Warcry gets Skinky – Hunters of Huanchi

When you’re young, people will ask you what your favourite dinosaur is. There are a lot of answers to this question, all of them correct. 

But one day, they stop asking.

It’s like they don’t even care anymore. 

Lizardmen (renamed to Seraphon) are for people who still do. Lizardmen were relaunched in 5th edition Warhammer Fantasy as part of the launch box with Bretonnians (previously they had been the Slann in Warhammer, but hadn’t been included in 4th edition and the range retired). I started collecting them in 6th edition, which was very much a golden age for Fantasy Battle, where the rules were pretty solidly balanced, and every army got a book and plastic release. I collected Southlands, a Skink based Lizardmen army. 

Chameleon Skinks have long been a player favourite, with the unit introduced in 6th edition (though there was a Chameleon Skink character, Oxyotl, in 5th edition). This release provides a kit that could be used as a unit in AoS (all models have the options to be built with blowpipes) and a skink unit with pet dinosaurs is something that will make a lot of Lizardmen (renamed to Seraphon) players happy. 

However Skinks play differently to a lot of warbands, and I expect them to shake the meta up when some players master the mixture of strengths and weaknesses they bring to the table. Many thanks to Games Workshop for sending us an advanced copy of Warcry: Sundered Fate so we could check them out!

Abilities & Reactions

Reaction – Slippery – when you are allocated damage by a melee attack action you can make a disengage action. Note that following the rules on page 69 of the main rulebook ‘Damage points are allocated one at a time’ This will keep your Skinks alive, as they take one damage point from a melee hit and then disengage, and unless your opponent boxes them in then a six inch move means you’ll outpace a lot of enemies. Imagine chasing a skink treasure carrier with a melee warband and how much that will suck. 

Double – Agile Climbers – until the end of the models activation, ignore vertical distance when climbing. I don’t need to tell you how useful this is for getting to the top of platforms and traverse terrain in general, and makes a fast warband even faster. 

Double – Envenomed Weapons – add one to damage for each hit and critical for the next attack action this activation. With blowpipes being strength 1 weapons with 1/2 damage, this really helps them do better chip damage, but the real strength is turning moonstone clubs into 2/4 beatsticks (with three dice they’re more likely to get those juicy crits). 

Triple – Hurled Bolas – Pick an enemy fighter within 8” of the model using the ability, roll a number of dice equal to the ability score, for each 6 they make one fewer action this battle round to a minimum of zero. Only useable by your club skinks, this is great for shutting down key enemy models or treasure carriers to stop them getting things done. I predict a lot of gnashing of teeth as Chaos Lords just stand around doing nothing. 

Triple – Bellow of the Carnosaur – Pick an enemy fighter within 6” of the model using this ability, subtract one from their movement and 1 from their hit and critical hit damage (to a minimum of 1) until the end of the battle round. This is a great use for a low triple (a triple 1 or 2) where you are unlikely to get off Hurled Bolas, and again limits enemy speed and damage). Great for messing with stuff that is slow already because it is hard hitting. Only useable by your Huanchis claw model, which is another reason to take what is already a really good model. 

Triple – Call of the Hunt – pick a friendly fighter with the Hunters of Huanchi and Beast runemark within 9” of this model. That model can make a bonus move action and allocate a number of damage points equal to the value of this ability to an enemy model within 1” of the fighter that made the bonus move action. This is absolutely great to get your Terrawings into combat, cause some chip damage to an enemy, and then activate them to Fight twice. You could theoretically use this to move a Terrawing 30” in a turn, but it’s great to use this ability to jump a model your opponent has activated and left vulnerable. 

Quad – Hit and Run – the fighter makes a bonus move or disengage, then a bonus attack or bonus move. This is great for potentially moving a model four times in a turn, and in matched play where you might be carrying treasure, I will let you think of the possibility of moving four times in a turn. 

Heroes

Chameleon Skink Alpha with Dartpipe

A 12 wound leader with a blowpipe, 6” move and toughness 2. The skink leaders are squishy if caught, and the alpha with dartpipe has exactly the same attack profile as a standard skink. 

Chameleon Skink Alpha with Moonstone Club

Tougher and with a higher damage output than the dartpipe alpha, with a higher toughness making them a little more resilient. I would choose this as the compulsory leader for the band, and it has access to the Hurled Boalas action. It’s a useful fighter compared to the standard skink, and the envenomed weapons ability makes them even better. 

I would only take a single skink hero. You have the option of taking an allied hero, and there are some interesting potential choices. 

Fighters

Chameleon Skink Hornblower with Dartpipe

For five points more than a standard dartpipe skink you get the Call of the Hunt ability, with no downsides to your normal statline. The dartpipe lets you engage at range, and Call of the Hunt is a great ability to boost your Terrawings. Otherwise this is a standard skink, and you lose no abilities to gain Call of the Hunt compared to a normal dartpipe skink. 

Chameleon Skink Hornblower with Moonstone Club

For exactly the same cost as a moonstone club skink, you lose a point of toughness and swap the Hurled Boalas ability for Call of the Hunt. My personal view is that the dartpipe hornblower is the better choice, but there is little in it between the two. The dartpipe is more expensive by 5 points, and the moonstone club has a reach of 1”, meaning to output damage you have to be close enough to enemy models to get punched back.

