Another preorder day has come for Warhammer Underworlds. There’s a bevy of releases available to preorder today and Goonhammer is going to cover all of them. Alongside the Spitewood Expansion Set, there were also four boxes of warbands from the previous edition that were re-released with updated rules. This article will take a look at the four Chaos warbands contained in the Reavers of Ruin box. I’d like to extend thanks to Games Workshop for providing these materials early for Goonhammer to review.
Check out the rest of the Goonhammer coverage of the Spitewood Expansion Set and accompanying releases once you finish reaving the ruins (which doesn’t sound productive to me, but who am I to judge?)!
You can find all our content for this big preorder day below:
- Spitewood & Grand Alliance Box Overview
- Spitewood Unboxing
- Decks of Spitewood: Hunting Grounds and Deadly Synergy
- Warbands of Spitewood: Kurnoth’s Heralds and The Blood of the Bull
- Chaos Warbands: Reavers of Ruin
- Death Warbands: Morbid Minions
- Destruction Warbands: Gitz and Goliaths
- Order Warbands: Seekers in Shadow
Skittershank’s Clawpack
Clan Eshin returns! Skittershank’s Clawpack is a band of five ninja rats ready to put Splinter in his place. Surprising probably no one, they are a Strike warband and they keep their “assassinate the enemy leader” focus that they held in the previous edition of the game.
The impact of a warband losing their leader can vary depending on which warband it is. Some, like the Exiled Dead or Sepulchral Guard, can be severely hampered if their leader is taken out. Other warbands, particularly the elite aggro variety, have their leader just fulfilling a slightly above average role that the rest of the warband mimics. It’s also just flat out dangerous to go after some leaders – Mollog can deliver quite a beating while taking hits and inspires based on taking damage, Hrothgorn is likewise fairly beefy and inspires when he makes a melee kill, and other big brawler warbands like Kainan, Headsmen, and Blackpowder are usually fine with their prey coming to them.
Are the tools Skittershank’s Clawpack brings to the table enough to outweigh this uncertainty and danger?
Warscroll for Skittershank’s Clawpack
The warscroll very quickly shows us what this warband wants to do. Starting with the inspire condition, the entire warband will inspire at once if an enemy leader is either slain or has at least 3 damage tokens on them. Kill (or significantly damage) their leader, inspire your fighters. Simple enough, although the difficulty will vary considerably based on who you are up against.
Marked for Death is the main way that this warband’s warscroll is going to help achieve their inspire condition. Getting to re-roll an attack dice against the enemy leader for every attack all the time is great. It’s basically the best part of the entire Raging Slayers deck, albeit applied to only a single enemy model. If you can position it so that you charge onto a waystone hex and attack a staggered enemy leader, you can get three re-rolls. That’s enough to re-roll every attack dice on any of these fighters. Leaders are also generally the highest bounty or tied for highest bounty in warbands, so this in a very round about way is also a boost to your scoring.
If you enjoyed Slashing from Kamandora’s Blades, you’ll be a big fan of Spiketraps and Snares that the Clawpack bring. The difference between these two abilities is enough to make them feel unique – I think Spiketraps and Snares does a good job of making an afflicted fighter feel trapped. While the extra damage only triggers off of a move, the barb token lasts for the entire round – not just the next turn. Looking ahead briefly, three of your five fighters sport 2 damage. If they land a hit on the enemy leader, the leader then can’t move without taking a point of damage and then inspiring the rest of your fighters. Neat. Unfortunately, this ability only triggers off of melee attacks so two of your rats can’t benefit from it because they only have ranged weapons. The plus side is it works with upgrades, so hand those rats some weapons!
Smoke Bombs is the first one-use ability on the warscroll. This area of effect stagger application can only be used after an attack which won’t help with that particular attack but does set you up for future turns. Unlike Spiketraps and Snares, this can be used with both of your ranged fighters. Note that it applies the staggers to enemies adjacent to your attacker regardless of who they are attacking. If you stagger the enemy leader, that’s two rerolls on every attack against them. Even Krowch’t should be able to hit something with that much help.
