It’s an exciting time to be a Warcry player. With absolutely no warning whatsoever, Games Workshop came in and added allegiance abilities to the entire game in the new Briar and Bone boxed set. We’re calling them “battle traits,” and will be breaking down how each of them works. Many thanks to GW for sending us an advanced copy of Briar and Bone for review.
Check out our review of the Death Grand Alliance Battle Traits.
If all fighters in your warband share a faction and/or grand alliance runemark, you can pick the battle trait corresponding to that runemark (and use it will all fighters). Are you using allies in your warband? If so, use the grand alliance battle trait. Are all your fighters from a single faction? You can use your faction battle trait or the GA battle trait.
We’re continuing on with our thoughts on every single Battle Trait, this time with Order. There’s a whole bunch of factions here, and unlike the other grand alliances there isn’t really a common playstyle to Order. You can find as many playstyles as there are factions here, but as with every other grand alliance, there’s historically been a tendency towards soup when folks show up to events. Slann Starmaster, Hexbane’s Hunters, Calthia Xandire, Starblood Stalkers, the Runelord… the list of popular allies is a long one. It’s nice that there’s no consensus auto-include, but I’m curious if this new set of rewards for ignoring allies persuades people to drop all those powerful options. At the very least, it looks like there’ll be some fun stuff to explore. Let’s take a look at the traits, starting with the generic one.
Order – Courageous Defenders
When a friendly fighter with this battle trait makes the “Take Cover” reaction, critical hits become hits on a roll of 3+ instead of 4+
TheSaltySea: Honestly I’ve wished Take Cover was better for a long time. It’s just such a high cost to maybe save yourself 2 damage. I’m not sure if this is enough, but as far as universal traits go, this is how it should be. Low impact, but aimed at countering a type of warband that can get out of hand quickly in an unfun way if they roll well.
Thundercloud: Fighting the heavy shooting meta ironically with an ability for the Grand Alliance most responsible for it.
Cities of Sigmar – Dawnbringer Zealots
At the end of each battle round, pick a friendly fighter with this battle trait that is on the battlefield. You can remove up to D3 damage points allocated to that fighter. Remove 1 additional damage point if that fighter is within 3” of an objective, carrying treasure and/or within 1” of an obstacle.
TheSaltySea: I’m confused about how the rules will function on this. It’s written with the previous CoS runemark, before they split the faction into 3 pieces. In the stingiest interpretation of the rule, this runemark doesn’t exist so none of the 3 CoS factions have a battle trait. In the most expansive interpretation, you might be able to cross the streams in COS factions and still enjoy the battle trait. Could a Castelites Ogor Warhulk get the D3 heals as part of a Dispossessed warband? That would be wild. One of Dispo’s strengths is their ability to supercharge big allies, which is balanced by them having zero big scary things in-faction, so adding a heal there if you pick a “close” ally would be pretty fun.
Thundercloud: I’m going to weigh in with a disagreement on this, as the trait is keyed to everything in the warband having the faction runemark. The runemark here is the old Cities of Sigmar runemark, and there are no warbands currently with that runemark, as the warband with it was superceded by the new Cities of Sigmar pack from November 2023. Given the eight month gap theoretically there were several weeks where the Studio could have edited the document before it was finalised for printing but it looks like it was forgotten and will likely be in a future FAQ to specifically make Castelites better. This means all the Cities of Sigmar warbands should be falling back on the Order trait.
TheSaltySea: If that’s so, they’ll be joining Order of Azyr and The Blacktalons, who both got left out in the cold. I’m assuming these traits were written and packaged before the decision to give all the story boxes Warcry rules. Is that what we’re calling them? I don’t have a better term, but supposedly we’re expecting 8 in total, and Warcry is really the perfect home for them. I hope we get traits for the story teams in a future release to fully integrate them into the game.
Daughters of Khaine – Jubilant Bloodletting
When a friendly fighter with this battle trait makes a melee attack action, after the hit rolls have been made, if you scored one or more critical hits and one or more hits and/or critical hits, you can pick a [double], [triple] or [quad] you have. Add 2 to the value of that ability dice, to a maximum of 6.
