Welcome to the second Spent Glory Product Review weekend! Thank you to Games Workshop for providing the page with an advance copy of this product for review and content creation. I hope to be able to provide something to the community that you all find valuable. Let me know what you think of my reviews and what you’d like to see change in the future!
So that you’re aware, this warband received some rules updates in the February 2026 Errata. I’ll comment briefly on the changes later in the article.
Three and a half months later, we’re back with another round of product reviews and new releases for WHU. Today, read some grisly tea leaves and peek into the future with our newest warband – in a Mastery flavor with a unique and powerful warscroll ability!
Click here to see a Master List of all warbands in the game
Knives of the Crone: The Lore
The Warhammer community preview post stated “These are Daughters of Khaine – or so they appear. In truth, the Knives of the Crone are followers of Morai-Heg, the Aelven goddess of prophecy, dispatched on secret business by their inscrutable patron.”
While many Daughters of Khaine follow Morathi, not all of them do per the lore. Now, for perhaps the first time, we get to see some witch aelves who are not fooled by her lies and follow a different leader/a different deity. Dark Elven civil war is always fun, and Underworlds again gets a little side faction that the main AoS games haven’t seen yet. These ones will apparently be spending their time looking for visions of the future in the entrails of their foes, which is pretty gruesome.
“Long thought dead, Morai-Heg has been appearing in visions to her prophetess Krethusa the Croneseer. The Knives of the Crone are the first dedicated miniatures we’ve seen for aelves inducted into her cult – presumably there’s a groundswell of clandestine religious fervour among the Khainites…
They are led by the seer Kaerna Vix, who reads the viscera of slain foes to glean her deity’s desires. A cadre of killers ensure Vix’s visions come to pass: Tazari is Kaerna’s strong right hand, while Krieta eagerly butchers those who draw her master’s gaze. Finally, the arbalist Azphel stands ready to put a crossbow bolt through distant foes.”
If you’re interested in reading more about the Crone herself, you can find stories in the Dawnbringers V book as well as the latest Maleneth Witchblade book.
Knives of the Crone: The Warscroll
This warscroll is pretty interesting as it ultimately is one big interlocking ability and is the only warscroll we have seen like this (outside of the “Grand Alliance Death: Dark Majesty” card). Even Grandfather’s Gardeners, whose cycle takes up effectively the entire warscroll, have multiple abilities. The Knives’ boxes have a lot of text, but it really all chains into one ability that you use in multiple circumstances and has multiple effects. Let’s dive in!
From the February 2026 Errata:
This change is a significant improvement to the warband’s reliability – the first allows you more opportunities to inspire, and the second increases your odds to hit attacks, this allowing you more damage output, more consistent scoring, more ability to roll for prophecies, and more chances to inspire.
Inspire
A fighter inspires if, after their successful attack, they get a certain result on the Prophecy Table which we will cover later. It will take a little bit of cheating ahead here, but if you’re aiming to inspire and willing to ‘fish’ for it, your odds of getting the result you need is ~78%. 4/5 times you successfully make an attack with a fighter you can also inspire them. This layers two different chance-based things to gate your inspire, unfortunately. While this warband should usually hit more than half their attacks, and you’ll be able to inspire on most of them, it’s still going to either be easy street or incredibly frustrating to inspire a given fighter when you want to – which might be one of the reasons why this warband is classified as Mastery. Some of these fighters really appreciate inspiration, so get ready to live and die by the dice, which seems to be the standard Underworlds DoK experience.
February 2026 Errata gives this ability an expansion of conditions; you now can pick any fighter to inspire if your prophecy roll to open a round results in Foretold Wisdom. This is huge, as you can improve fighter stats before the game really begins, and should help your survivability nd damage output. I would recommend inspiring Tazari and then Krieta with this should you get the opportunity.
Visions in the Blood
After a friendly fighter’s successful attack, make a Prophecy roll. We’ll see more in the next step, but this means you can roll for Prophecy both at the start of a round as well as after a successful attack – note this is not restricted to melee or even attacks taken during an action step. You could trigger this with Improvised Weapon, for example. So, what is a Prophecy roll, anyway? Let’s look.
