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 Death warbands contained in the Morbid Minions 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 get your fill of these morbid minions!

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

Heck yeah. It’s time to talk about Death.

Thorns of the Briar Queen

The first of two returning warbands for Death, the Thorns of the Briar Queen are a seven model Take and Hold warband. They’ve already been around for almost a year in their previous iteration in what I feel was a pretty reasonable state, so how does this new release change them?

Warscroll for Thorns of the Briar Queen

Their inspire should look familiar at least. If any of your fighters start your turn adjacent to an enemy, they inspire. This encourages you to get up and personal with the enemy which isn’t what a Take and Hold warband typically wants to do. It does mean that any time an enemy charges one of your fighters and ends up adjacent, if they don’t kill off your ghost it will inspire at the start of your turn. Considering how little health this entire warband has, that’s not a guarantee but since this warband starts on 2 dodge it is at least possible. The timing also means you aren’t likely going to charge with an uninspired fighter into an enemy – they’ll have to survive the clapback before inspiring but then they’re also charged out so you can’t take advantage of their new (and in some cases significantly improved) stats.

Wave of Terror is also back in the same form. Horde warbands securing flanked bonuses are already great for helping below average attacks actually land. Being able to use a single model to also grant surrounded to your other attackers helps even more. If there were no other charge token related abilities on the warscroll, this would be pretty difficult to take advantage of. Fortunately, every other ability on here can grant charge token(s) if you wish.

Soul Warden is a valuable push that lets you move 2 of your minions up to 2 hexes. It’s still a core ability, so if you use it you’re forfeiting anything else in that turn. Unfortunately for Thorns players, it’s back to being tied to Varclav in order to use it. If your Varclav is slain then you’re locked out of being able to use this push. Having counter play for abilities is nice, but I have to say I’ll miss being able to push regardless of whether Varclav was around or not. I think it’s worth pointing out that the wording here hasn’t changed on granting charge tokens – you either give both fighters a charge token or neither fighter a charge token. You can’t choose to only have one fighter get one.

Mugged doesn’t technically do anything itself, but it does set us up for discussing the next abilities. Think of it like a plot card for the warband. When you get the opportunity to mug an enemy fighter, you can teleport any one of your non-leader models to be adjacent to the enemy fighter and optionally grant your ghost a charge token. There are four of these mugged abilities, so that means four separate occasions where you can teleport a fighter. That’s substantial maneuverability and conveniently sets you up for an inspire and places a Wave of Terror powered model adjacent to an enemy for your activation. You can always forego taking the charge token in order to attack with your recently inspired fighter, too.

The first one-use ability is Paired Thugs. The first thing that comes to mind here is using it as part of a charge in order to set up your charging fighter with a full surrounded target thanks to Wave of Terror. If the opponent isn’t careful, you can also use it to slightly extend your reach and throw a fighter onto a feature token or Waystone hex that the opposing model is adjacent to.

No Room at the Top is a flavorful one. Whenever the enemy leader does almost anything, they can have a ghost pop up beside them. That’s pretty scary for any of the squishier leaders considering all your fighters do 2 damage once inspired. You can even combo it with Paired Thugs – the enemy leader uses a core ability, so you pop a ghost up next to them (and don’t give them a charge token). On your turn, you charge one hex to the side with your now inspired ghost into the leader or another target in the back line and use Paired Thugs to yoink another ghost back there. In the space of one turn, you can have two fighters harassing the enemy leader or something else near them.

Reprisals is kind of a consolation prize of mugging options. You can only use it after an enemy fighter’s successful attack, and honestly if any of your ghosts are hit with a successful attack it’s probably going to be the end of them. If the opponent doesn’t roll well enough to overrun from the attack, it can put you in position to reclaim any recently vacated feature token though. An attack is considered successful after the rolls are compared but before any damage (and thus drive back) is applied. I don’t think this will be relevant information very often, but now you know.

The final mugged ability is Leave Well Alone. A pure aggro warband isn’t likely to trigger this ability, so if you’re up against a BARF “always be charging” opponent you might have to rely on the other three options. Against most other warbands, including the ever present Pillage & Plunder delving strategy, you’ll be able to fire this off as soon as the enemy model moves onto the treasure token before they even get a chance to delve it. You can also do the one-two punch combo with Paired Thugs as described in the No Room at the Top section.

