Warcry: Catacombs is up for pre-order this weekend and comes with two new warbands – the Khainite Shadowstalkers and the Scions of the Flame. In today’s article, we’re focusing on how they play and introducing some of their strongest tactics. First up, the shadowy agents of Morathi…
Khainite Shadowstalkers
As you would expect from an elite, hand-picked band of aelven assassins, the Khainite Shadowstalkers are highly mobile, agile, and incredibly sneaky! This is exemplified by every fighter’s freedom to use the Shadow Leap
ability, letting them essentially teleport short distances as they use hidden pathways to flicker between shadows in an instant. This technique is incredibly useful for traversing terrain when fighting above ground, as you can ignore any vertical distances, and for leaping deadly subterranean hazards such as flowing rivers of lava.
All of the Shadowstalkers have also mastered the Dance of Death
ability, which enables them to finish disengage moves within 1" of the enemy. This means foes cannot pin you in place, so you'll be able to dart past them to strike a more important target – such as someone running off with treasure or an enemy fighter you need to assassinate to win the battle.The heart of the Khainite Shadowstalkers warband is their leader, the Shroud Queen. In addition to her formidable profile, she can perform the Ensnaring Darkness
ability. What makes this skill extra cool is that, when using it, she can shed her own shadow blood, which inflicts damage upon her to double the range of the ability, making it difficult to escape her ensorcelled grasp.
Scions of the Flame
This warband stands apart from the other Chaos warbands thanks to the presence of their leader, the Blazing Lord, and three specialist fighters, the Brazen Champion, Immolator, and Inferno Priest. The Blazing Lord and Brazen Champion are both devastating in melee where they can make use of their Beheading Strike ability. As each has a critical damage of 6 on their weapons, using a
6 on this ability will give them a potential damage of 12 for each critical hit – enough to slay almost any foe in a single strike!
The Immolator is all about crowd control, able to unleash a
ability called Inferno, which damages all enemies nearby. Meanwhile, the warband’s
ability, Engulf in Flames, belongs to the Inferno Priest, and its damage potential is limitless provided you keep rolling 6s!
The warband is backed up by Initiates and Fireborn. Whilst not the most remarkable fighters, the Fiery Might ability nonetheless allows them to fight opponents who are considerably tougher than them – great if you’re facing Iron Golems or Stormcast Eternals. What’s more, a few of them have access to firebombs to give you some ranged threat too.
Both the Khainite Shadowstalkers and Scions of the Flame will be available to pre-order this weekend in the Warcry: Catacombs core set. Make sure you secure your copy on Saturday!