Tag: Warhammer

What else am I doing with Warcry?

Hey everybody,
Following on from my blog the other day, I thought I’d continue the theme here today and talk some more about what I’m doing with this tremendous game!

I’ve talked a lot about the fact that I love this game for the Chaos-y feel it has, and gaming in the Eightpoints was what had really grabbed my attention back when it first came out. The move into including the Age of Sigmar stuff has long given me mixed vibes – while on the one hand it makes thematic sense for Lumineth or Stormcast to try to purge the forces of Chaos, on another it always feels a little bit tacked-on, especially if you don’t even have Chaos warbands present on the table. I suppose, though, that this has always been where my hipster self wants to keep the game as a Chaos-centric masterpiece, and so I was rebelling against the inclusion of other races from the mortal realms.

Since Warcry moved to Ghur, though, and we’ve had warbands that have been much more diverse in nature, I have slowly been getting over myself, and have started to think about other warbands. With the compendium available for free via the WarCom website, it’s a fairly straightforward process to build a warband and then work out what models you need to buy, although due to the fact AoS units can be equipped in multiple ways, it sometimes needs some thought as to what is what!

Now, I have somewhat dabbled with this process once already, when I assembled a Khorne Bloodbound list for use in a game. However, this time, I wanted to go through the whole process anew, especially to make sure I’ve not been missing anything important! 

Warband Building
So as we know, warbands in Warcry come in at 1000 points. You start with a Hero, who is the warband leader, and can include no more than three heroes including the leader. Warbands must be between 3 and 15 fighters strong, and all fighters must come from the same faction. And that, my friends, is that!

I’m going to start by revisiting the Khorne Bloodbound warband idea that I had back in 2021. I think that warband was led by a Wrathmonger, but let’s see what’s on offer for us in the new and updated Warcry 2.0. To begin, I should say that I have all of these models, so I’m not going to end up buying more plastic to fuel this project!

I’ve started out with an Exalted Deathbringer with Ruinous Axe. This chap comes in at 185 points, and is the hero and my leader. I have decided to take the max number of heroes allowed, so have also got a Bloodsecrator (the guy with the massive banner of Khorne) and a Bloodreaver Chieftain. I’ve then got three Bloodreavers, two Blood Warriors, and a Wrathmonger, which gives me a 1000 point warband. I had hoped to split it naturally into three parts, for the hammer, shield and dagger, but the way I had thought it could work wasn’t an entirely equal split, as the Bloodreavers form a group of four. But I’ll have a think about that. It could be that I have each of the heroes leading one of the three groups, then the three Bloodreavers allocated one to each, then the Wrathmonger paired with the leader as a kind of bodyguard, then two Blood Warriors into each of the other two squads. But that distinction will be made when it comes time to field them.

That was good, let’s do it again!

My next warband is going to be Slaanesh Sybarites, for which I bought the Warcry dedicated box a couple of years back and promptly did nothing with. It comes with a unit of Blissbarb Archers, and a unit of Myrmidesh Painbringers/Symbaresh Twinsouls. For this warband, I think I’ll be going for a mix of stuff, starting with the Shardspeaker hero as the leader. The Shardspeaker is a wizard, who can reduce the number of attacks coming in within a 6” range, which sounds like it should be quite powerful, defensively. The rest of the warband is made up of Blissbarb Archers of various flavours, and Myrmidesh Painbringers. The second hero is a Myrmidesh Painmaster, which I think sounds glorious. It surprises me how expensive these Slaaneshi hosts cost – the cheapest unit is an archer at 95 points, so there’s no option for a basic cultist around the 60 points mark. However, the Painbringers do have heavy armour, and they have the ability to increase their damage output for a Double. I’ve gone for one of the Symbaresh fighters, the guy with the twirling Excrutiator Lash, simply because the model looks awesome. He has access to the Quad ability Ego-Driven Excess, which allows them to move or attack if they take a fighter out of action, so I’m hoping for some delightful agonies coming from this guy! Finally, we have three archers to round out the band. The first is my third hero, the Blissbarb high tempter, and she comes with two friends plus a haemonculus, who can increase the strength of the archers’ attacks when they use their Triple ability. Using archers in Warcry seems a bit like cheating – the game is predominantly melee focused, after all, but these guys have a range up to 15”, which could near as damn it cover the board. I suppose I could make a warband out of Painbringers and ignore them, but the models look so lovely it’s hard to ignore! However, they still don’t quite sit right with me…

So what does all this mean?
The basic game of Warcry saw the original warbands fighting for dominance in the Eightpoints, and they were all very distinctive warbands that had a clear leader, champion, heavy infantry and so on in their numbers. With the addition of Age of Sigmar miniatures, however, things are a bit different, because while units are generally led by a sergeant of some sort, there are generally better heroes available who are much more fancy than their squadmates. This has led to profiles being created for such Hero units as the Shardspeaker, or the Exalted Deathbringer, and it does feel a little bit like we’re now playing Age of Sigmar Skirmish rather than Warcry as a distinct game. I suppose this is where a lot of the noise about Warcry warbands being slightly outclassed by AoS warbands has come from.