The Jaws Snap is a very rare enemy push. Unsurprisingly, it’s limited to the enemy leader but also only when that leader is in enemy territory. Use this to pull the enemy leader a little closer to enable charges, to push them away from their allies to prevent flanked/surrounded rolls, and discourage the opponent from using their leader to hold feature tokens or waystone hexes. The timing makes using it to set up a surprise charge difficult (it has to be in your power step) but it can still come in handy.
The final warscroll ability is Skittering Blur. This works for Slynk, Snyp, and Kreep by flat out removing any of them as being valid attack or ploy targets for the next turn. The Skaven aren’t particularly durable, so being able to no-sell an entire turn of the opponent’s offense is great if you can time it well. Imagine the fun from using Skittering Blur one turn, then playing Fireproof from Wrack and Ruin the following turn. Yes-yes. Since Skulck and Krowch’t don’t benefit from this ability, it even further cements their use as bait fighters to soak up enemy attacks early on or go on one-way trips into the enemy leader.
Fighters of Skittershank’s Clawpack
Being Skaven, this entire warband is fairly quick. Slynk, like all the others, starts at 4 move but jumps to 5 once inspired. That’s incredibly fast. Defensively, he’s no Wurmspat fighter but having 4 health and 2 dodge means he’ll take a few solid attacks from the enemy before going down. The usual note that 2 dodge makes being on guard extra potent, so tools to bring guard tokens in this deck are high on my priority list.
Slynk’s attack profile is quite swingy. He’s one of the few fighters that can land a 3 damage hit from turn 1, but being on 3 swords is not particularly reliable. Being able to leverage the re-roll when attacking the enemy leader will help, as will any previously applied stagger tokens, but be sure to do what you can to stack the odds in your favor before making the roll. Since it is a 3 damage hit, if Slynk can land a blow on the enemy leader that’s enough right there to inspire everyone.
This whole warband has amazing sculpts, but Snyp is my favorite. Defensively, Snyp mirrors Slynk in every way. He has the same move, health, save, and bounty as the leader. However, he has fly! Extra useful when your opponent is trying to body block their leader to safety.
Snyp’s weapon profiles are also fairly similar. Unfortunately he doesn’t have grievous so he can’t guarantee an inspire for the whole warband on his own. Inspired, he picks up cleave instead of another attack dice. This will help accuracy against shield reliant enemy fighters, but otherwise he’s stuck on a mediocre 3 sword attack.
Kreep (and the tiny unnamed rat on his base) are the last of the assassin models in the warband. He likewise has 4 move (5 once inspired), 4 health, and 2 dodge. Kreep’s the first model that drops down to a single bounty, however, which makes him a little more expendable than the others.
This is also the first ranged-only fighter in this warband. This means he can’t take advantage of Spiketraps and Snares unless you throw on a melee attack upgrade. However, he does offer a somewhat reliable 2 hammer (with a re-roll against the leader) attack at range 3, which both applies a stagger to set up future attacks and also does a point of damage so any of your 2 damage fighters can tip you over into that inspire state. Once inspired, being a ranged attacker on 3 hammers allows for pretty reliable ranged hits to finish off vulnerable fighters, knock enemies off of feature tokens that they want to hold, and apply staggers to help the rest of your assassins do their dirty work.
The first of the lowly peons in Skittershank’s Clawpack, Skulck is like a discount bin Kreep with lower health and save, but still maintains the impressive Skaven speed. If he survives long enough to inspire, Skulck does pick up a second save dice to be comparable to the rest of his team, but a 2 health fighter on one dodge typically doesn’t last very long.
Skulck’s sling is similar to Kreep’s while uninspired, except there’s no built in stagger. Once inspired, his accuracy doesn’t notably improve but he does pick up stagger for what it’s worth. Skulck can’t benefit from Spiketraps and Snares, nor Skittering Blur.
The final wanna-be assassin is Krowch’t. Like his buddy/rival Skulck, this rat is pretty fragile on 2 health and 1 dodge and also picks up a second dodge upon inspiration.