TheSaltySea: DoK have a decent number of abilities that trigger off your ability value, but some of them, like Slaughter’s Strength, need to be used before an attack to matter. It seems like a big setup to get a reward that won’t always be relevant. I wish this were one of the clearly strong ones, since I have yet to figure out how to make DoK work in Warcry 2nd edition. It’s not that this doesn’t do anything, I just don’t know what the setup is that makes it clearly strong.
Thundercloud: I think it still has a great deal of potential, because it’s about priming abilities for later in the turn. You have someone go and stab some chaff, and then boost Heartseekers, Slaughter’s Strength or Doomfire Bolt by two, or if you are really lucky and have a Slaughter Queen the Orgy of Slaughter quad. It turns crappy or mediocre triples or quads into decent or good ones.
Fyreslayers – Runic Momentum
After a friendly fighter with this battle trait uses an ability, add 1 to their Move characteristic for the next move action they make this activation.
TheSaltySea: In theory anything giving movement to a slow warband is a great thing. This is a nice benefit to Relentless Zeal and Duty unto Death, for example. It doesn’t improve the output of those abilities above some ally options in the GA (Calthia Xandire’s Coordinated Strike, for example, is a whole lot of movement if you want it), but it sure helps you avoid feeling like you’ve shot yourself in the foot just because you didn’t include them. I like it.
Thundercloud: Makes pure Fyreslayers faster, and Relentless Zeal lets you go 7”, getting you into or away from trouble.
TheSaltySea: Something funny with this, you can do things like use Onslaught or Encase in Molten Rock before your first action even though they’re meant to buff attacks. Then you get a 4” move and attack in your 2nd activation, still getting the buff. I know it’s a small bit of value but I wonder if it will start to add up in-game.
Hunters of Huanchi – Hidden Hunters
After deployment, each player whose warband has this battle trait can pick a friendly fighter with this battle trait from each friendly battle group that is on the battlefield. One at a time, remove those fighters from the battlefield and pick a different battle group, then deploy that fighter as if it were part of that battle group.
TheSaltySea: This is tricksy and cool. It would be completely broken on some warbands, but luckily Huanchi don’t have any big brawlers they get to play shell-game with. As-is it should still let you do fun cheeky things. Imagine getting your leader out of a vulnerable deployment group in the “Take down opposing leaders” mission, for example.
Thundercloud: Deployment shenanigans for doing things like a partially refused flank, or seeing what your opponent has done and recalculating on the fly to adjust the balance of forces. It’s sneaky skinky time and I like it.
Idoneth Deepkin – Power of the Tides
In battle rounds 1 and 2, add 1 to the Move characteristic of friendly fighters with this battle trait. In battle rounds 3 and 4, add 1 to the strength characteristic of melee attack actions made by friendly fighters with this battle trait.
TheSaltySea: If you couldn’t tell by my name I like IDK quite a bit. This is a super cool way to execute on the Tides ability from AOS. I know that an Akhelian King is going to be pretty incredible with this in the endgame of later rounds, the question is whether you can use the movement buff to survive that long. Namarti have generally struggled in 2nd ed, and we don’t have another option for cheap objective contesters. There’s a solution for the faction in here somewhere (maybe using the new squid team that came out in Underworlds) but it likely takes a lot of testing.
Thundercloud: What the world needed was Move 11” Akhelian Kings. It is interesting though, as IDK have struggled for a variety of reasons, and are seen as a faction to grab an ally from (the aforementioned Akhelian King) rather than a faction to take on their own. An extra 1” move makes everything easier to position in the first two turns, and +1 strength on the last two turns gives you a strength 6 Akhelian King but more importantly strength 4 Reavers and strength 5 Thralls, so that your Namarti stuff can wound things in melee. I can see potential in IDK, particularly bringing in Squidward and some of the Underworld fighters for the intermediate fighters the faction lacks, and the ability is very good considering low strength is one of the issues with IDK (the other one being low toughness and wounds, the Namarti die to a stiff breeze and you get weak chaff level resilience but not weak chaff level prices).
