Stories in the Mortal Realms talk about the Gargants, drunken brutes of monsters who strike fear into the hearts of mortals. They steal valuables, smash buildings and stomp those who scurry among their feet while they bulldoze the land looking for the next way to fill their bellies. But something has changed. The death of Behemat has drawn these savage beasts together into vicious tribes and they now march against the forces of the Mortal Realms.

After what feels like an eternity, the Sons of Behemat are here! We have seen these teased during the year as the Age of Sigmar’s equivalent to Imperial Knights, allowing players to take an army of nothing but giants! To support the new Battletome, Games Workshop have also released one of the biggest monster kits for Warhammer Age of Sigmar – The Mega-Garagant. This kit allows you to build one of the three varieties of Mega-Gargant from the book: The Kraken Eater, The Gatebreaker or the Warstomper and is also up for pre order today alongside the book!

If you would like to help support the site, then why not order your Sons of Behemat Battletome and Mega-Gargant though our affiliate Element Games and save yourself 20% too?

We have been very lucky to receive review copies both the new Sons of Behemat Battletome and the awesome Mega-Gargant kit to show off for you all, so grab a fresh brew and get ready to dive into the world of the Sons of Behemat.

Mega-Gargant Unboxing

I feel we have to kick off with the real star of the show, the brand new Mega-Gargant kit! Check out our unboxing video below!

The Mega-Gargant is certainly a giant kit (pun most definitely intended ) spread over 3 big sprues and 1 little one – it also seems that the main structure of the body is contained on just one of the frames, meaning that in the future Games Workshop could follow the path they have taken with the Imperial Knights kit and add new variants in the future using the same core structure for the Gargant.

I decided to build the Kraken Eater, as I really liked the nautical vibes that he had going on (plus I want to build all three variants as soon as I get my hands on more kits!) and I’m really happy with how he turned out, he’s certainly a big chap!

I know a lot of people will want to know how big the kit actually is, so I found some suitably giant behemoths to stand him next to!

While not eye to eye with the Everchosen, he’s certainly very big at about twice the height of the Gargant and similar in mass to the Imperial Knight. Both Nagash and Archaon stand a little taller due to wispy ghosty tendrils, tails and wings, but it is a shame he is quite a jump in price over both of those figures, especially as a lot of people will want to get all 3 variants. I feel £100 would have been the sweet spot here, thankfully picking up the model from an independent store does save a decent chunk of money on the RRP. It’s certainly an impressive kit, and is great fun to build and paint! You also get an absolute stack of spare parts that would make great use in converting up your other Gargants to make them look unique! Regardless of the cost, I’ll be adding another two to my collection as I’m already craving painting up another one!

Sons of Behemat Battletome Review

So now onto the Battletome itself, the latest Destruction book for Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Again, if you would rather watch our deep dive into the battletome I have embded our hour long review video below, and if you would rather read it then our full written review follows that!

Destruction Battletome: Sons of Behemat allows you to create an army of Gargants dedicated to one of three Gargant Tribes – The Takers, the Stompers and the Breakers. Each of these tribes have their own allegiance abilities, Command Traits and Artefacts and work quite differently from each other on the table top. You can also take any one of the Mega-Gargants

The Lore

We have previously glimpsed into what lore we knew about the Gargants here on Sprues & Brews, but the new Battletome expands on this massively. We learn about Gargant culture and even their oral history that has been passed down from Gargant to Gargant over the ages, and there is some brilliantly funny stuff in here such as the reason why Duardin are short and the fact that the Sons of Behemat worship an aspect of Gorkamorka in the form of his feet (One is stompy but kicky, the other is of course kicky but stompy).

We also get a recap of the events concerning Behemat during the Realmgate Wars, which is a great way of catching up with the Gargant centric things that happened during the book featuring Behemat, especially if you are new to Age of Sigmar!

The entire lore section is a great read which really captures the imagination by building on a race we have only really seen glimpses of in Age of Sigmar. There’s some really funny bits as well as a showing of just how powerful and deadly the Gargants are when they are driven together with a purpose.

I particularly like that the collective name for a group of Gargants is a “Catastrophe” (Though this is too difficult for the Gargants themselves to say, so they just refer to themselves as a stomp!)

The artwork throughout this section outstanding with a mixture of impressive as always pictures of the Gargants themselves along with maps and more “fairy-tale” like images showing events from the age of myth. As always, Games Workshop have pulled out all the stops with regards to presentation and this is a very pleasing book to page through!