However, by including profiles for a whole host of models, it does make things rather exciting, now that I have looked into it properly. Sure, the Warcry warbands don’t have Heroes per se, but when AoS warbands are going up against each other, I would imagine that this isn’t so much of an issue. See, in addition to the general suite of faction abilities that each warband can access, AoS-based warbands also have a set of Hero-specific abilities they can access. The more I have looked into this, it doesn’t actually seem to be all that bad in the new edition. For instance, in the Slaanesh Sybarites compendium entry, we can see that there are a total of 6 faction abilities, plus 3 hero abilities. That sounds a lot, when you consider that original factions like the Iron Golem only have their 6 faction abilities. But those AoS faction abilities only seem to extensive because their possible roster is correspondingly larger. The Slaanesh Sybarites can draw models from across a total of seven kits, while the Iron Golem only have the one. So a lot of the abilities we’re seeing for Slaanesh fighters can actually only be utilised by one fighter type each. The Corvus Cabal has two abilities that any fighter can use, whereas there is only one universal ability for Slaanesh, and every other ability is tied in to a specific fighter type.

It’s interesting to see how things have worked out, to give the best kind of representation without going too crazy. I mean, Slaanesh Daemons can actually field The Contorted Epitome as a unit, which seems a bit excessive…

Anyway, I think that’s all for now. I still need to look into allies, monsters and all the rest of it, but I think for now I have two warbands that will need my attention!!

What am I doing with Warcry?

Hey everybody,
In keeping with my current Warcry obsession, I thought I’d update you all today with what I’ve been doing with the game since my last post about it, which turned into a bit of a rant, really! Sorry about that. Hopefully, from here on in, we’ll be able to stay a lot more positive!

I’ve been busily working on my Darkoath Savagers, which were one of the two warbands that came in the Red Harvest box set. These are wonderful-looking models, and I really have enjoyed the painting so far. It’s perhaps going to be a bit difficult to distinguish them from some of the other warbands, such as the Untamed Beasts or the Spire Tyrants, who also have a generic kind of Chaos Marauder look about them. At least with some of the warbands, there is a very clear distinction between them – you wouldn’t mistake an Iron Golem for an Unmade, for instance! 

Speaking of these two, last week I played a game using the Iron Golem and the Unmade as my warbands, in an attempt to get a handle on the rules once more. It was a lot of fun, as well – the Unmade had to keep all fighters in the dagger alive by round 4, and even though the dagger included the Blissful One, the Iron Golem were able to take that model out by concentrated fire, however a lone Awakened One was able to escape the melee and hide in the ruins, allowing for an Unmade victory in the end.

I wasn’t playing with the new Reactions, however it’s interesting to see what has been given out to some of these warbands. The Unmade have the opportunity to inflict wounds back at an attacker, whereas the Iron Golem can turn critical hits into hits, which might be crucial. Looking further out, the Darkoath Savagers also have a similar Reaction ability to turn critical hits into normal hits, and I like the Tarantulos Brood ability to turn hit rolls of 1 or 2 into 2 points of damage back to the attacker! I think some of these will definitely bear more investigation as time goes on, because it adds an extra level of strategy to the game that I really like. Games are already quick and brutal, of course, and the back-and-forth activation means that you’re never really stuck just waiting for long, but adding these Reactions in does seem to be a good way to keep the focus tight for the whole battle.

My game has really shown me how I need to get painting, though, because it’s just no fun playing with black-primed models. I had initially thought to play Iron Golem vs Untamed Beasts, but that would have been silly as both warbands have been primed black and left. I also have the Cypher Lords which have been half-painted for ages now, so I might try to get those finished next, and keep the momentum up across the summer to get more painted so that I have more to play with.

I’m also really interested in getting some different sorts of warbands going. In the past, I had tried as much as possible to stick to the Warcry exclusive warbands, although I have used my Khorne Bloodbound in the past. I’ve got a lot of cards for other stuff, though, and with the compendium available for free on the WarCom website, it has got me thinking about other kinds of warbands. Sylvaneth have always been on my radar, of course, and as a longtime Lizardmen fan, the new Seraphon models could make for another interesting addition! Part of it is trying to find something new to paint, and part of it is scratching that itch for longtime favourite models to add to the mix.

