Clash For Gold – Questor Soulsworn Warcry Warband Review

Stormcast Eternals have been the poster children of Age of Sigmar. Somehow, they have not previously had a dedicated Warcry warband. You’ve been able to take various chambers and underworld warbands as Bladeborn, but it’s good to get a warband specifically designed for the game, rather than an assembly of AoS miniatures put together from different boxes.

Questor-Soulsworn give you a little band of heroic questing knights, and lets you run around smashing things with hammers, sword and axes.

 

Special Warband Construction Rules

Questor Soulsworn break the normal warband construction rules, and have no limit on the number of Questor Soulsworn heroes that may be included in the warband, including the leader. There is a limit of two heroes with other faction runemarks though, as normal.

This is because every model in the warband is a hero (and potentially the leader), so in selecting your warband you’ll have six models to choose from if you don’t bring in ringers from other factions. You have to balance what abilities and weapons you want access to.

 

Abilities & Reactions

The Questor Soulsworn abilities and reactions are almost entirely about improving the action economy of the warband and letting them move or attack more. All of the abilities are really solid, and with a couple of doubles you could conceivably give a model four move actions in a turn to let them sprint across the board. While the movement of every model in the warband is 4″, if you’re throwing around extra move actions then they’re faster than they are on paper.

Reaction

The Soulsworn reaction, Swift Retribution, lets you react if your fighter has been hit with enough damage to take them out of action, but before they are removed, and lets you make a bonus move or attack action with a friendly fighter anywhere on the board.

This is incredibly useful if you start taking casualties before you can activate models, as it lets you either hit back or position other models to double fight on their turn, do objectives, run away with treasure, etc.

Abilities

Double – Thundering Strides – Pick another friendly fighter within 6″, that fighter gets to make a bonus move action.

Double – You won’t even slow me down – If this fighter has taken down an enemy model by an attack action during this activation, they can perform a bonus move or attack action.

Double – With the Force of a Thunderbolt – Models equipped with a Grand Axe, Grand Blade or Grandhammer can use this ability. If the model finishes it’s move within 1″ of two or more enemy fighters, it can made a bonus attack. This is a really good double for multi-charging and smashing enemies two at a time, and the exact sort of thing an elite warband needs.

Triple – Searing Light – The Questor Prime has a cool lantern, and it does 3 damage to every visible enemy within 3″. Good for chipping away at mobs if you’ve been surrounded or are having an objective pile on.

Triple – Face Me Cowards! – The Errant Questor Duellist creates a 3″ bubble where enemy fighters can’t make disengage actions or finish move actions further away from the Duellist. This is great for pinning the enemy in place, preventing them moving to claim objectives or chase treasure holders or control the board and messing up your opponents plan. The Duellist is also great at mincing chaff models, so this can pin them in place while he gets to chopping.

Quad – Translocation – The Soulsworn Knight-Relictor picks a friendly model within 3″, removes them from the battlefield and puts them back anywhere more than 4″ from all enemy fighters. I don’t need to tell you how great this is for breaking models out of being surrounded, rescuing your guys, or getting models with treasure all the way across the map.

Heroes

Every model in the warband is a hero, so the gang’s all here.

Each model in the warband has 4 move, 5 toughness and 20 wounds, meaning it is just the weapons and abilities that they can access that are different, and the points costs vary from 160-170 points, meaning you can comfortably fit six models in the warband for 1000 point games with little prospect for underspend.

Credit: Games Workshop

Questor Prime

At 170 points the Questor Prime is a solid fighter with a reach 2, 4 dice, strength 4 2/4 weapon and a mass damage ability in Searing Light. While not as flashy as some of the other weapon choices, it’s reliable and great for squashing lighter enemy fighters, and the model gives access to an ability no other models have.

Soulsworn Knight-Relictor

The only model in the warband with a ranged weapon, and with a unique ability on a Quad to teleport another model, this is a must take simply for the ability. 3/4 damage on melee and 3/5 damage on it’s shooting attack means it has pretty reliable damage output and isn’t just fishing for crits to get kills.

