Welcome to another Warhammer Underworlds preorder day. Kamandora’s Blades are coming, ready to slice and dice and collect skulls for Khorne. In addition, Raging Slayers is a new Rivals deck ready to facilitate a bevy of accurate attacks. If you want to read about the new deck, you can do so here. This article will take a closer look at Kamandora’s Blades and see how the latest Strike warband stacks up. I’d like to express thanks to Games Workshop providing this warband for review.

Kamandora’s Blades are another new Chaos warband in this Embergard season. They’re yet another representation of Khornate mortals, alongside the organized play legal Gorechosen of Dromm and the two legacy warbands of Magore’s Fiends and Garrek’s Reavers. The Blades are also the third new Chaos warband since Embergard came out – Zikkit’s Tunnelpack lead the way, followed by Grandfather’s Gardeners, and now Kamandora and her companions come sprinting in. Their introduction brings the total of organized play legal warbands to 36 and the number of chaos warbands to 9 – making this grand alliance the second most populated option of the four.

When these murderous weirdos were first revealed, there was some serious backlash as to how they looked. I was also initially caught off guard because it didn’t quite line up with what I had in mind when I heard there was a new Khorne warband, especially as I was so fond of the current ones. However, the Knives of the Crone also received their share of negative comments based on how the previewed models looked, and since their release I have seen multiple paint jobs that have done them serious justice. Sometimes, the ‘Eavy Metal painting style doesn’t always match with the models, but it’s the established studio style used for box art and promotional images so it’s what gets used. While the technical ability of the box art is great – honestly, it’s a level of painting that I aspire to – it just felt a little too “clean” for what amounts to bloodthirsty skull-obsessed freaks who have cut off their own lips just to make their visage more skull-like in honor of the god of murder. In case you missed it, the phenomenal Louise Sugden even did a digital paint-over to show how they could be transformed with some color tweaks and some grime.

Initially, I was thinking about doing some head swaps or finding appropriate masks for the models. It would be a pretty simple process considering three of the four humans have heads that are completely separate pieces from their bodies – Kamandora will take a little more work since there’s all the flowing hair running down over her shoulders and torso, but the three others should be a piece of cake for anyone interested. I got as far as digging out various other kits I had sitting around that had potentially suitable heads. If you want a starting point, I found some good options in the 40k line: World Eaters Jakhals, Chaos Cultists, and the (I believe) out of print Chaos Cultist Warband all have some suitable heads that don’t look out of place in the fantasy realm of Age of Sigmar.

In the end, I decided I wanted to keep the characterful faces and lean into the creepy lipless motif they have going on. I did ultimately do a few ham-fisted but simple conversions – I chopped off most of their topknots and cute little skull hair-ties. I’m simply not fond of the topknot look and it’s something I tend to either leave off or trim off of models where it isn’t a huge pain in the butt to do so. My execution wasn’t flawless – Throkk has a bit of a flat head and I apparently didn’t file down the remainder of the hair on the other two perfectly, but I’ll take it.

I’d also like to shamefully admit that despite this being my 32nd painted warband that I own, it’s the first one I have painted myself. The rest have either been commissions from talented artists, a gift from an awesome community member, or models that came in the utterly insane Underworlds bundle that I snagged off of eBay two years ago. Painting is a real struggle for me but I weirdly enjoyed painting these five models up. The over-the-top musculature on Throkk was nice for practicing some volumetric highlighting and recess shading. I saved Kannat (the dog) for last and spent some time practicing using glazes to highlight the body. It was much easier than I thought it’d be, and I’m pretty pleased with the results. I’m not an award winning painter, but I can at least put these in my cabinet and not feel ashamed of seeing them next to my other warbands.

The models themselves go together quite nicely, which isn’t a surprise considering the overall quality of Games Workshop kits. I didn’t have to trim any of the push-to-fit pegs, the mold lines were average, and the assembly is very straightforward. The only two things that stood out to me were both on Kamandora herself. Her sword arm was a little fiddly for me to get onto the body. Additionally, during assembly you’ll notice Kamandora has a hole in her back which is normally where a peg would go, but the skull basket doesn’t have any corresponding peg for it so it just gets hidden without being used. Weird, but whatever.

In terms of in-game performance, let’s take a dive into their warscroll followed by individual fighter cards.

