At the time of this writing, the Skinnerkin are the least successful warband in Nemesis among the competitively valid options for Embergard according to the Underworlds Statistics Project. Prior to me giving them a couple test runs in prep for this article, Skinnerkin had logged 20 games played and a record of 3-17. That’s a 15% win rate! Assuming we want every warband to be somewhere between 45-55%, the Skinnerkin are drastically below expectations even accounting for a small sample size. They were 0-6 with BA/PP, 0-2 with BA/CC, and 1-7 with BA/RF. Those are all reasonable deck pairings, so it’s not like this data is sourced from ‘bad’ nemesis combinations necessarily either.

To add insult to injury, the warband received a rules update/errata nerf even prior to the rules being publicly available. As originally written and released to content reviewers and the World Championships competitors, their warscroll abilities Calloused Hands, Precise Fillet, and More for the Pantry were all able to be used ‘once per turn’ (i.e. up to 4 times per round based on their timing of use). They were one of the 4 chosen from the 13 classics considered intriguing enough to get a Path to Glory review and even with this, the overall opinion was “if the dice are kind, they can overpower with their consistently available abilities, but will be very feast-or-famine and ‘struggle to keep up and scale in the way that other Warbands do’”. After this review, the rules team changed all three abilities to read ‘once per round’ – removing the ‘consistently available abilities’ PtG liked, and effectively cutting their top potential warscroll power by up to 75%. Yikes.

Now with several months of play behind us to inform things, The Skinnerkin sit in the D-Tier (the lowest of the available rankings) in the Critico y Culo tier list. While tier lists are subjective and debatable, it lends further evidence to the fact that the community perception is that you would be unlikely to see Skinnerkin succeed in a tournament setting, and perhaps even casually. What the Hex also just did a Meta overview podcast episode, and when discussing “do you expect to see this warband at Adepticon”, the answer for the Skinerkin was “Hard No. They just don’t have enough in the damage department, they’re slow, and their warscroll gets you juiced for acquiring haunch but then you can’t spend it”.

Prior to this article, I played them once in Rivals against someone playing their first ever game of second edition, using Zikkit’s Tunnelpack, and still only won by a single glory thanks mostly to dice – the ‘kin really are sorely lacking in power in many areas of the game. I recognize that their being one of the ‘classic 13’ warbands carried forward means there is a very low likelihood they’re going to get a balancing consideration, and might well rotate out of competition before they get a second look (though timing on rotation has yet to be determined). That doesn’t mean we can’t brainstorm some ideas about how they might see a boost, since it does look like they pretty sorely need one. Heck, maybe even house-rule this warband to bring them up a bit in your local scene for casual play.

I’ve rifled through the larder and have a few choice morsels to plate for you. Let’s start with why the Skinnerkin are struggling so hard right now. Next, we’ll look at a few options for improving the warscroll/fighters to bring them more into line with other viable teams. And finally, for desert, I’ll leave you with how I have had some initial success with them despite the uphill climb they currently face, and how you might do the same.

What Makes the Skinnerkin So Weak

• As discussed above, their 3 warscroll abilities have been limited to only once per round, with now only 25% of the frequency of use from the original release.
• Lower stats than you’d like for a strike warband – they have no fighters on the team who can hit 3 damage even when inspired. This is a downgrade from first edition when Kretch could dish out 3, and while some other warbands lost this ability as well, it still can be a tough problem. 16 wounds across 5 fighters is fine, but their defense is below average and their accuracy is middling. They really don’t shine in any one stat area. Their ‘best’ trait is movement, but their best piece is only move 3.
• Natively, a five-fighter warband will struggle without movement economy/action efficiency if they want to compete in a landscape of 3-fighter elites or 4×4 teams who can otherwise play Strike much more competently as a result. You either need to be able to brawl better than the Skinerkin, or control territory better than the Skinnerkin, and they’re stuck clumsily in the middle. The Skinnerkin have no way to mitigate their action economy problems for strike other than hoping Seddrik dies right away, and his 3 health make that less likely even if you do decide to dangle him as bait.

• The warband mechanics rely on Haunch, but have unreliable resource generation as well as also having a limited ability to spend it. Really just rough from all 3 angles.
• Haunch is gated behind a runemark in many cases, which precludes the use of grievous, cleave, etc which this warband also needs more than many others. Lots of 1 and some 2 damage attacks, almost exclusively hitting on swords.
• There are few ‘reliable’ resource generating pieces, especially considering Kretch is easy to take down and Gristla is slow.
• Seddik as a fighter is relatively unhelpful in most matchups.
• Most of the fighters generally see very little benefit from inspiration, and in the case of Kretch actually become actively worse

What Could Potentially Fix Them in a Rules Update?