Errant-Questor with Grandhammer

The big hitter of the Warband, with a 3 dice, strength 6 and 3/4 damage, this is dishing out damage on 3+ on almost everything, and while toughness 6 is rare, getting past it on 4+ is useful. All the two handed weapon models get access to With the Force of a Thunderbolt to help clear up enemies and encourage you to multicharge.

Errant-Questor with Grandblade

Exactly the same as the Questor with Grandhammer except you get 4 dice, strength 5 and 2/4 damage. Against toughness 4 and below, statistically it’s almost the same as the Grandhammer and you have more dice to smooth out that variability curve.

Errant-Questor with Grandspear

The Grandspear has a range of 3, making it a good choice for engaging enemies where they can’t attack you without a move action first, and still hits reasonably hard with 3 dice, strength 5 and 2/5 damage. Your average attack on a toughness 4 or less model will inflict 6 damage, and that’s a pretty good damage output, and having a range 3 melee weapon is a very cheeky piece of kit. You do lose access to With the Force of a Thunderbolt though.

Errant-Questor with Grandaxe

Exactly the same damage output as a grandspear but range 2 and for five less points and able to use With the Force of a Thunderbolt. This model is the exact same cost as the Questor with Grandblade or Grandhammer though, and the Grandblade gives you more dice to fish for crits while the grandhammer gives you strength 6 and 3/4 damage. Those are range 1 while the grandaxe is range 2. This means it’s really up to you which you pick, the damage output for all of them is very similar and it becomes about preference and range of weapons to try to ensure that your opponent can’t do what you’ll do with a Grandspear, sit out of range and poke someone.

Errant-Questor Duellist with Twin Blades

The cheapest model in the warband, this model has range 1, 5 dice, strength 4 and 2/3 damage. Against toughness 3 models you get great average damage output, and you have access to Face Me Cowards! as a unique ability to pin enemy models and stop them going off to do other things. It’s cinematic, and against low toughness warbands (like a lot of warbands with chaff mooks) then the Duellist is great for blending through them. Wouldn’t necessarily go toe to toe with a Chosen of Chaos though.

Questor Soulsworn. Credit: SRM

Example Warband

Out of the box you can build six models, and fortunately that exactly fits in 1000 points.

Example Warband

Questor Prime
Knight Relictor
Duellist
Questor with Grandspear
Questor with Grandhammer
Questor with Grandaxe

 

For 995 points you have access to all the abilities the warband has, some longer reach weapons, the only missile weapon in the warband, some high strength weapons for cracking armour and a duellist for blending chaff models.

Overview and Suggested Allies

With fairly high price models in the warband, you’d be looking for allies in the 165-175 range, and replacing a Questor with something bringing something new to the table. Your weaknesses are numbers (so two allied heroes totalling 175 would be useful for an extra body) and lack of ranged weapons (up to you how much you worry about this, you still have the Knight Relictor and you are fast at getting around the table).

The warband is perfectly viable as it is. Six models is a decent number for an elite warband, and toughness 5 and 20 wounds across the board makes every model pretty tough.

You could put in a Sequitor Prime for higher toughness and wounds and similar damage output, but they would be a lot slower and have less synergy than the Questors. You could potentially take two cheap heroes from cities of sigmar, but they’d be very squishy in comparison.

My recommendation would be simply to stick to the Questors as they are for matched play, and in narrative you can find a good reason to take whoever you like as an ally or dip into the Order underworlds warbands. There’s no obvious ally to take to me, because the Questors work as a neat little self-contained faction with strengths they are very good at.

Conclusion

An easy to play team that’s good for new players, with abilities that compensate for low model count by allowing your models to do more, making them deceptively faster than the move 4 on the fighter cards implies. Individually tough and fighty, with some very interesting abilities on the specialist models that can really pay off in games.

I like them, and if you were comparing them to Kill Team, they fit into the same sort of niche as the Intercession Squad.

As with all elite teams you have to play to the objectives, but the Questors are suited to it and with six models have a better model count than a lot of the elite teams out there. I think this warband will end up a firm favourite for a lot of players. As always, if you have any questions or suggestions drop us a line at: Contact@Goonhammer.com.