There’s a healthy mix of persistent abilities, once-per-round abilities, and single-use abilities on this warscroll. Warband design continues to evolve from the state it was in even just a year ago where most warscrolls were 3-ish abilities that mimicked ploys. Kamandora’s Blades continues the trend to have new mechanics baked into the warscroll, but this time around it’s more straightforward than the Grandfather’s Gardeners and their plague cycle or the Knives of the Crone and their prophecy tables.

Looking at their inspire condition, you’ll notice they have two ways to inspire but they both hinge around the Worthy Skull mechanic. Your fighters will either need to end a power step next to the skull fighter or slay the skull fighter. This reminds me somewhat of the positional inspire mechanic that Thorns of the Briar Queen have; however, instead of needing to start your turn adjacent to any enemy, it’s ending a power step next to a specific enemy. It’s nice because this means in either player’s power step – you can charge into or move adjacent to the skull, then inspire going into your opponent’s turn (which as we’ll see later would help given the defensive profiles of most of these fighters) or if the worthy skull fighter charges into and fails to kill any of your fighters, they’ll inspire in time for you to crack back. The window also means you get to use any pushes or teleports to get into position before the status is checked, and this warband conveniently comes with a (admittedly very limited) huge push. Failing all that, you can just kill the worthy skull and inspire one fighter that way but keep in mind this turns off your ability to inspire any other fighters for the remainder of the round.

That’s a lot of skull talk. Let’s look at A Worthy Skull. This ability is pretty simple and means you must (not optional) select any enemy model of your choice at the start of the first action step of each battle round. The timing here is after both players know who is going first, but before the first player actually does anything in their turn. By itself this isn’t super important, but keep it in mind for when we get to the next ability. This worthy skull marker also only lasts until the end of the battle round, so it won’t carry over into the next. You can, of course, choose the same target but you’re also free to pick another noggin that you want to de-bone.

Importantly, there is no offensive benefit to declaring a worthy skull – Khorne isn’t going to make anyone’s attacks more accurate or hit harder or do anything other than give direction to the push and unlock inspires. Don’t fall into the trap of picking the biggest threat on the enemy side of the board and marking it for round 1. Even if you want to do a deep dive into the key piece someone has in the back line, you can nominate one of the dorks your opponent has deployed up front to still get pushed in the same direction and have an easier time inspiring your fighters. I’m only cautioning this because I realized I was doing it and want you to learn from my mistakes.

Slaughterous Pilgrimage is, in my opinion, the focal ability for this warband. Immediately after you pick a worthy skull, your entire warband must (again, not optional) push 1 hex closer to the skull. Getting five instance of a 1 hex push before the game even starts is massive, and you get to continue utilizing this as the game progresses (provided you have surviving fighters). There are a few things I’ve thought of where this really shines.

The first, and pretty obvious, is extending your threat range. We’ll see later, but all the fighters in this warband are limited to range 1 melee attacks and have a move of 4 hexes. On the smaller boards of Embergard, this is a massive threat range increase and will make it virtually impossible to play keep-away from the Mother of Hate and her lackeys.

The second way I’ve managed to leverage the pilgrimage ability is to ensure that when you’re placing treasure tokens, there are some just in front of your starting hexes. You can use Slaughterous Pilgrimage to push your fighters onto treasure tokens before either player takes a turn. You can use this to block the opponent from moving onto them if they’re playing the many decks which care about treasure/feature tokens or leverage it yourself by picking something like Pillage and Plunder as a deck to play with the Blades.

Just remember that Slaughterous Pilgrimage is not optional, so you’re not going to be going into rounds 2 or 3 in the same hexes that you’re leaving the preceding round unless you’re choosing something already adjacent to one of your fighters.

Blood for Khorne is the flashy (or is it slashy?!) ability for this warband. It’s a brand new runemark that each fighter has in both their uninspired and inspired forms. It’s… weird. Slashing gives you the opportunity to deal an extra point of damage, but it’s fully in your opponent’s control whether this will happen. And, to no one’s surprise, most players are not going to willingly let you deal more damage to their fighters. That said, there are times where you can at least force your opponent into an unpleasant decision – provided you can land your attacks to deliver the bleed token.

