Striking into the heart of The Old World, Setra The Imperishable starts his assault upon the Kingdom of Bretonnia. In The River of Bones, up for pre order today, we learn about the first phases of this new war while his High Priest Ashurtak attempts to find the secrets of Loren Forest…

In this full review we’ll be checking out the latest Arcane Journal for Warhammer The Old World, taking a look into the developing lore and investigating the new gaming content within the book!

That’s not the only Old World release today though, as we have also checked out the new Host of Nehekhara Army Reinforcement Set too!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending these over to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your copy of The River of Bones through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We’ve also filmed full videos of the new Arcane Journal and the Army Set which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So without further ado let’s take a look through the pages of Arcane Journal The River of Bones and check out what goodies have been added for the Tomb Kings and Wood Elves…

Arcane Journal – The River of Bones Review

The Arcane Journal format has been super popular for Warhammer The Old World, giving players slim softback books delving into a slice of lore and rules rather than having supplemental content being in large hardback books. They must have sold well, as we’ve had almost 20 of these volumes now, and The River of Bones is the third dedicated to the Tomb Kings.

I say dedicated to the Tomb Kings, but that isn’t really true as this is probably more of a Wood Elf supplement than a Tomb Kings one – but more on that later!

From a lore point of view this is a fun one. Carrying on from the end of The War of Setra’s Fury, we see Setra mobilise his forces to begin his assault on Bretonnia. Setra Himself deals with a number of Bretonnian forces that are trying to hold him at bay, while his High Priest Ashurtak raids the Vaults for Barrows as he heads to Loren forest, a source of magic that Ashurtak desires to bend to his will.

Centuries ago, before Nagash cast his great spell, the Kings of Nehekhara ruled wide across the Old World. So great was their empire that they even had followers further North into the Border Princes and beyond. People here followed Setra as their Lord, and they learnt the mysteries of the Mortuary Cults – embalming their dead within barrows in order to protect them in their journey to the afterlife. Fast forward to the present day and the Lich Priests of Setra’s invasion are finding these crypts and barrows and raising the dead within them to replace losses from the war. Many of them are scattered through the mountains of the Vaults, and so this is a key location for Setra to replenish his troops before the final assault on Bretonnia itself.

The River of Bones talks about the army of High Priest Ashurtak as he navigates the Vaults searching for these tombs, before being drawn into Athel Loren. His plan is sound, venture into the forest, lean of it’s magics and then use Loren as a staging area to assault Bretonnia. Unfortunately for the High Priest, he does not account for ambushes from Forest Spirits and the other inhabitants of the forest…

I really enjoyed the narrative in this one, and it feels that we’re going to get a couple of books leading up to climactic battle between Setra and Bretonnia. Could we perhaps see this culminate in a Siege supplement? By the gods I hope so! But there’s lots of scope for more love for Wood Elves, Bretonnia and even the Empire as the war moves north.

As ever we also get a couple of narrative scenarios that fit into the narrative framework of the book. First up we get an ace multi-player Battle March scenario designed for 3-4 players. If you have played Triumph and Treachery in Warhammer Fantasy then this is pretty much a lite take on that – Turn order is randomised every turn, and the active player picks an opponent to be their enemy each phase. Essentially you can only interact with the player you picked each phase, making the 3rd player safe for that phase – making this the perfect environment for making deals and backstabbing! I really hope we see this expanded in a full Arcane Journal at some point, as T&T were some of the most fun games I ever had back in 8th Edition.

In The River of Bones we also get a full scenario allowing players to react the big centre piece battle that closes out the narrative with 3,500 points of Tomb Kings led by Ashurtak facing off against a small 1,500 force of Wood Elves who are later joined by 2000 points of Forest Spirit reinforcements. This one has some really cool mechanics such as Ashurtak being able to tap into the magics of the forest in order increase the regen saves and magic resistance of his entire army at the cost of not being able to cast any spells while he is channeling this!

So what about gaming content?

Well one cool thing that The River of Bones does add to the game are rules for Enchanted Terrain. If you’ve played previous editions of Warhammer you’ll have come across this with “mysterious terrain”, but essentially this means that any natural terrain pieces (such as hills or woods) have a special rule that is not known until a unit moves into it. Once it does, you roll on the chart to see what happens. On average you’ll have no effect, but there’s 10 other results that can add some fun things to your games such as mud that reduces movement, healing waters that give units regeneration or even vines that will attack wizards that cast spells. Because you don’t know what the terrain is until you move into it, it makes it worth sending quick units to scout out terrain features to see if it’s worth dedicating a decent unit to take them properly. These are of course optional rules, but I feel that they add a fun element to games of Warhammer The Old World.

