Hello! Today I’m bringing you a long-overdue review of the second warband from Harrowdeep’s Core Set - Da Kunnin’ Crew. I have to say that this core set has been great for me - Order and Destruction are my two favorite grand alliances and there are no horde warbands in that box. So it’s a pure joy to review both of those warbands for me.
Inspire Condition
The inspiration condition for those guys is an interesting one - they have a global inspiration condition that requires three or more enemy fighters to be out of action. On top of that, every fighter has his personal inspiration condition to supplement the global one. That personal inspiration condition is the same for every member of the band - a fighter becomes inspired after an attack action in which he was supporting or received support.
This is a cool approach - global condition is a difficult one. Killing three enemy fighters can be very difficult - especially when facing elite warbands. So the backup option is much appreciated. That secondary way of inspiring is very thematic and goes well with what our orruks want to do during the game. Inspiring them is very easy thanks to that alternative way of doing it.
The Fighters
Mannok Da Kunnin’ is the leader of the warband. He’s a formidable fighter with 5 wounds, a movement of 3, and defending on a single block. His Tri-Prodda has a range of 2 and hits for 2 damage on 2 hammers. That’s a very standard and decent attack profile for a leader. On top of that, he’s having a Kunnin’ Kommand reaction that allows you to reposition your fighters without the need to waste an activation for that. This also helps get supports for your attacks, which is huge for this warband!
Once inspired, Mannok gains +1 to his movement, his Tri-Prodda gains extra attack dice going up to 3 hammers, and gains Grievous. That way his attack becomes very accurate with a 42% chance for dealing 3 damage. His effective threat range goes up to 6 hexes, which is very good.
Torka Tuffskul - Mannok’s lieutenant, also a formidable fighter. He has 4 wounds, movement 3, and defends on a single block. His attack action has a range of 2, hits on 2 swords, and deals 2 damage. On top of that, it has Ensnare and Grievous. It’s not very accurate and has a small chance of dealing 3 damage. He’s the first fighter who will be very happy to accept help from supporting fighters to land his attacks.
Torka has a special rule called Grapple. When he’s within the 2 hexes of an enemy fighter that is a target of a friendly attack action, Torka is supporting that action. This is huge. Torka is an awesome support dispenser for the rest of the team.
When inspired he gains a +1 move and his attack action goes from swords to hammers making his attack actions a lot more accurate.
Krookgrin - the first of hobgrots, he’s a pushy little fellow with 3 wounds, movement of 3, and defending on a single block. His attack action is not impressive - range 1, hits for 2 damage on 2 swords. It’s not awesome - especially in terms of accuracy.
His special ability is called Money Bags - as an action, Krookgrin can spend a glory point to make one of the friendly minions make an attack action with +1 dice. It’s not a bad ability if you have one of your small hobgrots in range to make an attack. Sadly, this action doesn’t allow them to perform charges.
Once inspired Krookgrin gains a +1 movement, his defense goes up to two dodges and his attack action receives a buff getting +1 dice and a Cleave. What’s big is his Money Bags upgrade - now as an action he can choose up to two minions and pay 1 glory for each. Each of chosen minions will get to perform an attack action with +1 dice. If positioned well they can get two attacks out of a single activation, which is amazing.
Shank is the first of two grot minions in the krew. He has two wounds, a movement of 3, and defends on a single shield. His Krude Net has a range of 3, hits for 1 damage on two swords. His special ability - Pain in the Knee - makes him count as two supporting fighters, which can be sweet.
Once inspired he gets a +1 move, defends on two dodges and his net becomes significantly more accurate going from swords to hammers and gaining Ensnare.
While not powerful on his own, he can be very accurate thanks to Krookgrin and can give a lot of accuracy to his krewmates.
Gikkit - second minion in da krew. His stats and abilities are a carbon copy of Shank. The only difference is his attack profile. He has range 1 attack that hits for 1 damage on 2 swords and has Grievous. Once inspired this attack goes to three swords while Gikkit alone gets a +1 move and starts to defend on two dodges.
He’s also a very good provider of supports, who alone has a good chance of dealing 2 damage - especially when motivated by Krookgrin.