Fighters of Thorns of the Briar Queen

This warband is fairly simple to grasp when it comes to stats. Every fighter, your leader included, has fly and starts on 3 move before inspiring to 4. They all have 2 dodge and are worth 1 bounty. The Queen here is tied as being one of the most durable models, but at 3 health that is setting the bar so low that only a ghost could limbo under it. Durability is not this warband’s strength by far.

Offensively, the Briar Queen is… fine. A 3 swords attack that deals 2 damage is adequate but not impressive. It does help that the warband offers plenty of tools to grant surrounded on your attacks, so while a 3 sword attack is not amazing, it does get a lot better when you go from 2 potential successes on each dice to 4. Once inspired, this jumps to 5 faces on every dice being a success and she also picks up critical grievous. It’s not very reliable on 3 dice but it at least gives the warband a way to threaten 3 damage attacks. She’s also the only model in the warband to have an attack at greater than 1 range. It’s not a great attack, but it exists!

Interestingly, the Briar Queen herself doesn’t have any particular importance to how the warband functions. She’s not a valid target for Soul Warden and she is the only model that can’t benefit from teleporting via Mugged. None of the warband’s abilities turn off when she dies. She’s not even worth more bounty than any other fighter. This means you can be a little more aggressive with her and not care that much if she dies.

Varclav mirrors the Queen’s defensive stats exactly.

Offensively, he starts with a comparable weapon as to what the Queen has but without the flexibility of reaching range 2. Varclav and the Briar Queen are going to be your two more accurate fighters.

Varclav isn’t an eligible target for Soul Warden’s push, but he does have to be on the board in order to use it. He can teleport via Mugged, but evaluate the landing zone carefully before throwing him out there. Soul Warden is valuable and losing access to it is going to hurt your warband’s maneuverability.

The first of the minions, The Ever-hanged also drops us down to the 2 health fighters. That’s a worryingly low amount of health and the rest of the warband is going to share it.

The Ever-hanged is also the last of the 2 damage (uninspired) fighters and starts our descent into a bunch of cringe worthy 2 sword attacks. That’s not something you want to rely on, so absolutely make sure you have flanks/surrounds on attacks if you want to have any chance of hitting. Fortunately, the Ever-hanged does transition to hammers and picks up ensnare once inspired, so he’s another fairly reliable attacker – especially into other dodge-heavy warbands.

The Uncrowned and the Silenced are both minions that have identical stats, so they’re getting lumped in here together. They have the same defensive stats that worry me as the Ever-hanged, so there’s nothing new here.

Offensively, they’re just bad uninspired. A melee range attack on 2 swords only dealing 1 damage is not likely to hit, and even if it does it’s not very threatening. The only thing that improves on these fighter when they inspire is their attack but at least it does get a nice improvement by picking up another attack dice and a point of damage. I wouldn’t bet money on a 3 sword attack, but a 3 sword attack with surrounded? That’s a lot more appealing.

Like their friends above, the Exhumed and Ironwretch have identical stats so here they both are. Nothing’s changed since the previous few entries defensively, so we’ll move on.

Their uninspired attack profile is just as much of a wet noodle as the Uncrowned and Silenced. Once inspired, they also pick up an additional damage but go to 2 hammers instead of 3 swords. It’s an upgrade in accuracy when attacking on their own, so if you ever do have to try and land a hit on an enemy without your ghost buddies hyping you up, consider using one of these two.

Musings on Thorns of the Briar Queen

This warband is weird, but in an intriguing way. Games Workshop describes them as a Take and Hold warband. I can see being able to push two fighters in one activation helping with that, but nothing else in their toolbox assists with this plan. I guess you can get some nice placements via Mugged if your opponent helpfully stands next to treasure tokens for you, but that doesn’t seem like something to plan for.

What they do offer is a lot of charge tokens, a lot of teleporting next to the enemy, and (if they’re able to team up) a fairly reliable way to deliver 2 damage hits. Is this more of an aggro warband? Albeit one that can’t take a return hit, so they’re like a glass cannon. Except they’re not super threatening, so it’s more like a glass, uh, rock.

