Intro
Welcome back to Path to Glory for another warband review article! Thank you once again to Games Workshop for providing a free copy of the warband for us to review. Today, we will be discussing another Order warband with Knives of the Crone, cultists of prophet Krethusa the Croneseer (whose own mini is fantastic, I might add). As an avid Death enjoyer, I would like to point out this makes for three new Order warbands in the second edition before we’ve gotten a single Death warband, so I don’t want to hear any gripes about faction representation while I wait on a whole Grand Alliance! Anyway, back on topic, while these models don’t necessarily appease me from a visual perspective in the same way that Krethusa does, I have to say that they appear to be a great hybrid of narrative and mechanical implementation. While WarCom already let the cat out of the bag regarding what the warband can do, I’ll still summarize the warscroll and fighter cards and do my best to inject my own analysis, as I always do. With that as primer, let’s hop into the warband itself.
Warscroll
Inspire
Unlike many warscrolls (perhaps excepting that of Grandfather’s Gardeners), this one really only makes sense if you look at it wholistically rather than in bits and pieces. The inspire condition, for example, tells me that my fighters inspire when they activate Foretold Wisdom as a result of Visions in the Blood after making a successful attack. Maybe I’m on Good Burger, because yep, I know some of these words…
Visions in the Blood
Ah good, Visions in the Blood, they did mention that earlier, after my fighter makes a successful attack I—wait, what the heck are Rituals of Prophecy???
Rituals of Prophecy
Alright, I’ve had some fun with this, but here’s where we actually get to what the warscroll does. Very simply, at the start of the first Action step in each battle round and whenever a friendly fighter makes a successful attack, you’re going to roll 4 attack dice and, depending on the outcome, you will gain some benefit(s). As I mentioned in the intro, this is a great intersection of narrative and game mechanics, essentially having you throw bones and then interpret them using the Prophecy Table (we’ll cover that shortly). George has kindly worked out the math on this (see below), but, as we noted on the podcast episode, the highlight is that you will always get at least one effect out of this roll, even if it’s not necessarily the one you need at that given moment. Additionally, the last 3 lines of the Rituals of Prophecy ability do introduce a good amount of player control to the equation. Rolling triples gets you your choice of prophecy, quadruples your choice of any two prophecies, and crits become any symbol of your choice. While, from a competitive lens, I don’t love feeling a lack of control when I play, this actually removes a lot of the feelsbad that you would typically expect from such a dicey mechanic. In fact, the math suggests that you actually have agency in a large percentage of your outcomes.
Hi everyone, Kyros here with a brief statistical breakdown. In the table above, I’ve shown the calculation for the odds of all outcomes on a prophecy roll that give you an outcome where the Knives of the Crone player has no agency about what prophecy is actually foretold. As you can see, 9.259% of the time you will get a single prophecy and have no choice about which one, and an additional 11.111% of the time you’ll get two prophecies and have no say about which two. Taken together, this means that (only) 20.37% of the time, you’ll have no choice about what prophecy you get. However, the other 79.63% of the time, you’ll be able to have precisely the prophecy you want by using a crit to convert a triple (or natively having a triple). Additionally, you’d have the option to convert a 2nd double instead of a triple, so, for the vast majority of that 79.63%, you’ll actually have the choice of 1 specific prophecy or the other 2 prophecies. In conclusion, the prophecy table is far less random or dice-reliant than it may first seem, and you will have excellent control over your prophecies – the hard part will be hitting attacks!
Prophecy Table – Foretold Slaughter
Double swords get you Foretold Slaughter, which grants you crit grievous on your next melee attack this round. While this is fine, particularly given that none of the fighters in the warband have any weapon abilities on their fighter cards nor have access to base 3 damage, it is adding dice luck on top of an engine that already has some dice luck in it, which is never a great prospect from a competitive standpoint. Additionally, if you pull this effect out after your last attack of the round, it does nothing for you, as the effect does not persist between rounds. Thankfully, being double swords also means that this is the least common “fixed” outcome from the table, so you won’t get this too frequently unless you actually want it, which will, of course, still be the case from time to time.