Unlike Skulck, Krowch’t has to get up close and personal to deliver attacks which puts him directly in the danger zone. While a 2 sword attack is not typically threatening, the fact that he can deliver 2 damage (and a barb token) is enough to tempt me into suicide runs into the enemy leader on some occasions. Failing that, setting up a run with Kreep the turn before will deal one damage and soften up the enemy leader with a stagger token, further increasing the odds that the somewhat expendable Krowch’t can land his 2 damage attack.
Musings on Skittershank’s Clawpack
Your fighters get a nice boost when inspired, so seeking that inspiration early will probably be a common choice. It’s worth remembering that 3 is the magic number here and it doesn’t matter how it gets applied to the enemy leader. Decks that offer ping damage are therefore of extra utility because they can soften up the enemy so that any of your 2 damage fighters can finish the job while still being generically useful tools that drawing them later in the game is still going to feel fine.
With all the staggers and leader re-rolls, you have slightly more ability to manipulate your dice than the average warband. This makes some of the objectives that key off of rolling certain faces on the dice marginally easier to score – things like Critical Effort or Branching Fates from Blazing Assault, or Helping Hand from Deadly Synergy. Of course, you could just lean all in on landing those attacks into the enemy leader and take Raging Slayers to see how many dice you can re-roll in one turn. I’m not sure I’d want to rely on that, but it would at least create some dang accurate attacks.
The Gnarlspirit Pack
These four devoted Darkoath fighters return to the fray. I was honestly not expecting them to be a Flex warband, mostly because of how insanely aggressive they were in the previous edition. After looking at their cards, it still feels like their main strategy is “hit the enemy” so maybe they’re a Flex warband in the sense that Gorl is flexing his muscles to show off how strong he is.
Warscroll for The Gnarlspirit Pack
The Gnarlspirit Pack kept their mechanic of having an “alternate inspire” form in addition to the normal one where you flip a fighter card over. As such, they basically have three states.
Uninspired: This is just your baseline fighter on their uninspired side. This is how all the fighters start the game. Once you get a few activations, your fighters are unlikely to be in this state for the remainder of the game.
Unleashed: Each fighter gains a unique bonus to their uninspired stats when they have a spirit token. They gain a spirit token after completing a core ability. These are anything with the Underworlds skull icon; typically one of Move, Attack, Charge, or Guard but it could also be something granted by a power card. This means the first core ability each of your fighters does in the game will be with their basic uninspired side, but after that they’re going to be either Unleashed or Inspired.
Inspired: Nothing surprising here. When you meet the inspire criteria, you flip the fighter card over. The trigger to inspire is removing a spirit token from the fighter and the window to do that is immediately after picking the fighter to do a core ability. The timing here means you’ll be inspired before performing whatever core ability you’re doing, so you get to benefit from the inspired stats of the fighter. You can still gain a spirit token as normal, but this warband does have an uninspire trigger so as soon as a fighter gains a spirit token, they flip back to their uninspired side (but still benefit from the spirit token buff).
So for the first activation of any fighter, they will be vanilla uninspired. At that activation’s end, they will gain a spirit token and become unleashed. On their next activation, you can either remove the token to inspire them or leave the token there and take the activation with the spirit token buff. It’s also worth noting that both applying and removing spirit tokens is optional. Being able to shift your fighters between inspired and unleashed to meet the demands of the battlefield will be useful (hey, maybe that’s why they’re a flex warband!) but you can also leave them in whatever preferred state you want once they reach it.
I’ll go into the Unleashed buffs for each fighter in the fighter card section.
In addition to this back-and-forth transformation mechanic, the warscroll also has three single use abilities. The first is In Control which is a flexible push that can push up to three fighters at once. You’ll need one fighter to be inspired before you can use it and it only pushes your uninspired fighters, so it does require some set up before using it but pushes are always welcome.
