Being in both of the recent first edition “Starter Sets” appears to have paid off for The Sepulchral Guard, as they make the transition to the second edition via free download on Warcom. Arguably the best Take and Hold warband at the end of the first edition, it is nice to see that the designers expect them to reprise that role here in the second. We will see a number of changes to the rules which may impact their efficiency, but let’s jump in and see how they’re looking these days!
Warscroll
Inspire
The warscroll details two separate inspiration conditions, one for your leader and one for the rest of your fighters. Your non-leader fighters inspire when they are given a raise token, whereas your leader inspires after 3 or more raise tokens are given to friendly fighters. For reference, I am reading this as equivalent to “the third or subsequent time a friendly fighter is given a raise token” in that it seems to only care about giving the tokens, not how many are on your fighters at any given time. This would mean that raising the same fighter multiple times will contribute to your leader’s inspire just the same as raising 3 separate fighters. Cheating ahead to the fighter cards, every one of your non-leader fighters has only 2 Health, meaning they will generally be dropping pretty quickly. With the increased focus on interaction in this edition, that should translate to plenty of opportunities to raise them, so folks ought to be inspiring pretty quickly. Even if you’re not really inspiring, that is probably just you suffering from success a little bit (unless, of course, it is because your leader got sniped), which is fine as well.
Forward!
One of the classic core abilities for the warband, Forward! is usable only by your leader (and only if he has no charge tokens) to move two other friendly fighters. This ability has always been a phenomenal way to support the Take and Hold gameplan of this warband and I expect that to continue into the second edition. Moving two fighters onto treasure tokens simultaneously will often leave you a token “ahead” even if your opponent is able to knock one of them off, allowing you to keep persistent pressure on your opponent to do something about it if they don’t want you hitting any significant objective payoff for holding. Great ability, you’ll still be spamming this about as frequently as you are able as the Sepulchral Guard player.
Arise!
The other classic core ability for the warband, Arise! is another leader-restricted ability which (again, if your leader has no charge tokens) enables you to raise up to two friendly fighters onto starting hexes in your territory. This is significantly increased throughput compared to the first edition, which would normally mean that you don’t need to use the ability as frequently. However, the added caveat now is that fighters come back with 1 damage on them. As we discussed earlier, all of the raise-eligible fighters have only 2 Health, so this will mean they are coming back vulnerable. Basically, any individual fighter will have next to nothing in terms of staying power, particularly since they are losing their upgrades when they are slain, but this is somewhat offset by the increased replenishment rate from this ability, as well as the fact that they will have 0 Bounty after being raised. While I think the ability is still solid, my biggest concern will be the types of ping cards we see in the future. For now, many of them are unable to hit vulnerable or damaged fighters, but things like the Farstriders’ Vanguard or Razors’ Hammertide abilities will be absolutely devastating to this warband, if too widely available. I think these kind of matchups (and potential future design space) will ultimately limit the competitive viability of the warband as a whole.
Grasping Hands
Getting into our first once-per-game ability, Grasping Hands is a surge ability after you pick an enemy fighter as the target of an attack. The target is considered to be surrounded for that attack, which is a pretty sizeable accuracy buff, particularly in the case where your fighter hits on Swords. While it’s a decent enough ability, I’d have preferred something that provided more direct support to their Take and Hold gameplan.
Relentless Blows
Relentless Blows is sort of a hybrid of the first edition cards [
The Necromancer Commands] and [
Ceaseless Attacks], but somehow worse than either of those cards independently. After a failed attack, you get to make another attack with a different friendly fighter, but you have to target the same enemy fighter. I have to say, this is pretty awkward for a warband that has almost exclusively Range 1 attacks at its disposal. Short of driving back into another one of your fighters on a failed attack, you are essentially only getting to try this in cases where you have two fighters adjacent to the same enemy fighter, and even then only when the first attack misses, which will likely not be so common given that you’ve got that fighter flanked (or even surrounded). I don’t mean to lament on changes from the first edition too hard, but when the changes are this baffling, I think it is worth pointing out that they had two perfectly serviceable effects already templated from the first edition, yet elected for this situational of a replacement instead. On top of that, this ability once again does not support their Take and Hold gameplan, not a fan of this one.
Bone Shrapnel
Bone Shrapnel is our final ability on the warscroll, this time as surge after a friendly fighter is slain by an enemy fighter to deal them 1 damage in return, if that fighter is not already vulnerable. As a deterrent, I quite like this one. “Be careful if you want to kill me, you might set yourself up for a kill in return” is actually the kind of thing you could use to disincentivize your opponent from going after a friendly fighter standing on a feature token. Furthermore, there is no range limitation listed on the ability, meaning even fighters using ranged attacks will not be safe from the ping back (which narratively seems a bit odd to me, but I’ll take it). I think I’ll go so far as to say this is actually my favorite once-per-game on the warscroll, granted that I think the two core abilities are where the warband shines.