However, Age of Sigmar and Warhammer Fantasy are so big, in my mind, with my love of Warhammer that I can’t really help myself, truth be told. I came to Games Workshop through a love of the Fantasy setting, and so whenever I move from 40k to the fantasy side of the house, it always seems to bring about the nostalgia-feels. I think it would be awesome to get some Sylvaneth and Seraphon warbands, even without knowing what exactly I can do with them, but just for the sake of having these miniatures. Now that the Compendium, from what I’ve heard, has sought to balance things across the whole game, and the Warcry-specific warbands aren’t left behind, it might be the time to get some Lizardmen and Tree-spirits in my life once more!

Musings on Warcry…

Hey everybody,
I am really enjoying Warcry once again, diving into the setting and the lore in particular, but also getting more miniatures painted for the game. It’s been quite some time since I last played the game, but I suppose lockdowns didn’t help back when I was last feeling in the mood for this one. I’m working on my buddy James to see if he would want to try it out, as we’ve played Age of Sigmar and he was a fan of that, having a Slaves to Darkness army already. So the infection vector is there. I think JP has already had his interest piqued, as well, so hopefully I can convince him to try it out again as well.

I have a lot of stuff for this game, almost all of the Warcry-specific stuff from the “first edition” of the game (the red-topped version). There is just something undeniably awesome about this game, from the aesthetics to the actual gameplay itself. It’s fast and brutal, and I absolutely love it. The original setting of the Eightpoints, with Chaos warbands fighting each other for glory and recognition by Archaon, was an absolute triumph in my opinion, and initially, the move out of the realm of Chaos and into the realm of beasts had slightly cooled me to the whole thing. Indeed, GW seemed to be trying to push the game in a very different direction, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go that way.

It was a bit of a weird decision, in my mind, to make Warcry into a season-based game like Kill Team. I do get why they did it for the latter – the new Kill Team was already pumping out quarterly boxes, but the Gallowdark stuff allowed them to provide a homogenous setting while simultaneously supporting and expanding Kill Team, and the Boarding Actions sub-rules for regular 40k. Some noise was initially made that following all four boxes for Warcry would allow players to get an Age of Sigmar size table of terrain at the end of it, but the fact that Warcry warbands only ever filter into Slaves to Darkness armies means that it doesn’t have the same reach into its “parent game” the same way that Kill Team could. Warcry boxes have, thankfully, not sold out anywhere near as badly as those for Kill Team, meaning that it’s still quite possible to pick some up whereas I have only ever seen physical copies of Into the Dark, with no shop I know getting copies of the others. There are definite scalping problems with Kill Team, and I hope that never finds its way into Warcry.

However, there’s no denying that the game is still incredible, with the “second edition” rules being more of a tidy-up than a re-write. It is still the same game, from what I can see, with just the stat-block changes being the most significant change, but also the addition of Reactions to the game. These work when an enemy fighter activates against one of your ready fighters. That ready fighter can make a Reaction by spending one of their two actions to do something, either one of the Universal Reactions, of a faction-specific one. I think Reactions first became a thing in the Horus Heresy revamp, and is slowly starting to bleed over into more games, starting here.

Last week, I wrote a blog pondering what could be next for Warcry, given that we’re now at the end of the season and things over in Nottingham are pausing for breath (slightly) before the launch of 10th edition. I wonder if August will see a new season announcement, or if we’ll have something different? The Ghur lineup was interesting, from what I’ve heard, because Heart of Ghur (the first box) is no longer in production, meaning there is currently no Warcry starter set. You can get some of the subsequent big boxes, but they function as expansions for the first box, so you only get miniatures, board and a campaign book – no dice or tokens, and no rulebook. Whether they will do something to consolidate what we had during this season by bringing out a new starter, or whether the terrain will be reboxed as with many of the Savage Lands boxes from first edition, who knows. Unlike what happened with Kill Team, Warcry never saw a release of the new terrain elements when one box was replaced by another during the season.

At least all of the warbands can still currently be bought quite freely. I understand Kasrkin and the Arbites are still pretty much gold-dust.