Self-Command is a two-part ability. The first benefit is that you remove all of a fighter’s spirit tokens and thus inspire them. It’s a way to get an inspire on a fighter outside of your turn or one that can’t activate due to charging. The second benefit is picking up a guard token on that same fighter. Both Lupan and Sarrakkar sit on 2 dodge when inspired, so this guard token can do solid work on them. You can use this on a fighter that has no spirit tokens, but since the inspire criteria is removing spirit tokens, that won’t inspire your fighter.
Surfaced Instincts is a one-time defensive boost to one of your fighters. There’s some synergy in that it stops both cleave and ensnare from working and you have a warscroll ability to grant a fighter a guard token, so you can really make someone obnoxious for one turn. The downside is if your opponent doesn’t have cleave/ensnare, or their fighter that does has another runemark like grievous or brutal this won’t do much, but it’s better than nothing.
Fighters of The Gnarlspirit Pack
Sarrakkar has a respectable defensive profile with 4 health, 2 dodge, and 4 move. He’s faster than most humans in this game and that’s before we get into his Unleashed benefit. Once Sarrakkar picks up a spirit token, he’s blitzing around the board at 6 move which is ludicrous. Alternatively, if you inspire the Gnarlspirit Pack’s leader, his stats won’t change but he does pick up the fly rune. This means that after his initial activation, Sarrakkar is either zipping around at 6 move or flying at 4, both of which are fairly mobile.
Offensively, he’s sporting Leader Stick 2.0 – a solid upgrade over what many leaders were sporting in previous releases. Range 2, 2 hammers, 2 damage is a solid profile and to top it off he also has a ranged attack as well. Granted, in the uninspired state it’s an anemic 2 swords so you’re not going to hit anything with it. When inspired, that ranged attack gets a boost in another attack dice and cleave, making it a touch more reliable in hitting targets exactly 3 hexes away. Anything closer and he’ll want to deliver the bonk.
There isn’t a ton of difference between unleashed and inspired Sarrakkar. They’re both increasing his mobility, so lean into the one that’s going to get you where you’re going easier. Unleashed is great for straight up reaching further spaces, but against large swarms being able to fly over intervening models can prove useful – particularly when trying to snipe Deintalos out of the Exile Dead, for instance. His inspired form does grant a minor buff to his ranged attack, but the nice thing is you can stay unleashed until you need to inspire to use it. If a situation comes up where you need to land a range 3 hit, you can always inspire as you’re activating Sarrakkar and go for it.
Gorl is the hammer and the anvil for this group. He’s the slowest fighter at 3 move and no way to increase it. Like all the other fighters, he’s sporting 4 health. Having 1 shield isn’t bad, but when unleashed he picks up an extra save dice which gives him the best save value of the warband.
He comes equipped standard with a fairly decent bonking stick – 2 hammers and 2 damage is perfectly adequate at breaking skulls, but he really shines once inspired. Picking up both an extra damage and brutal can help him deliver the hurt to enemies, but don’t overestimate the accuracy of 2 hammers. Getting some kind of assistance can make the most of those solid 3 damage swings.
The choice here is a pretty straightforward defense vs offense. Unleashed Gorl rocks 2 shields, but inspired Gorl hits for 3 and can ignore flanked/surrounded (and thus cover). The activation sequence lines up pretty well for a plan where you activate Gorl early to move him up onto a token the opponent may want, thus unleashing him and having him guard it on 2 shields. If someone gets within range, you can activate him again and either stay in turtle mode or switch to the inspired profile to deliver The Bonk.
Kheira is a strange one here, but we’ll get to that in a second. Her defensive profile is a mix of what we’ve seen so far – 4 move like Sarrakkar, 1 block like Gorl, and 4 health like everyone else. None of these change in any of her states. She’s a good candidate for any cards that give extra save dice, especially because she’s not able to shift into a defensive stance like Gorl.
Her offensive profile to start with is fine. As mentioned, 3 swords is not great but it is serviceable – especially if you can set up flanks/surrounds. That said, she’s not going to be on 3 swords for more than her first activation of the game. Once unleashed, Kheira picks up an additional attack dice but only on her printed weapon (no cheating with upgrades). Alternatively, when she inspires, Kheira picks up… an additional attack dice and critical grievous.
