A Guide to Grom the Paunch in Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires

This is a guide to playing Grom the Paunch in the Immortal Empires campaign.

Strategy and tactics, hints on character development, etc.

Grom the Paunch Overview

Grom the Paunch is one of the most fun factions to play.

He's got a big chariot and runs over things. His cooking cauldron provides a fun mechanic that provides terrific buffs to Grom and your faction armies.

Grom is a relatively easy faction to play primarily due to the Greenskin Waaagh mechanic and the Greenskin confederation mechanic. If you're looking for a fun, casual campaign where you can crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women, then Grom is a great choice.

The First Few Turns

Grom starts the game at war with Aquitaine.

They are relatively easy to defeat. They don't have any particularly dangerous units. Grom and the Snotling Pump Wagons can devastate their archers while your Rock Lobber artillery pummels their foot soldiers. Their cavalry falls hard to your Orc Archers.

On the first turn, I find that it's best to recruit a lord at your main settlement of Massif Orcal and have him recruit goblin archers and spearmen. These troops will be useful in a few turns when you fight the Fay Enchantress.

Once you've taken Aquitaine's two cities and eliminated them as a faction, you have some choices to make. Playing Grom, you have a great deal of flexibility. You can aim to take over Bretonnia and the Empire. You can invade the High Elven lands of the Ulthuan doughnut. You can head East and confederate with the other Greenskin factions.

Lately, I've been heading East and confederating with the other Greenskins. So, after I eliminate Aquitaine, I will generally give their two cities to the Red Duke of the Vampire Counts of Mousillon faction. Gifting these lands to him gives you a friendly neighbor and helps prevent the Bretonnians from snowballing across the map.

If you're planning on staying in Bretonnia, it's still not a bad idea to give away the Aquitaine province. Strengthening the Red Duke will make it easier to fight the remaining Bretonnians.

Whichever you decide to do, the next order of business is to take out the Fay Enchantress. Bring down your second lord that has been recruiting in Massif Orcal and have him help out. You can typically catch the Fay Enchantress's army in or around Brionne. Then siege and take Carcassone and they're done for.

Make sure that Grom himself fights the Fay Enchantress. Her defeat trait (+10% replenishment) is one of the best in the game and is very useful.

Waaagh!!!

After you destroy the Fay Enchantress, you will have accumulated enough reputation to call your first Waaagh.

A couple of pointers on Waaaghs:

Look at your goals for the game. If you want to take over Bretonnia and the Empire, then you should make one of these factions your Waaagh target. Likewise, if you want to take over Ulthuan, you should target the High Elves. If you want to head East and confederate, then you should probably target the Dwarves of Clan Ungrim.

The early game Waaagh is your best opportunity to destroy your enemies. Greenskin armies are strongest in the early game, so don't waste the opportunity to wipe out or significantly cripple your long term rivals, What you do in your first Waaagh can smooth the experience for the rest of the game. By the time you're first Waaagh is finished, your target enemy race should be pretty much broken.

If you raze the Waaagh target city, then the Waaagh is successful. However, if you decide to hold on to the Waaagh city, you need to keep possession of it until the Waaagh ends. Make sure you are actually in possession of the Waaagh target city when the final turn of the Waaagh comes. I've lost the Waaagh target on the final turn to a sneaky army or rebel spawn, which caused the entire Waaagh to fail. Generally, I just raze the target city when I take it to avoid this issue.

When you successfully complete a Waaagh, you are rewarded with access to some Regiments of Renown. I actually prefer the Regiments of Renown for the mid tier Waaagh ("Da Bigga Trophy") rather than the big monsters which you get for the top tier Waaagh. The mid tier Waaagh troops include a Feral Wyvern, which is the only flying unit (other than level 18+ Warboss lords) that you can obtain as Greenskins. The wyvern isn't perfect, however, as it goes into an uncontrolled frenzy very easily. The other Regiment of Renown reward is two units of Armored Squig Hoppers, which can be buffed to become some of the best shock cavalry in Warhammer III.

Before declaring a Waaagh, make sure that Grom has a full 20 unit stack, as the size of the Waaagh troops is determined by the size of your armies when the Waaagh is declared. I generally also have another lord with at least 10 troops (often another full stack of 20) to get full value from the Waaagh.

Confederations

Greenskins probably confederate easier than any other race.

If you can't convince a Greenskin faction to confederate with you via diplomacy, all you have to do is use Grom's army to defeat their faction leader and you can force confederation (and pick up a sweet kill trait as a result too.)

