Welcome to the first in a series of articles that looks at each of the Champions, and their followers, from Godtear. These are not intended to be ‘expert’ opinions about the game but my own thoughts as I examine each Champion. I’ll be examining each Champion based on their card abilities and not necessarily looking at in-game examples. If you don’t have the cards for Grimgut you can find PDFs on the Steamforged Games website.
General comments
Grimgut is unusual for a Maelstrom Champion in that he only has two attacks. The first is his Ultimate, Buffet, and the second is his Clash Phase skill Nom, Nom, Nom. Both target followers specifically so Grimgut also can’t damage champions. Grimgut’s damage output is specifically focused on followers and he isn’t really all that good at it. So what does he bring to the table?
Stats
Grimgut is slow, easy to hit, easy to damage but comes with a lot of Health to allow him to take a few hits without being KOed. He is Move:1 Dodge:2 Armour:2 and Health:9 in both phases. While it is going to be easy to stop him moving with a single Move blight it isn’t as if he was going very far in any case.
The Retchlings are equally soft and squishy. Which makes sense given how they look. They are Move:0 Dodge:2 Armour:1 and Health:1 in the Plot Phase and Move:1 Dodge:2 Armour:1 and Health:1 in the Clash Phase. This additional movement will prove handy in the Clash Phase since Retchlings have an attack they can use multiple times.
Passive and Ultimate
Grimgut’s Ultimate skill is called Buffet and it allows you to target up to three adjacent followers with a 7/7 attack. It doesn’t affect as many followers as, for instance, Blackjaw’s ultimate Fire Storm but it has very high attack and damage ratings so it can be useful at punching through high defence or armour followers like the Household Guard, Quartzlings or Sneaky Stabbers. And with the exception of the Household Guard, these all come in groups of three.
Grimgut’s unique ability is is Passive called Spew. Combined with his New Spew skill this allows Grimgut to expel a line of Retchlings across the board. Handy for making a wall to block movement or, more likely, to try to place Retchlings in contact with as many enemy units as possible. Spew is his core ability and most of the options he has available in the Plot and Clash Phase involve using his Retchlings to put blights on units or attack followers.
The Retchling’s Passive skill is the removal of any points you get for KOing them. They are worth a base of 0 steps but, I assume, that a Maelstrom Champion would still get 1 step for them. This means that in most situations you can toss them into harm’s way since they won’t be worth steps if your opponent removes them. Even better, put them into locations where your opponent has to remove them to move and then happily remind them of the lack of steps they are getting.
Plot Phase
Grimgut’s Plot Phase skills are New Spew, Flu Spew and Goo Spew. New Spew allows you to remove all of your Retchlings and then string them out again starting from Grimgut’s position. Once they are in position, Grimgut can then use Flu Spew to attempt to add a
Damage blight to any enemy units in contact with a Retchling. Similarly, Goo Spew will target any enemy unit adjacent to a Retchling with a potential Dodge blight.
Depending on your opponent’s positioning you can potentially affect a large number of units with these skills.
So in this example, Grimgut has used New Spew to place 5 Retchlings and now has the ability to use one of his other two skills to potentially place blights on Rhodri and all of his followers. One thing to take note of is that you are impacting a follower, in this example, that is four hexes away from Grimgut. New Spew gives Grimgut a much larger range than people may expect. If he strings out his Retchlings he can potentially effect units up to six hexes away. Flu Spew and Goo Spew are, I think, one of the longest ranged skills in the game because of this.
Or you could alter how you place the Retchlings to even better effect.
So now we have the same effect, Rhodri and Followers blighted, but we’ve also blocked Rhodri off from the Objective.
Placement of your Retchlings in the Plot Phase is going to depend on what you are going to do with your Retchlings in their activation. In the Plot Phase the Retchlings have the Slip and Slide skill which can be used up to two times to add Move boons. Spewing Retchlings behind our own deployment to add Move boons to your other Champions or Followers in 2×2 or 3×3 can help you move in your first turn quicker. This can also be used to put out Move boons in later turns to make your opponent misjudge how far you can move Champions. That banner might not be safe if Grimgut can Spew a Retchling over to a Champion and boost their movement in the next Phase.
In the example above, we could add a Move boon to Grimgut (always useful) but if we use it to add it to the Retchlings themselves we are going to most likely lose it in the Clash Phase since when we Spew the Retchlings will lose any Boons or Blights they have.
So in the Plot Phase, we have the ability to place some Blights, potentially increase our movement in the Clash Phase and also wall off areas of the board or block our opponent from moving closer to our Champions and Followers. The Retchlings that we Spew out are not going to move in this phase so their placement is quite important.