Prophecy Table – Foretold Wisdom
Double hammers get you Foretold Wisdom, arguably the strongest effect on the warscroll, as it allows you to peek at the top card of your objective deck and either leave it there or slide it to the bottom of the deck. Deck manipulation is a consistently underrated effect and one that is arguably more important than ever given the types of objectives we have in the game, especially in a world where people are taking 13+ objectives more frequently than ever before. While I still would not recommend taking more than 13 objectives (and even then, only in certain pairings), smoothing out your scoring is extremely desirable. For example, consider Countdown to Cataclysm, which runs pretty significantly on getting Wreckers and Spread Havoc at the right time. Sometimes CtC games are won and lost on whether Spread Havoc, in particular, scores for 1 or for 2 glory. Even more situationally, you might just need a particular power card to supplement your ability to score an objective. For example, if you are playing for Strip the Realm in a BA x PnP pairing, you might not want to draw it into hand until you have your Lure of Battle handy as well. There’s just a lot to like about getting perfect information from your deck. On top of that, this one also inspires the attacking fighter when it comes (notably, you cannot inspire from your start-of-round roll since it is not granted by Visions in the Blood), which is pretty vital to the warband overall. Being on hammers instead of swords, it is nice to have this be a bit more likely of an outcome than our previous entry since I think you will want to achieve this outcome the most frequently.
Prophecy Table – Foretold Protection
Any combination of Flanked/Surrounded, Flanked/Flanked, or Surrounded/Surrounded results in Foretold Protection, which grants you a re-roll in your next Save roll made in the current battle round. Note that, like Foretold Slaughter, this re-roll applies board-wide, not just for a fighter who may have gotten this result from Visions in the Blood. Given that the warband is relatively fragile when uninspired (as we will see in the fighter cards momentarily), this is a great consolation prize in cases where you don’t quite manage the Foretold Wisdom to inspire to 2 Dodge on your Save, as 1 Dodge + re-roll is functionally similar in many instances. To spoil some stats, once inspired (or even uninspired in the case of your leader), the whole warband is on 2 Dodge which, when combined with this re-roll, can give them a surprising amount of staying power, particularly with good odds to hit a Stand Fast. While this has the same potential downside of Foretold Slaughter in that you may be taking the last turn in a round anyway when you proc the effect (making it pointless), I think this is just generally more applicable of an effect and will be critical to keeping your fighters on the table.
Overall, while there are some timing-related considerations for all 3 of these abilities, together they make for a pretty compelling warscroll, especially given the amount of hidden agency we discussed earlier when looking through the math.
Fighters
As usual, we’ll start with the warband’s leader Kaerna Vix, who sports a physical profile of 4 Move, 2 Dodge, 4 Health for 2 Bounty with an attack profile of 1R/2H/2D. Nothing too out of the ordinary with any of these stats, they are just generally solid. She has good bulk, especially if you are consistently accessing Foretold Protection, with decent mobility and offensive output. She inspires to gain an additional die on her attack, bumping up to 1R/3H/2D, which is a very nice boost, especially since you are getting not only accuracy but also better odds of accessing the damage from Foretold Slaughter. While I do think the rest of the warband gains more from inspiring and so I would prioritize using some accuracy to help them out before I help Kaerna, her stats are plenty good enough to make her a focal point for your warband, especially once you start tacking on upgrades.
Next up we have Krieta, who has a physical profile of 4 Move, 1 Dodge, 4 Health, and is also worth 2 Bounty. Her uninspired attack profile is begging to use Foretold Slaughter at 1R/4S/1D, and I would be hard-pressed to say I’m going to plan to attack with her unless she has some grievous support online. That said, she gets some great boosts from inspiring, going to flat 2 Damage on her attack and 2 Dodge on her Save roll, as well as tacking on the flying trait for some better mobility. Once inspired, she is an extremely potent piece in a world where you will often have access to crit grievous (if not just straight grievous from a card like Great Strength). Great synergy with Hidden Aid too, both for accuracy and for better survivability. She is definitely my highest priority inspiration from the warband, she just gains so much and will essentially be a second copy of your leader (arguably better) once she gets there. That said, if you miss that attack with her in the first round and/or fail to hit Foretold Wisdom, it is going to feel rough.
Tazari is next up at 4 Move, 1 Dodge, 4 Health and again worth 2 Bounty. She has access to two weapon profiles on her uninspired side at 1R/2H/2D and 2R/3S/1D. When inspired, she also goes to 2 Dodge with flying while her weapons combine into a single 2R/2H/2D attack. While you certainly want to access that 2 Dodge with her, her base weapons are perfectly serviceable to the point where, if given the choice between using Foretold Wisdom or setting up a Foretold Slaughter for an uninspired (or maybe even inspired) Krieta, I might actually opt for the latter. While you obviously want to see all of your fighters inspire at some point in the game, she feels like a piece where you want to be setting up for the rest of your warband, perhaps while claiming some positional scoring, rather than a central part of your gameplan.