As a reminder, the rulebook lists the following as core abilities: move, attack, guard, and charge. There are also other core abilities that are granted from power cards like Burnt Out or Bellowing Tyrant. Finally, there are some warscrolls that grant access to new core abilities like the Crimson Court’s ability Dark Transfusion or Zikkit’s Tunnelpack’s ability Kaboom! Any of these would trigger the extra damage from slashing, but core abilities that other fighters perform or that the player performs  would not.

Here’s a list of random things I’ve noticed about the slashing runeword while playing:

• The effectiveness is much diminished against horde warbands because they can just activate one of their many other fighters
• It’s yet another incentive to go after fighters who have not charged this round – you can use the “charged out rule” (game slang for the rule stating that fighters with charge tokens cannot be activated unless all other friendly fighters also have charge tokens) to limit your opponent’s options
• It helps put pressure onto key enemy fighters – if your opponent wants to evacuate a fighter from a danger area but it has a bleed token, you’re either going to have their fighter stick around for another round of chopping or they’ll have to take a point of damage
• The inability to stack slashing with extra accuracy from cleave or ensnare hurts; likewise, grievous is basically just “slashing but better”

The final ability is Call the Pursuit which is a highly restricted but very efficient push. This requires both your leader and Khorne dog to be alive (no mean feat considering how squishy both of those fighters are), be within 4 hexes of each other, and having a useful spot for the dog to land next to Kamandora. If all those criteria are fulfilled, you get a massive push for Kannat that leaves the dog free to charge, attack, or whatever at the end. You can’t use it to set up supports for Kamandora if she is making a charge, but you can use it to set up for an inspire on Kannat if Kamandora charges the worthy skull target. I think using this early in the game is the best bet. If you try to save it until the perfect moment, one or both of the fighters will be dead or out of position.

Fighters of Kamandora’s Blades

First thing’s first; Kamandora has the epithet “Mother of Hate” which goes pretty hard. I’m happy for her, her big ol’ knife, and her backpack of skulls.

Looking at her stats, she’s a fairly decent melee focused leader but is only sporting 3 health which is a worryingly low value. Being 4 move, along with the freebie push each round from Slaughterous Pilgrimage, will allow her to reach most hexes on the board without much trouble. As anyone who has played against warbands on 2 dodge, that save profile can sometimes be frustratingly hard to crack through especially if any guard tech is factored in. Kamandora is tied for the highest bounty in the warband at 2, so while she will probably be a priority target, if she does get taken out you won’t be hurting as badly as if she were one of the 3 glory leaders.

Offensively, Kamandora has a pretty basic weapon profile that’s a tweaked version of the “leader stick” profile. She sacrifices any reach to tack on the Slashing weapon runeword. As talked about above, this is a runemark with a lot of potential play and counterplay tied to it. You can’t quite do the mental shorthand of looking at Kamandora’s profile and assuming it’s 3 damage but the potential is there, which makes this an interesting profile. 2 hammers, 3 damage is a profile restricted to the truly heavy hitters in the game like Kro-jax or Gorlok so having it even as a potential is pretty impressive. Once inspired, the only change Kamandora has is picking up an additional attack dice. While that’s always welcome, it’s not a stark change. I’m tempted to use Kamandora herself as a forward deployed dangle fighter to bait attacks since she has the best uninspired save profile in the warband. The only hesitation I’d have is that Call the Pursuit requires her to be alive and in position in order to get the big 4 hex push on Kannat – but maybe yanking the Khorne dog up to the front lines in the first power step isn’t necessarily a bad idea.

Throkk’s defensive profile is similar to Kamandora’s except he trades off one save dice for an extra point of health. Starting on 4 health feels like a much safer breakpoint than 3 – Throkk isn’t vulnerable to a one-shot from a 2 damage fighter paired with Twist the Knife, or a one-two punch combo of a ping and follow-up 2 damage attack. That said, you’ll want to inspire this guy to pick up that second save dice for sure. He, along with everyone else in the warband, has 4 move which will help leverage their desire to surgically strike as well as get into position near the worthy skull for an inspire.

His offensive profile is the exact same as Kamandora’s, both inspired and uninspired. Everything said for her also applies to him. The fact that Throkk picks up an extra dice on both his save and attack does make me prioritize inspiring him over Kamandora, especially to get a little extra defense to protect his larger health pool.

