After starting their Twin Tailed Crusade from Hammerhal, the Dawnbringers are nearing their goal of founding new cities for Sigmar after many trials and tribulations. In Aqshy, a new city has been founded in the form of Emberguard due to the efforts of the religious fanatics of the Great Wheel under the command of the Pontifex. Meanwhile in Ghyran, things have taken a turn for the worse with the Dawnbringers entering the domain of the Mad King Ushoran.

In Dawnbringers Book V: Shadow of the Crone, up for pre order today, we learn of the next part of the Dawnbringers story and see what befalls these brave crusaders and what other threats are plotting against them.

In this review we’ll be taking a look into the latest part of the Warhammer Age of Sigmar Dawnbringers series and seeing what is happening in the narrative, what cool gaming material is included and how the latest subfaction for the Daughters of Khaine checks out – we’ll also be unboxing and painting up the Croneseer herself and seeing what her awesome new model looks like.

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us free review copies of both Dawnbringers 5 Shadow of the Crone and the Krethusa’s Cronehost box. If you would like to support the site, then why not order your Age of Sigmar goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself money too?

We have also filmed a full unboxing of the Cronehost box, were we check out the models, paint up Krethusa and talk about her new subfaction. You can check it out just below or over on YouTube

So without futher ado let’s give into the next (but not final) book in the Dawnbringers series.

Dawnbringers V: Shadow of the Crone Review

The Dawnbringers series has been another example of an excellent edition branching series from Games Workshop. For those that don’t know, when we get to the end of an edition and the start of a new one, Games Workshop tend to put out a narrative series that advances the storyline ready for the new game. In this case it’s very likely that the 4th edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar is on the way this summer, and the Dawnbringer series is wrapping up the story of 3rd and getting threads set up to be explored in the new edition.

So far in the series we have seen two Dawnbringer Crusades march out from Hammerhal in order to found new cities in Aqshy and Ghyran. Over the course of the 4 previous books we’ve seen them face many challenges (And also met a number of new characters and units who have all got new plastic models supporting the release.

As book 5 starts, the Aqshy contingent has successfully founded a city, while the Ghyran force has been facing off against the Flesh Eater Courts of the Mad King Ushoran.

I don’t want to delve too much into spoilers here, as I really do think these books are best when explored spoiler free, but a large chunk of the story is actually set within Hammerhal itself with the Witchhunters Callis and Toll delving into the sewers to try and find the cause of the Madness that is currently spilling over the city. In book 4 we learned that the blood of Ushoran is being made into wine that once consumed by mortals infects them with the Flesh Eaters curse. While Ushoran appears to be insane, he is actually quite cunning and wise and plans for the wine and the curse to spread from city to city across the realms until all are under his sway.

Callis and Toll also get some aid from an unlikely ally – an Aelf known as Krethusa the Croneseer, who leads a splinter faction of Khainites who have turned from Morathi. It seems that suspicions and distrust are spreading through the Daughters of Khaine, with a large number now questioning the divinity of Morathi. Krethusa, who has been empowered by a shard of the Aelven god Morai-Heg has seen both the resurgence and the doom of the Aelven race, and is now guided by her god of foresight in order to steer the path of destiny to make things better for the Daughters of Khaine. There’s an interesting fragment of a vision discussing a Phoenix being consumed by a black sun which I wonder may be a nod towards Malerion or Tyrion, and that maybe this is setting the scene for a new take on the “Dark Elves” under a single banner being something introduced later in this edition.

We also learn about the things happening in both of the realms, and later in the story things start to tie together and it quickly becomes apparent that this Crusade is far from over. Traditionally in the past we have had 5 books in these series, but the book later confirms that a 6th and final one is on the way that ties everything together.

I’m really interested to see if these threads get concluded in the final volume, or they leave some hanging to get resolved in the next edition and later suppliments.