I would love to get a proper starter box though, even if it is re-releasing Heart of Ghur or a reboxing of elements from across the season, just so that there’s a way to get that stuff. But it will probably have to wait for 10th edition’s dust to settle first, so there will doubtless be time to save up the pennies. Going forward, I do hope they kinda scrap the seasonality, and instead produce a starter, then maybe 6 months down the line give an expansion to that with some new or different terrain. During the first season, it was fine to have that starter box, then boxes of warbands which you could pick up if they interested you. The terrain boxes weren’t always actually available (I’m still upset about the mausoleum terrain box being sold out everywhere), but it didn’t seem to be quite so frenetic and exhausting as it has been to keep up with the pace lately. Even though I wasn’t following the season myself, just looking on, it’s been a terrible environment for people trying to keep up with everything.

Let’s be honest, if you have the money to keep up with the pace of Games Workshop’s release schedule, you probably don’t have the time to play anything because you’re busy working seventeen jobs to pay for it all.

I don’t want this post to become any more of a rant, though, so now that I’ve got all of that out of my system, let’s move on!

I’m hopefully going to get round to writing some more about Warcry as the rest of the year goes on, as it is such a good game, I feel like it deserves more recognition here on the blog. Stay tuned!

What’s next for Warcry?

I wonder what’s coming next for Warcry? I have kinda checked out of this recent “season” with the revamped setting in the realm of beasts, mainly because it was too many big boxes that GW wanted me to buy. However, I’ve been looking at the minis when they did get released, and I am very, very impressed with it all. In terms of the overall look of the game, Warcry really vies with Necromunda for me as the best-looking game GW puts out.

There have been four box sets in the new Warcry 2.0, starting with the Heart of Ghur last summer. This box came with the Horns of Hashut, who were almost mistaken at first for Chaos Dawrves, and the Rotmire Creed, a sect of Nurgle-worshippers from the swamps.

We also got the fantastic jungle-swamp terrain that continued to form a continuous theme throughout the season of boxes.

The next box was Sundered Fate, released in the autumn and included the delightful Jade Obelisk, Tzeentch-flavoured cultists, going up against Skinks. Again, there was a backbone of terrain with some new bits thrown in to keep things fresh.

Box three, Bloodhunt, came out at the start of this year, and gave us Vampire Counts vs Khorne cultists, with yet more new terrain pieces…

By now, the similarities with the Kill Team model should be immediately apparent. There is a certain amount of terrain that is recycled from box to box, with new bits alongside two new warbands. The difference from Kill Team, however, is that both of these warbands are brand new, there’s no upgrade sprue for an older force.

Nightmare Quest, the final box in the season, has been a slight let-down in some respects, because rather than continuing the trend of having a god-aligned warband to give us a new take on Slaanesh, we’ve got Stormcast vs Flesh-Eater Courts. In addition, the “new” terrain for this box is the realmshaper engine that has been released previously as Seraphon faction terrain.

Still, it’s interesting to see how the season has progressed. With all four boxes, you get a great set up that should give a lot of interesting opportunities for tree house tables of terrain, and I do like it!! Unfortunately, there is another difference with the Kill Team model here, in that the terrain has not been made available separately from the big box sets. You can still get the warbands, of course, but if you missed out on the big box, then you’re in for a tough time trying to build a massive jungle-swamp table. It’s a real shame, because this stuff is beautiful.

With all this said, though, the point of this blog is me wondering what they’re going to do next with the game. I really enjoyed the Eightpoints setting, and it was looking through my Warcry collection of minis from the “first season” (if we’re going to call it that) that got me writing all this, anyway. I would absolutely love to see a return to more ruined towns and off-the-wall stuff like Red Harvest’s chaos-tinged mine terrain. Hopefully there will continue to be some very cool models coming out, regardless.

The most important thing, though, is to slow down with the release schedule! Releasing big boxes that cost over £100 each, for different game systems, often on the same day, is just forcing a lot of players to pick one game and stick to it. Why they couldn’t space these things out more is beyond me. As it is, there’s just too much coming out to keep up with, and it’s starting to scare me a bit. I wanted to get into Kill Team, but the debacle of the Gallowdark season not being available has soured me on that. I do now kinda wish I’d kept up instead with Warcry, but having a fun skirmish game that saw some releases every so often suddenly ramping up and being aggressively milked in the same way has kinda put me off that, as well.

I’ve not actually played Warcry for some time, and certainly not with the new rule set, but I am now thinking about trying it out again. Obviously I’d only be going at it with my older warbands, although I have been taking a look at some of these newer bands with interest…

I hope that, whatever the future is for Warcry, it will be more under control, and will be available to buy freely when time and funds allow, rather than these heavy pressure sales we’ve had of late!

Back under the mountain

At the weekend, I had a game of Warhammer Underworlds: Direchasm with my mate James, who is starting a Slaves to Darkness army and had picked up Khagra’s Ravagers. We’d talked about the game last year, which is what kinda prompted me to investigate all of the boxes that I have lying around, so it was nice to finally have a proper game with it!

