Warcry: Briar and Bone review – "the factions are getting weird!"

Briar and Bone is the latest Warcry expansion to take us deeper into the deadly heart of the Gnarlwood. Once again two warbands will do battle in this scary, swampy landscape while hoping to obtain treasure from the ruins of crashed Seraphon ship, the Eye of Chotec.

If you've read my reviews of the previous two sets, Hunter and Hunted and Pyre and Flood, then you'll know what to expect from Briar and Bone, which once again contains two distinct sets of miniatures, as well as a large piece of unique terrain. It also comes with a Warband Tome that contains all the rules for your new models, and all the necessary cards. You'll need to own a copy of the Warcry: Core Book (sold separately) to actually use any of this, of course. 

Briar and Bone: Features & design

• Small, focused expansion with one key piece of terrain
• Unique warbands with great, though sometimes challenging, models
• An expansion aimed at existing players, rather than beginners

The warriors duking it out this time around are the Twistweald – a pack of mutated Sylvaneth – and the Teratic Cohort, a unit of marauding Ossiarch Bonereapers. It almost goes without saying at this stage that the models are excellent, though the Sylvaneth are trickier to build than the Cohort, due to the huge amount of detail packed in and instructions that aren't always the clearest. 

Games Workshop has done a pretty good job at theming these releases. The previous expansion, Pyre and Flood, pitched forces representing fire and water against each other, while Hunter and Hunted was pretty self-explanatory. Here, the Twistweald and the Teratic Cohort are both very different warbands but they share one thing: a kind of bitter resentment. The Twistweald, while still fighting for the good of the Sylvaneth, are effectively exiles. The Bonereapers, meanwhile, are warriors who have been transformed into weird constructs as punishment for failing Nagash's exacting standards. It sucks to be either of them, basically.

This set's included piece of terrain is a Ravening Gnarloak. It's another satisfyingly chunky and grotesque kit, though with its big toothsome maw it can't help but feel a little similar to the Mawpit from the Hunter and Hunted set. It has a single special rule: Kick 'Em In. If an enemy fighter falls within 2" of the mouth of the Gnarloak you can choose to kick the fighter into it. Nice, simple and effective.

The Gnarloaks are actually key to the set's campaign, titled The War of Briar and Bone, with the opposing forces battling for control of the killer trees. For the Teratic Cohort they are a useful source of fresh bone. The Twistweald, meanwhile, want to transform them into a way of preventing further access to Talaxis. In practice this means a set of six scenarios to be played out over three battles with the usual mix of assaults, assassination strikes, and defensive missions.

The Twistweald
Well these are cool and weird. The Twistweald are a group of Sylvaneth who have become infected with parasitic organisms that have mutated them – hence the more-than-usually gnarly look to the miniatures. You get eight models: the leading Swarmsage who, wonderfully, still has a couple of nests of Spiteswarm still attached to him. He's backed up with a pair of Twistroot Wardens, a Revenant and a Spite-Revenant (that's the fella with the big root-whip arm) and three Dryads. I love the diseased vibes of these models, they're really quite unique.

Teratic Cohort
I've got a lot of time for the Death factions (and especially for big daddy Nagash – surely the most amusingly petty god in Warhammer) but I've never been a huge fan of the Ossiarch Bonereapers. Something about them just doesn't quite work for me (ghosts, ghouls, vampires and skeletons make sense, but the Bonereapers are weird non-specific constructs). That said, the eight models you get here are very satisfying to build and will be a doddle to get painted up quickly. The Kavalos Centari also makes for a particularly fast and deadly leader.

Pyre and Flood: Gameplay

• The Twistweald are a gang of murderous mutant trees, basically
• The Teratic Cohort burn through wild dice while using abilities
• Now that the setting is established the factions are getting weird!

The two factions in Briar and Bone have very different play styles. While the Twistweald are tricky to assemble (and look like they'll be a real challenge to paint) they're a good, aggressive warband designed for smashing foes quickly and efficiently.

The Teratic Cohort on the other hand perform well in combat (especially the Kavalos Centari which packs a real punch), but to make use of the abilities effectively you're going to need to use up wild dice. The warband comes with a way of generating more of these, but it's a slightly faffy mechanic. 

Let's get into the rules in a bit more detail...