Rituals of Prophecy
At the start of a round (and after making a successful attack as per Visions in the Blood), roll 4 attack dice. If you get a result, that Prophecy happens. If you get 2 results, you get them both. If you roll a triple, you can pick your favorite Prophecy. If you roll 4 of a kind, pick your favorite two. Any crits you roll can be changed to any other symbol, so you can get some flexibility and agency in landing the Prophecy you really want in a given moment. I have a section on probabilities later, but first we need to look at what the results actually are.
Don’t forget, you roll at the start of each round AND after a successful attack – don’t miss your Prophecy before the first activation! You can potentially survive an opening shot with a defensive reroll or access crit grievous to get a 3 damage alpha strike even before making an attack.
The Prophecy Table
There are three abilities you can grab, and no matter what you roll on the Prophecy ritual, you’ll get at least one of these results. The first, requiring two swords, is Foretold Slaughter, which per the February 2026 Errata gives this ability Cleave and Ensnare on your next melee attack attempt this battle round. This makes you substantially more accurate into any matchup, which will help you roll more prophecies and get more use out of the warscroll. It’s dead if you roll it after your fourth activation in the round and is also the lowest probability result.
The most important and most unique ability on the table is Foretold Wisdom, requiring two hammers. Look at the top card of your Objective deck. You can then put that card on the top or bottom of your Objective deck. This is HUGE, depending on what that card is. You either know what you’re about to draw into and can work towards it or you can ensure that you don’t get it until the third round. Maybe you’re about to score a Surge and would love to draw into another one; dump that End Phase card to the bottom of the deck. Maybe the card you look at isn’t realistically scorable this round, and you don’t want to have to deal with it yet – put it away for later. Maybe it’s a card you totally can score, and now you can get started on setting up for it a little early. Your opponent doesn’t get to see what card it is, and you’ll get to inspire a fighter if you rolled this after their successful attack. Absolutely their best result and a warband defining feature. Nobody else gets to do this, and it opens up some really interesting deckbuilding decisions for Nemesis.
Last, any combination of two flanked and/or surrounded will grab you Foretold Protection – the next time you’re targeted by an attack this battle round, you get to reroll one Save die. Usually not a bad thing to have, but also not something to write home about in many cases. It is also worthless if you roll this after the last activation of a battle round, since the effect expires before your opponent can attack you.
Stats on the Prophecy Table
First, since inspiration might be very important, let’s peek at just the ways to get a double hammer: there are 15 different combinations of 2 numbers that can be chosen from a set of 6 options. These combinations include {1,2}, {1,3}, {1,4}, {1,5}, {1,6}, {2,3}, {2,4}, {2,5}, {2,6}, {3,4}, {3,5}, {3,6}, {4,5}, and {4,6}. If we assign each side of the dice a number, (say crit is 1, and hammer is both 2 and 3) then we find 4 of those 15 combos will give us a double hammer – assuming we change the crit to a hammer every time.
The real jank here is that we’re doing the above exercise with four dice, looking for pairs. I’m going to ask you to trust me since it’s hard to explain the permutations without taking up a ton of picture space, and you either know them already or you don’t care. If somehow you’re not in either of these camps, play along at https://www.statskingdom.com/combinations-calculator.html, select n=6, r=4, and allow for repetitions.
There are 126 ways we can roll 4 different six-sided dice since the order doesn’t matter. If we are hoping to roll at least two hammers flat, there are 51 ways to do that for a 40.5% chance.
If we change the crit to a hammer every time, you have 30 more combinations that would result in 2+ hammers. This means with crits included, your odds of getting two hammers, two crits, or a hammer and a crit on 4 dice is 81/126, or 64.3%.
However, if you get a triple (or quad) of anything, you can also choose whatever result you would like. Not including triple/quad crits and hammers (since we already included those above), there are 18 more results that get us to Foretold Wisdom. If you’re angling for Foretold Wisdom, you can force it with 99 total of the 126 possible dice results, or 78.6%.
I’m too lazy to show my work on the math on the rest (and this might be a touch off since I did average a B in math), but you have:
- a 15.9% chance to get Foretold Slaughter natively
- a 59.5% chance to get Foretold Slaughter if you’re also changing crits to swords or rolling trips/quads to choose it
- a 40.5% chance to get Foretold Wisdom natively
- a 78.6% chance to get Foretold Wisdom if you’re also changing crits to hammers or rolling trips/quads to choose it
- a 40.5% chance to get Foretold Protection natively
- a 78.6% chance to get Foretold Protection if you’re also changing crits to flanked or surrounded results or rolling trips/quads to choose it
We’re heading into territory beyond by meager stats skills, but sometimes you’ll get two prophecies, and sometimes you’ll get to choose your favorite AND get a second one. Let me know if you run the numbers and we can expand/correct the above odds table.