Khainite Shadowstalkers – Swarming Shadows
At the end of each battle round, each player whose warband has this battle trait can pick two friendly fighters that are within 9” of each other, more than 3” from each enemy fighter and are not carrying treasure. Place each friendly fighter in the position the other fighter was in when they were picked.
TheSaltySea: This has real value for protecting targets in the “take down X fighter” battleplans. Imagine your opponent needs to score the bonus point for slaying a hero and yoink, your Shroud Queen blinks 9” away. It also lets you drop a Darkflame Warlock into shooting range if your opponent thought they were being cautious, or lets you position a Warlock for the attack debuff triple Harness Shadow in the following round. There are a whole bunch of uses to this. Do most of them feel fancier than they feel scary? Sure, but “fancy, not scary” may as well be the Khainites tagline in Warcry. The help they need as a faction is bigger than what a battle trait can provide, and if they ever get that help then this will fit their playstyle perfectly.
Thundercloud: Yeah, repositioning models is incredibly powerful, and even more so being able to do it every battle round. Some factions have similar abilities as a Triple. Shooters swap with melee fighters, fighters with ranged abilities are suddenly in range to use that ability next round, models that are out of position get swapped with a less valuable model (especially if it looks like they’ll get ganged up on next turn). The warband as a whole haven’t done great in second edition, and a strong trait will hopefully help them out. I do agree they suffer from a bad case of their units need to be either cheaper or better. Their models are fast, they hit reasonably hard, but toughness 3 and 8 wounds on their low level fighters and toughness 3 and 12 wounds on everything else except the leader means that heavy shooting or reasonable melee just removes them from the board. Toughness 3 and 8 wounds means banging your elbow on the door frame kills you.
Kharadron Overlords – A Good Deal
Once per battle round, after a friendly fighter with this battle trait is targeted by an attack action but before the hit rolls are made, you can make a deal. If you do so, add one wild dice to your opponent’s saved wild dice. Then subtract 2 from the damage points allocated to that fighter by each hit and each critical hit from that attack action (to a minimum of 1).
TheSaltySea: Does anyone else find it hilarious that the opponent doesn’t get to accept or decline? It’s a very mafia-style deal. Anyway -2/-2 damage is huge, and in round 4 you don’t care about giving your opponent a wild dice (aside from the new Teratic Cohort) so it’s just pure value there. I think this is immensely powerful, and despite their nerfs KO can still make some respectable lists with no allies. Of course, every once in a while you’ll lose a game because you demanded a deal when you probably didn’t need to, and it allowed your opponent to pop off with some crazy ability combo. Maybe we can mitigate the high skill floor in the listbuilding phase? KO has some expensive balloon boys, like the Mizzenmaster, who are pretty much always going to be worth more to you than a wild dice is to your opponent.
Thundercloud: A once per round ability to try saving a critical model, with the downside of storing up some risk for future rounds. I like it. Kharadron didn’t need an overwhelming ability if the last two years of tournament placing is anything to go by, but for pure KO forces where they’ve left Calthia at home, it’s a solid ability.
Lumineth Realmlords – Aetherquartz Reserve
At the start of the first battle round, each player whose warband has this battle trait can pick a friendly fighter. That fighter has an aetherquartz reserve. Once per battle, that fighter can use their aetherquartz reserve. When they do so, the next time that fighter uses an ability, you can treat one [double] you have as a [triple], or one [triple] you have as a [quad].
TheSaltySea: When I first read this I thought it was every battle round and I got so excited I almost went and bought a Vanari Lord Regent. Rampage every round!?!? Sign me up! Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. This trait feels a little low energy, but Lumineth do have some pretty cool triples that are just a little overcosted. Maybe getting one of them as a double once per game ends up feeling pretty good?