Strongpoints

One of the cool new things added in this book are Strongpoint missions – These represent one army trying to defend a fledgling settlement while invaders try and tear them down. In these battlescrolls the defender gets a number of resource points in order to build their strongpoint from, and they then select from warscrolls for the scenery pieces they can use to construct their defenses from. These consist of the recent scenery pieces that got released at the start of the edition (Guardian Idol, Nexus Syphon, Aqualith and Domicile Shell) along with two older ones (Shattered Temple and Baleful Realmgate) which all have their own resource characteristic (How many resource points they cost to take), a wounds characteristic and save value, and some special rules relating to that scenery piece.

So for example a Baleful Realmgate costs 8 resource points, has 20 wounds and a 4+ save and units within 9″ at the end of the movement phase can go through the gate to be placed into reserves ready to come on again from a board edge next turn. Or the Guardian Idol costs 5 resource and has 15 wounds, but gives nearby units a 6+ ward save.

The scenario maps shows the areas where these can be placed, but it’s up to the player to decide what to take and in what area to place it.

It’s a nice mid ground towards a full siege ruleset without the problem of the attacker having a wall in the way, and leads to some fun and different games, something that the Dawnbringers series has done really well!

Also introduced in this section are rules for Realmscape Objectives. These are the plastic Objective markers that were released at the start of the edition, but always seemed a little odd that they were on different base sizes. Dawnbringers 5 introduces these more interactive objectives with each distinct piece having it’s own rule that encourages you to take the objective not just for an arbitrary “one, two, more” objective purpose, but to also gain access to a decent benefit even if you don’t control it – For example if you have a unit within 6″ of a Dawnbringer Bell than that unit can rally on a 5+, or if you are within 6″ of the Realm orrery you get +1 to cast rolls. This is an interesting update (And I’ll stress that this is not compulsory, it’s recommended for Strongpoint missions, but can be used in any game) and feels like a way of blending the benefits of mysterious terrain and giving you an aditional benefit for fighting over an objective. Personally, I love the idea of this and would love to see this become a thing in 4th edition. At the moment there’s no need to take more objectives than you need to – however with this every objective on the board could be a strategic location to take for the benefits, not just the victory points – and this is how I’d see a battle being fought in the Mortal Realms.

Path to Glory

In the book we also get the next part of the Dawnbringers Path to Glory campaign – this is a multiple book spanning Path to Glory series that is very much focused on the narrative of the Dawnbringer Crusades, and as such is aimed for Cities of Sigmar players. While I’d have liked to have seen more for other factions, this is perhaps a hint at the type of Path to Glory content that we will see in the future, with much more flavour and narrative and the feel of an evolving world. In this installment your Crusade has finally founded a city and now have to defend it from the horrors of the Mortal Realms!

In this the player gets to pick 20 resource points worth of Strongpoint scenery, and then over the course of the campaign you can add to these as your fledgling city grows. What’s cool here though is that there is persistent damage. So there is a chance that if a terrain piece is destroyed in a battle it would be damaged and be in need of repair (Something that costs resources to do) meaning that it grants to benefit except cover, or it could be completely ruined with the rules encouraging a suitably ruined terrain piece to replace it (The Warcry ruins are a good choice here) – I really like this as you get a feeling of your city growing and crumbling against the tide of attackers. I feel this would be ace with a small group of players who have all modeled their own city along with pieces to use as ruins for when things take a turn for the worse.

I know a lot of players dont have the space for a large terrain collection, but for those that do and are fans of Path to Glory this is a really cool addition that really captures the narrative of what the book is trying to deliver.

6 Missions are included here which make great use of the above new Strongpoint rules, and through the Dawnbringer series so far players will now have a much expanded suite of scenarios for playing Path to Glory with!

The Croneseer’s Pariahs

In Dawnbringers 5 we also get a new subfaction and special character for the Daughters of Khaine in the form of Krethusa the Croneseer and The Croneseer’s Pariahs – Alongside the book there’s also a Cronehost host box that contains the new character, 10 Sisters of Slaughter and 5 Warlocks

Krethusa the Croneseer herself is an absolutly gorgeous model and looks suitably creepy with a different vibe to the newer Snakey Daughters of Khaine

I painted her up to match my existing army, and had a great time working on her – though if I was to do it again I would leave the wings and head seperate in order to make it a little easier to get to the interior detail. Her hair in particular makes it quite difficult to get your brush in towards her body and it can be a little fiddly with it attached. Build that in a sub assembly and paint attached to a painting handle so that you can get into the body and save a little frustration trying to avoid parts you have already painted!

