The Gnarlwood was a dangerous place to travel through, but the prospect of riches from the crashed Seraphon Void Ship known to the peoples of the Mortal Realms as Talaxis proved too enticing for some. As they get deeper into the wood however, those warbands entered what was known as the Ravening Ruin, and there things soon get more dangerous…

In Warcry Sundered Fate, up for pre order today, the Seraphon warband of the Hunters of Huanchi take on the forces of the Jade Obelisk in the next part of this season’s Warcry story arc. In this review we will be taking a look at the contents of the box, checking out the warbands and exploring he Stealth and Stone supplement

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us a free copy of Sundered Fate to unbox and review! If you would like to support the site then why not order your copy of Sundered Fate through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself money too!

We have also filmed a full video unboxing which you can find below or over on YouTube

So grab your survival gear as we head deep into the Gnarlwood once again…

Warcry: Sundered Fate Review and Unboxing

Coming hot on the heels of Warcry Heart of Ghur is the next boxed set within the Gnarlwood story arc that is spanning this season of Warcry. In case you are not aware. Games Workshop are telling the story of the Gnarlwood and Talaxis over the course of a year and 4 connected boxed sets. This is great idea as not only do we get the evolving storyline and some awesome warbands, but we also get a stack of terrain that is thematically linked and will work amazingly for some games of Age of Sigmar set within the Gnarlwood (I suspect the next General’s Handbook may bring us to this environment too following Thondia)

Whereas Heart of Ghur was more a “Starter set” containing the core rules in addition to a lot of goodies, Sundered Fate is more so an “expansion set” to this edition – essentially containing a stack of new scenery and a playing surface (along with all the cards needed to generate missions in this environment), two new warbands (along with all the cards needed to play with them) and a Stealth and Stone supplement containing all the rules and lore – the one thing it doesnt contain is a set of the core rules, so you will either need to pick this up separately or use the free starter ones available on Warhammer Community

At first glance the scenery within the box looks very similar to the frames in Heart of Ghur, however while the scatter scenery and bridges are exactly the same, all of the larger Gnarloaks are either brand new or use an additional sprue to change the silhouette of the scenery piece – this is great as it means you can use this alongside the existing Heart of Ghur to have thematically similar pieces, but each of the big pieces to be different for variety.

I’m hoping that as we get closer to the Void Ship that we get some crashed ship elements, but I am happy that we have a number of different Gnarloak pieces now

Like with Heart of Ghur you also get a full double sided Warcry board and all the cards that are needed for generating missions within the location for this box, the Ravening Ruin.

The real star of these boxes however is always the warbands, and we get two brand new ones in the box!

The Hunters of Huanchi are fragile but quick warband with some nice mechanics and lots of ranged attacks

They don’t hit very hard with a low number of attacks and strength, but they have a lot of tricks and some spikes on crits.

Their unique reaction “Slippery” allows them to get out of dodge by making a disengage action when they are allocated damage – this is great as means they can then use their ranged attack against the most suitable target!

Envenomed Weapons is a nice double that adds extra damage to their hits and crits, a Hurled Bolas is a triple that the melee fighters can use for a chance of reducing the number of actions a target fighter gets!

Call of the Hunt is a nice ability the Hornblower can use to allow the Terrawings to make a bonus move action and then apply damage equal to the dice value to a target

The models are absolutely gorgeous too, and I hope a sign that the Seraphon will be getting more updated models too – For the review I managed to get one of the Chameleon Skins and a Terrawing painted up, and I already can’t wait to get the rest of the Warband done!

The other warband in the box are the Jade Obelisk, a tough and more hard hitting, but slower warband.

They have quite a few abilities that extend their resilience and make them quite tough to take down – Their reaction “The Curse of Jade” in particular is pretty good in that it reduces the damage from each incoming hit. When combined with the ability to heal damage with an easy to get off double “Stonewarp” which heals half the value, or all the value if they are also near the Obelisk! At 110 points it would be well worth taking a couple of Obelisk Bearers to try and maximise the range of this ability to ensure you keep your fighters topped up.

But even if the enemy manages to take out one of your fighters you can easily turn this to your advantage with the Bloody Tribute triple, which gives a fighter a bonus move action when one of your fighters is killed.

The Idolarc is quite fragile compared to the rest of the warband, but it is rather good with its triple “Gaze of the Idolarc” which reduces the move or toughness of a target by half the value! triple 5 could reduce the toughness of even scary targets by 3, making them quite easy to take down.

Their quad is also very nice, giving a target 2 bonus more, attack or disengage actions in any combination!

