The War of Settra’s Fury breaks the pattern of the other Arcane Journals in that it doesn’t focus on one specific faction, rather it provides some updated materials for multiple factions, as well as providing rules for how to play smaller point battles in the Battle March module. Like all the other Arcane Journal’s there are 48 pages in a softcover book with full color art and pictures throughout. This book is based on Settra’s invasion of the Border Princes and the Dwarfen Holds in the area of the Border Princes and features background material and stories about this area of The Old World.
The Battle March rules provide list building options for small games of 500-750 points and allow you to use these rules for mercenary detachments in armies between 2,000 and 3,000 points. The rules require you to bring two non-character units, swarms and war beasts don’t count towards this minimum. You must have one character which cannot be more than 25% of your total. Units are limited to certain percentages of the points for a single unit, ie you cannot have a special unit that costs more than 30% of your points. Finally, you may include one 0-X unit in your army, which allows you to bring some super special troops even though Battle March does not go up to 1,000 points. There are modifications for the placing of objectives, victory points, and table size, as well as two scenarios. I’m a big fan of the Battle March rules and look forward to playing them in the not to distant future.
This Arcane Journal provides updates for the Tomb Kings army and for the Dwarfen Mountain Holds – Slayer Host list. The new options for the Tomb Kings are the Barded Skeletal Steed and the Winged Warsphinx. The Barded Skeletal Steed still has vanguard so your character can join fast moving skeltetal steeds with a little more armor, buy annoyingly it is on a 30mm x 60mm base, limiting where the character can go in any unit he joins. The Winged Warsphinx costs 5 more points than the regular Warsphinx and swaps the two Tomb Guard in the howdah for Fly (9). I think this is a more than fair upgrade to add some speed to the beast!
The Tomb King Liche Priests also gain Incantations of the Mortuary Cult, effectively bound items that are cast with a successful leadership test instead of a bound item roll. Each incantation has a casting value which is used for enemy dispel attempts. Each Incantation can be bought multiple times across the army, but a character can’t duplicate Incantations and no character can carry the same combination of Incantations. If an Incantation is successfully cast it is used for the game, if not it can be tried again. The book uses the phrase “performed” and by my reading if the Incantation is dispelled it still counts as having been “performed” so you would lose it. There are 6 Incantations with Casting Values between 7 and 9. There is one Hex, two Enchantments, one Magic Missile, one Magical Vortex, and one Conveyance. All of these Incantations add something to your army and are worth taking, with the exception of the Vortex which seems to have limited utility to me. Still, it is nice to have the flavor of the Incantations back in the game for those of us who have played back in the day!
The Renegade Crowns army list is based on the Border Princes. As you can see below you can bring a motley collection of units from the Kingdom of Bretonnia and the Empire. The units can be equipped with almost every option available to like units in the two armies, meaning whatever model you have can be used in this army! The only excpetion is the Hireling Outriders cannot bring Repeating Handguns.
You can upgrade your Lords or Wizards with one of four Infamous Origins that modify their statistics and allow them to bring units with special upgrades. Each upgraded character allows you to bring one unit with the special upgrade. For those of us who have been around a while you can definitely see the influence of the old Dogs of War/Regiments of Renown and thus the rules give the greybeards amongst us a chance to pull out our classic metal models!
The Mercenary Hosts unit allows you to upgrade a unit of Sellsword or Veteran Sellsword Infantry to heavy infantry and the Phalanx special rule for +10 points per unit. The Phalanx special rule allows the unit to be in Combat Order even if the unit is deeper than it is wide. The unit will not be disrupted by Cavalry units with First Charge. This rule, and the fact that the Infamous Origin is The Might of Miragliano brings back the mighty pikemen of yore!
The Renegade Knight INfamous Origin allows you to give a unit of Freeblade Knights, or Veteran Freeblade Knights the Lance Formation and Noble disdain for +2 points per model.
The Noble Outlaw Infamous Origin allows you to give a unit of Hireling Outriders the Ambushers special rule for +1 point per model.
The Wandering Diestro Infamous Origin allows you to bring Wandering Duelists which allows you to upgrade a unit of Brigands to have +1 WS for +2 points per model, and once per game the Duelists may force their enemies who are directing attacks against them to re-roll successful hits. Vespero’s Vendetta is back!
This is not a very powerful list, but it is very characterful. I do wish the mercenaries in this army didn’t suffer from the Misbehaving Mercenaries rule as you can bring 33% of your army from any “Dogs of War” unit in any Arcane Journal. According to Warhammer Fantasy Online Rules Index Project these units are Badlands Ogre Bulls, Bonegrinder Giants, Doomseekers, Imperial Dwarf Mercenaries, and Imperial Ogres. I don’t think any of these units would break the list if they didn’t have the Misbehaving Mercenaries rule and would make the army even more characterful. With this Arcane Journal Games Workshop has shown they are willing to split the focus of an Arcane Journal so I’m wondering if future books will have more unit options and ways to reflect the classic units.
Speaking of splitting focus, this Arcane Journal finishes off with additional rules for a Dwarf Slayer army. In order to create a Dwarf Slayer list you will therefore need the Forces of Fantasy book, Arcane Journal – Dwarfen Mountain Holds, and this Arcane Journal, The War of Settra’s Fury.
In this list one unit of Slayers with a Units Strength of 10 or less may have Ambushers and Skirmishers for +1 point. The wonderfully named “Look Snorri, Trolls!” rule is back which allows each Slayer and Brotherhood of Griminir Unit make a d3+1″ move forward before deploying scouts of Vanguard. This little bit of help might be the difference between charging and getting shot to death in later turns! 0-1 characters per 1,000 points may Scout for +10 points. If a unit has a standard it may spend +1 point per model to get a 6+ ward against non-magical shooting attacks. Finally, unless your General is not Ungrim Ironfist your general must be a Daemon Slayer or Dragon Slayer but does not gain the Inspiring Presence special rule. After all, these nutters are spending their time trying to die, not give heroic speeches!
The only new unit in the book for the Slayers are the Brotherhood of Griminir. These are essentially a unit of Giant Slayers with a special, hero level, champion, the Shrine Keeper. For an additional +21 points the champion (39 points total) gains a wound, and a special dispel. The Shrine Keeper may attempt a Wizardly dispel with a range of 21″ and a +1 to dispel.
Even with this new unit and the army special rules I don’t feel a Slayer Force is a viable choice. Maybe if you bring 8 Doomseekers you could be in for a good time, but a 6+ ward against non-magical shooting doesn’t do much to keep the raving lunatics in the fight, and at only T4 I see them dying in droves to any type of shooting. With their slow move they will struggle to get into combat, and with no close combat save they are going to die in droves. Yes, unbreakable keeps them in the game, but at their cost not many will be left alive to keep up the fight. I might be willing to give them a try in Battle March though….
As a whole I think this book is disjointed and unless you play one of the three armies listed it is probably not worth picking up. I like the Battle March rules but I’m sure you’ll be able to find them somewhere online without looking to hard. I’m a completionist and enjoy supporting my local game store but if it weren’t for that I’d probably have skipped this book. I place it slightly higher than the Arcane Journal Dawn of the Storm Dragon though, so there is that!
-Wachtmeister
The Wachtmeister's Patrol 