Warbands are slowly drawing to the shattered centre of the legendary ruin of Talaxis, a Seraphon craft that crash landed in the Gnarlwood. While Nagash has sent the Ossiarch Bonereapers of the Teratic Cohort to claim the prize for himself, the diseased and insane Twistweald Sylvaneth look to bury the ship once and for all. In Warcry Briar and Bone, up for pre order today, we see these two forces strike against each other in a fight for the fate of the Gnarlwood

In this full review and unboxing we’ll be taking a look at Warcry Briar and Bone, what looks to be the final part of the Gnarlwood Warcry saga! We’ll be taking a look and painting up the miniatures inside the box, checking out the rules and seeing what new content is available for every faction in the game!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us a free early review copy to check out on the site. If you would like to support us then why not order your copy through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing video to accompany this written review, which you can see over on YouTube or just below!

So let’s delve once more into the Gnarlwood and see who is going to lay claim to the secrets of Talaxis…

Warcry Briar and Bone Unboxing & Review

It seems a very long time since Warcry Briar and Bone was announced, and on the Warhammer Age of Sigmar front, 4th Edition and the Skaventide Launch Box has been the thing that has grabbed most of the attention! But finally, Briar and Bone is finally here, and it’s got some awesome contents!

So let’s take a look inside!

The box contains 2 new warbands for Warcry (which also have rules in Warhammer Age of Sigmar 4th Edition), a new Scenery piece and cards to use everything inside including the usual mission and map generation cards. It’s worth noting here that to get the most use out of those terrain layout cards you’re going to want to have access to the scenery set that was released alongside this edition. Unlike with Kill Team however, where the scenery box is very important to running the scenarios, here it is easy to sub out some of the terrain for other pieces if you don’t have them, so it’s not the end of the world.

Ossiarch Bonereapers Teratic Cohort

The first of the two new warbands in the box are the Teratic Cohort – these are a hunting party of Bonereapers with some awesomely weird new constructs in the form of harpies and dogs – I love that we are getting some new different looking Bonereapers and I feel that these go a long way to adding some variety to the army. I’ve not had the chance to paint these guys up yet, but they were fun to build and have quite a few optional parts to add some variety here

From a rules point of view, the Teratic Cohort have some interesting mechanics that revolve around spending save wild dice in order to trigger some more powerful abilities.

For example, their unique reaction Predatory Rage allows a unit that has taken damage to strike back with an attack action at -1 attack and -1 damage, however if they spend a saved wild dice then they no longer have the -1 and instead attack and base stats.

Now, usually this would cause you to burn through your dive pretty quickly – but they actually have a mechanic that accounts for that too. Eyes of Katakros is a double that allows you to roll a number of dice equal to the value of the spent dice – with each 5+ granting you an extra wild dice to your pool. This can only been done once per battle round, but use this on a high value like 5 or 6 and you have a very good chance of generating more dice to use the boosted versions of your abilities. Some of them are quite expensive in that they take 2 dice in order to get the enhanced ability – but they are very good – so for example Unleashed Rage has any critical hit causing an additional critical hit, but boost it with 2 wild dice and every critical hit instead causes 3 critical hits. Use this on a Cylkopian with Nandrite Bident and you have the chance to do 15 damage with every attack, or 45 damage if you get really lucky and all three of your attacks roll 6s!

The fighters themselves offer a nice mix of fighters, even if they are a little slow outside of the Centuri. Range is also a little lacking, but they are pretty reliable in combat with some good chances for spikes of damage, especially when combined with their abilities.

For those wanting to use them in games of Warhammer Age of Sigmar they are actually pretty quick, with the ability to be set up outflaking and set up on any turn outside of 9 of the enemy. They are also pretty quick with movement 7, making them pretty good for Bonereapers to get some of the more movement based battle tactics with.

Sylvaneth Twistweald

The other side of the box are the Sylvaneth Twistweald and these are very cool models. After being exposed to the realm shaping abilities of the Seraphon ship and it’s terraforming abiltiies, the Twistweald are infected with a parasitic growth that is slowly consuming and strangling the plant life of the Gnarlwood. What’s really nice about these models is that you can actually see these barbed parasite vines twisting around the models. From a lore point of view they are slowly going mad, but they can harness this rage in order to fight even harder.

The models are absolutely gorgeous, and I think these are one of my favourite warbands released so far for Warcry. One of the best things about the latest season is the move away from Chaos, and for the other Grand Alliances to get the chance to have cool new kits exploring things that are a little more fringe than they would normally get.

There’s a lot of options on the sprues, and in order to build very variation you’ll need two boxes – so make sure to have a good look over the options and rules so that you can build something that covers all bases. I went for rule of cool however, and just picked the models I liked the look of the most, and honestly they are all fun!

Painted up they look brilliant, and Stacey has done an excellent job painting these to match her wider Sylvaneth army while making them look different to the main army with details such as some purples glazed into the flesh and the vivid parasitic vines twisting through the models.

The Twistweald also have some fun abilities. Like the Bonereapers they are pretty slow, with the quickest models being the Dryads at movement 5.

They have some nice threat with their reaction – they role a dice for each hit on them in combat, and for each 5+ they deal 2 damage each. Weaken some enemy fighters and you’re going to put them in the position where they could end up causing damage on themselves

They can also cause a surprising amount of damage with their abilities.