It's relatively easy to confederate all of the Greenskin factions. After you've destroyed the Fay Enchantress and the Carcasonne faction, declare your first Waaagh on the Dwarves of Clan Ungrim.
Leave a lord (with his Waagh army and his own troops) to garrison Massif Orcal and then head East.
Raze the Dwarven capital to conclude your Waaagh, then keep heading East and North, encountering, defeating, and confederating Wurzag, Skarsnik, Azhag, and then finally Grimgor.

If you want to keep Grom the Paunch at home to take the land around Massif Orcal and fight the Bretonnians and the Empire, then you can confederate through diplomacy as well. Send a Goblin Big Boss on a mission to find the other Greenskin factions. Once you've met them, keep an eye on your diplomacy options. If you check often, you will often find that they will confederate with you. This is particularly true if you are in the middle of a Waaagh, as one of the confederation factors is the strength of your military forces.

Grom's Little Buddy, Skarsnik

If you want to confederate Skarsnik, you will usually need to seek him out (at Mount Gunbad) relatively quickly. He tends to get eliminated early on in most campaigns.

Skarsnik is a rather under-powered legendary lord. He is not a great fighter. He doesn't cast spells. He's not going to win any beauty contests.

However, Skarsnik can be a very effective lord by utilizing his strengths. Skarsnik provides buffs to the stats of goblins, Night Goblins, and Squig Hoppers. He also has great ambush skills. He also starts off with the "lightning strike" ability. He also has an ability, "Tricksy Traps," which cloaks and hides units around him, giving the the ability to stalk.

Playing with Skarsnik requires a bit of finesse, but it is also very effective and very satisfying.

Combined with the buffs from Grom's Cauldron (mainly the lion meat ingredient,) Skarsnik's squigg hoppers can become incredibly powerful shock cavalry. Here is a comparison between Skarsnik's upgraded Armored Squiggs, and the Wood Elves' Great Stag Knights, which are elite, late game shock cavalry. Note that the Squiggs also have almost twice as many models per unit. The regular, unarmored squiggs have similar stats except for less armor.

Using Skarsnik's "Tricksy Traps" ability makes it a lot easier to get the squigg hoppers on the enemy's flanks and rear. Just stack all the sqiggs on top of each other, put Skarsnik in the middle of them, and when you trigger his ability, they all vanish, allowing them to flank the enemy without being detected. With their insane charge bonus, they can often rout the enemy with their initial charge. If not, pull them out of melee after 4 or 5 seconds, then send them charging again.

As good as the buffed Squigg Hoppers are in regular battles, they are even better in ambushes, where you are virtually guaranteed an opportunity to charge the enemy's flanks and rear. Skarsnik has a skill that buffs combat stats during ambushes, so it's even more devastating.

Use ambush stance whenever you can. Skarsnik can get his ambush success chances to 100%, even in barren terrain.

An effective late game Skarsnik army is 8 squigg hoppers, 3 or 4 doom diver catapults, 3 or 4 stone trolls, a shaman, and the rest goblin or night goblin archers.

Overall, Skarsnik is great. He may not be the most powerful legendary lord you will confederate, but his playstyle makes him a lot of fun.

Leveling Up Grom; Equipping Grom; and How to Use Him in Battle

Grom is a very powerful legendary lord, both regarding his individual combat ability and the buffs he provides to his troops.

When I level Grom up, I first get Lightning Strike. Lightning Strike is essential for fighting when you're outnumbered. After Lightning Strike, I focus on his abilities that buff goblins, trolls, and artillery (because that's what his army is mostly made up of.) I don't bother with the buffs for pump wagons, as I don't find them to be particularly effective units.
After filling out his unique abilities and army buffs, I fill in his combat skills.

When equipping Grom, it's super useful to find anything that will increase his durability. He's going to be constantly in combat pretty much any battle. Potions of healing are great. The Seed Of Rebirth is an item that provides regeneration while in combat. Combined with Grom's natural regeneration, this is a pretty powerful combo. The Seed of Rebirth is most often found when confederating minor Goblin factions like Crooked Moon Mutinous Gits, or the tribe that inhabits the Black Pit, etc. Often it will be held by one of the lords or heroes of these minor factions, so when you confederate, make sure to check their equipment.

How to use Grom in Combat:
The secret to Grom's success in combat is to always keep moving. He has a substantial charge bonus, so constant charging will make good use of it. His attack animation is also triggered when he's moving, so once in combat, keep pushing through the mass of enemies and he will keep dealing damage. The Fishy Shroom Burgers recipe gives Grom perfect vigor so he doesn't get tired out. It also gives him a great breath spell that does substantial damage and gets him out of trouble if he's unable to push through a huge mob of enemies.