Thorns of the Briar Queen feel like a puzzle that I’m trying to solve while not being able to see the picture on the box and all my puzzle pieces are turned upside down. I feel like there’s something here but I’m just not quite seeing it. Perhaps a Nemesis pairing using Edge of the Knife and something else? Five of your seven fighters start tempered for Edge of the Knife and you are able to temper enemy fighters with a single 2 damage hit which puts Trial of the Tempered into plausible range. Alternatively, the new deck Deadly Synergy rewards you for having fighters adjacent, and between the pushes and teleports you can achieve that fairly easily with this deck. The downside is your fighters are made out of wet toilet paper so the enemy can disrupt those united states by just killing them. Hunting Grounds to take advantage of your opponent putting themselves into a big ghost pile and something like Emberstone Sentinels or Pillage & Plunder to give you the passive scoring to wait until the opponent comes over? If anyone has ideas for this warband, I’m incredibly curious.

Sons of Velmorn

These are some of the coolest sculpts in all of Warhammer Underworlds. Five skeletons in rad gear with very fun poses, this Flex dysfunctional family warband is here. In the previous edition, they had a fairly lackluster set of rules. Games Workshop did eventually give them a small buff, but they were still pretty uncommon to run into in my experience. How does their debut in Spitewood fare?

Warscroll for Sons of Velmorn

Inspiring is pretty simple here. Just make a successful attack with any of your models and that model will inspire. Additionally, any of their buddies who are adjacent to the target after the attack will also inspire. This has some strange interactions with drive back. If you drive the target back and its no longer adjacent to your flanking fighter, that fighter won’t inspire. Conversely, you can bop an enemy over to a friendly that’s a few hexes away like a hot potato and inspire them this way. This signpost pretty clearly says that the warband wants to pair up and have flanked situations before attacking.

Deadly Command is the first of the leader-centric abilities on this warscroll. It’s also going to shape how a lot of the rounds play out for you. The first activation will be something with Velmorn – likely a move, guard, or attack – in order to pick up the command token. Simply having a command token on Velmorn means your three Grave Guard will be more accurate. This not only helps with pushing damage through, but also inspiring them and Velmorn.

Rise Again is your second leader focused ability. As a core ability (so taking up your entire activation), your leader can spend a command token to revive one of your three smaller fighters but only if he doesn’t have a charge token. This means your leader had to have already picked up a command token earlier that round from Deadly Command. On the plus side, the raise brings your Grave Guard back at full health… all 2 of it. It feels strange, but you spend your command token to use this core ability only to gain the command token again after it finishes so at least you’ll retain the accuracy enhancement from Deadly Command.

Raise Shields! applies to, unsurprisingly, the models in this warband with shields. That’s two of your Grave Guard as well as the big boy Jedran. It’s not going to come up all that often, but when you do manage to roll a crit on your save dice it’s a free guard token. Due to the timing here, you won’t gain the guard token until after the combat has been fully resolved so you can’t use it to deny being driven back, nor will you get additional successes from dodge results on your dice. On the plus side, the enemy’s attack doesn’t have to be successful so make sure you’re rolling those defense dice even if your opponent completely whiffs an attack. You can gain a free guard token.

As if a raised fighter being worth 0 bounty isn’t enough, The Velmorn Curse gives your opponent extra reason to avoid your risen fighters. Only three of your five fighters can be raised so it’s not likely that this will come into play all that often, but considering how strong of an ability it is, that seems fair. After all, it would be absolutely insane to have it go off for seven three of your fighters with no restrictions, right?

Surprise Swiftness is the final ability on the warscroll and the only one limited to once per game. Being able to jump all of your fighters up to 5 move from their starting 3 for a single turn is handy. Use it for a long range charge or to bravely run away. The extra movement granted from Surprise Swiftness is, unsurprisingly, just a very useful generic ability to have for a warband.

Fighters of Sons of Velmorn

Morlak? Who is Morlak?

Velmorn Morlak is pretty key to this warband functioning, both through the ability to raise fallen Grave Guard and giving them enhanced accuracy by “flanking” the enemy. At 4 health and 1 shield, that’s not the most resilient profile so you’re going to have to be careful with him early on. He’s a juicy target and losing your leader early will set you back. Inspire ASAP and pick up that second save dice. He and the rest of the warband are about average at 3 move.

Morlak’s attack profile is fine. It’d be nice if he had at least range 2 to stay a little safer, but he has to get up in the thick of things. A 2 hammer, 2 damage attack is adequate but not amazing. Critical grievous on a 2 dice attack won’t happen often, but fortunately he does pick up normal grievous once inspired and can bop anyone who gets near him for 3 damage.

