In the previous book, Lord Kroak the most powerful Slaan and defaction leader of the Seraphon was moved to act due to events in motion. Kroak has been saddled with a rather sad, ugly resin model for a very long time and shortly before the release of Broken Realms: Kragnos Games Workshop would reveal a giant new model which of course would require a more impressive warscroll to match! You can look it up on Games Workshop’s website by the time this review goes up if you want follow along.
Lord Kroak
One of the things I was wondering about the changes to Kroak coming in is if he’d be operating in a different role. As a named Slaan, Kroak was incredibly powerful. Few would even bother to take a non-named Slaan because Kroak was better in every way for just a marginal point increase. New Kroak is…surprisingly similar. There is a lot of powers that are familiar here but most of them have been amped up to scale better than they did in the past but the general vibe will feel quite familiar.
The first most notable change is his 18 wounds, more than double his previous 7. This comes with an catch though. Dead for Innumerable Ages returns similar to its first edition version. In 2nd edition it was changed to a respectable 4+ Feel No Pain check but that’s pretty dull. In the original version of Kroak’s warscroll, he had a quirky rule where he had no wounds, but any damage dealt would require the player to roll a die in the Battleshock phase and add the damage dealt. Beating his bravery would kill Kroak. Since this damage would accumulate over the Hero, Shooting and Combat phase it was pretty easy to deal the 10 damage necessary to auto kill him unless he was very well protected. This has now returned, but in an even better version. Now Kroak is asked to roll 3d6 at the end of each phase and add the damage taken that turn. If the total is 20 or more he is slain. I haven’t run the numbers on the statistics of Kroak dying after suffering a certain amount of damage but overall the statistics mean he will be pretty hardy. However, it also means he could die instantly after only taking 2 damage, even if the odds are 1 in 216 but it could happen.
Some minor changes to his powers include Azyrite Force Barrier now scaling up to do more attacks against MONSTERS, and Master of Order has been renamed to the more apt Supreme Master of Order, granting a +2 to casting, instead of the +1 he had before. If people feared his casting prowess before it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
What’s the cost for all these beautiful new upgrades? Kroak’s point cost when up a bit, to 430. A little over 100 points. Is it worth it? I think it does remove him from his perch as a defacto take but not because he isn’t good. He most certainly is good. He just costs a lot more and you have to deal with the unpredictability of him being removed off the field due to a bad roll. I think the clear role of taking Kroak over a generic Slaan now isn’t so clear cut and that’s a good thing for the army’s diversity but he’s still a strong take.
That’s it for Seraphon content. I’m not sure why Seraphon got divided up like this. There was a new battalion in Be’lakor and Kroak was shown so it seems odd to move him here alone. Regardless, he’s going to make some Seraphon players quite happy.
Up Next – Cities of Sigmar
That’s right, Cities of Sigmar shows up in Broken Realms again! We got another brand new city to play with (complete with their own traits, artefacts and spells) plus two new characters. Coming up next is our coverage of Cities of Sigmar and the city of Excelsis!
