The Gnarlwood hungers. Terrible earthquakes have shaken the realm, and something stirs beneath the Gnarloaks of the Gnarlwood. In Ghur, the starving Gorgers of the Ogors believe their god has awoken, as tooth lined maws are opening up across the realm. Feeling they can lift their curse of hunger, the Ogors are tossing all matter of things into the pits, hoping that their god will see their offering.

In Hunter and Hunted, the latest expansion for Warcry, (Up for pre order today), the Gorgers take on the Wildercorp Hunters of the Cities of Sigmar, as war returns to Ghur.

In this review we will be unboxing the new set and checking out everything that is contained within, while also discovering the new rules and seeing what the new Gorger models look like built and painted!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us a free review copy ahead of release 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 have also filmed a full unboxing video which you can see over on YouTube

So gather together your finest warriors as we venture out once again to the Gnarlwood

Warcry Hunter and Hunted Unboxing and Review

So before we did into the rules and lore, let’s take a look at what is contained in the box. Hunter and Hunted is somewhat of a first in that this isnt a big box with a board and enough scenery to fill it. Instead, the set contains the two new warbands and their warband tome, the cards needed to generate missions and a new piece of scenery in the form of the Ogor Mawpit.

Hunter and Hunter clocks in at £80, which is a little cheaper than the previous boxes we have got during the Gnarlwood season. However, alongside this box we also have a set of scenery that would have made up the board and other scenery in the set which costs £67.50, putting the total cost of having both this set and the associated scenery at £147.50 – while it is nice to have the option of buying this separately, I personally would have gathered them together in one box at a discount – though getting these from a 3rd party such as Element Games will make it a little more affordable.

So what do you get for your money?

We get a decent sized piece of scenery that is currently exclusive to this box in the form of the Mawpit. Being a big fan of painting terrain I was really looking forward to this kit, but unfortunately it was a bit of a Trailhound to put together. I think my sprue was slightly warped, as the main body (which is made up of two big plastic parts) didn’t sit together great, and this caused some of the later parts of the assembly to be misaligned.

Once I had managed to get it together and filed a couple of small gaps however I was really happy with the finished piece. It’s satisfyingly big with surfaces large enough to place the Ogors on – It’s also going to be really easy to paint up – block in the main colours then use lots of drybrushing to start building up the texture surfaces. As great as it will be in games of Warcry, it’s also going to look fantastic in games of Warhammer Age of Sigmar too, especially for Ogor Mawtribe players! I even think it might work well as an alternate Mawpot too!

Speaking of Ogors, the new Gorgers are absolutely awesome models and a big step up from the old ones that originally got released years ago with the Warhammer Fantasy Ogor Kingdoms book. There are a couple of options too for weaponry – In Warcry these have different profiles that we will talk about a little later, so I’ve opted for a spread of all the weapons available. I’m interested to see if they will get new rules for Age of Sigmar, as we get lots of options that are not currently available to them. I went for a classic pale scheme, which was easily done with Apothecary White over a White Colourforge base and I decided to base them to match my existing winter themed Ogor army.

The other warband in the box are the Windercorps Hunters – we’ve seen these previously in the Cities of Sigmar Battletome, but they are available for the first time in this box. Again, like with the other recent Cities of Sigmar releases they are gorgeous and have quite a few options with the leader having one of three different builds available, and most of the models having options for ranged or melee weapons. For AOS you don’t have to worry too much about how they are armed, but in games of Warcry you’ll want to check over the various options as there’s lots of ways you can put these together. Again we’ll be looking into the rules for them a little later.

Like with the other big boxes we have had for this season we also get cards that are used to generate games of Warcry along with terrain cards – one thing to note is that in order to get the full use of these cards then you will want to pick up the accompanying Scales of Talaxis scenery set, as many of the cards feature these terrain components.

Along with the fighter and warband cards (Which we’ll look at a little further down) you also get a card showing all the universal abilities. This is a great addition as we have not had this included in any of the previous boxes this season, making it a great reference tool to remember that these additional abilities are available to any warband.

Finally we also get the Hunter and Hunted Warband Tome, which we’ll be taking a look at next!

Hunter and Hunted Warband Tome

If you have picked up any of the other boxes for the Gnarlwood season of Warcry then you will know what to expect here. In the 65 page book we get lore for the two warbands, their rules and supplemental gaming content such as campaigns and quest chains. These books have been a great way of collecting together all the rules for this season, though I do wonder if a compendium will be released at some point that puts all the warbands from this season in a single tome much like the Kill Team one did for Gallowdark.

From a lore point of view, it seems that something is awaking under Ghur. The land has been shaking with earthquakes, and vicious tooth lined pits are opening up across the land – these things are big enough to even eat the Gnarloaks that hunt through the woods, so think the Sarlac pit with a particularly bad attitude.

