It’s an exciting time to be a Warcry player. With absolutely no warning whatsoever, GW came in and added allegiance abilities to the entire game. We’re calling them battle traits, and here’s the shorthand for how they work:
If each fighter in your warband shares a Faction and/or Grand Alliance runemark, you get to pick the battle trait corresponding to that runemark, and it effects all your fighters. So do you have allies in your warband? If so, use the grand alliance battle trait. Are all your fighters from the same faction? You can use your faction battle trait or the GA battle trait.
We’re on article three out of four (check out our coverage for Grand Alliances Death and Order), and this one is for the seven Destruction factions. You can find some of the punchiest factions in the game here, and Destruction has been a popular choice for the entirety of 2nd edition Warcry. Yes, it’s rather appropriate that the edition taking place in Ghur has been so kind for destruction, but will that continue for the entire year with battle traits? We’re here to find out. The bar for tempting us into using a battle trait is higher for destruction, as they’ve typically been even soupier than the other factions. Why? Well the Gobbapalooza are worded as allies, which allows all destruction teams to ally in cheap fighters with great abilities that don’t count towards the limit of 3 heroes. Add in the presence of playable Thralls in the Troggoths and a greater density of high-quality Underworlds teams than the other GAs, and it can often be difficult to tell what faction a given Destruction player is even playing. Luckily it seems like good old James Workshop understood this, and he pushed the power level on the Battle traits to make up for it. Let’s take a look.
Destruction – Relentless Destroyers
When a friendly fighter with this battle trait makes a melee attack action, the target cannot add 1 to their Toughness for being in cover.
TheSaltySea: One of my local playgroup said they only made this one so people would remember that cover in melee is a rule. I think this is one of the weaker GA traits, but that’s okay because I think the faction traits in destruction are some of the best ones.
Thundercloud: Literally only use this if you have no alternative. I had forgotten about the cover rules as well, which shows how often I’m fighting across cover when I play.
Bonesplitterz – Primal Beliefs
When a player whose warband has this battle trait makes an initiative roll, before initiative is determined, they can re-roll each result of 1.
TheSaltySea: The fact that this says “can” instead of “must is incredible. Bonesplitterz want to have a whole bunch of doubles for Charge, so if you have a single 1 this improves your odds immensely. On the flip side, if you have double ones but you really wanted initiative, try re-rolling them and see if you end up with singles. Giving you some control over your ability rolls is huge value – if the trait said “gain .5 wild dice per round” I’d go bananas for it, and I think that’s roughly equivalent to what we’ve got here. I’ve disparaged Bonesplitterz on my channel in the past, but this is absolutely one of the wildest traits GW published.
Thundercloud: It’s a really strong ability on a faction that’s not performed well due to a mix of poor damage output and low toughness, so we’ll see if Bonesplitterz come out of the cupboards.
Gloomspite Gitz – Da Bad Moon Rises
At the start of a battle round, each player whose warband has this battle trait can roll a dice, starting with the attacker. On a 2+, pick 1 of your opponent’s, or your own [doubles], [triples], or [quads]. Change the value of those ability dice to the result of the dice roll.
TheSaltySea: I’ve been critical of the “ability value” traits thus far, just going off my experience that reactions and dice abilities that manipulate dice values are rarely worth it, but this one is a whole other story. Being able to manipulate your opponent’s dice without spending resources is a delightfully sneaky method of control. You’ll never be able to change something to a 1, but if you roll a 2 or 3 you can still devastate your opponent’s plans. If you roll a 4+ then you just use it on yourself. Beautiful.
Thundercloud: This is very good for buffing your rolls, or messing with your opponents, and you roll the dice and then choose what to do. Roll a 2? Your opponents quad is suddenly a bit useless for anything tied to the ability score. Roll a 6? If you have a quad then Sneaky Stab got real juicy.
Gorger Mawpack – Ravenous Gorging
After an enemy fighter has been taken down by a melee attack action made by a friendly fighter with this battle trait, remove D3 damage points allocated to that friendly fighter.
TheSaltySea: So thematic. We’re eating our opponents! It’s also pretty good for them. Gorger Mawpack are a respectable team, but one of their quirks is they have lots of wounds but low toughness, so even very small opposing chaff still tend to be able to focus them down and take their pound of flesh before the Gorgers get to gorging. Now you’ll be able to recover a bit from those wounds. An aside – lots of the traits read “more damage”, which is cool, but I actually really like the rate at which things get taken off the board in Warcry as-is. It’s almost impossible to table someone, but it’s also almost impossible to keep your most important pieces alive, so games have this great feel where the later rounds become about using your survivors smartly. I worried that giving every faction more damage would change that dynamic, so it’s nice to see a trait with a good heal to balance things out.