Jedran’s a beast with 5 health. He, like his dad, goes from 1 shield to 2 once inspired so picking that inspire up is highly valuable. He does sport the bulwark icon, so he can pick up free guard tokens from the occasional critical result on a save dice. Neat.

That said… good luck landing a successful attack with this guy without some work. It’s a frightful 3 damage hit, but at 2 swords and no ability for Velmorn to flank remotely through Deadly Command, you’re going to have to arrange adjacent fighters the old, manual way. Sadly, he doesn’t gain any accuracy once inspired either. Jedran’s a prime candidate for extra attack dice or rerolls from ploys or stagger.

Faulk is our first grave guard and sets the tone for the rest of them. A move of 3 like the rest of the warband is fairly average. Only having 2 health is quite a problem, but fortunately it’s guarded behind a 2 shield save value. That’s a tough nut to crack. He’s also a bulwark fighter and as a result will pick up a guard token every once in a while.

Faulk’s weapon profile shows that Jedran’s lack of accuracy runs in the rest of the family as well. This profile is pretty rough at range 1, 2 swords, 1 damage but since Faulk is a grave guard he can benefit from flanked from dear ol’ dad. Again, critical grievous on two dice isn’t something to rely on but you could always get lucky. Once inspired, Faulk is a little more accurate and picks up another base damage while retaining crit grievous so he’s also a source of 3 damage, although it’s unreliable.

Helmar is a lot like Faulk. In fact, he’s identical aside from the inspired weapon which trades in critical grievous for cleave. Once he flips, Helmar’s one of the more accurate fighters of the group.*

*terms and conditions apply, Helmar needs support from his dad, Helmar needs to be attacking a target saving on shields, Helmar needs a little bit of luck

Thain, despite having a big ol’ two handed weapon, also starts on 2 shields. Sure, why not. It’s worth pointing out Thain is the only grave guard who is not a bulwark.

The larger weapon translates into starting at 2 damage which is a little bit better than Faulk and Helmar, although he trades critical grievous for critical stagger which is a bit of a downgrade in my opinion. It becomes full on stagger once inspired as well as getting a little more accurate with the extra dice.

Musings on Sons of Velmorn

On the whole, this warband feels a little directionless to me. You have some average fighters who aren’t going to be able to go full aggro mode. The extra tax of requiring Morlak to do something as your first activation in order for any of your other fighters to have a decent chance at hitting anything rubs salt into that wound. On the other hand, they’re also not particularly capable of zipping around and delving/holding treasure tokens. Sure, you have the ability to have guard tokens spontaneously generate on your fighters but they won’t show up until after the attacks are over, so it doesn’t help prevent drive back nor are most your fighters capable of holding a treasure through a few hits.

Perhaps they’re a decent candidate for Hunting Grounds, since by having your opponent come into your territory you have an easier time setting up either flanked attacks with Morlak and Jedran or full surrounded attacks with Morlak’s remote adjacency and any other fighter standing next to the grave guard’s target. Initially I was thinking there was something with Deadly Synergy and Deadly Command, but the temporary adjacency is to the target and not your fighter so there’s not even a brief window of cheating the united state into existence.

I’m going to have to cook a little longer on these guys before I feel good with any particular Nemesis combination. If I had to pick one warband out of this release that feels like it could use a boost, it’d probably be the Sons of Velmorn.

The Exiled Dead

Another seven fighter warband makes a splash here. Fittingly, the Exiled Dead are a Mastery warband of electric zombies lead by the extra creepy Deintalos.This warband felt like you needed a PhD just to pilot them in a reasonable time last edition but were frightening when in the right hands. Does any of that change with this new release?

Warscroll for The Exiled Dead

As a reference, here are the different fighter types spelled out.
Minions: Regulus, Bault, Vlash, Ione, and Coyl
Conductive fighters: Bault, Vlash, Ione, and Coyl

This is one of the few warbands out there where fighters start the game inspired. Five of your fighters are considered minions and these all start in their inspired state. Once they die, they uninspire (since that’s what the rules say happens to every fighter when they die) and if they are raised they’ll come back uninspired with no way to flip back over. You’ll want to leverage their enhanced stats while they’re on their first life because once any of these five make a kill, both your leader and Marcov will inspire.