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Overall those fighters are not very accurate on their own but have a very strong ability to provide large amounts of accuracy through supporting their mates’ thanks to their special abilities and Mannok’s reaction. They’re a bit slow though - this is somewhat helped by three out of 5 fighters having range 2+ attacks. It is however making it a bit more difficult to position those fighters well enough to make full use of their supreme capacity for supporting other fighters. Torka is an MVP support guy of the krew.
Faction Specific Cards
While rating the cards I will be following the system as below:
1 - a very powerful card. You should take it in nearly every deck. A staple.
2 - a very strong card that you should consider taking. Might not always make the cut, but should usually contend with other options.
3 - a situational card that might prove to be good in certain situations or with proper card support
4 - a weak card. You might find a use for it, but in general, most often you’ll be better off with other picks.
Faction Objectives
Born Survivors - it’s a pretty neat card in theory. The problem is that you’re having a warband with two fighters at 2 wounds and one 3 wounds guy. That means scoring this in early rounds can be difficult unless you’ll manage to protect those fighters early on. With the amount of damage and accuracy in the game, it might be a tall task, but with a decent positioning, this is doable.
Rating: 3
Good Lootin’ - this one goes in hand with Born Survivors - you have to protect your weak fighters, but at the same time you’d have to get a kills on your own. This makes it strictly worse than Survivors. It would be okay if not the fact that you have to maintain a positive kill difference for the entire game.
Rating: 4
Gristle For The Mill - that’s a neat surge. It is a kill surge, but it’s one of the easier ones to score - the only real limitation is the fact that you have to kill a 3+ wounds fighter - there’s plenty of those around. And 3 wound guys are fairly easy to pick out.
Rating: 1
Krule Tricks - this one is tough. There’s not a lot of ping damage in the game right now. Lethal hexes won’t help here, so you’d have to rely mostly on your beefier fighters softening the target for a small grot to finish it. It’s not easy and takes quite a bit of effort for a 1 glory. It could get better if we will have more reliable ways of dealing that one point of damage.
Rating: 4
Kunnin’ Warfare - this is… pretty good. My first reaction was that this is another poor card, but then I did realize that we’re dealing with a warband that has 3 fighters with range 2 or 3. That additional range makes this objective quite interesting. It’s super easy to riddle the field with cover and feature tokens, so charging into them shouldn’t be a big deal. Friendly pushes help too.
Rating: 2
Malicious Blow - this one is the opposite of Gristle for the Mill. And I find it very situational. It could work on hordes well, but often it can be a dead card. Just take Gristle instead - it’s far more universal. Also - so far I’m not a fan of vulnerable mechanics. It’s just too hard to control when it occurs. This makes this objective’s secondary condition not that great.
Rating: 3
Mind of Mork - I’m not sure I like this. It feels a bit like Opening Gambit, but Gambit was much easier to score. This card is scoreable - Mannok is not the easiest bloke to kill and scoring 2 objectives doesn’t seem like a very hard thing to do. But I would rather get something easier for my 1 glory end phase slot.
Rating: 3
Outmanoover - this is another card that feels fairly easy to score thanks to a good range of Krew’s fighters. Losing Shank makes it harder, but Mannok and Tuffskul are an excellent duo to score this.
Rating: 2
Shadowy Taktiks - This is another easy-to-score end phase card - one well-prepared attack action is enough to inspire 2+ of your fighters. So odds of scoring this are very high. This is my go-to 1 glory end phase card for them.
Rating: 1
Superior Skulkers - if you’re on the offensive this card can be scored easily. It’s becoming a bit more tricky when you have to play a more careful game. Still - this is a decent card to consider - it’s just one glory, but it’s not a bad one.
Rating: 2
Supreme Kunnin’ - this card is very easy to score in a warband focused on providing supports. The attack doesn’t even have to be successful.
Rating: 1
Tougher Than Youse - I don’t really like this card. The conditions aren’t that easy to achieve and all that for a single glory doesn’t feel like a good deal.
Rating: 4
Faction Gambits
Creeping Doubt - I like this one. It’s a friendly push with an extra effect to it. Could be good to bust some tankier targets. Push one of the grots and you get a re-roll and double support out of that ploy.
Rating: 1
Easy Meat - extra damage ploys are usually very strong. This one requires having a supporting fighter to work, which is not hard at all for the Krew. Very good option to quickly bump your damage output.
Rating: 1
Firebomb - this card effectively translates into about a 50% chance to deal 1 damage to your desired target. With a chance to hit more fighters. It’s not terrible, but I don’t like ploys that require a dice roll to work.
