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Bladeborn is a recently released standalone bookshelf boardgame published by GW and is available in very limited markets, namely Barnes and Noble and apparently “GAMES” in the UK.
Many reports have said that the 14 twist cards included in Bladeborn are identical reprints of cards already found in the Warcry Starter (or the Battleplan card set if to you buy the cards outside of the starter).
I took that to be true until I decided to sit down and compare them myself, only to find out this is in fact, not true. Some of the Bladeborn twists share the same name of the Warcry counterparts, only for them to have unique effects. There are 9 new twist cards, with 5 more being duplicate reprints of twists found in Warcry and 1 of those being formatted to fit the hex framework that Bladeborn uses.
The following are the list of cards that are new in Bladeborn that can be used in Warcry:
Winds of Rot (Warcry) – Add 1 to the Toughness characteristic of all fighters this battle.
Winds of Rot (Bladeborn) – At the end of the combat phase, deal 1 damage to each fighter with one or more damage tokens.
Bloodwind (Warcry) – Add 1 to the Attacks and Strength characteristics of all fighters with 1 or more damage points allocated to them.
Bloodwind (Bladeborn) – At the end of a fighter’s activation, deal 1 damage to that fighter unless that fighter made one or more attack actions in that activation.
Winds of Fate (Warcry) – Players roll 7 initiative dice each battle round instead of 6.
Winds of Fate (Bladeborn) – After the players have determined initiative in each battle round, each player can re-roll all of their singles once. If they do so, they then divide their ability dice once more into singles, doubles, and triples.
Howling Winds (Warcry) – Subtract 1 from the Attacks and Strength characteristics (each to a minimum of 1) of attack actions that target an enemy fighter more than 6” away. In addition, when taking falling tests, roll 2 dice instead of 1. On a 1 on either dice, the fighter is said to have fallen.
Howling Winds (Bladeborn) – In rolls to hit, re-roll hits and critical hits for weapons with a Range characteristic of 3 or greater.
Battle Frenzy (Warcry) – Add 1 to the Attacks characteristic of attack actions made by fighters this battle that have a Range characteristic of 3 or less.
Battle Frenzy (Bladeborn) – Fighters cannot make disengage actions.
Grudge Match (Warcry) – Add 1 to the Strength characteristic of attack actions made by fighters this battle that have a Range characteristic of 3 or less.
Grudge Match (Bladeborn) – In rolls to hit, re-roll rolls of 1.
Eager for the Fight (Warcry) – Add 1 to the Move characteristic of all fighters this battle.
Eager for the Fight (Bladeborn) – In the first battle round, when a fighter makes a move action they must end that action closer to the nearest enemy fighter.
Blizzard (Warcry) – No ability or attack action can be used to target an enemy fighter more than 9” away this battle. In addition, after a fighter’s activation, if they did not make a move action in that activation, roll a dice. On a 1, allocate 3 damage points to that fighter.
Cold Snap (Bladeborn) – After a fighter’s activation, if they did not make one or more move actions in that activation, roll one action dice. On a roll of 1, deal 3 damage to that fighter.
(While these two cards do not share the same name, it is clear that they serve to fill a similar design niche and even share the exact flavor text as the above cards do)
Exotic Scent (Bladeborn) – In hit rolls, re-roll critical hits.
(This card is entirely new and does not have a similar analog in Warcry)
As has been revealed these are clearly not the same twists as in Warcry. The backs of the Bladeborn twists match the Warcry cards pretty well with only subtle differences, but not significant enough to avoid easy integration into your Warcry twist deck.
The faces of the Bladeborn twists lack the symbol that denotes which type of twist it is, but these symbols rarely ever come up mechanically so their omission is of negligible consequence.
I would go so far as to say that these could be recognized as official additions to the Warcry twist decks we all use.
As a bonus, there are also 10 illustrated lesser artifact cards included. While Warcry players already use rules for lesser artifacts as dictated by the Warcry rules, we have been dealing out 1 random card to each player before the battle begins, as a house rule.
These lesser artifacts must be used during that battle and cannot be carried over into other battles. Use it or lose it as the saying goes.
This adds a bit more granularity and variety to pick up games and we rationalize their inclusion as each warband finding random junk on their way to each new skirmish, either from the bodies of the numerous fallen scattered throughout the Eightpoints, or discovered in hidden caches as warbands forage for food and water.
There are also convergence cards included for the 3 major battles of each convergence. These are rewards of artifacts and are meant for the 6 warbands mentioned in Bladeborn. But I could see these being used by other warbands as well, without any modifications at all. These show promise in being explored for use in Warcry, but haven't done so yet so I cannot comment on the legitimate uses for them at the moment beyond creative supposition.
I wouldn't buy Bladeborn just for these cards, but considering how the Underworlds warbands are now legal for use in Warcry through the 2021 tome of champions, the two slaves to darkness warbands in Bladeborn pushes this into the realm of this could be considered to be an expansion for Warcry that happens to also be a standalone product. Each of these warband sprues are sold by GW for $25 USD without anything else. Bladeborn is $50usd msrp, so this has some value in many directions.
I hope this helps other Warcry players out.
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