Krethusa from a rules point of view is a really interesting model and fulfills a support role within a Daughters of Khaine army. In the narrative she has defected from Morathi – and this shows in her rules with her not being able to affect Morathi, Melusai, Medusae or Scathborn with her abilities.

The big one she has is Burnt Offerings, which allows her once per turn (And that is both player turns, not once per battle round) to activate an ability on a 2+ if she is close to a Cauldron of Blood. You select a unit within 9″ of her and pick one of three abilities: Prophecy of Silence (Which stops enemy units within 3″ from receiving commands), Prophecy of Dark Wings (which allows the unit to make a move) or Prophecy of Reclamation (which means that only Monsters or Heroes can contest objectives against the picked unit) – all three of these are really handy, and the fact that you can do it in each player turn is ace!

She also has a really good prayer “Murder of Crows” which in addition to causing D3 mortal wounds can make a unit -1 to hit rolls for the rest of the game. This is amazing and can really neuter the enemy army over the course of the game, as it’s more likely to affect low wound units you can target those pesky elite infantry units with a pretty much guaranteed -1 to hit, or take a gamble on bigger things like Kurnoth hunters for a 1 in 3 chance of the hit modifier element going off (You have to roll equal or over the targets wounds characteristic for this to take effect)

She only has 6 wounds and a 5+ save, but her 4+ ward makes her a little more survivable

Her Army of Renown is pretty cool too if you are bored of Morathi and all the snakes, as it excludes all those units allied to Morathi, instead focussed on your non-snake, non-scathborn units such as pure Aelves, Warlocks and Cauldrons of Blood.

Their first battle train makes any hit of 6 automatically wound at increased rend – This is really good if combined with a big block of Witch Aelves backed up with a Gladiatrix and those 6s will go through at rend 2 on your basic infantry!

Cauldrons of Blood have an interesting mechanic where they start the game empty but can be filled by killing models within 3″ of it – this has a couple of uses.

Firstly, the Cauldron gets a 4+ ward from shooting attacks when full, and all units within range of the Bloodshield are -1 to hit in addition to the increased save they usually get. With lots of ways of making the enemy -1 to hit the Pariahs should prove to be a slippery foe to fight

Secondly, at the start of any phase Krethusa can empty the cauldron in order to use her Burnt Offerings – with some clever filling and emptying you could potentially use this ability multiple times over your turn and your opponent’s turn. Have some fast unit like Warlocks lurking near Krethusa and they can move quite a distance across these abilities, or perheps make it difficult for your opponant to take objectives in their turn when your 20 Witch Aelves standing next to the objective can only be contested by monsters.

Speaking of Doomfire Warlocks, they also get much better in the Pariarhs – for a start they get the Battleline role, and once per turn a Warlock unit that is charged can move 2D6″ on a roll of 3+. This is a little swingy so can’t be counted on, but screening with units of Warlocks that can then run away on average 7″ when charged is amazing – especially given that you could potentially then follow that with a free move from Burnt Offerings to get them somewhere else, such as sneak onto an objective.

The entire army gets a 6+ ward and gain a new Heroic Action “The Blood Reveals” which does D6 wounds to a unit that cannot be negated and then a 50/50 chance of filling a cauldron (That again can be emptied by Krethusa for more shenanigans)

As this replaces the faction rules from the Daughters of Khaine battletome, there are new enhancements, grand strategies and battle tactics also included

For Prayers we get a 4+ chance of giving a unit a 5+ ward save, a 3+ prayer that allows a unit to move and fly (Again works really well with Warlocks) and an ace prayer that goes off on a 4+ and means if an enemy unit rolls a 1 to hit when attacking that unit then they suffer mortal wounds equal to the damage of their own weapons!