As mentioned earlier in this rant, I have doubts that the Skinnerkin will see any love come their way as most of our Rules Updates thus far have been nerfs/toning down overperformers rather than bringing up the lower-end teams, and the Skinnerkin being one of the free, online, ‘classic 13’ teams puts them in a lower priority bin, or so I would imagine. That said, if anybody at GW is reading… maybe put a bug in somebody’s ear to the tune of the following?

While I don’t think the warband needs all of these adjustments in combination, they are probably going to need a handful. There’s no way you’re going to effectively correct a 15% win rate/D-Tier standing with a single change here.

• Make haunches easier to obtain: I see two ways to potentially do this. The first is to consider giving something to Pewdrig, who canonically is a more experienced chef/butcher than Kretch. He’s a flensemaster who has been with Gristla for years! Either give him Chef status, or give him the Fillet runemark on his weapon (ideally while bumping him to flat 2 damage). Another option is to change the wording on Precise Fillet. The ability either needs to go back to once per turn or have its reliability improved – grant the weapons the Fillet runemark rather than crit Fillet. Right now we get one chance per round, in which we need to successfully hit AND have rolled a crit. Additionally, you can’t up your odds of success with a different runemark like Cleave. The odds of Precise Fillet ever getting you more than one Haunch per game are abysmal in its current form.
• Make haunches easier to spend: as of right now, the only use they have is Calloused Hands, which you can only use once per round. Only getting to use a maximum of 3 Haunches per game makes it less useful to bother acquiring them, especially once you are inspired. Why make a resource management warband and then not give them ways to manage the resource? While I can see Calloused Hands potentially being ‘abusable’ if it was able to be done every turn (and it is a bonkers good ability), once per round is too little if it’s the only way to spend them. Seeing as they’re hard to come by anyway in their current form, it’s not like you’d be Standing Fast 12 times per game in the old wording, and if you can’t make this warband lethal at least make them persistent and annoying. Allow for Calloused Hands to be used more often?! You can also work Haunch into the More for the Larder ability which I’ll get to in a little bit.
• This warband could benefit from a fighter stat boost, however unlikely that is to occur. Maybe give Gristla and/or Kretch another wound, or up Kretch’s damage to 3 (or just give him 2 and grievous) – at least on his inspired side. Give the Carnskyr 2 dodge uninspired. They guys need some more juice.

• Give Seddrik a melee attack, or let him at least use Filet on his chain in some capacity. He can theoretically reel in a Haunch he’s grabbed with his meat hook, after all, or potentially give him Grapple so he can pull somebody with his chain. First Edition Seddrik had a 2 damage scything attack available to him when inspired, which would be excessive here but another option is still in order. He could benefit from a melee option so he can access cards and abilities better and feel like he contributes to the warband’s plan more reliably.
• Increase the reliability of the Carnskyr’s ability. Right now, he has a 1/3 chance to do nothing at all which is a let down. The First Edition iteration was a 50% for either option which I don’t feel was overpowered at the time and certainly wouldn’t be now. Often times you’re really praying for a specific effect and still had a coin flip to get the ‘wrong’ one, which was a bummer. Now we have the pleasure of getting our desired effect less often and sometimes seeing no benefit to Grasping Talons at all, when the warband could really use something. If a ping and a Haunch is too strong for a 50% chance, then let the push happen 2/3 of the time, or vice-versa.
• Consider a change or three to More for the Pantry. As it stands, you can only once per round use this ability after your action, which is rare and also restrictive timing as well as needing a Move or Charge token. If you change the push timing to be either more flexible (say, in any power step), you could use it more flexibly and open up more avenues for play. If you remove the adjacency to an enemy requirement, The Skinnerkin can have a better shot when trying other playstyles like Flex or Take and Hold. If you remove the requirement to have a Move or Charge token you can set things up better for fighters who have yet to activate. This warscroll ability also doesn’t currently require the use of Haunches – maybe keep the wording as is, and if the player elects to spend a Haunch, they can push in a different window, ignore the adjacency requirement, push somebody who has no tokens, or potentially push further than 1 hex such as up to a number of hexes equal the round number. It could read “Exactly as it reads now, or discard one or more haunch tokens and push any friendly fighter a number of hexes equal to the round number/number of haunches discarded” for example. Story-wise, these are hungry bois who could take a quick bite and then clear their minds enough to think about other things like scoring objective cards or holding feature tokens.

How Can We Leverage the Tools They Do Have?

I have spent a good amount of time noodling over this warband and played some testing, and you do have some tools at your disposal – just note that you’re going to have to lean more into flexy control play and positional take and hold. Strike is just not how they’re going to shine for you in a realistic sense. Their best pairing at this time, so far as I can tell, is Blazing Assault/Countdown to Cataclysm. Kills and to an extent damage is less important for scoring. just getting in and attacking should be enough to score some of the cards, and you can be marginally rewarded by losing fighters of your own. Additionally their warscroll abilities actually make stealing feature tokens their special little niche. How do you take advantage of it?