Clash Phase
Grimgut and his phlegmy friends get a bit more attack-oriented in the Clash Phase. Grimgut can still Spew out Retchlings in this Phase but I think that his options are more restricted in the Clash Phase. In the Plot Phase, his two additional skills are similar enough that it was often a choice between which Boon to try to place after a Spew. In the Clash Phase, Grimgut can Roll three hexes in a straight line and also attack a follower and these actions are different enough that the choice between them can be more difficult to make it the correct circumstances arise. Sometimes it is handy to Roll into a position to attack a follower or smash a banner. And if you used Slip and Slide on Grimgut in the Plot Phase he can Advance for 2 hexes and then set up a Roll for an additional 3 hexes to make a total move of 5 hexes.
Roll combined with Slip and Slide can also be an effective way to get Grimgut into contact with as many followers as possible so he can trigger Buffet and try to generate up to six slides in one attack. Given how quickly that can swing the turn back into your control it is something you want to try to keep your eyes open for.
Spewing in the Clash Phase is made more interesting by the addition of a point of Move on the Retchlings in this phase. The Retchlings have an attack skill, Slimed, that, unlike Grimgut, can target Champions. The major benefit of it is that it can be used twice in the phase from different hexes. So in the Plot Phase, we were Spewing into a static position but in the Clash Phase we are going to look for areas in which we can Spew and then move into a position to attack.
So lets us the same situation we had in the Plot Phase.
This time when we Spew we want to then move the Retchlings afterwards to group them up and increase the dice we have for the attack and damage rolls.
Ideally, we want to get two Retchlings in each hex to increase our chance of hitting. Getting groups of two using Spew and a subsequent move should be easy to pull off.
So after moving the Retchlings we can potentially attack two of four hexes and up to a maximum of three units. We could try to take out the hex with two Household Guard, try to chip some health from Rhodri or even get both stacks of two Retchlings to attack Rhodri. You can even just string the Retchlings out in a line and try to attack a unit six hexes away from Grimgut. Once again, the range at which he can affect units is deceptive. It isn’t until he has used New Spew that his options become more apparent for your opponent.
As several people online commented after this was initially written (thanks to Taylor Kowbel and Sean Horn) if you do use an Advance to move the Retchlings you are limited to just a single activation of Slimed. If you want to maximize the number of times you can use Slimed you can just bunch the Retchlings up as you Spew them.
The Retchlings only have to be placed adjacent to another Retchling or to Grimgut so you can build multi-Retchling hexes all at once as long as you don’t need to extend the range to catch your opponent’s units.
Conclusion
Despite his Maelstrom credentials, Grimgut is not a typical Maelstrom Champion so your experience with Titus and Blackjaw won’t really be useful with him. The interplay between his Spew ability and the skills on the Retchlings mean that it is useful to think of his followers not as independent units but as range extenders for his skills.
The Plot Phase is where Grimgut will be placing blights or Move boons. So you can set up your other Champions for an attack, defence or give them a bit of a Move boost. The Retchlings can provide a critical way to block off opponents from board positions, or escape, but unless you also want to block off an area that also has units you want to blight this strikes me as an either/or situation.
It is important to remember that Grimgut is limited to placing his blights on enemy units. So you can’t use him to put blights on a friendly unit and then use a Champion like Nia to move them even further. He can though, given the right circumstances, both blight a target and give a Move boon to the unit that will alter charge it.
The Clash phase is a bit more complex as Grimgut gets more options. Grimgut can, despite his bulk, be boosted to move up to 5 hexes in this phase. Remember though that the first or last three of those moves will have to be in a straight line. This still gives you an incredible amount of flexibility though. Someone like Nai could still take a blight that Grimgut added and use Crystal Glare to move it to a more effective target. If you do that, you could be making that blight affect a target that is up to 10 hexes away.
Using Roll with a Move boon is also something that shouldn’t be underestimated. Here is an illustration of the possible end hexes that Grimgut can reach using Roll and Slip and Slide if he does his Roll move first.
Now you won’t have this sort of flexibility all of the time but it is important to remember that while he is a lump of phlegm Grimgut can still get across the board when he needs to. If you do a two hex move first and then do a Roll the possible end hexes are slightly more impressive and more difficult for your opponent to predict.
Grimgut is a Champion of extremes. He can’t move far normally but when he does he can cover half the board. He has limited attacks but they can be done at ranges most Champions can’t touch. And his Ultimate is potentially a turn winning move.
Pile of dice 
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