Speaking of support pieces, last and least is Azphel, the only fighter in the warband worth 1 Bounty on a physical profile of 4 Move, 1 Dodge, and 3 Health. His uninspired attack profiles are also pretty unattractive at 1R/2S/1D and 3R/3S/1D. He does still go to 2 Dodge when inspired and swap from swords to hammers on both attacks, but being stuck at only 1 damage on a 4-fighter warband is pretty brutal. Even more so than Tazari, I think all you really want to do with Azphel is charge onto a token, score Aggressive Defender, Get Stuck In, etc., and hope that he hits so you can make some prophecy rolls. He reminds me a bit of how you might play Ahnslaine in Ylthari’s Guardians. It’s cool if he can score some stuff for you, but he is also completely expendable as long as it means he can better serve the other members of your warband, which is a pretty great analog for how he would be treated narratively as well.
Conclusion
While I do think the Knives of the Crone have some very engaging mechanics and (mostly) solid fighter profiles, I think they don’t quite satisfy my personal tastes for intersection of mechanics and aesthetics. That said, I have to applaud the design team on creating such a perfect marriage of narrative with game mechanics that I’m sure many of you will be able to enjoy, even if it’s not necessarily my cup of tea. Having seen this warband and Grandfather’s Gardeners (as well as a number of others to-date), I think GW has proven that warscrolls have the ability to be far more than was initially feared when Tunnelpack and Emberwatch were revealed. While I still think there is no way to replicate the highs of the original design (using both fighter cards and faction decks) with the warscroll approach, seeing unique mechanics like this implemented via the warscroll gives me a lot of optimism for future warband designs.
Back on topic for the warband itself, the Knives seem like a perfectly solid option competitively. While I think there are some aspects of the warband which will keep them out of the highest tiers of competitive viability (namely their uninspired fragility and relatively low damage output when crit grievous and certain inspirations fail to cooperate), there’s also plenty here to work with if you are trying to win in a tournament setting. You have at least 3 solid stat balls to work with on the fighter cards together with 3 very functional abilities you can pull off the warscroll that can be influenced with reasonable enough frequency to suit the current game state. As far as Nemesis pairings go, I think Blazing Assault is very nearly non-negotiable here. It packs in far more accuracy than any other Rivals deck together with the best grievous output via Twist the Knife and Great Strength. On top of that, Illusory Fighter, Healing Potion, Great Fortitude, Shields Up, and Hidden Aid are all fantastic ways to cover for early game fragility until you are able to get inspired. While very much tried and tested at this point, you won’t be surprised to hear that this will probably pair best with Countdown to Cataclysm or Pillage and Plunder. We already went through some of the CtC synergy when discussing the objective deck manipulation from Foretold Wisdom, but I particularly wanted to highlight the value of Improvised Attack for the warband, as Visions in the Blood only cares that you’ve made a successful attack, it doesn’t care if that attack happens to be made in the power step. On the flip side, PnP offers its great suite of objectives while also granting you some more survival/elusiveness tech via Impossibly Quick, Wary Delver, and Canny Sapper. On top of this, it also introduces the maximum grievous potential of supplementing the BA cards with Gloryseeker, a crutch I have come to lean on quite a bit in the second edition. If you’re looking for some less common partners, I actually like the prospect of playing BA with Emberstone Sentinels here. You have the optimal glory distribution for scoring Supremacy (holding 2 treasure tokens with any permutation of your fighters will score it for you) and some solid staying power once you get folks inspired. Since you only want a few of the ploys from ES anyway (mostly Settle In, Confusion, and By the Numbers, perhaps Hold the Line! or Hidden Paths), you don’t struggle with the usual issue of BA pairings where you feel you’ve left a lot of good stuff on the cutting room floor. Additionally, having both Lure of Battle and Confusion in the deck gives you more disruption potential than most pairings. The surges can be a bit of a sticking point in this pairing, but I like it a lot in theory.
Well, I hope this has given you a good starting point for your adventures with the Knives of the Crone. Please reach out and let us know what you think about them and where they will land in the meta. Until next time, we wish you the best of luck on YOUR Path to (or visions of???) Glory!
