In today’s article I’ll be covering everything you need to know about Hexbane’s Hunters. This includes the fighter cards, 32 faction specific cards, and the miniatures themselves. I know a lot of people are excited for this warband as they look absolutely gorgeous. It’s really nice to see non-chaotic human fighters in the game. It’s about damn time.

This makes it perfect for custom games using unofficial profiles. This also lets us focus in on a particular setting. When the original game came out, it was very thematically focused on the Chaos warbands and the current season is doing similar with the Gnarlwood forest. Reflecting Mask: Flavor text is hilarious. I think this card can be a great deterrent in certain matches. It’s a feels bad card for your opponent. Kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t kind of deal when placed on the right fighter. I like that it forces your opponent make a hard choice and smart players will capitalize on either scenario. Anvalor • Brighthall † • Brightspear • Callidium • Draconium † • Edassa • Fort Denst • Ipsala • Rozh • Vandium Penumbral Key: This is a classic style of card. It’s not particularly hard to do, especially with some power card support. That being said, I feel like warbands who want to score using keys tend to be a bit more passive/defensive. This may be great for aggro warbands but the risk is that when you get aggressive, your fighters can die too. I like guaranteed glory and this can be an avenue for it. It may require some work, however. An Eye for an Eye: This is pretty much It Begins from Reavers. This is a solid surge because they are so many reasons as to how inevitable this. You’re going to lose fighters. You’re going to be able to take out at least one fighter – though that could be matchup dependent. I think you’re going to see this a lot, I like it. Requiring the kill bars it from a better ranking though.

Proof of Guilt: A hybrid with 3 potential scoring conditions, the first of its kind! I like this idea of this card – it’s a win more card. I think the first condition has no chance. The last condition is decently reliable, though it may depends on who wins the rolloff. There will also be matches where you are the beatdown and you have to bum rush into enemy territory for condition 2. It’s also great for when your opponent is the beatdown and bum rushes you. That all being said, I think the most reliable way to score this card is via the third condition. However, I think that may be a trap. Your opponent can score 6 cards, but they may do it after you have missed your window to score this card. Also, are you going to give up going first in a round when you should to try to score this? I think it’s too complicated. It’s not a bad cards by any means, just not my cup of tea. Barbed Promise • Darkdelve • Desperance • Duskhenge † • Gaolintar • Greyspire • Harkraken's Bane • Hollenwald • Murmurus • New Sadoria † • Scant Hope • Tarnastipol • Umbramox Steelheart's Champions • Garrek's Reavers • Sepulchral Guard • Ironskull's Boyz • Chosen Axes • Spiteclaw's Swarm • Farstriders • Magore's Fiends • Storm of Celestus • Drepur's Wraithcreepers We covered her inspire above and we know its intrinsically tied to Hexbane’s. If they both manage to inspire, Brydget becomes a bit more compelling. She jumps to 2 dodge which dramatically improves her survivability. Her axes go to 3 smash with scything! And last, but potentially not least, her pistol gets cleave. It keeps the volley special rule. Stormsire's Cursebreakers • Thorns of the Briar Queen • Eyes of the Nine • Zarbag's Gitz • Mollog's Mob • Godsworn Hunt • Ylthari's Guardians • Thundrik's Profiteers

push-fit Hexbane's Hunters miniatures – no glue required to assemble, cast in solemn grey to stand out even when unpainted. I’ve also put together an abilities card. For the Underworlds war bands usually you keep fit them into an existing warband. So in this case they’re part of the Cities of Sigmar warband and have access to all the normal Cities of Sigmar abilities. Alternatively, you could have them completely independent. Drifting Tides: I adore this card. I was really worried that Dark Inversion was going to be a big problem in the meta. That still might end up being the case but now you can mitigate some of that pesky hold objective scoring. After the power phase ends, but before you start scoring you can react with this card and move any objective token, into any adjacent hex. Your opponent can’t do anything about it. How awesome is that? And if your opponent isn’t scoring off objectives, which is rare nowadays, you get a free upgrade. Not bad but you’re definitely taking it for the second condition. The last aspect we have here is the average damage against toughness 4. In the understanding fighters video I suggested looking for 1 dmg for every 25 points, but that was an extremely aggressive profile on the basis that we’d be looking for the cream of the crop. Looking at the averages 1 damage per 40 points is probably reasonable.I feel like Brydget is the worst and best hunter in this warband. Un-inspired, she feels like someone you want to use as bait. However, when inspired (which is hard to do reliably) she becomes a terror. But that’s the thing, she’s not meant to be survivable. The fighters in this warband are built to die. They’re also built to take the enemy with them. Brydget can do that. You might only get one go – she is the very definition of a glass cannon. But boy when she goes off, it’ll be spectacular. Maybe even game defining. On The Scent - This 1 glory objective can be scored in an end phase if one or more friendly beasts/companions are within 2 hexes of an enemy leader, or if one friendly fighter are adjacent to an enemy leader. Easy to score for aggressive warbands, and great for Hexbane's Hunters who have two companions. It’s interesting because this warband feels like a mix of Godsworn Hunt and Garrek’s Reavers. They’re going to kill you, and can reliably do so in most cases, like the former but also want to die in the process, like the latter. It’s such a neat concept and the cards are so thematic. Not only do they make sense, they are balanced! They have a great spread of great, good, and decent cards. The big guy is Aemos Duncarrow. I suspect he’s the Woodsman out of the Red Riding hood legend. From the quotes I’ve seen from him on the cards, he’s neither slow or dumb, although I am going to give him the Brute runemark along with the Destroyer one. So would I recommend Hexbane’s Hunters? If you like them, sure. Personally I wouldn’t buy them because I’m not a fan of how they look and their gameplay style doesn’t appeal to me. They’re not bad, far from, just not what I look for in a warband. As I said, if you like the look of them from this review, then you won’t be disappointed. It gets a lot better if you only play Rivals or Rivals+/Warlords format.

Thanks again for taking the time to read my review. Thank you to Games Workshop as well for sending me this preview copy. But what free upgrade are you going to play? Give Haskel the Bane of Evil card and watch him get more powerful each time your opponent takes out one of his followers. Ward of Martyr’s Blood doesn’t provide enough defence, especially as most of your fighters are 1 defence.

Who Are Hexbane's Hunters?

Burn Them Out: This card is really interesting. We’ve seen universal versions of this before. I think the challenge with this warband is that they are kind of slow. I don’t think I like this card because while it is potentially easy to score in the early game, it becomes much harder in rounds 2 and 3. People don’t generally just stand on their starting hexes. Here we have the full custom war band with all 6 fighters. I’m sure after a few games I’ll be looking to make more tweaks, but right now we’re able to get this warband on the table which is a big step. In our understanding fighters video, we had a look at some of the averages and what to expect. We’ll be using this as a bit of a baseline for the profiles we put together. The typical move for a fighter is 4 with points getting reduced if the fighter goes to the slow 3 and increased if the fighter is faster. Usually Elves are 5 move while mounted fighters are 8, 10, or 12 move. Toughness is usually 4, although for humans they’re typically 3 toughness. So for 18 wounds we’re talking about 150 points. We can adjust that up or down as we decide to add extra features. The second approach is to go through the compendium and work out an existing profile we could use. This will require some compromises but it will be tournament legal, with approval from the TO for proxies.