There’s not a whole lot of push/pull here between which form you want Kheira to be in. Inspire her and have another fighter that can threaten 3 damage. She’s also a solid early choice if you want to get a full 3 fighter push out of In Control, since you’ll pretty much always want her inspired.
Our final fighter, and the only one worth a single glory, is Lupan. A final 4 health, 4 move fighter but this time he only has a measly 1 dodge for his save. That’s not great, but at least he’s unlikely to get one-shot by most enemies with his 4 health. When inspired, Lupan jumps up to 2 dodge.
Lupan has the same baseline melee attack as Kheira and he can also stay back and plink away with a ranged attack. His ranged attack starts at range 3, 2 hammers, 1 damage but like Kheira that won’t be applicable for long. When unleashed, Lupan also counts all rolls of surrounded as a success. This works on both his melee and ranged attacks, as well as any weapon upgrades you equip him with. Alternatively, you can inspire Lupan and his ranged attack picks up an additional dice and stagger. The difference in accuracy here isn’t all that substantial, honestly.
The biggest factor for me in whether I want to inspire or unleash Lupan isn’t for the attack, it’s to get him to a respectable save profile by picking up the extra save dice on the inspired side.
Musings on The Gnarlspirit Pack
The Gnarlspirit Pack isn’t the meta menace of the past, but I think they have a solid presence as a four fighter warband. Games Workshop has them listed as flex which I guess I could see, but I still think they’re going to shine when being used as an aggressive sledge hammer.
The Thricefold Discord
This three fighter Mastery warband has their second showing in this edition – like some others in this release, they initially had a set of free downloadable rules when the Embergard box released but the astute reader will notice this version is entirely different from what we’ve seen before. Throw out anything you’ve learned about the warband and prepare to start over. The Thricefold are dead! Long live the Thricefold!
Warscroll for The Thricefold Discord
The only mechanic that carried over from their previous incarnation is the inspire mechanic, and I’m pretty glad this made the transition. It’s flavorful and does a great job of conveying how much these three daemons really hate each other. It also helps to take the sting out of bad rolls early in the game. “Oh no, I failed this attack but at least I get to inspire a fighter,” is a nice consolation prize.
The big change here is Temptations of Slaanesh and the introduction of temptation dice. I don’t play Age of Sigmar, but my understanding is this is a similar mechanic that the Slaanesh army has there so it isn’t too surprising to see it ported into Underworlds. Basically, you start each battle round with 6 temptation dice and can use these as fuel either for your one-use abilities or to try and tempt your opponent on their attack rolls. The latter can be done after the opponent rolls their attack dice and gets at least one unsuccessful result. If your opponent accepts your offer, they replace the failed result with either a sword or hammer and you get to push one of your other fighters one hex. If they refuse your offer, the attacker takes a damage after they finish resolving their attack with no caveat about being vulnerable, so you can kill enemies with this.
There’s a lot going on here. First off, getting six dice every round feels weirdly high. You can spend one on every single attack your opponent makes and still have two left over. I guess it’s insurance for the time your opponent plays Improvised Attack and/or gets lucky with volley attacks with Zarbag’s Gitz.
The timing of offering your temptation dice is interesting. It’s after the opponent rolls their attack dice, but before you roll any save dice. I see two main situations coming up where you’ll want to make this offer. The first is if your opponent is rolling a bunch of dice and the majority of them are successful. If you think that you’re going to be getting hit no matter what, you might as well offer a dice and get either a push or a damage from it. Alternatively, if your opponent rolls all misses but you feel that your targeted fighter has a good chance of saving it (or you’re comfortable just taking the hit), you can offer a single success to your opponent.
If you’re ever down to a single fighter, the temptation dice kind of stop working. Your opponent can always just accept them but then you don’t have an eligible fighter to push so that’s sad.
I already feel like I’m too dumb to properly work out when to use this or when to accept the dice when my opponent offers them to me.
