Warcry Bloodhunt is the third release in the Warcry Heart of Ghur series (also know as Season 2). In today’s blog post I round up all my pictures and painting guides I made whilst completing this set in one handy dandy location.
These models were supplied to me by Games Workshop for free.
Let’s start this blog post off with a cinematic battle scene. Warcry Bloodhunt sees the Claws of Karanak warband, a group of cultists who willingly follow Khorne’s prized Fleshhound, go to war with the ritualistic vampire monks of the Askurgan Trueblades, undead beings that won’t lower themselves to drink the blood of sentient races and try to keep their curse in check through meditation and drinking the blood of monsters. In the scene above the Claws of Karank attempt to flush out the Askurgen Trueblades from their Bamboo fortification by burning it to the ground.
This isn’t a review, I leave that to Stahly who wrote a great review here, but I wanted to share my thoughts on Warcry Bloodhunt before we got onto the close up pictures and painting guides. This set is more like can expansion set. It can be used as a standalone game even though it is missing the core rulebook, which is available to buy separately or download for free from the Games Workshop website.
The reason why I believe it’s best to own a copy of Heart of Ghur, the first set released in this season of warcry) is because there are 12 terrain cards in Bloodhunt and 6 of those include terrain layouts using the the Heart of Ghur Gnarlwood terrain set in combination with the Bloodhunt terrain set. I’m gutted their isn’t a set of cards for all three sets like in the picture above, oh well at least the core rules include terrain set up rules that don’t use the cards so you can use all of it if you want still.
How to paint Warcry Bloodhunt
I love making these painting guides, not only do people on twitter/instagram tell me how useful they are for them but it’s a way for me to write down my recipes in a really visual way and ensures a continuity and consistency to my painting even when sets are painted months apart. I used my Heart of Ghur recipe card for Bloodhunt. I’ll use it again for Warcry Nightmare Quest.
I was so happy to see a Soulblight Gravelords faction in this set as I have a tidy collection of Undead amassing since Cursed City was (first) released. You see, the Seraphon in Sundered Fate didn’t interest me as I wasn’t adding them to a collection so they felt like a bit of a chore without a purpose. Painting these Askurgan Trueblades was awesome because I could use my Ulfernkarn scheme on them. I even painted the Cursedblood to match my Vargskyr!
When the Warcry roadmap was first announced and we saw the 4th set was called Nightmare Quest, I really thought Undead were going to in that set. But if we look at the pattern of releases so far this last set in the season must be Slaanesh mortals vs Destruction. Maybe the ‘night’ in ‘nightmare’ refers to Night Goblins and we’ll get Gloomspite Gitz. Although personally, I would love to see a Warcry unit of Grot Spider Riders, they’re the perfect Warband for creeping around the woods.
How to paint Askurgan Trueblades
Apart from the Abhorrent Ghoul King, I hadn’t painted any Death units since the Sepulchral Guard so it was great use these an excuse to paint some more and I’m really happy how they came out. You can read my thoughts on how the warband plays in this link here.
As I previously mentioned the Askurgan Curseblood scheme is a direct rip off from my Vargskyr tutorial. I love it, I think it’s a great look for the model.
Now, the Claws of Karanak excite me even more than the Askurgan Trueblades. This Khornate warband was the perfect excuse to revisit my Blades of Khorne army and add another mortal unit to it. This 8 strong team of hunters have such a unique look with their brass flesh hound masks that I wanted to lean into the flesh hound feel even more and paint their furs to make the spines and frills of my own Flesh Hound units.
How to paint the Claws of Karanak
This warband took a while to paint because half way through I just stopped to paint the terrain form the set. Not sure why I did, maybe I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere with their whole set and I needed the terrain done to feel better about it all? Maybe, that was it. When I did return to this warband I was reinvigorated and finished them off in no time. Painting a whole box set is pretty hard going and this is the third Warcry set I’ve painted in 8 months now.
If you’d like to read more about what I thought about the rules of the Claws of Karanak check out my post here.
As I mentioned, this isn’t a review, it’s more of a round up for prosperity’s sake. So far Warcry Bloodhunt is tied in first place with the Heart of Ghur set for being my favourite. I love the fortifications which give a unique take on the same tree sprues we’ve had previously and both factions in this set have been added to my army collections. I’m excited for Nightmare Quest but I don’t collect Destruction forces so it could be a flop from me… especially if it’s even more trees and bamboo! Give us Seraphon spaceship ruins now!