• Recognize that while filet requires a runemark applied to a melee weapon, the two fighters designated as Chefs (Gritla and Kretch) simply need any attack to be successful to gain haunch via that route. Weapon upgrades still qualify for the Chef haunch. Using Grievous or Cleave doesn’t block the Chef Haunch. Heck, even range 3+ upgrades (like Hurled Weapon) can still grant Haunch if a Chef succeeds with them, since the wording of Chef doesn’t specify what kind of successful attack.
• Do you need to steal a token? You have a ‘free overrun’ once per round with this warband. If you fail to overrun and claim a token on an attack, you can still use the warscroll ability More for the Pantry to push on afterward if you drive the opponent back, assuming your fighter has a move or charge token. You have to end adjacent to an enemy, so unless you slay them outright, you can just follow them after the driveback and that token is all yours. Unless of course they Stand Fast, but you’re generally throwing 3+ dice so your odds are ok.
• Once you’re on a token, you can be a real pain in the haunches to dislodge at least once a round and assuming you have the haunch token to spend. When your opponent comes at somebody holding a feature (and I would save it to either protect Gristla or maintain control over a critical Treasure) you can leverage Calloused Hands to GUARANTEE you stay on it, at least if you survive the attack. By the reading of the ability, you will be assumed to roll more crits for stand fast, no matter what the actual roll is. Reducing damage can be nice, but the real kicker is the no drive back. They’re less likely to finish you off (especially if they calculated an attack with precise damage to slay you), and they can’t get the token from you unless you’re slain. This is of course assuming you haven’t already burned Calloused Hands for the round, and have a Haunch to spend. Super easy and reliable, I know. But it can be a semi-guaranteed Shocking Assault score! It can lock in Set Explosives! If you’re a maniac trying to play Emberstone Sentinels with them you could score all kinds of stuff with this!

• While unreliable, Carnskyr’s Grasping Talons can be a great disruption tool to move somebody off a critical place they need for scoring or into a special place you need for scoring. They are on a feature you want to steal, swoop on over and either ping them and gain a haunch (hopefully finishing them off with the Carnskyr’s charge right afterward), or just yoink them from the token with the talons. Or 1/3 chance to do neither. And you can’t land on the token you pulled them off of since it goes off after the move, but it’s still pretty sweet for token theft which is again I believe this warband’s special secret.
• Did I say Seddrik is borderline useless? a range 3 poke is nice if it’s from a token, and especially if it drives somebody off of another one. Crit Ensnare/Ensnare while inspired is not marvelous, but a lot of the hold/pillage meta right now are dodge fighters and so it has a little more value when you’re playing token thief. He can always be the fighter who hangs back and holds treasure in your territory if that gets your Set Explosives and/or blocks Pillage stuff your opponent is trying to do.
• While inspiring this warband doesn’t suddenly make them good, inspiration might be a little easier than people had assumed. The reading on the warscroll is ‘immediately after you gain your third or subsequent Haunch counter’ – I’d like to emphasize the word Gain here. It doesn’t specify you need to be in possession of 3 Haunches, just that you have gained 3 Haunches. By my reading (and I could be wrong, but please man these guys need the help) you can have spent your Haunches immediately after gaining them and still inspire the third time you gain one. It’s not about how many you hold, just how many you’ve picked up.

In summary, while this team is designated as Strike, I wouldn’t think of them as a “slay 1-3 models per round” team and more of a “make attacks and disrupt/counterplay the enemy’s plans” team. If you take whatever Strike plan you have worked with when using Krushas, Gorechosen, Headsman’s etc and try to apply it here, you’ll fall flat, but there are still ways to use the Skinnerkin in an aggressive playstyle. In today’s Pillage/Cata meta, you can give people some problems, and you can be really mean to Emberstone players in particular. All in a world where you’re less likely to get stat checked by elites (save for the Jaws, who would probably be a nightmare for the Skinnerkin right now).

Wrap

What do you think? Even before the rules update butchered this warscroll and the warband’s chances at competitive success, they were probably underpowered. A gentle (or more than gentle) lift is probably in order to get the Skinnerkin back on the table and seeing a little more opportunity. In the meantime I think I’ve discovered a little something that might work for them as overrun/stand fast thieves, though I haven’t put it through the full paces yet. Have you played the Skinnerkin in Embergard and found anything to be working for you? What do you think of these proposed changes, and what other ideas do you have? I’ve sent the above thoughts to whunderworlds@gwplc.com but I’d love to hear from you at SpentGlory@gmail.com. Until next time, get out there and Spend that Glory (and maybe some Haunches, if you can find them)!