Dynamic Enhancer is the first time we show the mini-split in this warband. There’s Deintalos and his electric crew, then there’s Marcov and his thesis project of Regulus. Dynamic Enhancer applies to the conductive fighters of the first group. It does a lot to keep their board presence strong while Deintalos is ordering them around. All of these zombies start on 3 move that deteriorates down to 2 once they have died and been raised, so being able to have anything to keep their slow feet shuffling a little quicker is nice. It also means that while they naturally slow down as the game goes on from dying and coming back, they’re also picking up a little bit of speed if the opponent is killing them faster than they can be raised.

Overload continues with another benefit for the conductive fighters and it’s one hell of a doozy. Your four dinky fighters all gain grievous if they’re targeting an enemy with a stagger token. That’s a very large damage spike and makes all the incidental stagger from some of their attacks or from your own power cards a lot more impactful, plus it happens to play well into the current stagger-filled meta ruled by Pillage & Plunder. So many fighters are delving and staggering themselves in the process, so this makes your fighters even more deadly against them. Their attacks aren’t super accurate, but thankfully stagger directly assists with that.

Dynamic Surge also helps with your conductive fighters’ attack accuracy by providing another re-roll if you can gang up on the enemy. That shouldn’t be too hard of an ask considering an ability we’ll see in a moment. If you can box in a staggered enemy, even the toughest models in the game can be overwhelmed with zombie hits.

Puppeteer is a core ability, despite the core ability icon being teeny tiny. Trust me, it’s there. You might have to squint. Amusing typesetting error aside, this is the one ability that applies to Marcov and Regulus instead of Deintalos and his electric crew. Once per round, Marcov can choose either to do a double action alongside Regulus or raise a slain Regulus. If choosing the first option, the core abilities can be separate abilities. Marcov can run over to a token while Regulus charges into the fray, or Marcov can make a standing attack while Regulus charges into the fray, or they can both go on guard, etc. It’s super flexible. If Regulus dies, Marcov has to spend one of the battle rounds’ use of this ability to raise Regulus so there won’t be a double activation that round. I think this is a nice inclusion to enable counterplay.

Danse Dynamic is the last but most important ability on this warscroll. We’re back to caring about Deintalos and his conductive fighters. The action economy that this ability grants is insane. You spend one activation to either move or attack with four fighters. If your opponent is attacking your conductive fighters to reduce the amount of actions you get from this, that’s fine – you also raise a slain conductive fighter after doing the action with all the surviving ones. Since the raise is after performing the action, if you choose to move then all of the surviving fighters will gain the movement boost from Dynamic Enhancer and then a slain fighter pops back up. The restriction here is that Deintalos can’t do this if he has move or charge tokens. Normally, charge tokens are what these extra core abilities care about but the fact that Deintalos can’t even have a move token is (hopefully) going to keep this from getting out of hand. The Exiled Dead player will need to have pushes or teleports to reposition Deintalos unless they’re willing to forego using Danse Dynamic for the remainder of the round.

Fighters of The Exiled Dead

Deintalos has a fairly respectable defensive profile for being a weird nerd. His move of 3 is fairly standard. A health total of 4 protects him from being killed in one hit from most fighters, and his 1 shield defense is better than a lot of spellcaster types get. Inspired, it even goes up to 2 shields to put him defensively on par with some of the more durable brutes in the game.

Two very serviceable attack profile options means Deintalos is no slouch if you come into range. His melee profile is quite solid and lets him safely poke from behind his zombie wall while applying stagger and gets even more accurate once inspired. He also sports a ranged attack which will be great at poking fighters off of tokens or delivering the final damage to something that had the misfortune of being staggered in front of an Overload empowered fighter, especially because cleave’s such a boon for accuracy.

The apprentice necromancer of the bunch is a bit weedier than his boss. One fewer point of health but starting (and staying) on 2 dodge make Marcov the best candidate for a guard token in this bunch.

Offensively, that’s not a terrible profile either – especially if you are able to combine it with a Regulus attack. Uninspired Marcov is fairly average, but being able to bop for 3 once inspired makes him surprisingly threatening.

Marcov’s BFF is the first of the minions and thus starts the game inspired. Like the rest of the minions, his 2 health and 1 block don’t change even after he dies and comes back, but unlike the others he retains his 3 move.

The extra reach that Regulus has on his melee attack is quite handy, especially if the arena is crowded with bodies. It also allows him to reach just a bit further and help Marcov if they both decide to tag team one enemy fighter.