Building Your Armies (and the best Scrap Upgrades)

The various buffs you can get for goblins from the faction effects, recipes, and Grom's abilities make them viable troops. A fully buffed goblin spearman unit can hold it's own with much more elite tier units. Give them the scrap armor upgrade. Here's a comparison of a goblin unit that has all of Grom's goblin buffs and the scrap armor upgrade compared with higher tier infantry:


These upgraded goblin infantry do an excellent job of holding the line, taking walls in sieges, and generally providing a staunch line of spears to shield your missile troops and artillery.

Likewise, goblin archers can be upgraded with scrap and buffed with recipes to become very effective missile troops. I prefer to use the Heavy Ammo scrap upgrade. I like the extra armor piercing damage, particularly in the later game when you face an increasing number of armored enemies.

Here's a comparison of the various recipe ammo upgrades. It confirms that the combination of Harpy Head ammo and the Heavy Ammo scrap upgrade is a very effective combo.


My favorite army composition for Grom is the following:

Grom
Goblin Shaman
Giant River Troll Hag
Black Orc Big Boss
2 Doom Diver Catapults (Winged Ammo scrap upgrade for extra range)
2 Stone Trolls (Reinforced Weapons scrap upgrade for extra 25% weapon damage)
4 Goblin spearmen (Scrap armor upgrades)
8 Goblin archers (Heavy Ammo scrap upgrades)



This is a multi-purpose force that performs well in field battles and sieges and will win battles against high tier opponents.

If you don't want to play a mixed army stack, a stack of Nasty Skulkers can be very effective. With their "Jagged Weapons" scrap upgrade, they are particularly deadly. With their ability to stalk, you can get them into melee range without getting shot to pieces by enemy missile troops, and in sieges, they can get over the walls before the enemy even knows they are there.

Grom's Cauldron

There is a ton of information already published on the internet that details the various recipes, ingredients and Hag's cooking challenge riddles. I'm not going to duplicate that information here.

This section will simply address some of the practical issues relating to Grom's cauldron.

Here are some tips:

1: The Hag Merchant will appear 2 turns after cooking a recipe. Early on, I cook a recipe as often as I can, to increase my interactions with the Hag Merchant. When the Hag appears, I generally will recruit a lord at her location and then disband him as soon as he's interacted with the Hag. It's so much more convenient than trying to move Grom or another of my lords to that location.

2: The ingredient that the Hag offers for sale is completely random. She will sometimes offer things that you already have. When in the Hag interaction screen, there's no way to check and see what ingredients you already have access to, so make sure you check your ingredient list BEFORE you interact with the Hag and remind yourself what you have and what you still need.

3: If you are into save-scumming, you can keep saving and reloading until the Hag offers the ingredient you want.

4: Most of the recipes themselves offer buffs only to Grom. However, the Elven Fois Gras allows for a faction wide buff to recruitment. It gives a +4 recruit rank for all units; -2 turns global recruitment; and +50 unit experience gain per turn. Combine this with the -1 global recruitment bonus for using a goldfish ingredient, and you have very fast global recruitment. This is a big deal. You don't need to build army buildings in every location because you can recruit globally. Global recruitment allows you to build an army quickly in an emergency too.

5: Some of my favorite ingredients are:
Stinky Fungi. Provides a -8 debuff to enemy leadership. This is pretty significant, and helps rout enemy units.
Dragon Tail and Harpy Head Ammunition These are the two best ammunition buffing ingredients. The Dragon Tail explosive ammo does great damage against tightly packed enemies, and the Harpy Head ammo provides the highest DPS. Note that the Dragons's Breath splash damage effect causes serious friendly fire issues if your own troops are in contact with your target.

6. One of the most effective recipes for buffing Grom in battle is the Fishy Shroom burger, which gives Grom perfect vigor and a powerful bound wind spell.

7. By far the absolutely most useful recipe in the game is the Elven Fois Gras. This provides -2 turn duration for global recruitment and +4 recruit rank. Add a Goldfish ingredient to the recipe for an additional -1 turn duration. This recipe requires eagle talons, which are obtained from the Axe of Grom quest. This is reason enough to get this quest battle done.

Greenskin Lords and Heroes and their Traits

The Greenskins have a number of good heroes on their roster. Other than the Night Goblin Shaman, I tend to recruit and use all the hero types.

Giant River Troll Hag: An excellent all around hero. She provides buffs to replenishment, is a decent melee fighter, and has access to the Lore of Death spells. She has a number of abilities that decrease enemy leadership. When coupled with her "Doom and Darkness" spell, she can often cause numerous enemy units to rout. You should consider placing a Hag in pretty much every army.

Goblin Shaman: The Goblin Shaman uses the Lore of the Big Waaagh. This lore is notable for the Foot of Gork spell, which inflicts massive damage on a large area. A well placed Foot of Gork can delete several units at once. The Goblin Shaman is a must-have hero just for the Foot of Gork. There are some other useful buffs and damage spells in the lore as well. As a bonus, he gets a mount, so he can move around easily on the battlefield.