Miniatures Showcase and Painting Guide

As we have come to expect from Battletome releases, the centre pages are filled with gorgeous photography of the miniatures range. As we have a relativity small army here with only 4 different units, we get some gorgeous full page shots that really show off the detail of the various models with cut out shots showing some of the details that you might otherwise miss.

We also get a fairly comprehensive painting guide that details how to get your Sons of Behemat army ready for the battlefield using a combination of Contrast and traditional paints. This section covers how to paint different skin colours, the clothing and weapons, but also details such as how to paint eyes and rather grubby looking toenails! This should arm anyone new to the hobby with enough ammunition to get started with a Sons of Behemat force and take that first jump to getting some paint on their miniatures!

As a typical Sons of Behemat army is probably going to have quite a few Mancrusher Gargants in it, the book also has a handy section details some kitbashes you can do to add some variety to these units! Everything from a peg leg conversion to a cow flail (!) is detailed, along with ways of personalising the stock faces in the box to make sure your force looks varied. I really like that they included this, and it should give people some inspiration to also use some of the spare parts from the Mega-Gargant kit too!

Allegiance Abilities

Now we get on to the rules themselves! The most exciting part of this book is being able to take an army of nothing but Gargants! As you would usually expect taking an army of just Sons of Behemat unlocks some cool new Battle Traits to supplement your army

Mightier Makes Rightier

A great play on the Might Makes Right ability from the Ogor book, this ability makes each Mancrusher in your army count as 10 models for the purposes of objectives and each Mega-Gargant count as 20 models. Mightier Makes Rightier gives the Sons of Behemat a great way of being able to complete for objectives without feeling penalised for having a super low model count army. Without this rule I think the Gargants would really struggle to hold objectives as even if a single Mega-Gargant battered an enemy unit to the ground, it would only take two enemy models to contest the objective and claim it for themselves. With the Mightier Makes Rightier rule your opponent is going to have to dedicate a lot of resources to shifting your Gargants, or attempt to tie them up with a horde unit. As we will see later in the book there are ways too of making your gargants count as even more models!

Chuck Rocks

A cool way of adding some shooting into your Mancrusher units without having to include it in their profile, this ability lets you select a unit of Mancrushers (and these can come in units of 3!) and lets each of them make a D3 shot D3 damage 18″ ranged attack! So potentially 21 damage from a unit of Gargants in the shooting phase! Now, they only hit on 4s, however as they do D3 damage each I reckon I’d be worth chancing some lucky shots to try and kill some supporting characters hiding behind units, soften up what you are about to charge or use them to force some battleshock on a nearby unit. Seems really fun, and as with the previous ability there are ways of making this better too!

Lord and Master

Further allegiance abilities are then determined by which tribe your Gargants belong to. This is based on what type of Gargant your general is. If he is a Kraken Eater then the army will be a Taker Tribe, if he is a Warstomper than the army is a Stomper Tribe and if he is a Gatebreaker then the force is a Breaker Tribe. This adds a surprising amount of customisability to your force as each of these tribes has additional allegiance abilities, command traits and artefacts to further modify your force!

The Taker Tribes

The Takers are the Gargants that are hoarders who want to collect lots of loot! this is reflected in the two additional allegiance abilities that they gain!

Get Rid Of ‘Em!

This further increases how many models a single Gargant counts as for purposes of objectives. Mega-Gargants count as 30, but Mancrushers count as a crazy 15 models each making a unit of 3 count as 45 models! Even if you lose a single giant you should still be able to hold on to an objective unless it is absolutely flooded with small bases!

More Stuff For Me Collection

This is pretty cool, every time you kill an enemy model with an artefact you get to roll a triumph, and this triumph can be used even if you already have one by having spent fewer points than your opponent. An extra “re-roll hits” is really handy to force through some more damage from your units and can really swing a battle in favour of the Gargants

Command Traits

The Takers get some fun command traits! Monstrously Tough ups your Gargant to an insane 40 wounds making it even harder to take down, Old and Gnarly lets you reroll saves of 1 which essentially gives you a permanent mystic shield on your general, which is really handy! Louder than Words increases the attacks of the Gargant’s main weapon making it a little more on a threat.

Strong Right Foot lets the Gargant kick an objective using it’s Get Orf Me Land ability 3D6 inches – we’ll look at this in more detail when we get to the warscrolls, but this lets you really scupper your opponents plans by moving the objective around the board. Very Acquisitive lets you sacrifice having a command trait by instead taking 2 of the Taker Artefacts (Which can both be given to your general if you want), I think this is a pretty good pick as they have some really good artefacts available. Finally Extremely Intimidating is a 3″ aura of -1 to hit your general, again pretty good at keeping him alive, but you are still going to vulnerable to ranged fire.