Reminder that the only way Regulus will be able to come back is if Marcov spends an activation using Puppeteer, and then they can’t double activate that turn. That’s a pretty steep cost but provided they both survive that round, it allows for a double activation in the following round.

Bault and Ione are conductive fighters, as are all the ones from here out. Their stats are the same so I’m lumping them together. As minions, they start the game inspired and won’t show off their uninspired side until they die and are raised. The extra move from being inspired is a big boon, but the uninspired 2 isn’t quite as bad as it seems thanks to Dynamic Enhancer.

Like all the rest of the fighters, their attacks are far more threatening before they die. Getting raised brings both of them back with one less damage and the loss of critical stagger.

Vlash’s club must be something special, because they’re the only one of these conductive minions to retain the runemark when raised. Cleave is a nice boost for accuracy against a good chunk of the field, including anyone on guard, so make the most of this magical, armor piercing piece of wood while it still deals 2 damage.

Coyl’s got a big arm, for sure. All this translates to is being a base 2 damage once uninspired instead of the 1 damage that all the other conductive zombies change to. It does mean he’s still able to threaten 3 damage against staggered enemies even when uninspired which makes him a pretty solid threat.

Musings on The Exiled Dead

The Exiled Dead have been reworked from their previous iteration but still retain a lot of the same flavor. There are more restrictions in place for all of the bonkers multi-activations this time around but they’re still going to do some wild things in the hands of skilled players. The fact that Dinetalos can’t use Danse Dynamic and move himself to a more secure location is going to make keeping him safe much more challenging, and the inability for Regulus to charge four times in a round while Marcov is off knitting a sweater in the corner also brings them more in line with the rules that everyone else has to follow.

They still have phenomenal action efficiency and can really swamp the board, though. Whether you want to use one activation to move four fighters onto treasure tokens and waystone hexes or if you want to build a wall of zombie flesh to wash over the enemy, I think this warband can do it. I also love how they have a uniquely strong play into Pillage & Plunder due to getting some extra damage off of the self-induced stagger tokens from the P&P plan.

As for decks to look at, some things I want to prioritize are ways to reposition Deintalos without shutting off Danse Dynamic. Illusory Fighter, Commanding Stride, Canny Sapper, Sidle Up, and Synchronised Effort all can help out with that. Synchronised Effort (from Edge of the Knife) would need some help obviously, but considering five of your fighters start off tempered and they can keep coming back, that feels like a nice fit. The unique ability to move so many dang models at once also means Deadly Synergy is an option, but sadly not those two decks together due to plot card limitations. This feels like a warband that can make a case for a lot of decks and I’m eager to see the variety.

The Skinnerkin

These ghoulish chefs are Death’s second returning warband in this box. The Skinnerkin are a Strike warband consisting of five fighters that are ready to flay, slay, and fillet. Their initial release last year had some weird mechanics that were quickly clarified to not work every turn so they lost most of their flavor, winding up in them being shoved back in the pantry in favor of more exciting dishes. Have our Chopped contestants returned with new culinary skills for a rematch?

Warscroll for The Skinnerkin

The Skinnerkin’s warscroll has been redesigned since the last time you’ve seen them. They’ve kept a lot of the haunch generation mechanics but all the things to spend the haunches on were changed – this is good because there wasn’t much to do with haunches after you earned them previously.

As before, all of your fighters will inspire as soon as you gain your third or subsequent haunch token. You don’t need to have three haunch tokens so feel free to spend them as soon as you generate them, but keep track of how many you’ve earned.

Prime Cuts rolls all of the haunch generation mechanics into a single ability instead of having them spread out in different abilities. There are three different ways that your fighters are going to generate those juicy juicy haunches. The first is if you slay an enemy fighter who is flanked or surrounded. The wording here is nice because it still counts if you’re using something like Hidden Aid or the plot card from Deadly Synergy makes your fighter united. The attacker doesn’t even have to be adjacent to the target if you’ve gifted them a new weapon via an upgrade card. The second generation method keys off of your chefs making successful attacks (but not necessarily slaying the target which is a mental image that’s fairly unpleasant). As a bit of a tease, you have two chefs and they’re some of your most accurate fighters. The final haunch generator is through the warband specific fillet runemark. This also grants a haunch on a successful attack and both of your chefs have some kind of access to this runemark. All of these abilities can fire off at the same time if you set it up well – your can make a successful attack with a chef using the fillet runemark and slay a flanked target to generate three haunches all at once.