With the land covered in hungry maws, the Ogors feel that this is the manifestation of their god making himself known to the realms. Now I assume the awakening that is mentioned earlier relates to these maws opening up, however there is a possibility that something else is waking up under Ghur (And this is hinted at in Deathgorge, the new Warhammer Underworlds game, also up for pre order today) and I’m interested in seeing how this plays out, especially with the Dawnbringer crusades in full swing and this Era of the Beast story coming to a close.

In the book we also get the full rules for both of the warbands (Though as usual these are also included on cards contained within the box to make in-game referencing really easy)

Gorger Mawpack

First up we have the Gorger Mawpack, a twisted and deformed offshoot of Ogor who are cursed with an eternal hunger causing them to be always starving – no matter how much food they eat, they can never sate their hunger. This transfers quite well to their game rules, which captures the essence of what they do.

Their reaction “Rending Bite” can be used when they are targeted – if the attacking model does not roll and criticals then they are dealt 6 damage.

They have a decent suite of abilities too, such as a cheap bonus move action for a double, the abiilty to increase 1 to their damage for hits and criticals or to lose the Beast runemark (Something that is present on most of the warband) for a double.

Agonising Roar is a nice Triple that can stop enemy fighters from disengaging, leaving them in prime eating range of your Ogors. Maddened Blows is another Triple that allows criticals to activate on a 5+ which can be really good with some of the Ogors that have bit damage spikes.

Finally, their quad Starving Rampage allows the Ogor to make a free attack action for each and every enemy fighter within 1″ of them, making surrounding an Ogor with bodies a really risky gambit.

As for the warband themselves, they are a little more fragile than you would imagine with a toughness of 3 across the board (Which represents the fact that they are starving), though they are still packing a high wounds characteristic with 30 and 35 on them.

There’s a really nice mix of weapons on offer here, the Howler in particular having 5 attacks and strength 4 that deal 3/6 damage or the Ogor with two handed club only having 2 attacks but at a crazy strong strength of 6 and damage of 4/8. There’s enough variety here to make a fun warband with whatever you pick, though I do feel taking one of each for just shy of 1000 points gives you a nice mix of options.

Wildercorps Hunters

The Wildercorps are quite a different style warband to the Ogors, for a start they have a lot more bodies, can have a fully ranged force if they want and have some tricksy abilities that make for fun play.

Their reaction allows them to get out of dodge by allowing a free disengage after they have been allocated damage

They also have some decent control in their abilities. For a double you can make a successful hit cause the target to lose an action, and if they have already activated instead take 3 damage. For a quad they can also allow the entire warband to make a bonus move or disengage action, allowing them to dance onto objectives or set themselves up for some vicious shooting.

My favourite action however is “Kill” – this causes a target to take damage equal to 3x the number of dogs within 3″ of them – flood the board with doggies and make the enemy suffer. You’ll want to take the dog handling variant of the leader in order to gain access to this however

Compared to the Ogors the Wildercorps have much more customisation, with most of the different unit types having the choice of multiple ranged weapons (In order to gain more shots) or some close combat weapons to give them more teeth up close.

The Arbalester is a really nice choice as he has range 6-20, 2 shots at strength 4 dealing 4/8 damage – a couple of those could be quite the threat

They also have lots of cheap options, with dogs clocking in at just 60 points – I feel investing into these for some sneaky tricks with the Kill command could be really successful.

Deadly Expedition

The remainder of the book continues the theme from the previous Warband Tomes by offering both quests and campaigns for both of the factions within the box. Again, I’ve really enjoyed the way that these have been done in this edition with branching chains based on which side wins, and some fun mechanics such as each side having to pick one of 3 options that are they compared against each other to determine what happens.

We also get rules for using the Mawpit in your games, and you dont want to be eaten by it! If you end up on the maw itself you are taken down – leaving to some fun actions such as pushing an unsuspecting victim into it!

The book closes with images of all the cards contained in the box – however all the terrain cards are not included, which is a bit of a shame.

Summary

So what do I think of Hunter and Hunted? While I’d have liked this box to also include the Talaxis scenery set that is available separately, what is on offer is a really fun set. From two awesome new warbands to a fun terrain piece, there’s a lot to love here. The lower price point than the big boxed sets hopefully makes the warbands assessable to a lot more people, and hopefully this will stay in stock longer than we had seen for some of the big Warcry sets. Both warbands look great fun to play and they are a joy to paint. It’s worth noting that alongside this box there are also another 2 warbands that are up for pre order today – the Kruleboys and the Fyreslayers, both of which look really cool – We did receive a copy of the Kruleboyz, but unfortunately they turned up a little late to make this review – but stay tuned to our social media to see them unboxed and reviewed!

This season of Warcry has been amazing, and this wave of releases gives players a stack of new content to work through while we wait for the next season!

Hunter and Hunted is up for pre order today for a 2 week period and is released Saturday 21st October

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with free review copies.

Published by Matt Crowther

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