Tomb Kings Rules

Both the Tomb Kings and Wood Elves get rules in this book, but let’s take a look at the undead first.

First up we get some new rules that look to remove some of the character “tax” that is needed in games of Battle March. Battle March is designed for quick and punchy games at sub 700 point levels – but unfortunately the Tomb Kings are very reliant on their characters when building an army. The new Champions of Nehekhara rules in the book allow you to disregard the usual construction rules in regards to characters and instead take lesser characters. you can now have your army led by a Royal Herald, and if you do then they gain access to “Honour Thy King” which is basically a reduced version of My Will Be Done. Likewise, you can opt to build your army without a priest at all – and if you do there’s rules to represent the fact that the Priest who is controlling the army is back home in Nehekhara and thus has a weaker hold over the army. The control over the army isn’t quite as strong – each turn you pick a unit and roll on a chart to see if you get to bring back any models. A roll of 6 brings you back D3 wounds, though a roll of 1 causes an extra wound for example.

While you are safe in the respect that you havn’t got a priest to kill that can cause issues for your army, instead if your general dies then your entire army reduces their regen save by 1 for the rest of the game! On top of this, every unit has to make a leadership test with units crumbling by the difference!

I really like this as it lets you build a fun Battle March army without having to invest so many points in two heroes!

The first Army of Infamy in The River of Bones is a really cool one – The Barrow Kingdoms. This essentially represents an army that is constructed from the fallen warriors that are being raised from the Barrows as the Tomb Kings Priests march north. What’s fun is that from a lore point of view these would probably be barbarian tribes or even the ancestors of peoples in what is now The Empire who in ancient times followed the Mortuary Cults. This gives you a really nice way of using non-Tomb Kings coded models – vampire counts skeletons for example to represent the kinds of armour these bodies would have been buried in.

Army contruction is pretty good, with only Caskets of Souls, Swarms, Carrion and Ushabti being unavailable and a restriction of only 1 Tomb King or High Priest being allowed in the army (Really you’re encouraged to go for lesser heroes, and whatever model is your general is allowed a Bone Dragon regardless of it they can normally take one!) Royal Heralds in this army also get access to the Honour Thy King rule we talked about earlier, even if they are not the general!

To represent the fact that your Priests are probably raised scholars of other forms of magic that was learned within these lands outside of Khemri, they are also allows to take Battle Magic and Dark Magic lores, which is pretty cool.

On top of this a lot of units can be upgraded into new variant units for an additional cost, Chariots can be upgraded to Finest Charioteers giving them Regen 5+, increased initiative and First Charge and Khopesh (who needs Tomb Guard Chariots!), Skeleton Horsemen can become Noble Cavalry increasing their Weapon Skill, and also giving them Regen 5+ and Khopesh (I think I might have to build a box of the new horsemen now…) and finally Shades of Death can be taken as an upgrade to Skeleton Skirmishers – this represents the ghosts that are also present in the Barrows, and gain Ethereal and Magic Attacks (I really hope we get a made to order of the classic undead spirits to represent these with, though AOS Spirit Hosts cut up to fit smaller bases could work too)

I really like this Army of Infamy and feel that you could make some really nice “classic” looking undead armies using it. Plus, while you can’t take a Tomb King and a High Priest, you still can absolutely take something like a herald, stick him on a dragon and still take your Lv4 caster.

Wood Elf Rules

The River of Bones also adds quite a lot of cool stuff to Wood Elf armies.

First up we have the long awaited Spirits of the Forest Army of Infamy. This finally allows you to run an entire army of Forest Spirits (but still allows you to take decent Wood Elf units too)

For every 1000 points you can take a Treeman Ancient or a Gargantuan Treeman Ancient. The Gargantuan Ancient is a new Character choice who can be taken in this list or you can take a single one in the standard Wood Elf list too. These are really cool – they are on a 100×150 base and I’d probably use the plastic AOS Treelord to represent this. They are basically a tougher and stronger Ancient with more attacks and wounds but are only level 2 with no way to upgrade their magic capabilities. Instead they have Armour Bane 2 on their already AP-2 fists and have a stone thrower as a ranged weapon using the Bombardment rules! Essentially this represents the Tree launching it’s roots at a distant target – centre of the template is a S6 hit with D3+1 wounds, which gives Wood Elves access to a surprising source of artillery!