Fighters
Very few other leaders are as key to their warband as The Sepulchral Warden, who sports a physical profile of 2 Move, 1 Shield, 4 Health, and 1 Bounty. Don’t let the fact that he is worth the same amount as the rest of the warband fool you, as killing him early in the game will often mean a defeat for the Sepulchral Guard player, since they lose access to both core abilities on the warscroll with him slain. His weapon profiles are very similar to other leaders we’ve seen so far in this edition, with 1R/2H/2D and 2R/2H/1D at his disposal. While you generally won’t be using him to make attacks, these are at least fine should you have cause to do so. Once you get him inspired, there is a bit more impetus to leverage his stats, as he gains an additional hex of movement on top of an additional point of damage to each of his weapons. Between these and his core abilities, you’ll be using your leader quite frequently when playing the warband. However, as I mentioned, his offensive capability will generally be less relevant than simply keeping him alive to keep using Forward! and Arise!
Our first of the warband’s “heroes,” we have the Prince of Dust with a pretty meager physical profile of 2 Move, 1 Shield, 2 Health, and 1 Bounty. His attack is serviceable at 1R/2H/2D, but nothing really to write home about. Once inspired (which should be relatively easy status to obtain given how easy he is to kill), he adds an additional hex of movement as well as stagger to his weapon. I have to say, pretty disappointing to see him not improve much upon inspiration given that seems to be the warband’s whole thing. Very little reason for your opponent to fear killing him since he’s not particularly threatening even upon his return, especially since he comes back vulnerable. I would have liked to at least see 3 Health on him when inspired or something, particularly given the early marketing push from GW about fighters being sturdier in this edition.
The Champion suffers from similar issues at base 2 Move, 1 Dodge, 2 Health and 1 Bounty. He has the same weapon profile at 1R/2H/2D, but once again inspires to add an extra hex of movement, gaining cleave instead of stagger this time. I guess I would rather take the cleave than the stagger, but still not a lot here to disincentivize my opponent from slaying him.
Our final “hero” is the Harvester, who clocks in with the same physical profile as our prior entry at 2 Move, 1 Dodge, 2 Health, and 1 Bounty. His weapon profile of 1R/3S/2D makes him likely the ideal candidate for use of Grasping Hands, given he is the only of your 2-Damage fighters to hit on Swords. Once inspired, he is provided the obligatory additional hex of movement as well as an additional die and brutal on his weapon profile. He’s definitely quite solid still, particularly when you can manufacture supports, I’m just not entirely certain that any of the three of these fighters hit the threshold where I, as the person playing against the Sepulchral Guard, am particularly scared of letting you inspire any of them.
I figure we can cover all of the Zealous Petitioner, Inevitable Petitioner, and Rising Petitioner together since they are all the same statistically. They all start on 2 Move, 1 Shield, 2 Health, and 1 Bounty with weapons at 1R/2S/1D. Similarly, they all inspire to gain that extra hex of movement as well as an additional die on their attacks. Given that they’re not putting out much damage, I expect you’ll see them used exactly as they were in the first edition. Your leader will move them onto tokens with Forward! and bring them back with Arise! when convenient, but I doubt if you’ll be doing much with them otherwise.
Conclusion
For a warband that had recently received a lot of love from the designers in the starter set reprint, I have to say, I am very disappointed in this iteration of them. While they ought to retain the core gameplay loop of moving multiple fighters onto tokens while resurrecting ones that have been slain, I feel like they’ve left the warband lacking in a number of ways. Firstly, the once-per-game abilities they’ve elected to add to the warscroll, to me, should point towards the playstyle you believe the warband embodies. If you want them to be Take and Hold, why is there so little support for that playstyle on my warscroll outside of the core abilities? Additionally, the drop to 2 Health on the three “heroes” is just brutal, especially given that they’ll be coming back vulnerable from Arise! and without upgrades due to the new raise mechanics. For reference, they are easier to slay than a little rat with a bomb strapped to his back (even more so when raised), I just don’t get it. The only offsets to this are the change to Bounty for raised fighters being 0 and the fact that scything no longer exists, but these hardly compensate for the remarkable frailty of the warband. Furthermore, the inability to longboard or offset, coupled with the plethora of teleportation and movement cards they’ve printed this early into the edition leave the leader of the warband, who is perhaps more critical than ever, far too exposed for my liking.
The universal Rivals deck pool is not doing them any favors for competitive play at the moment either. I think you have to take Countdown to Cataclysm for one of your decks currently given the ease of ticking up that tracker off slain fighters (you should have no problem getting all 3 of those ticks over the course of the game). It also has a few very solid end phase cards for the warband, including Set Explosives and Spread Havoc, as well as a key defensive piece for your leader in the form of Utter Conviction. While I would normally seek to pair this with Emberstone Sentinels for horde Take and Hold strategies, the 0 Bounty for raised fighters means that Supremacy will not be particularly consistent for the warband, which significantly chips away at the deck as a desirable option for them. Therefore, I think that, of the 6 decks we’ve seen to date, I would prefer to take Pillage and Plunder instead, particularly given the synergy with surge objectives like Share the Load and general ease of delve spam afforded by the movement economy of the warband.
While I am not particularly excited about the warband in this iteration, I really hope some of you out there who are excited will show me how wrong I am about what I’ve written here. Please go ahead and ping me back on social media with all your glorious wins and success, I really want this warband to prosper! Until then, we wish you the best of luck on YOUR Path to Glory!