Grasping Talons is one of the few things that functions the same way it did before. It’s exclusive to the Carnskyr, your weird selectively hairy bat thing, and triggers when the Carnskyr moves through an enemy. You have a 33% chance of inflicting 1 damage and generating a haunch token, a 33% chance of pushing the flown-over fighter, and a 33% chance of doing nothing and wishing your dice didn’t hate you so much. This is super unreliable and each effect is pretty different, so don’t rely on it doing something in particular. The odds are in your favor that something good for you happens, but it might not be what you’re banking on so be flexible.

The rest of their warscroll is in the format that I’ve been calling a menu for a while, but it’s finally thematically appropriate here. You have four choices on the menu and can pick one of them each turn which is super generous – that means you get 8 choices every round, 24 every game. Each one requires spending a haunch, so there’s definitely no way you’ll wind up with excess haunches this time around.

Taste Test is first on the menu. Getting to discard a haunch token to immediately inspire one of your fighters has some use, but the fact that it happens after you resolve a core ability means it’s a bit restricted. Inspiring does help a few of your fighters on their save dice, so if you’re in a tight spot and aren’t sure if you’ll be able to get haunches #2 or #3, you could use this for an immediate defensive boost on Carnskyr, Pewdrig, or Seddrik. Gristla and Kretch won’t benefit from it defensively, but they do generate haunches more reliably once inspired so you could use it to jump start your haunch train.

This One is Ruined; Fetch Me Another! is a first – not only does this have an exclamation mark, but a full-fledged semi-colon in the ability name. That groundbreaking achievement aside, for the cost of a single haunch you get to re-roll an attack dice. That’s like the best part of Raging Slayers, but doesn’t require you to take a bunch of questionable objectives! It’s like the Accurate upgrade but doesn’t take up a card in your deck! Pretty rad. It’s also good for fishing for crit fillet on your chefs to potentially replace itself, although that’s a low chance of occurring.

The King Hungers! is another offensive boost, but this time instead of increasing your accuracy it’s boosting the damage. Being able to access grievous at will is nuts. Most of your fighters don’t have threatening attack profiles, so being able to boost the damage on any attack is needed for this warband to output decent damage.

Quick Nibble allows you to trade a haunch token for a heal. Like the other options, you can only do this once per power step but that’s still a ton of potential healing on the table. It’s kept in check by the fact that your fighters are so fragile that they’ll mostly just explode when hit, but if you get a little lucky with defensive rolls and have the haunch tokens, it’s possible to take any of your non-leader fighters from vulnerable to full health in just two power steps.

Fighters of The Skinnerkin

It’s worth pointing out that Gristla is one of your two chefs, so she’s key at generating those haunches. Protecting her and getting as many activations out of her as possible will be key in unlocking all those great warscroll abilities.

At 4 health and 1 block, keeping her alive is going to require work. As worrying as it seems, she’s actually the toughest fighter in your warband. She’s also only of average move at 3 which puts her firmly as the slowest member of her group. Her bounty is tied for the highest along with your other chef, Kretch, so the opponent is doubly rewarded for taking these two out early. Players who are skilled enough to keep her safe until she’s generated enough haunches to get the ball rolling are going benefit here.

Offensively, Gristla has a medium accuracy attack that deals 2 damage. It’s fine. The critical fillet runemark won’t come into play all that often but you’ll be grateful when it does. Since she’s on swords, you’ll want to be setting up flanks and surrounds as often as possible but you already wanted to do that for more haunches. Once inspired, she snags an extra dice and fillet is accessible 24/7 just like a crappy drive-through.

All it takes is a few successful attacks and you’ll have a pile of meat to work with, so do your best not to squander your head chef.

Kretch is the other chef of the bunch, and thus your other key haunch generator. Believe it or not, but he’s substantially less durable than Gristla is – 3 health is in the danger zone of being killed in one hit without much effort and only having 1 dodge, even after inspiring, is not going to stop many hits from coming in. The good news is Kretch is fairly quick baseline, and inspires to be among the fastest fights in the game so he can at least get around to where he is needed most.

Offensively, he’s somewhat similar to Gristla uninspired. Slightly more accurate but less likely to trigger that critical fillet ability. When inspired, he also picks up fillet full time and can generate two haunches with each successful attack (one for being chef, one for using fillet).

