Intro
Welcome honored guests to todays bountiful feast! The noble Skinnerkin are preparing delights to astound! These wonderful chefs and courtiers of the Flesh Eater Courts are ready to server their delicacies in the formidable city of Embergard, and we here at Path to Glory are prepared to walk you through the menu. Without further ado, let us peruse the finery!
Warscroll
Inspire, Perfect Cut, and Fillet
First, we must talk about Haunch Counters. These are a central mechanic to the Skinnerkin’s Warscroll Card, and you gain one when one of your Chefs successfully attack, or when an attack triggers the Fillet runemark. This does make these counters somewhat unreliable to gain – as we will see, both Gristla and Kretch are fairly accurate, but dice are dice and sometimes you will just not get the counters you need. There are a couple other ways to gain these Counters, but we’ll talk about those in a bit.
To Inspire, you need 3 Haunch Counters. To achieve this in Battle Round 1, you’ll either need 3 successful attacks from Chefs (fairly difficult with Range 1), or you’ll need some combination of their attacks plus the other few ways to get them, which are also fairly dicey. Suffice to say, this is not a terribly reliable Inspire condition, but that is only one part of the larger card, so let’s continue.
Grasping Talons
Grasping Talons is the next non-Haunch Counter (well, kinda) passive Ability, and it has to do with Carnskyr, your semi-Vargheist who swoops over the battlefield. When he Flies over an enemy, he can roll a dice. A third of the time, nothing happens. A third of the time, he deals a damage and gains a Haunch Counter. A third of the time, he pushes that fighter a hex. This is fairly unreliable overall, as all dice-based effects are, though the two effects are pretty ok. Positioning enemies against their will outside of making attacks is fairly rare, and damage + Haunch is a solid boon for you. I would recommend simply Flying over enemies any time the Carnskyr charges if possible, and if the dice go your way, fantastic.
Calloused Hands
Calloused Hands is our first active Ability, and boy howdy is it good. Give up a Haunch in order to reduce damage by 1 and ignore drive back. The threat of having this available always makes your opponent reconsider their choices in terms of attacking. Plus, unlike many Abilities, you can use this once per turn instead of once per Game! That’s a massive boon and you should use it with impunity unless you need the Haunches to Inspire.
Precise Fillet
Precise Fillet gives the Critical Fillet ability to a melee attack before dice are rolled. Now, this is again unreliable as you still need to roll that Crit, and it also prevents that attack from using other Runemarks in the process. It’s a gamble, but like Calloused Hands, you can use it once per turn, so there’s not a crazy downside to it other than lost value. When your warband is Uninspired, I think you always use this with Carnskyr. Seddrik can’t use it without a Weapon upgrade, Pewdrig would generally rather have Critical Grievous, and Gristla and Kretch both already have Critical Fillet, so they don’t need it. Once inspired, it’s quite good to use on Pewdrig, as he rolls 4 Dice and therefore has a good shot at rolling the Crit, though again it depends on if you need the Grievous or not. Often though, this is just Carnskyr’s Ability.
More for the Pantry
And finally, More For The Pantry is a nice little positioning tool that, surprisingly, you can use every turn. A push that requires a Move/Charge token and requires you to use it to reach an enemy is somewhat restrictive, but there’s many, many uses for this Ability. Get to tokens after knocking someone off, if you didn’t have the Crits for Overrun. Move up for Support on an Attack. Grab a Treasure Token for scoring. This Ability will give you lots of utility over the course of the game, and again, you can use it thrice, which is very good when most factions can use similar Abilities once. Fantastic.
Overall, this Warscroll Card has lots of power, but it does lack reliability. All the abilities either are dice-dependent, or in the case of More For The Pantry, require particular setup and positioning. Perhaps that’s why they ended up being able to use their Abilities multiple times, but regardless of the reason, I think they benefit from it overall. Now, let’s meet tonight’s servers that will be bringing these goodies to the table.
Fighters
First, the Leader, Gristla Tenderhooke. Her profile is fairly solid – 4 Health with a Shield could be much worse, and her attack is on the higher end of reliably good. Roll some Crits with her and you’ll be stacking up Haunches in no time. She’ll likely be your anchor for many games, having the highest Health pool and somewhat reliably being able to use Stand Fast if you pop Calloused Hands on her (half the time, anyways) allows her to tank at least better than the rest of your team, and with Fillet and Perfect Cut, she’ll want to get into the mix of things nice and early.
Young Master Kretch is basically a mini-Gristla while Uninspired, having the same stats but with one less Health. Curiously, he’s one of the only Fighters I can think of that gets worse when he Inspires overall. Sure, he gains a Move and his Fillet no longer requires crits, but losing (statistical) accuracy on dice and a swapping his defense for a worse one is fairly rough. I think with Kretch you want to use him early to get some Haunches and then not particularly mind if he bites it before or shortly after Inspiring.
The Carnskyr is a nice, straightforward piece. Fast with Fly and an accurate attack, this big bat really wants to Inspire for that second Defense Dice, though they don’t gain anything beyond that. Remember Grasping Talons for this fighter, and always move over enemies if you can swing it. Overall, The Carnskyr will be a nice backbone piece for your team to make longer charges and roll extra dice for variant effects.
Pewdrig is probably the fighter that gains the most from Inspiring. His initial attack isn’t bad, per se, but it is dicey as usual. Inspiring gives him speed, defense, accuracy, and removes Critical from Grievous for a flat damage boost. Wow! If at all possible, keep Pewdrig around til the later stages of the game so he can really flex his culinary skills on your enemies.
And finally we come to Seddrik. Poor, overlooked Seddrik is probably the least valuable team member. While having a Ranged Attack is vaguely useful, especially when it’s pretty accurate, he lacks any significant damage, he lacks the ability to get Haunch Counters, and he lacks any utility beyond the occasional one damage poke from range. While this is useful, and I wouldn’t recommend completely ignoring Seddrik, I do think he’ll often be an after thought in game plans due to the other four fighters simply being stronger or more utilitarian. Still, threatening that long range poke to Drive Back enemies on Treasure can be occasionally very strong, and he can always pick up a melee Weapon if he wants to contribute in other ways.
Conclusion
Overall, The Skinnerkin bring an interesting element to the table – when the dice are kind to them, they can power up quite quickly and overwhelm the opponent with good stats and Abilities. If fate goes against them, they will struggle to keep up and scale in the way that other Warbands do. Having consistently usable Abilities makes their Larder feel quite deep with supplies, but sometimes those supplies are rank and unfortunate. Feast or Famine, as one might say. If you find yourself a gambler, taking a seat at their table has the capacity to be a joyous occasion, or one where you find yourself the main course…
And with that, our meal is concluded. I hope you enjoyed your stay at Path to Glory. Please thank the chef on your way out.
Best of luck on your Path to Glory!