Well, I say “proper” game; neither of us was really that sure of the rules, so we spent a long time trying to figure things out! One of the most critical aspects of the game was also a bit of a mystery to us until the third round, as well! See, we were playing it where each fighter had an activation, so it was getting quite baffling when we were talking about situations where fighters could potentially move and shoot – how could that happen, if they’ve already activated? Well, near the start of round three, and after a quick google search, it dawned on me – the player has four activations, not the fighter, so you can activate a single fighter multiple times if you so wish!

How foolish we were!

I think we were also both quite impressed by how tactical the third round became. We’d very much just moved a bit and had a bit of a scrap in the middle, and over the course of the first two rounds, I’d managed to score two objectives, and James had taken two of my fighters out of action, so we were tied on two Glory each. However, two of his fighters only had one hit point left, so if I was able to kill then both, I’d win. If I did nothing, he would win for having more fighters on the board. It suddenly became quite tense, especially when I was unable to kill anything! As it turned out, James was also able to score an objective because all of his fighters were Inspired, so he won 3-2 regardless, but it was funny how the game had been quite nice and free-flowing until that last round, when suddenly things started to really matter!!

All in all, it was a really fun game, even if I did lose, and it’s got me thinking once again about trying to play it some more. I only have the first four boxes, but I think we’re on season 7 or something now – I don’t see myself getting back into it very much, but I would like to see if I can perhaps pick up some more of the Direchasm stuff while it’s still out in the wild. Especially if the Bonereapers warband shows up anywhere, as I think those models would be quite good for my larger army, if nothing else!!

I’ve done a tiny bit of tinkering with my deck, ahead of any potential future games, as I had been using the “starter” Lumineth deck from the box. I don’t have a great deal from Direchasm, though, so there isn’t a lot of scope (unlike my collection from Nightvault).

But anyway, it’s something that I hope that we can play some more, going forward!

Age of Sigmar: the first game

Well folks, I had my first Age of Sigmar game on Friday evening – my first in a very long time, and certainly my first with the new edition. For the curious among you, I last played in 2nd edition, in February 2019, with my Nighthaunt, and aside from it being really fun, I don’t really remember a great deal of it!

I have talked quite a bit about Age of Sigmar recently, as I was gearing up to play against James and his Slaves to Darkness, but through one thing or another, we just hadn’t been able to get round to it until now. As such, a lot of my research into the game had gone a bit by the wayside, so it was still a bit of a steep curve when we started!!

However…

Age of Sigmar plays fairly similar to 40k, with the broad game outline being fairly similar. That said, there is overall less going on, somehow. The fact that your weapon profile tells you what you need to hit and to wound is such a tiny difference that nevertheless speeds things up a lot, and the fact there are very few mixed units means oftentimes you’re fast rolling because everybody has a sword, for instance.

Also – shooting is so rare as to be non-existent.

In our game, because James only has the Start Collecting box, we were playing at roughly 570 points, so that allowed me two units of Mortek Guard, one unit of Immortis Guard, and my Boneshaper hero. The first unit of Guard died pretty quickly from being in the centre, whereas my Boneshaper kept reanimating models from the second unit, causing some significant irritation as they just would not die! However, the Immortis Guard really surprised us both. In a single round of close combat, they killed off the Chaos Lord, the next two rounds they saw off the cavalry, and in the final round they swept in to demolish what was left of the Chaos Knights. They only took a single wound in the sole game, too!

Beasts.

I think the Mortek Guard should be fielded in larger units, though – I know we were somewhat constrained by points, and by how I’ve built everything, but it’s just more reason to get that second box of Guard and bump each unit up to 20 bodies. I also think I needed a bit more speed – I very much moved up the field, then let everything close the gap and come to me. Since the game, I’ve built up my five Kavalos Deathriders, which I’m hoping to get painted at some point before we can arrange another game, as it might be good to mix things up a little!

Though I can’t help noticing how my horses are much smaller than those Chaos steeds…

It was a very fun game – made all the better because I actually ended up winning, 8-7! Didn’t expect that. We both agreed, though, that being able to just play the game, without needing to constantly check rules, was such a huge plus, and I think it’s a credit to the designers that the game is very sleek, by and large. Sure, we had some complex interactions come into play from command abilities, traits, and other special abilities, but even these were fairly straightforward to walk through. It made the game experience overall really quite light, in terms of being able to actually play the thing!