Moving on, we come to Irresistable Feast – the first alternate use of your temptation dice. For the cost of one of your many temptation dice, you can deal a damage to an enemy fighter that isn’t vulnerable. No range restriction, no positioning restriction. This is great.
Sublime Senses is next and also costs a temptation dice to use. This time, you’re giving one of your fighters a guard token. Again, very straightforward but powerful, especially since all of your fighters inspire to two save dice. Use it to plant yourself on an aqua ghyranis token, a waystone hex, or a feature token or just help to reduce the effect that offered temptation dice have for your opponent by increasing your save chances.
Pavane of Slaanesh is the final single use ability here. Again, you spend a temptation dice to use it and in return one of your fighters gets to ignore cleave and ensnare in the next turn. It’s another way to help reduce the impact of granting temptation dice to the opponent, but is more limited in its usefulness.
Also, if you are getting deja-vu from these last two abilities, I agree. They’re pretty similar to the final two that the Gnarlspirit Pack get, aren’t they?
Fighters of The Thricefold Discord
Since these fighters had been released in digital format before, I’ll also be making a note of how their stats have changed from their initial release a year ago to this iteration of them.
Vexmor’s still a bit lazy with only 3 move, but he’s got a hefty 5 health and 1 shield for his save. As the leader in a three-fighter warband, he also gives up the most bounty of the three fighters. Once inspired, he picks up an additional save dice and sits comfortably at 2 shields.
Offensively, Vexmor is a 50/50 hitter when uninspired. The good news is you’re going to get to inspire one of your other fighters when you attack with him half the time! Inspired, he picks up an additional dice to get a fairly nice but not obscene range 2, 2 hammer, 2 damage attack.
The biggest change for Vexmor is the loss of the indolent rule, so he’s no longer picking up extra attack dice and grievous for being lazy. That’s a shame, and makes his attacks substantially less threatening. Instead, Vexmor trades off that offense for more durability once inspired thanks to that additional save dice.
The first surprise here is Vashtiss’s health. She’s at 5 now! She still starts on a piddling 1 dodge but retains fly and 4 move, making her fairly good at getting into position for her ranged attacks. Inspiring still brings her save up to 2 dodge.
Offensively, Vashtiss might be taking over as the star for this warband. She has nearly identical attacks when uninspired, just one at range 2 and one at range 3. Once inspired however, her melee attack bumps up in damage (to be the same as Vexmor’s profile) while her ranged attack becomes an impressive range 4 attack.
The only stat change Vashtiss received in this printing was an additional point of health, but she also lost the twice-nerfed evade mechanic. By its last iteration, it was so hamstrung that it rarely came into effect so I imagine this extra health point is just as good if not better.
More health again?! Lascivyr also has 5 health now, but unlike their previous incarnation they only have 4 move. The speeding bullet has slowed down a touch. Otherwise, their printed defensive profiles are the same.
Just looking at the cards, Lascivyr also doesn’t change in their attack profile while uninspired – it’s still a range 1, 3 swords, 2 damage attack. Inspiring also still changes it to 3 hammers, but now they also get critical grievous.
Lascivyr probably got hit the hardest in this transition. Between losing a point of move and the guaranteed ping off of Wicked Slice, they are both slower, less flexible, and less deadly. Similar to Vashtiss, the evade mechanic is also gone but replaced with the extra pip of health which probably evens out.
Musings on The Thricefold Discord
This is a radical departure from the previous version of Thricefold Discord. Initially, I wasn’t a big fan. I liked the weird playstyle they had where you were trying to maximize Vexmor’s attacks without ever moving or charging while Lascivyr ran around like a toddler with scissors. That style did pigeon-hole them into a very specific deck build, though, and meant they couldn’t utilize a lot of cards that other warbands could make good use of. Whether or not this was a good thing, I’m still not quite decided. I’ll have to give them a few test runs before I feel confident in saying whether I like the change, but they’re going to have an uphill battle to sway me.
That said, this shift means the Discord are no longer allergic to charge tokens. They can make use of some more strike oriented tools like Reckless Fury or Raging Slayers without turning off their damage and survivability.
