Gnarlwood Unboxing: new skeleton hero?

[Sception]

So I got the new underworlds box, at leadt in part to get a look at those pretty new grave guard:





At this point I'm thinking "huh, 3 base sizes. I guess they're upping Wight Kings to 40mm, and, what, some sort of championesque guy on the 32?"

only, no, looking at the instructions, the wight king is on a 32, and one of the guys who in the initial advertisement I thought was normal grave guard sized is just BIG.



Really big, in fact. he towers head & shoulders over the wight king, even with the king standing on the traditional hero's rock. His sword would be a grwatsword for any of the other follower dudes.

Here's a few size comparisons:







So he's a bit smaller than the cursed city ogres, but only barely.

So what is this guy? is he a normal grave guard who just happens to be on the taller side, or is he something different, perhaps a preview of some new skeletal unit or hero that might come to AoS in the future?

The page of lore for the faction in the new rulebook didn't say anything about this guy - though it did confirm that the unit leader is supposed to be a Wight King, not just a grave guard champ.

Looking at the underworlds unit cards:


The red circle is wounds characteristic, so in underworlds at least the big guy has more wounds than a wight king. we also get a name and a bit of lore - Sir Jedran is Wight King Velmorn's illegitimate son and bodyguard.

So, what do you think? Just an underworlds thing, or is Jedran perhaps a preview for the future? Even if he is the latter, that future may not be coming any time soon. we still havent seen the Mortisan Executioner or Mortek Archers implied by the OBR underworlds team for instance.

Even the regular dude grave guard in this box may not be a preview for future grave guard. remember there was an underworlds skeleton team way back when, but when a new skeleton box finally came they had a completely different look.

Still, some interesting stuff to think about, and some very nice new skittleton models if you happen to be at sll interested in underworlds.

 

[The Sun King]

Really good points. Hmm... I think he is probably not a new type of unit. Sadly. My hunch is that he will have a hard time slotting in as a new type of hero as he is clearly not as high in the hierachy and not as low as a Grave Guard.

I have for a long time hope to get real zombie ogres, not just the Korsagi, but we have yet to see that.

 

[Gederas]

Based on what little fluff we have, it just seems Sir Jerdan Falseborn is, quite literally, a big bastard.

His brothers are the same size as the new Deathrattle skeletons, so I feel this is just GW having variety in heights for once. In general though, I'd use him as another Wight King

 

[Sception]

his brothers are labled as grave guard, and his father is labled as a wight king. jerdan is explicitly neither. Whether he represents something else that will get to be its own thing in the future... can't really say.

seems unlikely, tho.

 

[Gederas]

So, I picked up Gnarlwood and yeah. Jerdan is huge:




He's roughly as big as my Avatars of War Lord of Undeath, and that's a 3D printed model at 130% scaling!



Clearly the lad ate his Wheaties as a kid. And the cereal box. And the bowl.