I had a fairly interesting idea pop into my head during the game, though. We were talking about my Bonereaper models, and I was explaining how they’re supposed to be bone constructs, not reanimated skeletons like the old Tomb Kings. In conjunction with the oft-repeated possibility of Mortek Archers being a unit for the army, I started to think about the old Tomb Kings line, and doing some mental comparisons, wondering whether GW might expand on the Bonereapers with Tomb Kings analogue units.

The current Bonereapers line up has skeleton swordsmen, skeleton spearmen, skeleton horsemen and big constructs akin to the Ushabti, along with the huge catapult that is a Screaming Skull mk2. On an unrelated note, it does make me chuckle how many paint names have survived when the units they were named after have gone up in smoke. But anyway. The Tomb Kings also had skeleton archers, which begs the question, if Bonereaper archers could be a thing, what else could we get?

I think Necropolis Knights are fantastic looking units, and would absolutely love it if somehow a similar thing could be introduced to this army. I’m not sure what they could be riding, but I reckon it could look very cool to have a different sort of mounted elite type of unit?

I think having chariots in the game is very important, to keep with the fantasy feel, and I do like the fact that several armies have their own take on this. I’d love to get something for the Bonereapers, it’s almost a no-brainer as we already have skeletal horses, and the crew are just Mortek Guard.

I suppose the Ushabti are a cross between the Immortis Guard and the Morghasts, and the Gothizzar Harvester replaces the huge scorpion (or possibly the Necrosphinx, though that was a very beautiful model…)

I’ve heard some rumours talking about more units, including the ever-present Archers rumours, but also mentioning a mounted hero, possibly mounted on some kind of war machine. I think the possibility of having a hero in chariot is perhaps a bit too close to the Tomb Kingd and Settra, but war machine rumours do come back to some kind of ballista that is mentioned in the lore. Now that we’re supposed to have Stormcast chariots and a few armies have ranged war machines, it does present some interesting speculation!!

I love variety, of course, so would definitely like to see more for my favourite Death faction!! Especially if I’m going to have the opportunity to play more AoS!!

Warcry content in White Dwarf

Hey everybody,
I’ve been going through the archives, so to speak, and taking a look at all of the stuff published for Warcry through White Dwarf since the game was launched in 2019. If I’m honest, there’s not as much new content in there as, say, for Necromunda, but even so, I thought it might be useful for others like me, who are curious as to what else is out there for this great game!

While there hasn’t been a great deal of content in the way of new rules and so on, I think it’s interesting that White Dwarf has been giving us new cards for fighters, particularly recently with these pull-out sections they’ve been doing. This really goes back to the Jakkob Bugmansson fighter card that came in with a slew of other game “expansions” within the magazines, as an actual printed card for use in the game.

Back when Warcry was released, we had a Designer’s Diary in the September 2019 issue that showcased the initial six warbands, and talked through the influences and such for the miniatures. We also had two battle reports. A couple of months later, the December 2019 issue had a Realm Focus article on the Eightpoints, and included a two-page painting guide for the ruins showing four different colour schemes using Contrast paints. I think this is quite useful, as I still don’t know how I want to paint my scenery from the original core set!!

The first new rules for Warcry came in the February 2020 issue, Issue 451 in the new numbering system, when we had the rules for Fyreslayers. At this time, GW had already released a bunch of card packs for some of the various Age of Sigmar factions, but Fyreslayers weren’t one of them. While they would release further waves of packs, it felt like a lot of people saw the White Dwarf release as “righting a wrong” or something, but anyway.

The Spire Tyrants were the seventh original warband released for Warcry, and in Issue 452 (March 2020) they got their own campaign rules, Lord of the Pits. The very next issue began the Tale of Four Warbands, which was a great way to raise the profile of the game, in my view, showcasing four warbands and some amazing colour schemes, as well as featuring battle reports to show just how awesome the game is!

In Issue 454 (May 2020), we had rules and a campaign for the Lumineth Realmlords, who were a new army when the Sentinels of Order expansion book had been released, so weren’t included. The Lumineth were also expanded in the article on the Warhammer Community site, of course, which was partly later folded into Tome of Champions 2021. The Lumineth were treated to a box much like the Slaanesh Sybarites that I picked up last month, though, giving all the fighter cards for the faction.

We had another warband release with Issue 456 (September 2020), with Cities of Sigmar getting cards and a campaign. I say “cards”, of course, but they’re just printed in the magazine – you know what I mean, though! This was followed with the Jakkob Bugmansson card in Issue 458 (November 2020) as I mentioned above, which was a physical card, as well as a challenge battle for using him in games.

