For the last year we have been fighting through the Gnarlwood, the horrific flesh eating wood deep within Ghur. Rumour has it that inside this mass of carnivorous trees is the remains of one of a Seraphon void ship, filled with treasures and arcane devices. These rumours are not only true, but a danger to the inhabitants of the Mortal Realms as those with less than noble purposes close in on powerful devices such as Realm Shaper Engines – The Slann is long dead and the surviving Seraphon forces are too thin and scattered to make any difference, however protection has come from the God King Sigmar as the Stormcast Eternals arrive to defend the ancient devices.

In Warcry Nightmare Quest, up for pre order today, the Stormcast Eternals look to defend a Realm Shaper Engine from a ghastly band of Flesh Eater Courts on a delusional quest. In this full unboxing and review we’ll be taking a look at the set, checking out everything that is inside the box, building and painting up the contents and checking out the rules for both warbands!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us a free review copy ahead of time to check out on the site! If you would like to support the site then why not order your copy through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too! We also have a Patreon live too, and any support would be much appreciated!

We also have a full video review and unboxing up to accompany this article, which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So gather your warband, and let’s venture back into the Gnarlwood one last time…

Warcry Nightmare Quest Unboxing and Review

So before we dig into the rules side of things, let’s take a look at what is in the box!

This is the 4th box in the season, so most people will know what to expect here! The bulk of the box is taken up with the scenery – this time containing some scenery we have seen before, 2 Gnarloaks, bridges and scatter terrain. But the star of the scenery in this box is a new Realmshaper Engine! Now, at first I assumed this was the existing kit from the Seraphon range, but this is actually a different sculpt.

Firstly, it sits a little lower than the Seraphon one, and doesnt have the magical energy coming out of the top of it (Though it does have a focusing crystal embedded in the centre of it). While the Seraphon kit has reversible walls with different details, this one can only be built one way round. What the Warcry one has that the Seraphon one doesnt however is full compatibility with the Gnarlwood scenery range. There are two platforms attached to the pyramid that can be used with the Gnarlwood rope bridges in order to attach them to the other scenery pieces out of this box (And out of the pieces in other boxes this season).

This is great as it gives us a very different scenery piece to fight over at the point where most collectors probably have more Gnarloaks now than they could use in one game. For Age of Sigmar players however, the scenery in the box now finishes an entire board of Gnarlwood terrain, allowing you to put together a nicely themed board.

Like with the other boxes we also get a Warcry board in here, and combined with the other 3 this season you have a playing surface large enough for Age of Sigmar.

Of course we also get the two new warbands, the Questor Soulsworn for the Stormcast Eternals and the Royal Beastflayers for the Flesh Eater Courts. We’ll be looking at the rules for both of these later in the review, however from a model point of view they are absolutely gorgeous!

I painted up the Flesh Eater Courts for this review, and I had a blast working on them! The Flesh Eaters army for Age of Sigmar is nearly entirely made up of old Warhammer Fantasy models, and is due a range refresh (Perhaps this winter alongside a new battletome), and the Royal Beastflayers knock it out of the park with some really characterful and creepy models. Massive shout out here to the Offal Hounds (Who I really think should have been called Gore-rillas) as these look so cool and freaky! We get a nice mix of different fighters who are visually unique along with a couple of stand out characters. This is my favourite type of Warcry set, one that isnt too worried about being for Age of Sigmar and is designed first and foremost for games of Warcry.

The other warband are the Stormcast Questor Soulsworn, and these have been worked on by Dave for this review. This set is made up of 2 duplicated sprues of 3 models – which does mean you end up with a couple of models with similar poses, though the models are gorgeous and among some of the best Stormcast infantry. In contrast to the Flesh Eaters I feel this is an Age of Sigmar kit that has been made usable in Warcry rather than feeling purely Warcry, though they are really good models and there’s loads of weapon options, something that goes some way to keeping the silhouettes mostly different.

They fit together like a dream, with zero issues when assembling. Sadly, Dave didn’t get chance to paint the warband, however I know he is very keen to get them completed over the next few weeks as this will be his main Warcry warband going forward!

In the box we also get all the usual cards and handouts, both for the warbands and for generating missions. I want to give the map generation cards a cheer here as there are cards that include scenery from the other boxes, allowing for some very diverse set ups with denser terrain.

We also get the Might and Madness Warband Tome, so let’s take a look at that next…

Might and Madness Warband Tome Review

As with the other boxes this season we get a “Warband Tome” that acts as sort of a mini battletome for the release. This contains lore, rules for both warbands and some campaign arcs to play through.

