Preview the New Uthuk Y’llan Units of Warband of Scorn

With adrenaline coursing through her veins and the taste of Daqan blood on her tongue, the Blood Sister leaned back on the barricade and began chanting the summons. It wasn’t long before the earth began to quake with a low rumbling, and then it broke open as a giant, spined, insect-like demon crawled out of the ground. The Blood Sister laughed with glee and ran her fingers along its curved back. “Are you hungry, Doombringer? There are delicious humans just beyond this barricade. Go. Devour them. It is time for our people to rise.”

Lacerate your enemies with Warband of Scorn! In this Army Pack expansion for BattleLore Second Edition, you’ll find four fiendish new Uthuk Y’llan units and additional Blood Harvesters to support them. Build your own diabolical custom armies by combining these new units with ones from the core set, or use the two Army cards included in the expansion to instantly deploy balanced and ferocious armies composed entirely of units from Warband of Scorn, ready to devastate your opponent and feast on their blood.

Today’s preview introduces the four new units of Warband of Scorn: burrowing demons, Blood Sisters wielding dark magic, creatures whose very bones can deal damage, and deranged infantry troops. You’ll learn each unit’s capabilities and discover the strategic advantages of the Warband of Scorn and Bleeding Coven armies.

Blood and Bone

Centuries ago, the Uthuk Y’llan were first transformed from mere desert hunter-gatherers into vicious and relentless, warriors by drinking demon blood. To this day they continue to drink demon blood and use it in their dark rituals, but above all they crave the blood of their enemies. feeding upon it and draw strength from spilling it. Two units featured in Warband of Scorn, the Blood Sisters and the Grotesque, specialize in drawing blood. They can Bleed other units, slicing their veins and weakening them so that the Bleeding unit rolls one fewer die in combat.

The Blood Sisters are the powerful and cruel priestesses of the Uthuk Y’llan: practitioners of blood magic, demon tamers, and ritual murderers. On the battlefield they, like the Greyhaven Battlemages of Hernfar Guardians, constitute Caster units: ranged infantry fighting with magic. They have a movement value of two, a combat value and health of three, and their dark magic can harm enemy units up to three hexes away. With a lore result, they can Bleed nearby friendly units, sacrificing the strength of their own forces, in order to deal damage to the target. Yet the Blood Sisters’ magic can heal as well as harm: with a heroic result, they recover a point of health if the target unit has suffered any damage.

So much demon blood flows through the veins of the Grotesque that little humanity is left in them. Their limbs are transmogrified and their very bones have become weapons. They have the same movement, combat value, and health as the Blood Sisters, and with a  heroic result, they can Bleed the target unit and feast upon that blood. Instead of advancing, they can shoot forth sharp bone spurs from their body, attacking a target within two hexes and rolling three dice. Thanks to this Bone Blast ability, the Grotesque can lay waste to enemy units without taking a dangerous position. To come within range of a Grotesque unit is to beckon bloodshed and death.

Deranged and Devouring

Joining the Blood Sisters in the front lines are wild Beserkers driven insane by their thirst for blood. Insanity makes them unpredictable: their Deranged ability allows you to reroll a die in every combat roll a unit of Beserkers makes. The opportunity to reroll increases your chances of dealing damage or unleashing their Thousand Cuts heroic ability, which deals a point of damage to an adjacent enemy unit whether or not that unit was the original target of an attack. Such unpredictability makes the Beserkers a terrifying threat. The fact that there are four Beserkers in each unit makes them even more pernicious.

The fourth new unit is the Doombringer: a ravenous, creeping, six-legged demon drawn into war by its insatiable hunger. Its movement value of three is enhanced by its burrowing ability, which allows the Doombringer to ignore movement restrictions of hexes it moves through and sneak under the enemy without their knowledge. Wherever the Doombringer goes, its presence stops the enemy in their tracks: Elite and Infantry enemy units adjacent to a Doombringer cannot be commanded to move. In addition, with a heroic result, Doombringers devour infantry and cavalry, gnawing away at anyone or anything within reach of their massive jaws.

Warband and Coven

The Army cards in Warband of Scorn offer two armies: a destructive invading force determined to lay waste to everything in its path, and a ritual encampment ready to lash out at any attackers. Warband of Scorn is a decentered, offensive army capable of attacks on multiple fronts and litter the battlefield with the bleeding dead. It’s infantry-heavy, with three units of Beserkers and two units of Blood Sisters, joined by two of the three Blood Harvester units included in this expansion. Two Grotesque units and a Doombringer complete the army, the latter allowing you to slip beneath enemy lines and attack from the rear, the former allowing you to occupy a strategic position and prevent anyone from advancing past it.

The Bleeding Coven is an incredibly flexible defensive force that draws strength directly from the blood it has recently spilled. Again, infantry dominate: three units each of Blood Harvesters and Beserkers are supported by two units each of Blood Sisters and Grotesque. The remaining muster points are spent on two Blood Fields: magical pools of blood that nourish the Uthuk Y’llan, giving health to an Uthuk unit occupying one at the start of its turn. Well placed, the Blood Field hexes have the potential to make some of your units invincible. At the very least, they grant you extra time for killing and harvesting Daqan blood.

A Taste for War

For the Uthuk Y’llan, war is exhilarating, a chance not only to take revenge upon an enemy, but to delight in their gruesome deaths and, above all, savor the taste of their blood. The units of Warband of Scorn excel in spilling blood, in performing magic with it, and using it to enhance their own strength. Whether you integrate these units with other Uthuk Y’llan forces, or let the Warband of Scorn itself take the field, they promise to put fear in the hearts of the Daqan Lords and transform your games of BattleLore.

Pre-order Warband of Scorn from your local retailer today!

…