Things went very quiet on the Warcry front for the whole of 2021 though. It wasn’t until Issue 473 (February 2022) arrived that we got our next Warcry fix, with rules for gaming in Thondia, within the Realm of Beasts. Everything Age of Sigmar seems to be focusing on Ghur right now, so it’s no surprise really. There are a bunch of charts in this update, which allow us to generate new Victory Conditions and new Twists, as well as new charts for gaining artifacts and command traits when playing a campaign in Thondia. In addition, all beasts in the battle get +1 toughness, which is a nice thematic bit.

Issue 474 (March 22) gave us the first of many tie-ins to Age of Sigmar releases, when we had updated rules for Idoneth Deepkin and Fyreslayers, which accompany the two new characters that came out in the boxset. These characters also have cards in the magazine. Campaigns for each warband are also included here, all battles of which make use of the Red Harvest terrain, something I thought was interesting as it seems to suggest that this will be the new starter. At least the box is still available to buy, which is a nice change!

The next issue, Issue 475 (April 22) gave us Oath of Ascension – four linked games for Chaos warbands, each one fighting to become a Daemon Prince. It’s a really interesting mini-campaign idea, I think – you each have an Annointed fighter, who is trying to become a Daemon Prince, but whoever fares the best over the first three games then finds that Chaos has turned on them, and that Annointed fighter becomes a Possessed fighter under their opponent’s control. The “winner” needs to take down their former champion, but each time the Possessed fighter takes out another member of their former warband, they gain 10 wounds. Very nice!

Finally (for now!), in Issue 476 (May 22) we had updated rules for Nighthaunt and Daughters of Khaine, which goes alongside the recent boxset much like the Fyreslayers and Idoneth. We get new campaigns for each as well, once more using the Red Harvest terrain. The rules are more substantial for Nighthaunt, as they had more new models, but even so, it’s nice to see that GW are keen to keep the Age of Sigmar model range relevant in Warcry as well. Interesting, too, because the more models you have available to your warband, the bigger your collection becomes, until you might as well invest in Age of Sigmar as well…

At any rate, that brings us up to date with the stuff White Dwarf has made available for Warcry so far. I’ll be keeping this page updated as time moves on, so that it provides (hopefully) as complete a picture for what is out there. While a lot of stuff, like the early Fyreslayers and Lumineth stuff has of course been superseded and replaced, it would be nice if we had this collected in one of the annual books. Looking through my little Warcry library so far, I don’t think the Spire Tyrants campaign was ever reprinted, for instance, and as we seem to be getting much more stuff coming out this year, I would hope that it doesn’t disappear into the mists of time as things move on.

Hedonites of Slaanesh

Following on from Friday’s post, I wanted to give a bit of an update on my Exalted Seeker Chariot project, as well as a few fruits of my research into the new units in the army. I’m trying not to get excited, of course, as I have quite enough to be going along with, but as always with projects like this, it’s hard to not look around at what else there is, and where I might like to go with it!

The Chariot is going well, despite the fact that the whole thing is glued together. I’m enjoying the challenge of trying to get it painted, of course, and seeing it all come together at last, so hopefully things will continue on like this for now. It’s really nice to finally be getting some Slaanesh models painted, even if this is the third project diversion I’ve had so far this year!!

Starting with the latest additions to the army, Dexcessa looks like a lovely model to think about. Not only can it move 12” and fly, it’s-1 to hit and can fall back and later charge, it can issue a command once per turn without spending a command point, and Daemon units within 12” do not take battle shock tests. Something that I really like is the fact that, after it has attacked once, you add 1 to the attacks of each of its weapons at the start of each round. It starts out with 6 attacks, between its talons and its scourge, so that’ll quickly get up there, which I find quite exciting!!

The alternative build is Synessa, a wizard who knows all of the spells in the Slaanesh lore, and can issue commands to friendly models anywhere on the battlefield, provided it has line of sight to the model. Very interesting as a wizard choice!

The Shardspeaker is one of my favourites of the new models. It is also a wizard, and gets +1 to save rolls, and gets access to a magical attack if it casts a spell that isn’t unbound. It has a couple of ways in which it can mess with enemy units in somewhat close range, which I like, though I think it could definitely benefit from being screened somehow if you’re getting within 9” of an enemy, as it only has 5 wounds.

Myrmidesh Painbringers are a very attractive choice for that screen. Each model has 2 wounds, and at a full complement of five models, they’re making ten attacks, hitting and wounding on 3s, with -1 rend. For an unmodified wound roll of 6, they’re dishing out an additional mortal wound, too. Sure, they aren’t a tank, but they’re pretty nasty, I would think.