From a lore point of view we learn a little more about crashed Seraphon ship and the fact that the Realmshaper Engines that had been attached to the ship got separated from the craft when it crash landed. These devices are what has caused the Gnarlwood to grow so rapidly, however there is the very real threat of someone taking control of these and using the energies to their own end. With that in mind Sigmar himself has deployed his Questor Soulsworn in order to defend them in the place of the Seraphon who did not survive the crash. We get new lore about the Soulsworn themselves, and also the Beastflayers who are Royal Hunters who have ventured out into the Gnarlwood to do heroic things such as fell mighty dragons! Interestingly, we don’t see anyone going inside the Eye of Chotec itself, so perhaps we are not quite finished with this storyline yet..

Questor Soulsworn

The Stormcast are an unusual warband in that they are full made up of heroes! We actually get some special rules that allows them to take as many Heroes as they like, and also up to 2 other heroes with another faction runemark. While from a synergy point of view you’ll probably want to go pure Soulsworn, that does leave the door open for having a couple of other heroes come along with them!

Their reaction Swift Retribution is best used when you know your warrior is going to get slain, as it allows another fighter to make a bonus move or attack action – there’s no range on this and no requirement to attack the person that slays the fighter, so this is great at getting some free out of sequence moves and attacks to try and get the upper hand!

If we take a look at their abilities, there’s lots of ways of getting bonus actions, meaning that although you are going to have a small warband in numbers, they are all going to be able to get some work done! From a movement point of view, your Knight Relictor can teleport your fighters around the battlefield – something that is really cool and makes the warband very powerful

From a stats point of view your fighters have toughness 5 and 20 wounds across the board, making them difficult to chew through, and the range of weapon options gives you lots to play with. The only thing you are really lacking is range, with just the Relictor having a ranged attack, but its a decent one with 2 attack at strength 4 and 3/5 damage

These look like a decently sturdy warband with some good abilities to maximise the actions on your low numbers

Royal Beastflayers

The other warband are the Royal Beastflayers of the Flesh Eater Courts. Their reaction isn’t quite as good as the Stormcast one, however it does dissuade the enemy from making disengage actions or face mortal wounds.

Stat wise they are average toughness with fighters between 3 and 4, a mixture of wounds characteristics from the very squishy to the quire tough and no ranged attacks. While they have some middle of the road strengths on the weapons, they have some cool abilities

Feed the hounds is a really nice heal that affects everyone within 3″ and heals up to the value – it needs a kill to trigger but I really like this as a double. The Pack Tactics triple is amazing if you can get someone surrounded. Equally the Quad No Rest till our Quest is Done gives your fighters a massive strength boost when you are moving in for the kill.

While I think the Stormcast are better all rounders, theres some really fun stuff that can be done with the Flesh Eaters

Additional Rules and Campaigns

The book also contains new rules for the Realmshaper Engine – this is really cool, basically you can spend a triple in order to do D6 damage to every fighter within an inch of a chosen terrain feature – at the cost of you taking D6 damage too. What’s fun is that Seraphon take less damage from this!

Like with all the other books we get full quest content for both the Stormcast and the Flesh Eaters, with all the usual artifacts and upgrade to collect.

We also get two full campaigns to play through. The first of these is your standard warband tome campaign designed to be played with both of the factions in the box, but the second one is an awesome 4-6 player campaign for two allied teams culminating in a massive game covering two warcry tiles with the warbands fighting over the Realmshaper Engine in the centre!

The campaign material for Warcry has been great fun, and I hope we see this expanded upon further in the future with some stand alone campaign books outside of this season of boxes.

Summary

I’ve really enjoyed this season of Warcry, and this is a great box to end the current season by adding not just two awesome warbands, but also a nice new piece of scenery that acts as a nice centrepiece to your Warcry terrain collection. The models are really fun to paint up, and I’ve got to say I’m hyped for seeing more for the Flesh Eater Courts following this box.

Following Warhammer Fest it seems that it’s going to be a while now until we get the next season, but there’s more cool stuff on the war for Warcry such as a new starter box designed for newcomers to the game, plus more warbands for other less represented grand alliances such as Order, Destruction and Death, which should go some way to making the balance of warbands spread away from the heavy Chaos focus of the original release.

Warcry is a great game, and its been nice seeing it go from strength to strength in this latest season.

Warcry Nightmare Quest is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 20th May

Games Workshop send Sprues & Brews a free copy for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

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