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The Avalanche is what happens when you take a Great Bear kitted out as a gladiator and give it a tune up devoted to speed.

While it’s not the most efficient warjack around, it is damned quick when it wants to be, it’s about at peak durability for a non-character heavy, and while it prefers a bit of help to reach maximum damage, it’s usually capable of handling itself against peer opponents.

Base Rules and Stats � Rating: A-

What we’re looking at here is a Great Bear with a Slammer head, and then a few extra upgrades tossed on.

It shares the Great Bear’s 10/20 defensive profile, along with its 34 boxes. It’s Unstoppable base just the same, with the same melee attack of 7 as well. Just like the Bear it’s got Bulldoze to help clear its own path, or free up an allied model, but unlike the stock chassis it reaches the same SPD 5 as the character jacks or the Dire Wolf.

As I referenced, we also see Grand Slam, Gladiator, and Follow Up. This enables an Avalanche to Slam for free, to chase down its prey, and gets both an extra 2� as well as 2 POW on those Slam rolls, which isn’t bad at all.

Finally, we hit Fleet. For 1 focus you get a free 2� of speed. Now, the focus cost isn’t good, let’s just say that upfront. If you’re also paying for a charge that means you’ve only got 1 left to buy attacks when you arrive. Sure, you can slam for free, but you’re losing net attacks unless your real objective is to attack something beyond your initial target.

Still, it is a good ability, making the Avalanche a hell of a lot faster than is usually seen from a Khadoran heavy in those situations where it’s needed.

Lastly, I’ll include the Head’s granted rule here, which is Hyper-Aggressive. Whenever the Avalanche is damaged, it can move towards its attacker. While this isn’t often the best idea, it can be something that dissuades your opponent from even trying unless they want to get your Avalanche’s long threat into a better position to go after something vital.

Melee Weapons � Rating: B+

The Avalanche strolls in with a Pneumatic Lance and a Wedge Shield. The POW on both is just all right, 17 and 15 respectively, and only the former has proper reach. Fortunately both have a rule to help with this: Trash.

Yup, the Avalanche becomes a weapon master against any knocked down target, and guess which faction has several ways to knock down their targets? The Winter Korps. Be it Great Bears, Mastodons, Bison, Razor, the Tempest spell, or even the Avalanche itself slamming into its target, there’s plenty of ways to trigger the bonus with just a little bit of effort.

Beyond that, the Lance also comes with Critical Armor Piercing, for when the dice gods smile and decide that they want to see some overkill, while the Shield comes with beat-back to give you that extra little bit of movement if you need it.

Warcaster Tricks

Let’s get the obvious out the way. With Kommander Savaryn mixing Escort, Superiority, Fleet, and Avenging Force, you’re looking at 14� of movement in a walk, threatening 16�, or else charging/slamming/trampling out to to 17� with 2� of reach getting you a 19� threat on your arrival. That is hilariously far for a heavy, even if its efficiency on arrival isn’t the best.Kommander Sikora gets you Positive Charge, and a good feat that gives Unyielding and Rerolls, letting an Avalanche both do more damage reliably, as well as making it obnoxiously hard to kill in retaliation.While Kapitan Borisyuk usually prefers ranged jacks for his feat’s usage, an Avalanche makes a good melee model with him for that very reason. A lot of big Khadoran guns can cause knockdown, and Dark Unravelling giving the Avalanche blessed helps ensure its damage output stays consistent without needing a POW buff.

Other Synergies

Razor || Great Bear

Though it’s a pricey package, a Great Bear with a Heavy Cannon or Razor work very well with the Avalanche by setting up trash in advance. While Trash is the main draw here, don’t knock the fact that you’ll get automatic hits in melee as well. Removing die rolls from the equation is always for the best, and an Avalanche striding in with extra damage on all its attacks should be able to kill most heavies.

Bison

Once again we add an automatic knockdown with the Bison, which has the added benefit of a couple of big AoE shots when needed. True, the RAT is pretty awful, but that can be mitigated a little bit, giving the tank multiple ways to either soften up a target or clear a path for the Avalanche to move through.

Common Mistakes

I’m going to repeat a maxim from Medvedista’s page here: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Look, Fleet is great, but those 2� of movement are costing you an attack, and that missing attack could be the difference between a target heavy living or dying. So while you can tune up an Avalanche, throw it a million miles forward, if you’re not absolutely sure that it’s going to kill its target, you’re far better off keeping it back or finding a closer model to go after.

Losing that attack hurts. The only time you should be using Fleet is if you absolutely need to get somewhere or else you’ll lose on scenario, or your opponent has left a perfect slam lane for you to catch their warcaster.

As for the Trash & Slam effects� yeah, an Avalanche can knock down its own target with a free slam, can get some collateral, then come in with three Trash follows ups.. but it would really rather someone else do the knocking down to maximize its chances of a kill. You’ve got just better than 50/50 odds to kill an ARM 18 heavy with a slam + follow combination, which isn’t high enough for my peace of mind.

If it’s already knocked down, your odds go up significantly with a charge, especially if some chip damage has already been done.

Conclusion

The Avalanche is honestly kind of annoying, because� well, it sort of replaces its Great Bear equivalent? It comes in at the same point cost as an Aggressive / Battle Mace / Shield version of the base jack, has a slightly better base threat, a far better maximum threat with fleet, and more potential damage thanks to Trash. True, it has lower base POW and loses the situational gun, but� well, so what? Same armor, same hitpoints, and with a tiny bit of help a lot more damage even without the free charge.

While fifteen points is a bit to spend on a dedicated melee heavy, especially one that wants a bit of help to reach peak efficiency, overall there really isn’t much negative to say about the Avalanche. It’s big, durable, and flexible, and you can’t really ask for more out of a beat-stick style heavy.

Overall Rating: B+

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