Warband Guide: The Unmade

This The Unmade warband guide is the sixth in a series of articles providing all the advice you need to make the most of your Warcry warbands. You can check out the rest of the Warcry warband guides here:

• Iron Golems
• Untamed Beasts
• Cypher Lords
• The Splintered Fang
• The Corvus Cabal

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The Unmade: Agony is our gift!

Easily the darkest and most deranged followers of the Ruinous Powers among the warbands of the Eightpoints. These natives of Shyish hail from an island known as Tzlid, and for centuries it was a beacon of Order.

However as the forces of Chaos encroached into their Realm in the Age of Chaos, the Tzlid natives were pressed hard to survive. In his desperation King Vourneste sought a solution in prayer and mysticism. He emerged as the Flayed King, his broken mind teaching the Tzlid to embrace pain and nightmares to become unstoppable. Ages have passed since, and Tzlid fallen to horror and ruin.

The Unmade that emerged from it embody every aspect of the Flayed King’s dark teachings. Limbs removed in favor of weaponry, chains hung from their body. Belts made from their own faces torn from their very skull. The Unmade are truly the children of the darkest aspects of Chaos.

Pros

• The Gift of Agony – Your attacks and abilities all have a single purpose, kill everything and kill it as fast as possible. No warband in the game has as many damage-focused abilities as the Unmade. All but one of their specific abilities involves harming the enemy in some manner.
• Meat is Cheap – Fantastic chaff. With the addition of a second box you will have more diversity than you know what to do with.
• Leading By Example – The Blissful One is very much what-you-see-is-what-you-get. This stilt-walking, blade-armed monstrosity excels at killing, and there really isn’t a lot it cannot kill in a single activation. 

Cons

• Dice Spread Thin – Your abilities are all amazing and all necessary to push ahead, which means you will be utterly reliant on good rolls at the start of each round. Be cautious with those Wild Dice… you will need them.
• The Ultimate Glass Cannon – All of the durability issues of the Splintered Fang. None of their ability to play it safe. The closest things this warband has to a defensive option are reach weapons, and they hardly count. 
• One-Dimensional – As it is in the lore, so it is on the tabletop. The Unmade pack only a single strategy; Kill the Enemy. This force does not play objectives or defense particularly well at all.

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 Mustering your Unmade Warband

Out of the box, they’re fine. The Unmade are highly unique in that their Chaff units can take spears but it actually ISN’T the cut and dry choice. The Unmade Awakened with Flail actually puts out a great amount of Crit damage and has a 3” flail to help out with that as well. It may be worth the extra box purely for that diversity. Picking up the Double box is worth it in the long term for customization and experimentation, but like the Cypher Lords, it isn’t vital.

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Painting your Unmade

The Unmade pack an intense blend of dented metal, raw flesh and skin textures into very small and detailed models. They are a superlative challenge to any painter, but they reward that effort with a stellar (if unsettling) finish. 

For a solid guide on painting The Unmade, check out The MiniJunkie. The below video does a great job covering the nuances of flesh, metal and bone.

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The Unmade Unit Breakdown

For the purposes of breaking down the units and categorizing them effectively, these reviews will list units as being one of the following:

• Leader – A leader choice for the warband. A Warcry warband must include one of these, and cannot include more than one.
• (Elite) Threat Unit – A higher-price unit that either dishes out heavy damage. Also comes in the Elite variety, which a warband will usually only be able to afford a single one.
• Support Unit – A model who’s use is tethered to an ability, usually a Triple, that boosts the effectiveness of themselves and those around them.
• Infantry Unit – Middle of the road, these units are reasonably affordable in exchange for a baseline unit that can hold it’s own passably.
• Chaff Unit – Cheap, spammable and here to either screen or hold objectives. Can usually be buffed, usually is not cost effective to do so

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Blissful One (Leader) – 220pts

Only Leader choice for the warband. This towering monster is one hell of a unit, piling 5 attacks that Crit for SIX damage a piece on top of a wide range of potent abilities. There is no combat-focused leader quite like the Blissful One, and what it lacks in support abilities it compensates for in a staggering display of violence that leaves the enemy a red ruin. The Blissful One one is a Glass Cannon in the extreme, it can kill almost anything but almost anything (that isn’t Chaff or weaker Infantry) can kill it right back. Play it safe, single out targets and gift their pain to the Dark Gods.

