Showcase: Askurgan Trueblades Warcry Warband (inc. painting guide)

The Askurgan Trueblades have risen from their meditation and martial honing practices to leave their monastic lifestyle behind them to venture onto the blog today. Check out my thoughts on how I think this warband might play in a game of Warcry and I’ll also share my tutorial guides for painting an Askurgan Trueblade and a Curseblood.

Striding into the Gnarlwood at the behest of Nagash. These self disciplined monks have an ulterior motive and wish to seek our an Askurgan Elder who made a pilgrimage into the heart of the Gnarlwood. They want to learn more about the fate of the Askurga Renkai that their descendants craved. This knowledge and practice is key to these Vampires holding holding on to their humanity as they try not to give in to their carnel desires.

The disdain these Vampire monks have for lesser mortals is apparent. They’ll often fight with one hand behind their back or refuse to use magic. They’ll also never feed on these mortals and they’re forbidden from passing on the blood kiss curse. Instead they choose to hunt the biggest beasts of the Gnarlwood worthy of their attention.

The Askurgan Trueblades warband is made up of 8 warriors (1000pts). They are: Askurgan Exemplar (leader 205pts), Pariah (scout 105pts), Curseblood (beast 190pts), 2 Askurgan Ascetics (elite 115pts), 3 Askurgan Acolytes (elite 90pts). Even with the average number of models of 8, the force has plenty of wounds. The Exemplar has 20, but the Curseblood has the most at 25. The Pariah who is an ex-Curseblood who has come back from Beast form even has 18 wounds with the Ascetics and Acolytes having fifteen and twelve respectively.

With the extra wounds helping to combat the low numbers, the Warband is is average in the toughness department. With half of them being toughness 4 and the Acolytes and Pariah only being toughness 3. This lack of toughness can be mitigated with the [Reaction] Lofty Disdain which gives you +1 toughness during that attack action.

However speed is on your side as everyone has a movement of 5″ with the Curseblood having a move of 6″. This can be coupled with a warband wide ability called Moment of Savagery [double] which gives a free move or attack action when you take down an enemy fighter. The Pariah has a unique ability called Beast Familiar [double] which can stop an enemy fighter from disengaging within 20″, pretty useful for holding someone in place and denying them the chance to grab objectives/treasures. The Curseblood has another denying ability with its Terrifying Howl [double] which stops enemy fighters within 3″ making reactions.

I find the number of attacks to be pretty low for this warband with everyone having 2 attacks per action with the exception of the Exemplar (3 attacks), the Curseblood (4 attacks) and a Acolyte armed with Throat-taker (3 attacks). These attacks can be augmented with the Exemplar’s [triple] ability, Magisterial Pose, which gives the leader’s comrades within 8″ of him to receive +1 attack, but only if the Exemplar took down an enemy this turn. Another way of maximising damage with your low number of attacks is to play the ability Perfect Strike [triple] on your Exemplar or Ascetics which grants them crits on a 5+

Finally we get to the quad which can turn any fighter into a killing machine by granting them +2 to their movement and melee attacks for their entire activation this turn. So the Curseblood for instance could do 2 move activations and cover 16″ distance! Or they could do 2 attack activations and dish out a total of 12 attacks! Absolute carnage from a quad.

It was easy for me to decide how I wanted to paint my Askurgan Trueblade warband, I just adapted my Cursed City Ulfernkarn scheme that I used to paint my Soulblight Gravelords army. I even used the Vargskyr tutorial for the Curseblood.

Overall, this warband will be fun to play with due to their fast speed and high damage. You’ll be balancing when to make yourself tougher and when to dish out more attacks as you manage your ability dice pool making this quite a strategic warband. They’re also a lot of fun to paint and 8 is a great number, not too big and not too small. I painted mine in just over a week.