You can also take a Spellweaver along with Glade Captains, Spellsingers and Branchwraiths.

In core you have to take at least a unit of Dryads, but you can also take a unit of Tree Kin here, plus a unit of scouts or Glade Guard per 1000 points – so realistically you’ll be going dryad heavy plus a block of tree kin. I hope we see the classic Dryads brought back on a made to order for this release!

Special gives you scouts, Eternal Guard, Glade Guard, Wardancers, Wildwood Rangers, Tree Kin, Glade Riders and Sisters of the Thorn – so you can still take some standard elves!

Finally in Rare you can take up to 33% of points on Treemen and a Gargantuan Treeman per 1000 points. The Gargantuan is a non-character version and again is available to any standard Wood Elf army. Stats are similar to the hero version, but with better weapon skill and more attacks in exchange for only being a level 1 wizard – and yes, this gives you a strong combat caster with a stone thrower for any Wood Elf army in the Rare slot! really love these and will probably take two in every Forest Spirit Wood Elf list (You can only fit one in a standard army unfortunately due to the smaller Rare allowence)!

Every single forest spirit in the army can be given ambush for a paid upgrade, and when they ambush they can do this out of a wood rather than the board edge too, which is awesome! This makes the free Wood that Wood Elves can place at the start of the game very dangerous!

On top of this, each Tree Spirit character can also be given one of 4 different Blessings of the Elder Wood. Each blessing can only be taken once per army, but they have some really good effects such as the Blessings of the Oak giving them Armoured Hide and granting them immunity to Killing Blow, Monster Slayer and Multiple Wounds, Blessings of The Ash increasing Regen and making anyone who targets them reroll hits of 6, Blessings of the Willow giving them magic resistance 2 and a ward against magical attacks and finally Blessings of the Yew gives them a chance of coming back to life when they are killed!

Again, this is a really good Army of Infamy and probably the best Wood Elf list we’ve had so far!

The River of Bones also gives Wood Elves access to Kinbands – these are paint upgrades that enhance your Glade Guard, Eternal Guard, Deepwood Scouts, Wildwood Rangers and Glade Runners. There’s 6 different Kinbands that all lean into different things. For example Cavaroc gices a unit Vanguard and increases their movement by 1, while Cythral makes a unit auto pass dangerous terrain and also gives them a 5+ ward against monsters! Wood Elves are getting quite the glow up with this book!

Relics of Ancient Barrows

Continuing the theme of “cursed” Magic Items, The River of Bones adds 3 pages of new magic items that can be taken by any army – with a number of these having a detrimental effect in addition to some decent effects – for example the Axe of Abandon is a S+1 AP2 Extra Attacks D3 magic axe that makes you -1 to hit if you roll a 3 for the extra attacks, while the Armour of Dust is a suit of Plate Armour that cannot be modified in any way (that includes AP!) however, every time you roll a 1 for your save you reduce your Toughness by 1 for the rest of the game!

There’s some useful Extremely Common items here too, such as a Heavy Armour that can be worn by wizards. My favourite item in the new list are the Robes of Phakth, this gives the bearer Etheral, Fly (8) and Loner which should make for an interesting hard to kill assassin…

The River of Bones – Summary

So what do I think about the new Arcane Journal? Well as a fan of both Wood Elves and Tomb Kings this is a really interesting one to me! I love both of the Armies of Infamy and I think they make units in both of those armies a lot better. In particular I think this is a must have for Wood Elf players, as there’s a lot done here to make them perform a lot better! Interestingly there’s no new profiles for the Tomb Kings, especially given that Chariots are now on much bigger bases than they used to be – It could be that they get profile/points updates on Warhammer Community to account for this, though it might be as simple as them staying the same but just moving to larger bases.

What’s really exciting is the potential of what might come. We know that Setra Himself is headed to Brettonia – that opens the door for a new model for him and a wave of models for Brettonia too! Not to mention we’ll probably see Setra besieging castles, and that too has exciting possibilities! It looks like all the current races will start to be getting some love, and with the model updates we’ve seen already it’s an awesome time to be getting into Warhammer The Old World!

Arcane Journal The River of Bones is up for pre order now and is released Saturday 7th November

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