Rating: 3
Grotpile - not a bad push card, sadly very limited. I don’t see the value of pushing both grots to sit together - they won’t provide more supports anyway and they only ask to be smacked. Still - it’s a good delivery method if you want to bring in your grots.
Rating: 3
Krule Wager - spend one glory to maybe get an extra glory. I don’t think I would ever play this. In rivals might be okay if you have too much glory around, in the championship it won’t ever see play.
Rating: 4
Kunnin’ Waaagh! - this could be a decent drawcard... if not the fact that usually, you’d want those extra cards before charging, not after. Still, you could use this to draw 2-3 cards and do something with them in the final activation. The value of this card goes down with your fighters dying.
Rating: 3
Murk Lurkers - it’s situationally good. Trouble is that your most valuable fighters who also have the easiest time to get into cover are the ones with a single defense dice…
Rating: 3
Overthink - I don’t like this kind of objective mill cards. They feel like a waste of a card slot to me - especially with new do-over rules in place.
Rating: 4
Skin Of Their Teef - this is a cool defensive card. Makes killing your fighter a bit more tricky - especially early on. A very cool approach to a defensive ploy.
Rating: 1
Swampspill - single dice reroll for a chosen fighter until the end of the phase? That’s really tasty - especially when you have range 2 fighters receiving this. This could very well end up as an Illusion upgrade, but luckily it has been printed as a ploy - which is a superior way imo.
Rating: 1
Faction Upgrades
Dirty Fighter - with all the supports going around you should be fairly accurate, but should your attack miss this could help by at least pinging the target. Put it on Tuffskul and you could get a fair mileage out of it. It’s not a huge card but could do some damage.
Rating: 3
Ghastly Potion - upgrade speed healing potion with an option to become a very limited ping card. On paper, effects are fairly okay, but it’s slow and requires an action to use, which makes it even slower…
Rating: 4
Intimidating Phosphor - while I’m not a huge fan of illusion cards, this one is strong. Play this on one of your key fighters and he becomes considerably harder to kill. No range restriction on this effect is amazing.
Rating: 1
Looter - fun twist on the Trophy Belt, but because it is limited to Krookgrin it’s not good. Krookgrin is not going to be the killer in your warband and he’s fragile enough to not send him in the thick of it, so the likelihood of this actually doing anything is not high. But you could try sending him Rambo style to support and generate extra glory while at it.
Rating: 3
Master Of Murk - I like it - +1 dice and ensnare while in a cover hex? I wish this was a universal card - my Profiteers would take it gladly. It’s really good for both of your orruks.
Rating: 1
Morkrow - if you want to turn Mannok into Farstrider, then you can take this upgrade. You could take it with Master of Murk, add Fighters Ferocity, Glory Seeker, and Master of Shadow… ok I will stop before I will build an entire list with turret Mannok...
Rating: 2
Practical Joke - in theory, this could work as a finisher to kill a vulnerable fighter. But frankly speaking, I would rather take +1 damage in some form and kill my target without having to land another attack to do it.
Rating: 4
Spiteful Strength - + damage is always nice, but not when it’s restricted to minions.
Rating: 4
Titan Of Krulety - illusion version of Duellist’s Speed. It’s not terrible, but I don’t think it’s that good - mostly because it will go away sooner than later.
Rating: 3
Titan Of Kunnin’ - this illusion is cool though. Goes well in hand with Intimidating Phosphor. It should help your fighters survive an ordeal.
Rating: 1
Closing Thoughts
I really like the design of this warband. We’re getting an interesting mix of strong fighters with a good threat range who are supplemented by smaller ones, who - if used well - can boost your accuracy a lot. Mannok and Tuffskul can be a very effective kill team. And their inspiration is super easy - with a smart positioning you could inspire both of your big fighters during a single attack action.
Their faction cards contain several very strong options to consider. And historically warbands with a strong faction deck support tend to do very well. I think this might be the case with Kunnin’ Krew as well. Because they’re a 5 model warband they do have some options to flex into if you’re not interested in going hard aggro and Mannok could be built into a formidable ranged damage dealer. With good offensive capabilities and some very strong defensive options, they feel like a very well-rounded warband. In my opinion, they’re well worth trying out!
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