Thursday’s not off to a bad start this week.
Woke up to a nice surprise this morning, with Game Workshop having announced not 1 but 2 new Warbands for everyone’s favourite skirmish game – Warcry! All bundled together in a brand new box.
As if I needed more reasons to transmute my money in to plastic…
The full announcement (along with an 8 minute video) can be found over on the Warhammer Community website).
I just went through the announcement and compiled a couple of details and highlights from the announcement video, along with some of our own thoughts at the end as well.
Briar and Bone, the latest Warcry Box
Set in the twisted Gnarlwood comes the latest expansion box for Warcry. Aptly named Briar and Bone, it features warbands that are all about both.
Based on the reveal video, it looks like this is what we’ll be getting with it:
- The Teratic Cohorts, an Ossiarch Bonereapers Warband
- The Twistweald, a Sylvaneth Warband
- A piece of terrain called the Ravening Gnarloak
- A Warband Tome with battleplan generators, campaigns, etc.
What looks absent, however, are the tokens and additional pieces that we might see in a proper starter set (which this isn’t claiming to be) along with tokens and other bits.
The Teratic Cohorts, a New Ossiarch Bonereapers Warband
The first of the two warbands that was highlighted in the is part of the Ossiarch Bonereapers faction, dubbed here as the Teratic Cohorts.
They’re still reapers, and still made of bone, but I don’t think we’ve seen any quite like this so far.
The leader appears to be the large Centroid unit, who we’re told is quite powerful. Alongside him are two bodyguards who came off sounding like the additional heavies of the band who appear to have weapons with some reach as well.
Supporting them are a number of “creatures” – three hound like creatures and two flyers who, according to the lore that was shared, were being punished for past transgressions.
These units were touted as being remarkably quick and agile, of which they certainly look the part.
Ability-wise, we were tease that they would have a “unique mechanic” – effectively, some way to spend wild dice to empower their abilities (at the cost of now having them to make abilities later). That might lead to some interesting decision-making, where players have to decide between using a die to build a triple or quad or simply “empowering” a double or so that they already rolled.
It’s a neat idea on paper, and I’m really curious to see how it plays out.
Thoughts on the Warband: While I haven’t seen any stats for them, my first impression was that it reminded me somewhat of the Ossiarch Bonereaper list that tied for first place at the Golden Troll Warcry Tournament earlier this month.
That list was built around the strengths of the Bonereapers – their survivability and elites – while also working to minimize their weakness – speed.
Seeing a Warband that looks like it encompasses both powerful elites and brings nimble units that were previously very lacking looks very strong on paper.
The main questions would be how tough is that leader and those two elites – are they able to get the job done doing the gruntwork while the creatures swoop in to steal points? Or will those flyers be something of a real menace too while having a serious movement range?
The Twistweald, a Sylvaneth Warband with a, well, Twisted sort of Twist
The second warband comes from the Sylvaneth faction and they seem rather appropriately named as the Twistweald.
According to the lore gathered from the video, these fellahs are infected and corrupted from the inside-out and the models really show it.
Taking a look at them from a distance, there are some familiar Sylvaneth features, such as branches and roots, but a couple of the models look like something out of the warp or Chaos and which gave me something a 40,000 vibe for some reason (maybe akin to corrupted Chaos cultists).
The warband apparently functions around the leader who has one or more abilities that do damage to the fighters in order to give them a boost. He can also apparently heal them if needed as the models seemed like they might be fairly brittle or squishy on the battlefield.
The way it was presented, made it come across like a balancing act and could hopefully lead to whoever is playing them making some tough and engaging choices.
Our presenters also informed us that overall this would be a relatively high damage and beefy squad compared to the rest of the Sylvaneth roster.
It comes with a variety of fighters – tougher Dryads and Tree Revenants with weapons not seen before (such as bows) and a couple of toughness 5 fighters.
The standout model for me is the Spite Revenant, who really embodies the “twist” in their name and who is touted as being particularly vicious.
Thoughts on the Warband: If I’m being honesty, Sylvaneth is probably the faction I know the least about. Apart from having glanced at some of their leader units as possible order allies, I really don’t know much of what’s going on under their hood.
It doesn’t help that no one in my circles plays them, but maybe seeing something like this could turn it around? I’ll admit that I’m actually fairly excited about this set, which isn’t something I would have normally said for anything that’s both woodsy and Elf-like (I’m a Chaos cultist at heart I guess).
In any event, I’d love to hear what someone more familiar with the Sylvaneth thinks about this deployment – does it fit with what you’ve got going, or is this really a wild departure from their usual MO?
New Terrain – The Ravening Gnarloak
The presenters described it as one of the creepier pieces of terrain out there, and I second that feeling. We’ve seen plenty of Gnarloaks in other Gnarlwood sets, but nothing as ferocious as this.
According to the lore here, it looks like people attempted to tame this particular Gnarloak and built a sacrifical altar atop of it to keep it satiated.
How it will work in gameplay is that it sounds like models will have the chance to toss one another into the maw, similar to what we saw in the Hunter and Hunted box with the Ogor Mawpit.
Thoughts on the terrain: While I haven’t been loving that we’re seeing less terrain in each box, I do like that the pieces we do receive are standout.
This would definitely be a showpiece at any table, in a similar vein as the Realmshaper Engine and other big pieces have been. However, it’s always a question of how much use they actually get (Gnarlwood matches tends to devolve into a mud fight without much terrain use unless objectives are up there, compared to the earlier ruins).
As a side note, when they mentioned the moving characteristic of the Gnarloaks, I momentarily thought they might have added rules to have this piece actually walk around the board. That certainly would have been a chaotic wildcard to have, and probably for the best that they didn’t!
Before you go!
Thanks for stopping by! We’ve put together a couple of other pieces on Warcry lately that might pique your interest:
- All lists from the Golden Troll Warcry Tournament (March 2024)
- A closer look at my tournament winning (tied for 1st) Scions of the Flame list
- Some listbuilding and loving for the SCE Sacrosanct Chamber