Artefacts of Power – Trophies Taken By Force

Out of the three tribes, the Takers get the most choice in artefacts to reflect the fact they enjoy stealing them!

Jaws of the Mogalodon is a nice artefact with some utility in the fact that you can use it to affect hit, wound or save roles – I’d probably use it on your single attack high damage death grip to ensure a hit with that!

Wallopin’ Tentacle is a bit of a situational one, on a 4+ in the hero phase you cause a mortal wound to a Hero and get to reroll hits of 1 against that hero – with a 50/50 chance to trigger I’m not really a fan of this one compared to the previous arefact!

Jar of Burny Grog is a one use item that deals D3 mortal wounds on a 2+ and lets you reroll wounds against that target unit. On a 1 you take D3 mortal wounds yourself making it a little risky!

Net of the Beast-reaver this is similar to the Tentacle in that it only activates on a 4+ and can only be used against a monster but it’s pretty good if you want a monster hunter Gargant as it gives you +1 to hit and makes the target -1 to hit, again only has a 50/50 chance of activating though.

Glowy Lantern is a really good choice that turns you into a Wizard giving you the only real magic defence in the book and allows you to use any spare points for an endless spell.

Krakenskin Sandles is another great choice with increases your stop attacks by 1, improves it’s rend by 1 and makes it a flat 3 damage rather than D3 – I really like this one as it gives you a reliable source of damage on your Mega-Gargant

I like the Taker Tribe as an option for a Multi Mega-Gargant list as the Get Rid Of Em rule keys off all Mega-Gargants, meaning that every model in your army gets the benefit. I’d probably go for Very Acquisitive and take the Latern and the Sandles!

The Stomper Tribes

The Stomper tribes led by a Warstomper seem to favour Mancrusher heavy armies – I can see these most likely to be used with a single Warstomper supported by 3 units of 3 Mancrushers to really maximise on the unique Stomper traits

Getting Stuck In

This is really good for Mancrusher heavy armies as it improves their damage by 1 when targeting a unit with 10 or more models and improves it by 2 when targeting units of 20 or more models – really good way of getting Mancrusher damage up, but has no effect on any Mega-Gargants

Big Shouts

The general gains access to some “Big Shouts” that are essentially specialist Command Abilities that only effect Mancrushers – these are better than the normal Command Abilities as they all effect all Mancrushers within 18″ however it does state that the general can no longer use the standard ones out of the core book. They are all pretty good though, one allows all units to Chuck Rocks, another lets them all reroll charges, one for reroll hits of 1, one for rerolling saves of 1 and one that ignores battleshock tests. These really favour an army with 9 Mancrushers, arguably you lose the effectiveness of that ability if you take multiple Mega-Gargants

Command Traits

Stompers also have access to the Monstrously Tough, Old and Gnarly and Louder than Words traits, but they also have 3 unique ones:

Inescapable Grip let’s you reroll the dice to see if a model is slain with it’s Hurled Body ability – this we will see a little later is a way of picked up a model, slaying it and using it as a missile to cause more damage! It’s not too difficult for this ability to go off, so I’m not too keen on this trait.

Very Shouty is a good option for a 9 Mancrusher list as it gives your general an additional D3 command points letting you make the most of the general’s command abilities

Eager for the Fight is a way of getting your general into the fight quicker by letting him charge up to 18″ Only problem I see with this is that he may end up outrunning the Mancrushers that are advancing with him.

Artefacts of Power

The Stompers get less artefacts than the Takers, however they are all very very good!

Ironweld Cestus is great at giving you some survivability with a rerollable save (All Mega-Gargants only have a 4+ save, so any help with this is really helpful!) and also bounces back mortal wounds on a roll of 6 making your Gargant a danger to strike!

Club of the First Oak is potentially a candidate for the best artefact in the book, it restores a wound ever hero phase, but the real power comes from it’s ability to ignore death on a 4+. Whenever your general would be slain you roll a dice, on a 4+ the model is not killed and any remaining damage is ignored. This is amazing and can keep your Mega-Gargant kicking for a long time! It’s worth pointing out that this isn’t the first time it is slain, it is whenever it is slain!