Flesh Piercing Talons is a great ability to use on a Twistroot Revenant with Harvester Blade – it causes criticals to trigger on a 5+, and the 4 attacks and crit of 5 damage on the blade makes this a really nice combo for causing some big damage spikes it you get lucky.

Thorned Grasp is a triple that can be used by the Spite Revenant with Briarlash or the Swarmsage, and this has an interesting dice rolling mechanic similar to curse of years – you roll a D6 and if you roll a 2+ you cause 2 damage – you then get to keep rolling until you roll under or equal to the previous roll – so if the dice gods smile on you and you roll a 2, then a 3, then a 4, 5, then 6 you will do a total of 10 damage to the target. While this is very unlikely to happen, it’s one of those abilities that will get that cheer when it does finally trigger – and there’s a pretty good change of you doing 4-6 damage with it, so certainly worth a shot to see if the dice gods are on your side!

Sylvaneth have always been very good with their healing, but their quad Twisted Song gives them the best of both worlds with the target getting to remove damage equal to the total and then being able to make a bonus move or attack action. This is good to use the turn after Devour Infection that has you potentially deal damage equal to the value to a friendly unit, but every wound they suffer this way increases their attacks by 1 – again very good on units such as the Harvester Blade which have some big critical numbers.

In games of Age of Sigmar they work as a nice anti-charge unit, making a unit within 12″ each turn -D3″ to charge ranges, but keep in mind that in order to trigger this you must also be outside of 6″ from all friendly Sylvaneth – but still good for limiting incoming charges. As this works in any charge phase you can also catch out players looking to counter charge you.

Ravening Gnarloak

The final model in the box is the Ravening Gnarloak, and this is a weird one, a walking free with a massive maw in the centre of it ready to eat any unsuspecting victims! The weird fleshtrees have been an ace feature of the Gnarlwood, and this one is suitably unsettling for any game of Warcry or even a nice centre piece of a Gnarlwood themed Age of Sigmar board!

its a pretty big piece too, with enough space for a couple of models to fight over the platform.

From a rules point of view its got a really cool rule where there’s a chance that the tree eats anything that falls into the maw – if anything falls over on the platform you roll 3 dice and add the damage allocated to the target – if you roll over their wounds characteristic the target is slain! That’s a pretty reliable way of taking someone out of the game, so anyone with any sense will stay far away, but there’s plenty of abilities in the game that can allow you to move enemy models or drag them close to you, ready for you to kick them into the mouth of a flesh tree!

Brair and Bone Supplement

As with the other Warcry boxes, we get a full supplement book in the box detailing both of the factions and all the rules relating to them. From a lore point of view we get some interesting stuff here, with multiple references to this being the final battle for the Gnarlwood. I suspect this is the final book in the series, with us perhaps moving to a new environment next time to tie in with the new setting for Age of Sigmar 4 – something set in Hel Crown perhaps, with new ruins and warpstone chunks would be fun, and allow us to see some of the factions that are fighting against the Skaven invasion.

We get detailed lore about both the factions in the box, essentially Nagash has sent the Bonereapers to take his prize of the Seraphon ship for himself once and for all – standing against him are an offshoot of the Sylvaneth who are in consent pain because of the parasitic vines that are being spread by the realmshaper engine. They are concerned that left unchecked this could spread across the realms and cause untold damage to the Sylvaneth race at large. Their plan is to enact a ritual to bury the Eye of Chotek and spereading the parasites that have corrupted them into areas of the Gnarlwood, driving them wild and causing them to consume the entire Seraphon craft and putting an end to it’s realm shaping magic.

This plot thread also shapes the additional gaming content in the book with quests for both factions and a branching campaign (no pun intended) that plays out the goals of the Sylvaneth and revealing if they succeed in their task, or fall at the last moment for the Bonereapers to claim the prize for their lord.

What’s also new in Briar and Bone are new rules for every single faction in the game. Players are able to pick a new rule based on what Grand Alliance or faction they are. These rules are not tied to abilities but instead are active all the time and offer some flavour for every army. You get quite a lot of options here too – so for example if you play the Twistweald you could pick the Order rule, which makes Take Cover reduce Crits to Hits on a 3+ instead of 4+, or you could pick the Twistweald rule that makes a single Sylvaneth take 1 damage at the end of each turn, but splash D3 damage onto nearby units. Every single warband that has been released for Warcry over the life of the game gets their own rule, along with every grand alliance and broader factions such as “Stormcast” or Skaven, meaning that whatever you play for Warcry you’re going to have access to some new rules to play with

Summary

So this may be the final box of the Gnarlwood storyline, but it’s ending on a great one with two really fun warbands with some drop dead gorgeous models! It’s really nice here that we get some rules to expand out every single faction in the game, and this feels the perfect time to reset things and head to a new location. As much as I’ve loved our time in the Gnarlwood, I’m excited to see where we end up next. I do wonder what the future holds for Warcry, as it and Spearhead exist in a similar place as both an entry into the world of Age of Sigmar and as a smaller scale skirmish game. I still feel there’s a place for Warcry, as it is very different to AOS from a rules point of view and is very much it’s own thing. It’s also a great resource for new factions and terrain that we might not see in main line Age of Sigmar otherwise. But whatever the future holds, the Gnarlwood arc has been a great story and lots of fun has been had battling between flesh eating trees looking to uncover the secrets of Talaxis.

Warcry Briar and Bone is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 10th August

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

Published by Matt Crowther

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