The Wurmspat
Three Nurgle aligned models make up this Mastery warband. They have some very distinctive sculpts and have been highly sought after in the secondhand market by hobbyists who just want to paint them. Before their announcement, it wasn’t unheard of to see them selling for substantially more than the price of this entire box. Their returning appearing in Underworlds will have many people quite excited and others grimacing as they realize just how gross these models are. Yes, the back side of the Sepsimus model is exactly what you think it is.
Warscroll for The Wurmspat
These champions of Nurgle have quite the spew slew of abilities and some of their old flavor (ew) really shines through in this iteration.
There’s a flexible, dual method of inspiring your fighters. The entire group will inspire once three enemy fighters are damaged or slain, which is not terribly difficult to achieve. There’s also a bonus inspiration condition where whenever one of your fighters kills an enemy with a bile token (we’ll get to those in a second), that slaying fighter immediately inspires. The way this plays out is that you’ll often have a fighter, maybe two, who are inspired before reaching the group inspire threshold which is pretty neat.
Disgustingly Resilient is a potent damage reducing ability that the warband possesses. In effect, it means that whenever you roll a shield result on a saving throw, you’re going to get at least some kind of benefit from it – either making the attack fail completely if you have more successes, or reducing the damage by one if the opponent has more successes. Any effects that grant save dice re-rolls or additional dice on your saves are going to pull double duty in keeping these three around even longer.
Grandfather’s Gifts brings us back to those bile tokens that were mentioned in their inspiration box. Each fighter has one of their weapon profiles sporting the Bile Blade runemark which can be used to trigger this ability. Unlike a barb token from Skittershank or the bleed token from Kamandora, this won’t do any damage to the enemy fighter but instead reduce their movement by 2 (reminder that no characteristic can be reduced below 1). That’s quite a bit, considering even the most hyper-mobile warbands in the game are at 5 move. This reduction brings even the fastest models down to the Wurmspat’s level. Anything slower than that is going to be plodding along at a miserable rate.
Pushes are great, and Steady Advance is a nice double push without many requirements attached to it. Simply pick two fighters in your power step and push them each 1 hex. Note that this ability, like the remaining ones on the warscroll, specifies it has to be done during your power step so you can’t do it during your opponent’s power step right before your own turn. Still, being able to push any two of your fighters is some nice maneuverability for a warband that only moves 3.
Nauseous Revulsion revisits the idea of this warband being durable by reducing all of your enemy’s attacks by one dice in the next turn. The flexibility here is great because you don’t have to pick one enemy fighter to debuff, nor do you pick one of your fighters to be more survivable. This applies to all the baddies during the entire next turn, so any bonus attacks from power cards or warscroll abilities are going to be less accurate as well as the main attack during an activation.
Blades of Putrefaction is a gross name and made me look up the word “ague” to figure out what the flavor text was saying. It’s basically an on-demand Twist the Knife, which is a solid card. It also means every one of your fighters can threaten 3 damage from the first turn which puts a number of enemy fighters in one-hit-kill range. Just keep in mind this means you won’t be able to leverage any of the other plentiful runemarks on the fighter cards including Bile Blade.
Fighters of The Wurmspat
Fecula and her, uh, cat(?) start us off on solid footing. A move of 3 is about average for fighters in the game. Her save starts on 1 shield and increases to 2 when inspired, which is a very solid defensive profile even without taking into account Disgustingly Resilient which will make her 5 health last even longer. This profile is actually the same for both of the other fighters as well. It’s going to be a slog to take these fighters out. Since she’s the leader, Fecula does have the highest bounty at 3 but it’s going to require dedicated work from the opponent to take her out.
Offensively, Fecula has a nice and flexible set of attacks to choose from. Her melee attack is the one sporting the Bile Blade runemark and is a perfectly respectable 2 hammer accuracy that bumps up to a nice 3 hammers once inspired. Her ranged attack is a little less reliable at 3 swords (4 swords once inspired), but it does have stagger built in to help set up follow up attacks if you can land it. It’s also the longest range attack that this warband possesses and can be great for finishing off someone that Ghulgoch or Sepsimus has charged into once Fecula benefits from the target being flanked.