Twistweald

In The Lord of the Rings movies the Ents are a bunch of standoffish, sedate, but broadly friendly ambulatory trees. It actually looks rather cozy when Merry and Pippin are given a lift by Treebeard. That's very much not the case with their Warhammer equivalents. The Sylvaneth, while broadly-speaking closer to "good" than "bad" (whatever these concepts of morality mean in the Warhammer world), they're also weird and dangerous. That seems to be doubly the case for Briar and Bone's new subfaction, the Twistweald – Sylvaneth exiles riddled with a parasitic fungus that keeps them in a constant state of agony.

That perhaps goes some way to explaining their play style. The Twistweald are all about aggressive, close quarters combat. All of the fighters in the warband benefit from the Mycelial Ravaging reaction – a very tasty trick which allows a fighter to damage any opponent who tries to engage them in melee combat. Every 5+ hit roll scored by the attacker in melee will result in 2 points of damage being inflicted back at them. Ouch.

Their abilities are equally punchy. Flesh-piercing Talons gives Dryads, Revenants, and Wardens a critical hit on 5+ rolls made in melee actions. Voracious Swarm does 1 point of damage to any visible enemy within 12" on a 3. And on a 4+ Eruption of Thorns can wound any enemy that gets too close (within 1") of any Twistweald fighter.

When it comes to Triples and Quads, the Twistweald are even nastier. Thorned Grasp has some serious damage potential – on a roll of 2+ an enemy model within 3" sustains 2 points of damage. The Sylvaneth player then keeps on rolling and allocating damage to the enemy fighter until a roll is equal or lower than the previous roll. Devour Infection is an interesting one in that it actively damages your own chosen fighter, but adds 1 to their Attacks characteristic in melee combat until the end of the next round. Finally, their Quad is Twisted Song, which both heals a fighter and grants them either a bonus move or bonus attack action.

Teratic Cohort

The Teratic Cohort has access to some cool abilities, but most of them heavily rely on you spending wild dice. Used wisely, however, this warband is a fearsome close combat unit.

The warband has access to Predatory Ravage, a reaction that enables a fighter who has been attacked in melee to make a responsive melee attack in return. Making the reaction comes at the cost of a wild dice. You can choose to forgo that forfeit, but doing so will drastically reduce its efficiency – you have to subtract 1 from both the attack characteristic and the damage allocated.

In terms of abilities, Eyes of Katakros is open to all and is useful way of generating wild dice. As you will see, this is necessary given how much this warband eats through them. Bestial Leaps, meanwhile, allow the Kavalos Centari and the Mortek Cykloptians to make a bonus move of up to 3" which can be extended to 4" if you spend a wild dice. Nadirite Strike is a punchy ability that adds 2 to the attack characteristic of a fighter's next melee attack. That's fine, but (you guessed it) if you add a wild dice then any 5+s rolled become crits.

The charmingly-named Artery-severing Strike is a powerful way to inflict additional damage on enemy fighters who have been wounded in melee. Each time the enemy fighter makes a reaction or action (except for Wait) the enemy player must roll a number of dice equal to the ability and, for every score of 2+, the enemy fighter takes an additional point of damage.

Unleashed Rage gives you an additional critical hit for each one scored in melee. And if you spend one of your wild dice then one of those crits gains two additional critical hits. That's super effective for landing killing blows. Finally, Savagery Unbound is a great way for taking your enemy by surprise. It can only be used by the Kavalos Centari and the Mortek Cykloptians, but it means that any friendly model in a fighter's battle group can make a bonus move. If you spend two wild dice then that can be upgraded to work on any Teratic Cohort fighter full stop.

Should you buy Warcry: Briar and Bone?

As with all these Warcry expansions whether this is for you or not depends on how much one or both of the factions appeal. The previous set Pyre and Flood was aimed squarely at me as both a Lumineth and Nighthaunt collector. This one, not so much, but again that's purely personal preference. Certainly there's no doubting the excellent miniatures and I love the Gnarloak. 

The Teratic Cohort are an interesting from a rules point-of-view with some potent abilities but a reaction that's only useful in very specific circumstances. They're also quite expensive, points-wise, which may put some off. The Twistweald, on the other-hand, are more straightforward – a big gang of angry trees, basically, and who can argue with that?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...