Thundercloud: A nice buff for an elite team that end up taking damage pretty inevitably as despite having 30 wounds they’re toughness 3 across the board and end up taking lots of chip damage from various sources. Gorgers are a really strong performer, and I think this keeps them on the top tables as a competitive team.
Ironjawz – Enough Messin’
Each time an enemy fighter makes a wait action, each player whose warband has this battle trait can pick one friendly fighter. That fighter makes a bonus move action of up to 3”.
TheSaltySea: Okay, I’m grading on a different curve here, because I think this one is a tournament-winning quality trait. Ironjawz are slow, but they have an incredible and subtle ability section that gives them board control or damage, but not both. They can spend dice on damage and scoring mission points, or they can spend dice to get where they’re going. The issue is against high body count factions the opponent can wait them out, force IJ to commit to a section of the board to control, and then flood the rest of the board and score points around the ‘jawz. Not anymore. Just because your opponent isn’t waiting doesn’t mean this hasn’t ruined their plans. They’re going to have to move forward early, allowing you to meet them in combat on even terms. Amazing. The problem you have to solve here is what to do against the other combat factions. In my experience IJ traditionally use allies to do that, so you’ll need a plan for Ogor Mawtribes, Skaven, and even some Stormcast factions who don’t mind meeting you in a standup brawl. This trait doesn’t help there, so figure that out in the listbuilding phase and you’re golden.
Thundercloud: LOL. LOL x 2. The standard tournament tactic of having some chaff burn their activations with wait actions in order to draw your opponent out where you can jump on them suddenly has massive drawbacks against a warband that is generally pretty elite. Pure Ironjawz looking very interesting here, and the big drawback of Brutes has always been their speed, and this helps out.
Kruleboyz – Stick ‘Em Good and Quick
Once per battle round, pick a friendly fighter with this battle trait. For that battle round, after that fighter’s activation, you can pick an enemy fighter that was allocated 1 or more damage points by a melee attack action made by the fighter you picked. Allocated D3 damage points to that enemy fighter.
TheSaltySea: This is a great way to represent their whole poisoned weapons schtick. Also I love it because Gutrippaz are incredibly durable, but don’t do much damage for their cost. You need the friendly fighter you’re targeting to survive the round, which Gutrippaz have no problem doing, and then you get a free D3, to make up for their anemic attacks. Perfect match of trait to a faction’s strengths and weaknesses.
Thundercloud: Great for cleaning up models left on 1 or 2 wounds, you make the decision after your fighters used all their activations (to possibly free them up or get them out being surrounded), and very thematic.
Kruleboyz Monstakillaz – ‘Orrible Trap
When a friendly fighter with this battle trait uses the Krule Trap reaction, if the enemy fighter has the Monster () runemark, add 2 to the roll.
TheSaltySea: Someone had to get the worst one, and they couldn’t have picked a better faction to give it to. Monstakillaz have consistently hovered around a 60% winrate in tournaments since their release last fall, often with warbands that only use a single Brewgit or Boggleye for an ally. They would have broken Warcry in half if they’d gotten the Bonesplitterz trait, for example. As is it’s cool and funny and does exactly what the lore says they do, smash monsters. I love it.
Thundercloud: Just after everyone stopped taking Chimeras to tournaments we get a trait designed to completely screw over monsters by immobilising them whenever they get close.
Ogre Mawtribes – Devour Corpse
Friendly fighters with this battle trait and the Brute () or Agile () runemarks can make the following action:
Pick an enemy fighter that is taken down and roll a dice. Remove a number of damage points from this fighter equal to the roll. An enemy fighter cannot be picked as the target of this action more than once per battle.
TheSaltySea: I don’t love that this takes a whole action, but I do like that it’s decidedly more flexible than the Gorger version, since you can do it any time, and from anywhere on the board. D6 is bigger than D3 (insightful, I know) too, so that’s relevant. Taking down Tyrants and other big guys is already an exhausting task, so now it’s gotten even harder.
Thundercloud: I think it’s a bit of a trap, as with your big titan type models like Tyrants every action in the game is precious and healing D6 (so average 3.5 wounds) in return for one of those actions is giving up moving forward or murdering another enemy model.
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