It’s going to be difficult to protect Kretch, especially because he’s such a tempting target for the opponent, but do what you can.

The Carnskyr is not only fast, but has fly so it’s even easier for the bat thing to get around the board. He’s just as squishy as Kretch is, though, so if you fly into the thick of things don’t expect to live for long. At least there’s an extra save dice once inspired.

Carnskyr’s attack profile isn’t impressive, nor does it change once inspired. There’s also no guaranteed haunch generation available to this fighter. The Grasping Talons ability off of the warscroll means sometimes you can get a haunch and a point of damage on an enemy fighter, but you’ll also sometimes push them, or just do nothing.

He’s fast, he can sometimes provide extra utility, and he’s good at getting in place to flank.

Pewdrig has a fairly similar profile to Carnskyr – he’s a point of movement slower (until inspired at least) and no fly which slows him down a little bit. Two dodge is, as always, a great candidate for guard tokens.

His attack profile has critical grievous and then later straight up grievous. Threatening 2 damage isn’t a particularly impressive feat, but it’s better than anything your non-chefs can do. It does mean he can’t benefit from the grievous ability on the warscroll, but you could just use the attack dice re-roll instead if you want to make his attack land more often.

Seddrik is the final fighter in the warband and the only one with a ranged attack. Seddrik’s defensive profile is a mirror of Pewdrig’s, which means it isn’t very impressive. The three non-chefs in this warband really do want to inspire ASAP so they can pick up that extra save dice.

Offensively, Seddrik is still very similar to Pewdrig… except the attack is now range 3 and has ensnare instead of grievous. Attacks with 3 swords aren’t something you can rely on, but in a pinch it’s the only method you have of reaching out to smack an enemy off of a token or deliver the final blow to a vulnerable fighter. Note that Seddrik doesn’t have to be adjacent to a flanked enemy that he kills to generate a haunch token – there just has to be some other fighter there to set up flanked.

Musings on The Skinnerkin

The Skinnerkin have a very strong warscroll with multiple, powerful abilities that can be used over and over. The downside is that their fighter stats are pretty unimpressive and it makes surviving long enough to leverage the warscroll into a gamble. One nice thing is that both the attack re-roll and grievous granting abilities still work with weapon upgrades, so feel free to trade out some of these lackluster attack profiles for Burrowing Strike, Raging Blow, or Coordinated Deathblow.

Despite being a Strike warband, I don’t think you want to just ABC (Always Be Charging) with these cooks. Deadly Synergy feels like a risky deck to take because of how fragile your fighters are and how easily your opponent can disrupt your united setups, but this warband already wants to flank for a bunch of reasons and Deadly Synergy does offer some decent weapon upgrades. Wrack and Ruin offers pings to enhance your low damage, and if you’re able to get some haunches you can even heal back the damage you take from the symmetrical ping effects. Raging Slayers would help with the accuracy issues and let you fish for critical fillet results early on, plus it packs weapon upgrades and (surprisingly) some nice defensive assistance with a double heal and being able to reroll saves but yikes the objectives are painful.

CataWrack (Countdown to Cataclysm + Wrack & Ruin) has proven to be a solid deck pairing and would be the first one that I attempt with the Skinnerkin in Nemesis.

Final Thoughts

The offering from Death feels like a mixed back this time around. We have two redesigned warbands that had digital rules already, one of which (Thorns of the Briar Queen) is so different from their previous incarnation that it’s difficult to tell if it’s better or worse and the other (Skinnerkin) is a marked improvement, but the starting point was so low that it still might not be enough to bump them into competitive consideration.

Sons of Velmorn feel like they have just a few too many requirements asked of them to perform well – the underlying mechanics are cool and potentially strong, but the fact that command tokens have an activation tax to get them and the timing of Raise Shields makes it far less impactful than it feels like it should be.

Then we get to the Exiled Dead which are going to absolutely show up to events. I was initially concerned about their raw action economy, but I think the restrictions applied to Deintalos and Marcov make them even more vulnerable linchpins for the warband and it really does struggle once Deintalos is taken out. I’m cautiously optimistic about them having an impact on the field without distorting the meta around them – and even if they do, the release valve is built into the warband to enable other fast, assassin focused warbands (Skittershank’s Clawpack, for instance) to maybe keep them in check.

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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