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Joyous One (Elite Threat Unit) – 145pts

Very similar to the Cypher Lords Luminate in the sense that it is a smaller version of the warband’s leader, who can’t be it’s leader. He’s perfectly serviceable in this regard, packing 1 less attack and 2 less Crit damage, but he has access to a Triple called Flaying Frenzy that lets him inflict damage on everything around him to supplement his output. He is slightly faster and more durable than the Ascended Ones, so he earns his keep in that regard. Probably not worth taking more than 1 unless you have 20pts spare and can swap an Ascended One out.

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Ascended One (Infantry Threat Unit) – 125pts

Joyous One Lite. The Ascended One is your “baseline infantry”. He has basically the same statline as similar units like the Venomblood or Mirrorblade, but trades any extra reach on the weapon for access to Unmade abilities.

They won’t be holding any lines or pulling any clever movement tricks. They will however kill any infantry-equivalent that comes within shouting distance. Their points cost is slightly too much in my opinion, but it really isn’t a gamebreaker.

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Awakened One with Flail (Chaff Unit) – 60ts

The first flavor of Unmade Chaff, the Awakened One with Flail has less Crit damage on his ranged weapon than the spear version but has more attacks on his other weapon at comparable damage overall.

Either way these are set up to die in the same regard as any Chaff. Access to abilities like Nightmarish Visage and Barbed Strike mean that the Unmade Chaff have more uses than most Chaff. Being able to “net” a target at range or clip a target’s toughness by 1 offer them MASSIVE utility. 

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Awakened One with Brutal Polearm (Chaff Unit) – 60pts

Flavor number 2 swaps out diversity of attack profiles for a middle-of-the-road spear that does respectable Crit damage and has 2” reach. The same applies regarding abilities as the Awakened One with Flail, this unit has real utility. As both variants cost the same amount of points, it’s down to you on how you build them. Play around and see what works.

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The Unmade Ability Breakdown

We will now take a closer look at the six abilities specific to the the Unmade.

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Nightmarish Visage

Nightmarish Visage (Double) – Pick an enemy fighter within a number of inches of this fighter equal to the value of this ability and roll a dice. On a 3+, until the end of the battle round, that fighter cannot make move actions or disengage actions.

What an absolutely solid Double. There isn’t a game where this won’t come in at least a little handy, and there will be a lot of games where it plays a hand in your victory. As an example, your weakest unit, the Awakened with Brutal Polearm, can basically stun an enemy Threat then gang up on it with the other Awakened outside of the immobilized enemy’s attack range. Because every model can use this ability, and abilities are not capped at once per round, multiple Unmade can make use of this per turn. Very solid double, on par with Poisoned Weapons and Aura of Dread.

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Barbed Strike 

Barbed Strike (Double) – Until the end of this fighter’s activation, if any attack action made by this fighter scores any hits or critical hits, subtract 1 from the Toughness characteristic (to a minimum of 1) of the target fighter until the end of the battle round.

The Unmade are absolutely killing it on the Double front so far. Given the warband’s damage output is strongly tucked into it’s Crits, this is always going to be useful. Subtracting 1 from an enemy’s toughness can really help out in this warband, as your strength stats are 3s and 4s across the board. Getting this debuff hooked on an enemy Threat early can really guarantee that the Blissful One takes down the target and doesn’t end up stuck in a fight it will eventually lose on the backswing. 

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Chain Garrotte

Chain Garrotte (Double, Ascended One Only) – Pick an enemy fighter within 5″ of this fighter and roll a dice. On a 3-4, allocate 1 damage point to that fighter. On a 5-6, allocate a number of damage points to that fighter equal to the value of this ability

This isn’t bad. It’s very similar to the Iron Golems’ Thrown Bolas but only the Ascended Ones can make use of it. Given they’re likely to be up in the enemy’s face they’ll always have targets, though given the Ascended Ones are quite good in close combat it might be better spending this on Onslaught from the generic abilities for an extra attack.

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Flaying Frenzy

Flaying Frenzy (Triple, Joyous One Only) – Roll a dice for each visible enemy fighter within 3″ of this fighter. On a 3-4, allocate 1 damage point to the fighter being rolled for. On a 5-6, allocate a number of damage points to the fighter being rolled for equal to the value of this ability.

So this is basically Reaped like Corn and Whirlwind of Death, Quads from other warbands that automatically assign damage based on the ability value. The catch here is that the ability costs 1 less ability dice but involves a dice roll to achieve the full damage. This isn’t a bad ability as triples go, but I strongly recommend using it only when the Joyous One is deep in the thick of things as the next ability is probably worth a use over it.