Like with the Seraphon, these are also gorgeous models and suitably weird! Due to the bad weather I’ve not had a chance to get these guys sprayed up yet, but I can’t wait to get some paint on them!

Also included in the box is the Stealth and Stone supplement. This is essentially a “Battletome” for the two forces in the box and is used to make the most of the two warbands.

We open up with 21 pages of lore that expands on what we learned in the Heart of Ghur box. We know that warbands are hunting through the wood in order to find the fabled Talaxis Void Ship – but in this book we learn that this task has been so difficult because of the terraforming abilities of the craft. In the absence of the crew the ship has reverted to its pre programmed defense mechanisms and is using this technology in order to create vegetation around the ship in order to hide it from outsiders and try and take the approach to it as hard as possible.

Because of this, the trees and foliage around the crash site is much thicker with smaller parts of the vessel being completely obscured from view – This ties in nicely with the scatter terrain that seems to be shards of the ship that have various plants and thickets growing out of them!

The Skinks are doing all they can in order to stop warbands from reaching the ship, however exposure to the Gnarlwood is having a strange effect on the Seraphon, slowly corrupting them and turning them savage. They are able to cleanse this by returning to a statue of their long dead Slaan master (Though the fact they now worship a statue is perhaps a sign that these skinks are not completely sane after their ordeal…)

The Jade Obelisk on the other hand were once a tribe applauded as some of the greatest stone sculptors in all the realms, or they were until the forces of chaos fell upon them. Only a single citadel survived, containing a giant jade monolith that had been imported from far away and carved with strange sigils and runes. The bad news started when the stone began to talk, and continued when a daemonic entity dragged itself out of the stone! This entity made a deal with the tribe – he would grant them the strength and toughness of Jade itself. The tribe foolishly accepted before realising the downside of this deal – they would eventually turn to jade before starting to crumble away to nothingness. Of course, the Daemon had a new deal – it could keep them alive in exchange for sacrifices. And so the bloody circle continued with the tribe becoming more and more indebted to the creature.

I really like the background of both of these warbands and the Jade Obelisk in particular give us some insight into how mortals fall under the sway of Chaos and become unwitting servants of Tzeentch without necessarily being “evil”

In addition to the rules for each warband we also get rules for every piece of scenery in the box – so even if you didn’t pick up Heart of Ghur you will be able to use everything in the box. While the Gnarloaks and scatter pieces have the same rules as Heart of Ghur, we also get a new piece in the form of the Hollow Refuge which can be entered in order to gain a free Take Cover reaction whilst inside it

We also get a list of Forest Tactics – each player gets to pick one out of a list for “Special Rules” that are active that battle – so for example you could send a fighter out before the battle to find a lesser artifact, or perhaps trap and tame a beast to bring along for the fight. These are all pretty fun and add some nice twists to your warband for games deeper into the forest.

Like with the Rot and Ruin, Stealth and Stone has quests for each of the two warbands along with a branching 3 part campaign made up of 6 different potential missions, meaning that each time you play through the campaign you may get a different path. As we have mentioned before on the site, I really like these branching campaigns and I think they are one of the most fun things GW have created for Warcry. While you can have really fun matched play games, I highly recommend trying these missions out as they are brilliant fun!

In addition to the branching campaign, there is also a campaign designed for two teams of multiple players that has a “rock, paper, scissors” mechanic – essentially one side picks to Fearlessly Plunge into the Forest, Hack it down or to Burn a path through it and the other cab do a Cautious Ambush, Trap the Way or Extinguish the Flames – a matrix is then consulted that generates a mission depending on the combination chosen! This then culminates in a big showpiece battle that all the players take part in, an awesome way of finishing the campaign!

Finally the book contains all of the Battleplan Generator cards printed in the back of it, in case you don’t have the cards or buy the book outside of this set – again, a nice way of making sure everything in the set can be used by any player.

Warcry Sundered Fate is an excellent set containing some great models, awesome lore and fun gaming content – if you are looking to expand your Warcry collection following the Heart of Ghur box then you can’t go wrong with this expansion! While the contents will all be available separately, you do get a decent discount by getting this all in one box – though if you are only after one of the two warbands and don’t need the scenery then from a cost point of view the warbands will most likely be available separately in around 3 months time.

I’m really liking how they are taking things forward here, as it means that over the course of the year you will have collected your very own corner of the Gnarlwood.

The variety in warbands is also really nice here, with two forces that both look and play very different. It also gives a much needed non-chaos warband, something I hope that will continue with some Destruction and Death warbands as the season continues

Warcry Sundered Fate is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 3rd December

Games Workshop provided Sprues and Brews with a free copy for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

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