild aura. I believe it was the Danger Planet guys who said something the lines of “you play pigs for access to one of the most cracked buffs in the game” and they’re right. Built in pos flips for damage, built in ram on the attack which is on a massive aura on a huge 50mm base on a Sz 3 model. It’s absolutely insane, but as such I believe it impacts every single design decision in the keyword. Much like Flicker for Oni and Bayou Bash for Big Hat it has become a millstone around the neck of the keyword that has to be taken into consideration on every single model in the Pig keyword.  Even if you did not take Old Major in your crew, Old Major has impacted your crew, and that’s probably not right. 

Lastly for this blog (there will be more on this subject in the future) there’s two things I believe are missing from the crew thematically. 

1. Mud. Seriously where is the mud? Pigs like mud. There should be mud shouldn’t there?
2. One of my favourite pieces of the Bayou lore is their cyclical food chain. Gremlins eat Pigs. Pigs eat Gremlins.  We have Gremlins eating pig represented in Big Hat with the Spit Hog.  We have no representation of Pigs eating Gremlins. Time to redress this.

So. In conclusion: through a series of blogs I am going to do some wild speculative wish listing that I in no way believe would ever go any further than this blog, but it will hopefully be interesting/entertaining.  I believe there are themes that can be built on (support/output split & unruliness/reliance on instruction) themes that are missing (mud & eating gremlins) and themes that need to be discarded (self harm and big auto include aura buffs) and I’ll tackle each of these in blogs moving forward.

Back soon!