Ghalista, the meme-faced icon of the warband, and Antro Krast are the two lesser fighters with identical stats in the warband. Defensively, their profiles combine the worst of Kamandora and Throkk – they’re both on 1 dodge and only have 3 health, so they’re not very resilient. Fortunately, like Throkk, they’ll both pick up a second save dice when inspired and will be at a more comfortable 2 dodge. Still not as impressive as 2 shields, but it’s quite the upgrade from what they start with.

Offensively, these two aren’t exactly blowing anyone away on their uninspired side. 3 swords is deceptively inaccurate unless you’re able to set up a flanked or surrounded situation. Even if you can land the attack, they’re only doing a single point of damage (prior to potential slashing damage). Once inspired, though, they both get a glow up. An attack profile of 4 swords increases the chance of landing the hit in the first place, and they both jump to 2 damage while retaining the slashing runemark.

Ghalista and Antro Krast are the first of our 1 bounty fighters. They’re the least painful glory-wise to lose of the four humans, but they also stand to gain the most when inspired so I’m less inclined to throw them away early.

This Khorne dog could be improved with mustard, because as-is Kannat is a rather unimpressive addition to the warband. Starting at 1 dodge and 2 health, they’re in one-shot range from all but the weakest of enemies. At least Kannat has 4 movement, like the rest of the warband, and is the only one who can take advantage of the Call the Pursuit ability on the warscroll. I’d worry about saving that ability for too long, since Kannat could just die before you get a chance to use it.

If you’re attacking with Kannat, you are in a desperate position. 2 swords, 1 damage is the worst. Sure, it has Slashing, but landing the hit to get a Bleeding token out is pretty unlikely. Even when inspired, Kannat only upgrades to the same profile as the uninspired Ghalista or Antro Krast.

Use the dog for positioning–setting up flanked attacks, blocking charges into your other fighters, holding a back field treasure token to deny Strip the Realm, etc. Also, I Kannat get over this goofy little dude’s feet. They remind me of how a cat or dog walks if they have boots on.

Deck Pairings for Kamandora’s Blades

The Mother of Hate and her underlings have an interesting design. At first glance, they feel like they are an aggro warband, but they are somewhat fragile and don’t exactly pack a huge punch if you can’t get your opponent to trigger Slashing. Instead, they feel like they would want to fill a control role by denying your opponent activations on key models, but there aren’t a ton of cards that can support this strategy. What would you call a “glass cannon” archetype that’s less focused on raw damage and more on control? Glass manacles?

One strength that they have is the free push for all five models at the start of the game before any player gets a turn. They get this again in the second and third rounds, but being able to shift five fighters before the game really even starts is a unique mechanic that I feel can be leveraged. Being able to scooch onto potentially multiple treasure tokens just in front of your starting hexes before anyone can so much as move can put you in a very solid position as the game starts with opportunities to deny your opponent’s gameplan or further your own. Pillage & Plunder is a known strong deck with solid objectives and tools that cares about delving treasures away without needing to stick around to hold them. With some board orientations, it’s even possible to have this push take you from your territory into enemy territory which sets up further scoring potential from cards like Claim the Prize (from Pillage and Plunder) or Shocking Assault (from Countdown to Cataclysm).

Both Blazing Assault and Reckless Fury offer a plethora of cards that align with Kamandora’s Blades. There are objectives that require you to charge and attack (which you’ll surely be doing), plenty of ploys and upgrades to boost your accuracy (which helps Slashing come into play), and plenty of movement enhancing cards (to ensure not only attacks, but also early inspirations on key fighters). As always, the end phases for Blazing Assault will limit your glory ceiling but the power cards are some of the best in a Rivals deck. Reckless Fury still has a few forsaken cards in it, but the remainder of the Nemesis legal cards within it still offer plenty for the Blades.

Countdown to Cataclysm has reliable objectives but some of the higher scoring ones may be difficult for this warband to achieve. It also has a suite of control style cards that haven’t quite found a home in a warband that I’d like to eventually try out with Kamandora’s Blades — The End is Nigh and Growing Concerns feel like they’d lean more into the option denial route that slashing resides in. If you don’t want to get cute with weird cards, the deck also has some tried and true options that any warband can utilize.

The objectives in Wrack & Ruin feel tight for this warband. Some of the staples will be difficult to achieve because your fighters aren’t like to take damage and survive (Bloody and Bruised) or your mandatory pushes make them harder to achieve (Alone in the Dark). There are power cards here I’d love to have access to, but it would take some tinkering to make a workable deck. It could be another route to go for a control style deck pairing.