Thundercloud: Nice to have and not game breaking, and the model carrying the reserve can get killed and has to be the one using the ability. I think Lumineth are in a good place with decent cheap chaff (Wardens) and decent heavy chaff (Stoneguard) and spiking a double to a triple to pull off something like Emotional Transference from a Cathallar or Perfect strike with a Bladelord Seneschal or use a triple to just Rampage with a Vanari Lord Regent. You are signaling to your opponent at the start of the game you want to use an ability with one of your models, but I don’t think anyone is seeing you put down a 200+ point model and thinking you aren’t going to do anything with it.
Seraphon
After you pick your warband, pick either Coalesced or Starborne and gain the corresponding battle trait listed below:
Coalesced: Friendly fighters with this battle trait can add a 1 to the value of any [triple] spent to use the Tearing bite ability, to a maximum of 6.
Starborne: Fighters with this battle trait can make the “Starborn” reaction when they are targeted by melee and ranged attack actions.
TheSaltySea: Another one where I’d love a quick FAQ. I know this is lore blasphemy… but it appears that you essentially get to choose the trait you want to use after seeing your opponent’s warband. So you could look across the table and go “Is my opponent looking to bully me in combat? Let’s buff Tearing Bite. Is my opponent going to bomb me out with artillery? Let’s be Starborn and stay alive”. If that’s the case, I think this is one of the strongest traits, since flexibility is so good. I think RAI might be to have you declare it on your warband roster or something before meeting your opponent though, which lowers the power level significantly. My opinion on this one is entirely dependent on the FAQ results.
Questor Soulsworn – Heroes Without Limits
Fighters with this battle trait can use multiple abilities each activation. Such fighters can use the same ability more than once, and can use multiple abilities when they would normally only be able to use one. Where abilities grant bonus actions, such abilities are used one at a time and are fully resolved before another ability can be used.
TheSaltySea: Picture this: 1) Activate Errant Questor Grandhammer. 2) Cast Onslaught. 3)Move up into a crowded combat. 4) Cast With the Force of a Thunderbolt. 5) Swing twice with 4/6/3/4, assuredly taking something down. 6) Cast You Won’t Even Slow Me Down and swing a 3rd time with this buffed attack profile.
Sure that’s 3 doubles, but QS players don’t have to complain anymore about lacking for output. I think most of the time you’re still better off holding abilities in reserve and hunting for gradual value to avoid getting left behind late in rounds, but you’ll get some great stories out of this. The ability to punish a spacing mistake from opponents will be important.
Thundercloud: Questor Soulsworn have won tournaments as a one box warband, so being able to stack abilities opens up a world of possibilities for concentric buffs.
Stormcast Eternals – Scions of the Storm
After deployment, you can pick a friendly fighter with this battle trait. If that fighter is on the battlefield, remove them from the battlefield. At the start of the second battle round onwards, starting with the attacker, you can place that fighter on the battlefield more than 5” from each enemy fighter and more than 3” from each objective and treasure token.
TheSaltySea: Some respectable fighters who can take advantage of this rule: Calthia Xandire, Praetor Prime, Protector Prime and Protectors, Hurricane Crossbow, Judicator Crossbow, Evocator w Grandstave. Stormcast are on life support after some excessive nerfs in the last metawatch, but this is intriguing. I spent some time listbuilding with it and honestly didn’t find anything I liked in Sacrosanct or Thunderstrike (the two chambers I play), but Skaventide’s Warcry rules are right around the corner, and everything could change…
Thundercloud: I fully anticipate a refresh of the Stormcast Eternals rules with the new battle tome. This is another great ability to redeploy something slow that’s really useful to a low model count force with some models with Move 3.
Sylvaneth – Spirit Pathways
Once per battle, a friendly fighter with this battle trait can use the ‘Walk The Spirit Paths’ ability with needing or spending any ability dice, and can use this ability as if they had the Warrior () runemark.
TheSaltySea: A free teleport is cool! Fits perfectly with the lore too. Arch Revenants, Bow Kurnoths, and Scythe Kurnoths can abuse the distance restrictions on Walk The Spirit Paths, so there’s a whole bunch to explore.