Chameleon Skink with Dartpipe

The standard foot soldier skink, there to use it’s movement of 6”, it’s 6” reach weapon and it’s Slippery reaction and Agile Climbers ability to zoom around the table busting caps in fools and running away when caught. For 70 points they’re not super expensive compared to bigger tougher models, and these guys are the mooks of the Hunters of Huanchi. With toughness 2 and 8 wounds they’ll melt against shooting warbands (like Kharadron Overlords) without damage output to push back hard, but against slow warbands they’ll literally run rings round them.

Chameleon Skink with Moonstone Club

The standard punch skink, I would question the wisdom of putting a toughness 3 model with 8 wounds 1” away from enemy models, who will either be tougher and punch harder, or cheaper in points and hit just as hard as you. 

Huanchi’s Claw

The top fighter of the band, this model has an 8” reach on a 2 dice strength 3 1/4 javelin for 75 points. I hate to say it, but I’d take as many of these little fellas as you can. They have better and longer ranged shooting than the dartpipe skinks, and the same toughness as the moonstone club skinks and two extra wounds. They have access to Envenomed Weapons (and a 2/5 8” range weapon is real nice) and Agile Climbers, and the Bellow of the Carnosaur ability to debuff tough enemy models. 

As you only get one per sprue what you need is a number of cool hats to go on your chameleon skinks to mark them out as Claws. 

Terrawing

10” move beasts that can Fly and hit as hard in combat (and are as tough as) you’re moonstone club skinks. You lose the abilities and faction reaction but Call of the Hunt can give you an extra move and some chip damage on a target. 

I think these are great, for picking on wounded enemy models and finishing them off, to grabbing an objective in the Ley Lines scenario or rushing to contest objectives in others. 10” move models that can Fly are incredibly good for board control, and at 90 points each, they aren’t expensive. 

Example Warband

The warband comes with 13 models on the standard sprue, ten Skinks and 3 Terrawings.

This build uses all the models in the box, and clocks in at exactly 1000 points. You can swap some of the dartpipe skinks with moonstone club skinks without changing the points total, but I think this is a solid build from a single sprue. 

This gives you 13 activations with 110 wounds, and when you look at it like that you have a lot of potential for board control, grabbing treasure and swarming objectives, and you have a lot of expendable skinks to dance around the board and irritate your opponent. 

But what would a beefy pure Huanchi team look like?

This team is not based on what you find on sprue. You have a twelve activation team with 114 wounds, but have 4 Terrawings, 2 Heroes and all the standard grunts are Huanchi’s claws. It punches harder, is tougher, and has more fast flying models.

You could drop one Terrawing and one hero for a cheap ally hero, lose an activation but have a model with some real melee punch. 

Overview and Suggested Allies

As part of the Order Grand Alliance, you have access to an incredibly large number of potential allies, including for some reason the dark elf monsters but not the lizardmen ones. 

Do the Chameleon Skinks have a Stormcast emissary fighting alongside them to prevent the forces of Chaos getting the doodad? Have they hired a Kharadron Endrinrigger or Skywarden with some worthless jewels that they had lying around to kill the encroaching enemies?

Yeah I think you do need to come up with a better narrative hook than ‘it turns out my warband really likes winning’.

However if you want to stick with the lizard theme, then there are a lot of Lizardman (Seraphon) heroes that fit nicely with the chameleon skinks. 

Similarly Ripperdactyl & Terradon Riders have high speed and can grab treasure for a fairly high price, but a high speed and fly are worth paying for. 

Saurus heroes are expensive in points, but tougher and hit much much harder than skinks. Do you want to take one to go toe to toe with the enemy while your skinks run around? They are slower though, so bear in mind they’ll be easier for your opponent to catch. 

With the new Bladeborn rules you could also take the Starblood Stalkers, giving you Kixi-Taqa, a Skink Star Priest but cheaper and with different ability availability, and a big non-hero Saurus in Klak-Troq who can carry treasure and go toe to toe with enemy big hitters. There’s also a Chameleon Skink with a 1/5 Str 3 12″ Dartpipe (so worth taking) and three exactly like the normal skinks but with two extra wounds jobbers.

The Starblood Stalkers are to me the perfect ally set without leaving the lizard theme, and do give access to some great little characters.

I would recommend playing a pure Hunters warband for a few games, then look at how you want to vary it. Getting allies will inevitably lessen the numbers you have available, and you need to find the sweet spot for you. 

Conclusion

I think this is a high skill ceiling team that play the game fairly differently to how a lot of other teams play it. You do not have huge damage output, and none of your standard fighters get above 10 wounds. What you do have is a team with generally pretty cheap fighters, high movement, a great ‘run away’ reaction to stop them getting stomped in combat, and several abilities to make it even easier for you to zoom round the board grabbing treasure or objectives. 

I think this is a team where the average player will lose their first few games until they really start to get them, and we’ll see competitive players do well with them by almost playing a different game to ‘standard’ Warcry. This is a positional team well suited to running around playing the victory conditions, and since only one of six matched play scenarios is based on killing models, I expect some players to take to them. 

This is a finesse team though, and a lot of players like simpler beat stick teams (looking at you Stormcast, Slaves to Darkness, etc). So it’s interesting to see what impact it will have on the meta. 

We’re excited to see where the Hunters find themselves once they are out in the wild. As always, if you have questions or suggestions, drop us a line at Contact@Goonhammer.com.