Goblin Big Boss: This is a great hero, but he's not great in battle. He has Assassinate and Block Army Abilities, as well as an ability that provides +15% line of sight on the campaign map. I level these guys up in the army until level 15-20, then cut them loose and have them act as scouts. They're great at scouting, blocking armies and working as assassins. I like to get these guys with the Strategist trait that provides +5% campaign movement range.

Black Orc Big Boss: This is a tanky melee character that provides leadership buffs to nearby units. He makes a good tank, and is good for getting large groups of the enemy to surround and mob him, setting them up for a Foot of Gork, or allowing them to be shot by archers.

Goblin Night Shaman. A spell caster with the Lore of the Little Waugh. His concealment spells are good for flanking with cavalry. Other than that, his spell repertoire is kind of second rate when compared with the Big Waugh lore.

Some of the best traits for heroes are:

Confident: +4 leadership to the army (Greenskins can never get enough leadership buffs.)

Disciplined +2 melee +2 leadership to the army

Tough

Weapon Master. +35 armor piercing damage (good for Black Orc Big Bosses.)

Greenskin Lords:

Don't bother with generic Greenskin Lords. It's so easy to confederate that you can easily get legendary lords to lead your armies. The confederated legendary lords combined with the "Workshop Boys" that unlock in your research tree mean that you won't need any generic lords except perhaps on a temporary basis.

Grom's Economy and Building Tree

I've heard folks complain about how bad the Greenskin economy is. Indeed, I recently watched a well known Warhammer streamer struggling to make money as Greenskins and constantly complaining about how terrible their economy is. He was trying to play Greenskins the same way he plays High Elves. It doesn't work.

It's true that Greenskins don't make much money from their own settlements. However, if you play to their strengths, you can easily amass hundreds of thousands in gold and never have to worry about money.

The key point to remember is that Greenskins are a pillaging race. You will make most of your money not from your own settlements, but from sacking enemy settlements.

When you take territory, don't automatically upgrade the settlements. Particularly for any place that does not have a Suitable Climate, I don't bother building anything other than the first level money building ("Pile of Shiny Stuff".) I typically don't even repair any damage that occurred from sacking the settlement. I generally demolish any buildings other than the money making building. I never upgrade any of these settlements either.

As Greenskins, you don't have to worry if you lose some of these non-essential territories. They are there to to provide a minimal income and to act as a physical buffer between the enemy and your valuable, core settlements.

Save your money for upgrading a few key settlements and funding your armies. I generally only fully upgrade Massif Orcal, Ekrund, and a couple of suitable climate mountain regions such as the Southern Grey Mountains (Karak Norn) and The Vaults (Karak Izor)

Black Crag is a very valuable province too, but it tends to be in the center of the continuous wars with the Dwarves and Skaven.

The Greenskins' relative ease with global recruitment (especially with the Elven Foir Gras and Goldfish recipe) means that you don't need to have a bunch of fully developed military settlements. You can recruit from anywhere, provided that somewhere in the world the proper buildings exist.

Sacking enemy settlements is your primary source of income. You can easily make 20-50k gold from sacking a major settlement. When on a Waagh through Ulthuan or the Empire, you can sack a settlement every turn. It's not unusual to have 300k of extra gold by the time I've finished a Waaagh.

In short, if you play Greenskins like Greenskins, instead of trying to play like a civilized race you will make a lot more money (and have more fun.)

[Sadistdick]

Based on your army comp for Grom, are you saying that normal goblin spears and normal goblin archers (both with scrap) are better than putting in Night Goblins? Do Groms factional and ability buffs not effect them in the same way?

[Ashley]

Does the Hag Merchant work differently in TWWH3? I get one on turn 2, and despite cooking many recipes and playing for 60 turns I haven't seen another, I've collected most ingredients but can't cook the special recipes because I only have 2 cooking slots.

[MrDizemz]

I play a lot of grom and the best turn 3 thing you can do is run at batman and get rid of him before he gets a defensive pact with the other knife ears. also look from turn 1 for a mushroom addict lord so you can get a cheap 20 stack to wagghh with. the foot hold on ulthuan also gives you an overall better set up because all of bertonia and most of the empire is bad climate wise and fighting 3 elf LL vs fighting one at a time I will take the latter ever time. also ulthuan you can get attacked but its very predictable also taking less land around bertonia means less stinkie skinnies running at you

[Malenthas]

Give the severed head to your River Troll Hag.
Once she has it, it allows her to summon a Rogue Idol once per battle.

[Karth]

in immortal empires i cant for the life of me figure out how blacktooths severed head works it says it can summon a rogue idol but thats all i know