Thundercloud: Another free teleport ability that is very useful for moving all the models that can’t use Walk the Spirit Paths normally and with no restrictions on whether the model can be carrying treasure or not.
Twistweald – Ravaged by Corruption
At the end of each battle round, you can choose a friendly fighter with this battle trait that is within 1” of one or more enemy fighters and roll a dice. On a 2+, allocate 1 damage point to that friendly fighter If that friendly fighter is not take down, pick one of those enemy fighters. Allocated D3 damage points to that enemy fighter.
TheSaltySea: This one feels like an extension of their normal abilities, which is nice. In Thundercloud’s guide to Twistweald on this fine website, he felt like the Revenants were just purely better than the Dryads at the same job. This seems to increase the disparity. It’s just so hard to come by a wound pool that’s healthy enough to feel good using a self-damage ability in this warband, but maybe if we just use restraint and only apply it to situations where we’ve left an opposing fighter on 1 or 2 wounds this is a great way to finish them off and deny some activation value to our opponent.
Thundercloud: Well look who’s got even better now. Feeds into the spite theme for the warband, and it’s basically an extra D3 damage on enemy fighters engaged in melee with you at the end of every turn, potentially useful for knocking that last point of health off something instead of wasting an attack, or freeing up a model so it can go and do something else.
Wildercorps Hunters – Point Blank Volley
Once per battle round, before a friendly fighter with this battle trait makes a ranged attack action, you can have them make a point blank volley. When they do so, you can treat the minimum range of that weapon as 1”.
TheSaltySea: This makes counterplay against Arbalesters really difficult. They have a massive 6” donut of blind spot, which normally makes them harder to put on objectives, etc.. Now even if the opponent manages to crowd the big crossbow, it can still blow them away as long as they didn’t make it base to base. Quite scary for opponents, and quite nice for anyone who finds the Arbalester to be their favorite model.
Thundercloud: Yeah, this removes how I dealt with Arbalesters in the last tournament I played (run a chaff dog up to them and bite them from inside their ranged weapon range). Removes a major weakness from the warband and makes them even better.
TheSaltySea: I love how for all these we both tried to think of it from the faction’s perspective, but for Wildercorps we couldn’t help but think of it from the side of playing against them.
Vulkyn Flameseekers
Friendly fighters with the Berserker () runemark can use the following ability:
[Triple] Reborn in Flame: Pick a friendly fighter with the Beast () runemark that has been taken down. Set that fighter up on a platform or the battlefield floor wholly within 3” of this fighter. That fighter no longer counts as being taken down. Remove each damage point allocated to that fighter.
TheSaltySea: Is it just me, or does Order have a lot of traits that seem unusually skill-testing? Some folks are going to lose games because they cast this with their triple instead of Creed of Flame, which might feel a little rough. That said it’s a good option to have, and being a full heal resurrection makes it a great choice. We already see lots of 1-box Vulkyn Flameseekers players at events, it’s the most popular faction in Warcry by a substantial margin, so giving them more toys is good, especially when they’re toys that fit the theme as well as this one does. I just worry that this one is going to fool some people into decisions they’ll regret…
Thundercloud: I’m not going to say bringing your lava dog back with full health is bad, but yeah, I can see some people going double or triple Kyndledroth thinking they’ll keep jumping the enemy with them then keep bringing them back as a summon instead of just having Scalebreakers.
Ydrilan Riverblades – The River Winds Its Way
Add 1 to the Move characteristic of friendly fighters with this battle trait that start a move action within 1” of a terrain feature and on the battlefield floor until the end of that activation.
TheSaltySea: Listen, the vast majority of these battle traits are really cool. This one is incredibly evocative. You’re on the lowground, near terrain… it’s saying you’ve summoned a river to help you move faster. What a cool way to communicate that idea. Maybe I stop there instead of talking about what this warband needs vs what this trait gives them more of. Just play as pure Sonic-meme. Gotta go fast.
Thundercloud: Another trait that makes an already fast warband faster, as long as they stick close to terrain, of which there is generally plenty in Warcry. 6” move on everyone is sprinting across the board.
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