Mantle of the Destroyer is also a really good choice as it gives you a lot of utility that you would otherwise spend command points on by giving you a 12″ bubble to give Mancrushers bravery 10 and allow them to reroll charges

All of the Stomper artefacts are very good and it’s going to be hard to pick between them!

The Breaker Tribes

The Breakers specialise in smashing things, in particular terrain features! Again their traits only affect Mancrushers and Gatebreakers, so are another good choice if you want a relatively Mancrusher heavy army.

Breaking Down The Houses

This is pretty cool – it adds 1 to the damage of Mancrushers attacking units in terrain or that are garrisoned, this is probably less effective than the Stomper trait, however it comes into it’s own with the rule’s second ability – Each unit of Mancrushers can destroy a terrain piece each combat phase! A full unit of 3 Mancrushers is able to do this on a 4+ and is a brilliant way of shutting down any faction specific terrain pieces!

Fierce Loathings

All Mancrushers and Gatebreakers get to pick a specific unit type from a list that they gain a +1 to hit on, this ranges from Heroes, to units with Totems to Monsters and everything in between, this is really good as improves the combat performance of your attacks, especially those that hit on 4s such as the Gatebreaker’s Fortcrusha Flail

Command Traits

In addition to the Monstrously Tough, Old and Gnarly and Louder than Words traits, the Breakers also get 3 unique ones

Extremely Bitter lets you pick two Fierce Loathings, however the second one only applies to your general. Pretty good way of maximising the +1 to hit for your general.

Smasher lets the general reroll the ability to smash down terrain, though it really isnt too difficult for a Gatebreaker to do this, so I would probably pass on this one

Sees Red is a great ability that means you always count your damage as 0 if you are within range of a garrisonable terrain feature

Artefacts of Power

Like the Stompers, the Breakers only get a choice of 3 artefacts though again there’s some good picks!

Enchanted Portcullis is a 6+ shrug against wounds and Mortal wounds, and is the only such ability in the book, making your general survive a little longer!

The Great Wrecka makes your flail do an extra mortal wound on a hit of 6 (This pairs well with the Louder than Words trait that increases the number of attacks he gets to make with this too!) The artefact also lets you add one to your rolls to smash scenery again making more likely that you will be able to destroy them.

Finally the Kingslaughter Cowl makes your Mega-Gargant into a character killer! this works particularly well on the Gatebreaker as he has a lot of flat damage attacks to take big heroes down with.

Each of the three tribes also gets some name generator charts that allow you to create names for every Gargant in your army! These have no real in-game benefit but are great from a narrative point of view – I really hope we get something like Crusade from Warhammer 40k in the next edition of Age of Sigmar that builds on this further

The Warscrolls

We only get 4 Warscrolls in this book, 3 for each of the different Mega-Gargants and one for the Mancrusher Gargants

Mega-Gargants

Each of the Mega-Gargants has an impressive wounds characteristic of 35 making them take quite a lot of damage before they fall. Their main weakness is their 4+ save, and I fear that massed ranged attacks (Especially any with recent rend) could take down a Mega-Gargant pretty quickly, however combined with some of the traits and artefacts we have seen there are ways of keeping them in the fight. A bravery of 7 also leaves them exposed to some Bravery affecting abilities, so you will need to be careful if you are up against any armies that can manipulate this.

Every Mega-Gargant gets impact hits with their Crushing Charge ability that can deal up to 6 mortal wounds when they hot the enemy (This is each unit within 1″ too, so with the large bases you might be able to tag a couple of units too!)

As the offspring of the legendary godbeast, they also have the Sons of Behemat rule which means that if a rule would ever outright slay a Mega-Gargant it instead takes D6 mortal wounds – this is brilliant and gives them some great defence against abilities that may cause them trouble such as the Slayer of Kings

They all also have the Longshanks ability that lets them ignore models with a wounds characteristic of 10 or less and terrain features no taller than 4″ for the purposes of movement – this makes the Gargants surprisingly manurable and able to dance over units to get to juicier targets! if you don’t screen correctly and leave enough space for a gargant to fit then you could end up having a Mega-Gargant rampaging behind your battle line.

In a throw back to Warhammer Fantasy days, each Mega-Gargant also causes Terror, reducing the bravery of enemy units with 3″, this combined with the impact hits, ranged attacks and pure damage they can output in combat can force a lot of battleshock tests on the opponant.

Finally in another throwback to the giants of the World that Was, Mega-Gargants fall over when slain with the Timberrrrr! rule, causing mortal wounds to whoever they fall on – thankfully this has no effect on other Mega-Gargants, however regular Gargants will still take damage.