Edge of the Knife is not only good for the hordes of 2 health dorks, but also has been proven to work quite nicely with some of the elite warbands who can afford to take the damage to become tempered. Kamandora’s Blades aren’t either of those categories, so I would be reluctant to try this pairing.

Realmstone Raiders demands high accuracy melee attacks in order to trigger the Raid mechanic. Kamandora’s Blades aren’t the worst when it comes to that, but they’re also nothing outstanding when it comes to accuracy. It comes down to Realmstone Raiders being a lot of effort and putting extra reliance on dice rolls for similar results you can get from other decks with less risk or overhead.

The latest deck, Raging Slayers, has some synergy with Kamandora’s Blades. The guaranteed re-roll on attacks helps ensure you’ll land hits which also allows slashing to be more reliable, but the objectives are going to be difficult for this warband to reliably score. Raging Slayers’ power deck has some jewels, but also some real stinkers so it doesn’t even live up to Blazing Assault’s standard of “rough end phases, great power cards.”

Building something like this Blazing Assault + Pillage & Plunder deck was my first inclination, so that was one pairing I took for a spin in playtest games. The theory was that between the solid suite of BA power cards and surges combined with P&P’s end phase objectives and utility cards, this warband would be able to get to where they needed to be and gain some accuracy boosts when they made attacks.  The pre-game push let me stage onto treasures very effectively which served double duty of getting me into position for scoring and denying my opponent access to the tokens they needed for their own scoring. The downside was my already fairly fragile fighters were setting themselves up to be staggered and, as a result, even a not-very-aggressive warband was able to deliver the beatdown. There’s some push/pull between wanting to get up close to your worthy skull so you can inspire, but also wanting to not dive into the thick of things with these low health fighters.

The classic BARF (Blazing Assault + Reckless Fury) pairing was another of the Nemesis decks I tried out with Kamanora’s Blades. Go fast, hit hard, charge charge charge. I was coming off of playing an event with Morgok’s Krushas using a very similar deck, and the differences in how these two strike warbands felt while piloting was stark. The Krushas were able to get in and brawl, trading hits and creating a mosh pit of charged out fighters to score all of the “charge tokens matter” objectives from Reckless Fury. Kamandora’s Blades were able to charge in… and that was mostly it. They didn’t have the damage output to be truly threatening, nor did they have the durability to survive a clap back.

The next deck I plan to take for a spin will be a Pillage & Plunder + Countdown to Cataclysm pairing, leaning into the Pillage objectives and not being quite as concerned with trying to slay the enemy and collect their skulls. Not very Khornate of me, I know. This deck will have four ping effects and three weapon upgrades with 2 or greater range which I hope will alleviate some of the weaknesses that I ran into before.

Final Thoughts

Despite Games Workshop listing these cranial enthusiasts as a strike warband, I don’t think it’s entirely fitting. They feel like they’ll be stronger if you play them in a flex style where you don’t focus on trying to table your opponent and instead leverage the pushes from Slaughterous Pilgrimage and Call the Pursuit to get into position to score relevant cards. Being the kind of player who is able to predict a few turns ahead and try to trap your opponent into making hard choices with slashing will get more value out of their humble attack profiles, but they still need to be able to survive long enough to harvest those skulls.

I think this warband is fine. They’re not going to warp the meta around them like some of the problematic warbands of the past – I’m thinking of Embergard’s initial release and the Gorechosen of Dromm, or the initial release in the previous edition of warbands like Ephilim’s Pandaemonium or Gnarlspirit Pack – but my opinion is this also isn’t a meta where there are stark stratifications between warband power levels. The vast majority of options fall into the fine tier. Zargbag’s Gitz is probably the dominant choice in a completely even playing field, but they’re nothing like the problem children of the past. Additionally, nothing can be considered truly unplayable now and, in fact, GW has already buffed a few of the under performing warbands to bring them in line. If Kamandora’s Blades winds up being bottom of the barrel, I expect they’ll get a little boost at some point.

I plan to get a few more games in with Kamandora’s Blades just to test a few other ideas, but they’re probably not going to crack into my top 10 warbands list. They’re better than I feared, worse than I had hoped, and look far better in person than the previews suggested.

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