The Command Trait is a frustrating one where on a roll of 5+ any commands used by your opponent cost an additional command point, while this is a lower chance of triggering, it’s still really handy to limit command point spend.

The Artefact sadly is a bit rubbish – once per game the Blood Reveals All heroic action fills a cauldron on a 3 rather than a 4 – lots of better stuff that can be taken here.

I really like the Grand Strategy as it’s pretty easy for the Pariahs – you need a unit within 5″ of your opponants long board edge at the end of the game – keep a unit of Shadowstakers or Shadeborn hanging around and teleport them over at the end of the game – or use a last ditch Caludron emptying to move a unit of Warlocks down there

We also get 3 Battle Tactics – The first has you kill a unit near a Cauldron – pretty achievable! The second has you take an enemy objective and kill all models that were contesting it, and the final one has you use more command abilities in a turn than your opponent, which comboes quite nicely with the command trait.

I really like this subfaction, and I hope we see this fleshed out further in the next edition to offer a nice alternative to Morathi and Snakes.

Saviours of Cinderfall

The Cities of Sigmar get new units in the book in the form of Callid and Toll and their Companions – what’s nice is that any Order army can take these as an allied element, which is pretty cool!

If you take them in a non Cities of Sigmar army they get some extra abilities too – Duty Bound increases their save and ward save rolls by 1 while they are near an objective, and Sentenced to Death allows you to pick a target for them at the start of the game, and they will always hit on a 2+ against them.

Rules are pretty nice with some similar anti-wizard and anti-daemon abilities we’ve seen on other witchhunters with double damage when targeting them. Toll also has stakes, after they have fought you can try and stake the target – you roll 2D6 and if you beat their wounds characteristic then they are slain! This makes the unit a nice little assassin against most characters!

The Companions support this with some great stuff such as the unit not being affected by negative save modifiers, generating command points on a 5+ when a nearby enemy uses a command and even being able to depoly them off the board and come in anywhere outside of 9″ of the enemy! At 350 points they are not cheap, but I can see these being very popular as they are pretty hardy and on average auto kill an unmounted hero a turn if they get into combat.

Strongpoint Assault

Finally, the book ends with an entire Battlepack designed for teams of 4 players. With that requirement this is very much going to be one suited for clubs or your own matched play events, but it’s great that they include this here as these would be quite complex to write yourself.

The pack seems to have taken inspiration from other 4 player events but made some twists to ensure that everyone gets to be involved without it descending into a maths exercise to work out who statistically should be fighting. There are 4 battlefields that your players can play over, but each has different scenarios and different victory points, meaning that you are really going to need to choose if you send your best player towards the highest scoring one, or perhaps hold them back to take the charge from your opponents best player.

Theres some fun house rule stuff here too, such as each player having to have a different Grand Alliance and no units duplicated across the team’s armies, which should lead to some nicely varied forces.

As this is an entire battlepack we get new core battalions, new Grand Stategies and new Battle Tactics – which means that players wanting to organise this have everything they need in order to have a successful tournament including scoring sheets!

While most people are going to be hard pressed to gather enough people to do this, it’ll be fun to see this incorporated into larger events.

Summary

Shadow of the Crone is another excellent addition to the Dawnbringers series, and I’m loving seeing this expanding tool box of ways to play – it’s like a series of General’s Handbooks that should give players lots of different things to do while we are waiting for the next edition to drop – And I hope that the game doesnt change too much so that all this great content can still be used going forwards.

The narrative is great and I’m eager now to see how things close off, as we are getting some pretty big hints about who the next big player in the narrative is, plus some overarching things pointing towards the rumoured adversary in the next edition!

If you are a fan of the Age of Sigmar story line, and different ways of playing games then I would highly recommend adding this to your collection

Dawnbringers V: Shadow of the Crone is up for pre order today and released Saturday 23rd March

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

Published by Matt Crowther

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