Kraken-Eater

The Kraken Eaters have the ability to kick objectives they have control of in the Hero Phase, this is a pretty good rule as in a lot of scenarios you control the objective once you have “tagged” it – so with this you can kick it deeper into your half of the board towards your own forces or simply further away from your opponent so that they have to work to get to it.

Kraken Eaters also do some additional damage when they pile in, being able to target up to D3 models, they simply have to roll double their wounds characteristic to outright slay them!

Warstomper

The Warstomper is all about pilling attacks on to enemy units, and he does this predominantly with his Titanic Thunderclub. You get a number of attacks equal to each enemy model within 3″ plus a modifier that starts at +4, however this does cap at a maximum of 10 attacks, but the Mega-gargant can do around 20 damage with this alone!

He also has the ability to pick up and throw bodies to cause yet more damage. During the combat phase he picks an enemy model and adds the Hurled Body modifier (Starts at +2) if this is at least double the targets wound characteristic it is slain – so we have potential here for taking out a 4 wound model! On a 4+ he can then throw it causing a number of mortal wounds equal to the wound characteristic of whatever was killed! If you are lucky here you could potentially cause up to 8 mortal wounds, or reliably a couple of dead models on a unit with a small wound count.

Gatebreaker

The Gatebreaker gets a Smash Down that allows him to destroy a terrain feature during the combat phase – this is really reliable at his top profile letting him do this on a 2+!

All of the terrain pieces rules are removed and it simply gets the Rubble keyword – this is a brilliant way of neutralising a something like a bone-tithe nexus and will no doubt frustrate players who rely on said features! Poor Sylvaneth do not like this chap!

Mancrusher Gargants

Mancrushers are the new profile of the old Aleguzzler kit who can now be taken in units of 3. With a respectable 12 wounds each a unit of 3 is great to send off on objective duties and are pretty good in a fight, especially in a Stomper Tribe!

They get a lesser form of impact hits compared to the Mega-Gargants, however all this damage adds up and can certainly put some pressure on with a multi charge. They are a little slower than the Mega-Gargant as they only have a movement of 8, however with the Keep Up rule they can charge after they run as long as they are within 12″ of a Mega-Gargant

They also get a similar rule to the Kraken Eater with Stuff ‘Em In Me Bag where they get to auto kill a model per Gargant if they can roll at least double the wounds characteristic of the target.

Like their bigger brothers they also fall over, but they do not cause any damage to any other Gargants when this happens.

The main thing to be careful of with a unit of 3 is your bravery – with a bravery debuff, losing a single Gargant could spell trouble for your entire unit, so make sure to keep them close enough to your heroes for any command abilities should you need it!

Mega-Gargant Mercenaries

One of the cool things this book allows you to do is take a Mega-Gargant Mercenary in any other army! There are some limitations here, as you can only take a maximum of one, it counts towards your behemoth and leader allowance and you also do not get a command point in turn 1 if you take one – however you do get the giant help in the form of an angry Mega-Gargant!

Destruction can take any flavour of Mega-Gargant, however the others are locked to a particular Grand Alliance with Order taking the Kraken Eater, Chaos taking the Warstomper and Death getting the Gatebreaker

It’s also worth pointing out these Mercenaries are “named” Gargants with their own unique bonus rule, such as the Kraken Eater Bundo Whalebiter being able to choose to fight at the end of the Fight phase in exchange for being able to reroll all hits.

Obviously the benefit of an allied Mega-Gargant is going to vary from army to army, however this does give you an excuse to pick up the new kit and theme it to your current army!

Summary

I’ve been looking forward to this book for a long time, and while I don’t think the Sons of Behemat will be winning every single game, I think they will be great fun to play and an excuse to have an army of monsters stomping around the table! Despite only having 4 different units in the book, the 3 tribes give you a lot of customisability to give you everything from an army with 3 different Mega-Gargants supported by a single unit of Mancrushers to a force of 9 Mancrushers led by a single Mega-Gargant, which different playstyles for both of these extremes. It’s not every day a new army gets added to the game, and the new battletome certainly doesn’t disappoint by giving us a rich and interesting background along with the inspiration to create our Sons of Behemat force. I’m very excited to see how these guys perform on the table and already can’t wait to paint up another couple of Mega-Gargants!

The Sons of Behemat Battletome and the Mega-Gargant kit are both available to pre order today

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews review copies for the purposes of this article.

Published by Matt Crowther

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