Ghulgoch, as mentioned above, has the same defensive profile as Fecula which puts him solidly in the lineup of some of the most defensive fighters in the game despite clearly not understanding how armor should be worn.
Being the only fighter with a single weapon profile, Ghulgoch at least brings a good one to the table. At 3 hammers, it’s always an accurate attack and once inspired he also picks up the option for cleave if you want to pick that instead of Bile Blade. This dude is just a good, solid fighter whose value will increase against other shield heavy warbands.
Our final beloved of Nurgle is Sepsimus. He has a great defensive profile. Moving on.
Once again we get two different weapon profiles to pick from. Sepsimus has a ranged 2 attack (I assume this is his spear) which is fairly accurate at 2 hammers, 1 damage and notably picks up a second damage once inspired. His other attack profile is a heavy hitter (… is this the bundle of skulls in his other hand?) on the less accurate swords results but it does start at 2 damage and bumps up to a mighty 3 plus brutal. He’s your hard hitter in the group, and with Blades of Putrefaction can hit for 4 damage.
Musings on The Wurmspat
I have played a lot of my games with Morgok’s Krushas lately, and the comparison between these two warbands feels pretty straightforward to make. Many of the things that I appreciated having access to while playing the orruks are here – fighters that inspire to 2 shields, a fighter with base 3 damage that can be increased with grievous, push effects on the warscroll, and a bucket load of health on each fighter to chew through. Tack on some of the extra warscroll abilities that the Wurmspat have as well as the flexibility of having a ranged fighter and I am surprisingly tempted to join team Nurgle.
Many of the strike decks feel like good pairings with these three fighters. Aside from boosting accuracy/damage and giving you attack based objectives, a lot of them contain tools that can help even further lean into the durability aspect of the Wurmspat. Blazing Assault offers a guard token ploy and healing potion, as well as a second Blades of Putrefaction effect and a ton of movement. Raging Slayers has some rough objectives, but Honed Reflexes can allow you to re-roll your saves which pulls double duty with this warband and also offers a double heal in What Pain?.
For Nemesis pairings, I’m quite fond of CataWrack. Something like this offers 16 glory; a ton of pings for early inspires and being able to assist your damage output; and more durability increases with Fireproof, Great Fortitude, Desperate Defense, and Unstoppable. It feels like the Wurmspat have plenty of potential decks to pair with in Nemesis and I look forward to community innovation.
Final Thoughts
Chaos has a pretty nice showing here. Nothing feels outrageously strong nor unplayably weak.
I’m still a little lukewarm on the Thricefold changes but that’s because I was particularly fond of how atypical their previous playstyle was. It feels like they’re brought more in line with every other three fighter warband now, including in how some of their warscroll abilities are repeats of what we see in other warbands. They’re a warband I haven’t had a chance to play with the new changes yet, so I’m not sure how impactful the temptation dice are. Maybe they’re huge and I’m wrong!
Skittershank’s Clawpack have such dynamic and cool models so I’m glad to see them reach this edition. They at least retain a very unique playstyle in focusing hard on taking out the enemy leader. Will that be enough, though? Once the enemy leader is dead, they’re a lot less focused and will have to switch up their play style mid-game to finish it up.
Gnarlspirit Pack were some of the boogeymen of the previous edition but they’ve been reigned in quite a bit here. I like the design of having to constantly shift between Unleashed and Inspired with them, but I’m not sure that the rewards for doing so are strong enough to make it actually happen. I predict most games will just have the fighters settle into their desired states and stay that way for the rest of the game.
I’m very much not a Nurgle player, despite starting 40k with Death Guard ages ago. The models kind of gross me out and that holds true with the Wurmspat. However, they’re probably the most tempting of the Chaos warbands for me so I’m going to have to get over it to take them out for a spin.
Four warbands down, but there are plenty left to go! If you’re still eager for more, dive into the rest of the Goonhammer coverage of the Spitewood releases!
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