Hedonite models get the additional rule of Euphoric Killers, each hit roll of 6 inflicts 2 hits on the target. You still need to roll to wound, but ten attack rolls should score some 6s, which just gives yet more fodder for the possible mortal wounds.

The alternative build for the kit is the Symbaresh Twinsouls, who have 3 attacks each but a slightly worse stat line otherwise.

I particularly like the Dread Pageant, though that’s mainly in the context of their original incarnation as an Underworlds warband. In Age of Sigmar, they don’t particularly stand out for me, though they do have the useful ability of dishing out mortal wounds on 6s to hit, and with 13 attacks coming from the unit as a whole, there’s definitely scope there!

Now, I really like the idea of the Slaangors, but I’ve not really read good things about them. They have 3 wounds, and they make 3 attacks (4 on the charge). They move 8” and, at the end of combat you get to roll a dice for each Slaangor model left, dishing out a mortal wound on a 4+ to any unit within 3”.

I suppose part of the problem might be how you fit in a unit that costs 130 points if that’s all it’s going to do, but I do think there might be a place for them in the list somewhere! Rules like Euphoric Killers do make high-attack units a bit more interesting, as the possibility of rolling 6s is increased.

As always, the spells and command traits etc available to the army offer more bits and pieces that will stack in favour, it’s always exciting to sit down with a book and try to put all the pieces into a list! Of course, I’m really trying not to go overboard with buying more models, so I don’t want to run away with my plans just now!!

That said, I’ve recently picked up the Slaanesh Sybarites box for Warcry, which is very impressive to me. You get some Myrmidesh Painbringers, and some Blissbarb Archers, and all of the cards for all of the possible unit types in a Slaanesh Sybarites warband, which is a lot! Clearly, Sybarites are distinct from Hedonites in Warcry, as the latter seem to be entirely the daemon units, but this box was a revelation to me. I don’t remember them being released, but it seems to have come out alongside boxes for Stormcast, Lumineth and the new swamp orruks. Very interesting, if for no other reason than they give all the cards you need.

Anyway, that’s probably enough from me for now. I’m going to continue to try to not buy more Slaanesh units, despite the fact I really, really like that Dexcessa model!!

The Dark Prince

Hey everybody,
I’m definitely on an Age of Sigmar kick at the minute. I’ve been working on the Khorne Bloodbound units, of course, but now I’ve turned to another of the four. It was inevitable really, wasn’t it?

Of all the four Chaos gods, Slaanesh is the one that I keep coming back to, time and again. It weirdly plays into the whole thing about the allure of the Dark Prince that I talked about a fair few years ago now; he’s very definitely got his crab-claws into me!

I’ve currently got five Khorne Bloodreavers finished, and have not only begun work on the next batch of five, I’ve also got the Wrathmongers out as well! However, getting my head once more into Age of Sigmar has got me thinking again about Slaanesh, and I’ve started to paint up the Shardspeaker as well.

Thing is, I love the idea of a Slaanesh army. I love the lore, I love playing Chaos in Warhammer Invasion principally because I love the Slaanesh cards, and I really love the models. I think the fact they have had such a huge overhaul into almost entirely plastic is just wonderful, and we’ve got such delights now as to be truly spoilt.

Here’s the thing. I’ve bought and sold a Slaanesh army twice so far in my hobby life, and am currently sitting on my third iteration. I’ve kept this the longest, as I’ve had these guys with me for about four years now. I think having such beautiful models as that glorious Keeper of Secrets probably helps, of course.

I really want to make a go of it this time, though, so intend to get this project underway at some point in 2022. I’m particularly keen to make an effort with the Exalted Chariot, which is my biggest hobby mistake so far, in that I built the whole thing before trying to paint it.

To date, however, I have only painted a single Daemonette, and she isn’t really finished, if you count the base. But she was painted up slightly over 3 years ago now, so I do think it’s time that I made more of an effort to get some more models finished. Especially as I seem to recall the paint scheme I came up with for them isn’t particularly onerous.

I’ve been Instagram-stalking myself, and June 2016 is the earliest mention of Slaanesh (above), so I’ve had this idea for 6 years now, almost! I think it’s time I made it come to fruition, though getting a good balance is going to be key of course. I know that I have too many projects on the go, and I know I made the decision this very month to focus on the Black Legion, but within days of doing so I’ve had this massive swerve. However, I do find all that trim a bit exhausting, and unfortunately I’m now in the position where I need a new brush for all of that. Bah! I don’t want to fall into that trap again, but I think in more general terms, 2022 will be something of a year of Chaos for me!

I think I just enjoy painting up models for Age of Sigmar, almost more than I do for 40k. So I’m looking forward to getting underway with this!