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Vessel of Torment

Vessel of Torment (Triple, Leader Only) – A fighter can use this ability only if an enemy fighter has been taken down by an attack action made by them this activation. This fighter makes a bonus move action. Then, they can make a bonus attack action.

Ah, so this is what the Splintered Fang ability Relentless Killer could be, if it was good. The Blissful One is the most deadly model in the warband, and the odds of it killing at least one enemy fighter each turn are pretty good. The fact that rather than choosing between a Move OR an Attack Action, the Blissful One gets to make both, is what makes the ability worth the cost. Vessel of Torment is the ticket to clearing aside an enemy Chaff screen at rapid speed, and it works perfectly in that regard. Use it to bounce between enemies and squeeze out an extra move, potentially another kill.

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Gift of Agony

Gift of Agony (Quad) – This fighter makes a bonus attack action. Add 1 to the Strength and Attacks characteristics of that attack action if this fighter has any damage points allocated to them.

Very similar to the generic ability Onslaught, but with one extra dice for some added spice. The only downside to this is the fact you want your very squishy Blissful One to have taken some damage, but you can sneak around this by jumping off a building and (I can’t believe I’m typing this) hopefully failing the test. That small amount of damage counts for the requirements for the bonus and you can have your SIX Strength 5 attacks tear the enemy leader’s head off. Works on any model in the warband and has the ability (if damage has been taken) to ensure a kill. Very good, and contends with Rampage if you’re not desperate for a Move Action.

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The Unmade Strategy & Tactics

Straight out of the box the Unmade are an effective warband, not requiring an extra set barring the occasional Ascended One spam meme-list. The Double Box is worth the consideration for the additional Awakened Ones with Flail, as the ability to apply the Barbed Strike ability at a greater distance pairs well with their close combat damage output. Personally my Unmade have not yet been expanded, and I’ve had good success with them out the box.

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Aiden’s Unmade – Caveral’s Butchergang

Shield

• Blissful One (Leader)
• Ascended One
• Awakened One with Flail
• Awakened One with Brutal Polearm

Hammer

• Joyous One
• Ascended One
• Ascended One

Dagger

• Awakened One with Brutal Polearm
• Awakened One with Brutal Polearm

Hammer and Anvil (Shield in this case) essentially. I look to break my enemy between two superior fighting forces, but the tactic when enacted by the Unmade comes with a bit of a catch. Your fighters are glass cannons, and not protecting against the enemy using the same strategy will result in an early loss. I have included two Awakened Ones in the Shield with the Blissful One to serve as screens for it for this reason. The Hammer has a high concentration of threat units to split the enemy focus off the Shield, breaking their target priority and forcing them to fight us in an even footing, one they will surely lose on.

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Deployment

As above, make sure the Awakened Ones are protecting the Blissful One when the models are deployed. The Blissful One has a massive move distance so don’t be afraid to sit it a little further back, the enemy will not be able to keep themselves safe from the Blissful One so don’t feel the need to put it up close.

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The Game

The Unmade play exactly like how they behave in the lore and background fluff. They aren’t particularly inclined towards complicated tactics, and prefer to get stuck in and fight their enemies as soon as possible. However just because this style is simple in thought, it is far from easy in execution. 

• As your fighters will die to a backswing from any warband with near their damage output, you want to be wanting to make sure you attack fighters that have already been activated. To do this, go in with more durable units like the Joyous One first and then dogpile his target once it’s attacked.
• The Blissful One is the key to victory, protect it at all costs. It’s best spent one of two ways, taking down the enemy Threat/Leader unit as fast as possible or using Vessel of Torment to clear aside the weaker enemy models for the Ascended Ones to rush through.
• Inspiring Presence enables you to sneak in activations before the enemy if the activated model is near your Leader. While it’s not as flashy as Vessel of Torment or Flaying Frenzy, it’s better than the Ogor Breacher on 3 remaining wounds killing an Ascended One that probably could have killed it first.

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Conclusion

The Unmade are the ultimate in high-risk, high-reward gameplay. You’re a glass cannon pointed directly at the enemy and the only way to victory is directly through them. They’re among the harder warbands to play from the original run, but their skill ceiling is high enough to merit a fantastic playing experience. Last tip, be careful with the models. They’re thin, delicate and if you must transport them, avoid packing them too tightly. With that in mind… set free your face, take up the steel and remember, Our Gift is Agony.