I realize now after a few more games that the triples ‘pick your favorite’ is not as reliable, since Flanked and Surrounded are NOT the same result, and so changing a crit to one of them when you rolled one of each does not really give you triples. I am too lazy to go back and do the math again but your odds for fishing might be a touch lower as a result.
Warscroll Impressions
Overall I’m intrigued, to say the least. I like rolling dice and having to react to changing fates – which is also on brand for the warband’s lore! You have the lowest odds of getting Foretold Slaughter which actually isn’t a huge deal – Crit Grievous is OK and the warband can appreciate the extra damage but what you really want, inspiration and gameplay-wise, is Foretold Wisdom. What’s nice though is that no matter which of the possible 126 combinations you happen to roll for Prophecy, you will get something on the list. You’re guaranteed to foretell at least one Prophecy to open every round, and again with every successful melee attack. And whichever one you REALLY want to get in a given moment, you have a ~60-75% chance for that to happen if you’re willing to fish for it.
I think it’s going to take a few months for its effect to really shake out as players get good at using it, but Foretold Wisdom has the opportunity to take experienced players to great heights as they score more reliably and can ‘see the future’ so to speak. Mastery indeed.
Knives of the Crone: Fighter Cards
Kaerna Vix
Our warband’s leader, Vix has a solid stat block with 4 move, 2 dodge, 4 health and 2 bounty. Her attack is a little lackluster at 1 range 2 hammers 2 damage. Inspired, the only thing that changes is her accuracy – now hitting on 3 hammers. This is still nice, as it ups your chance to Prophesize. She’s a reasonable leader, but nothing exciting either.
Side note – her head is not as big as it looks in the ‘Eavy Metal photos.
Tazari
Our spearwoman, with the same stat block as the leader save for only a one dodge defense uninspired. She has two profiles like many spear wielders do in this edition – 2H 2D at R1, and 3S 1D at R2. Inspired, her attack profile combines to a 2 hammer 2 damage range 2, she bumps to 2 dodge, and notably gains the Flying runemark – guess that feather cloak isn’t just for show! Tazari is our other source for early 2 damage and is a reasonable piece for any gameplan. If you’re playing against Knives, she’s probably one of the first ones you want to take down.
Krieta, Wing of the Crone
This gal is a treat, and is both my favorite model of the warband as well as my favorite fighter card. Krieta has the same stat block as Tazari did, but has a 4 sword attack at range one to do 1 damage. Inspired, she also jumps to 2 dodge, keeps 4 swords, and moves to a flat 2 damage while also gaining flying. If you can manufacture a scenario where she has flanked and/or surrounded for her attacks, she’ll do a lot of good work for you. Once inspired she can reasonably put out 2 damage. Also great for scoring dice-based objectives like Critical Effort and Overwhelming Force. Plus, she can also fly when inspired – niche but can be great when it does come up.
Azphel, the Hag’s Eye
Poor Azphel. Among the Daughters of Khaine it’s a woman’s world, and this remains true even among the Croneseer faction. Azphel has only 3 health, still starts on 1 dodge, and has a dreadful 2 sword melee attack for 1 damage. His range 3, 3 sword attack is reasonable however, and so he can still be useful depending on your deck and gameplan. Additionally, he only gives up one bounty. Once inspired he goes to 2 dodge, and his attacks hit on Hammers, which makes him much more accurate – just note you had to hit an attack with him and roll the right prophecy to get here. You’ll probably either use him to hold a token and take potshots or serve as your danglebro since the other 3 models have a lot more utility. He’s also your best weapon Upgrade caddy.
The worst part? He gets to bare the midriff like the Himbo he aspires to be, but the ladies make him wear boots so he doesn’t outshine them with his immaculate toesie woesies. Life’s rough out there for an elf boi, and I’ll have to assume the warband’s symbol branded into his forehead wasn’t done of his own free will and accord. Sweet hero rock pose though, which lets you pretend he’s a coiled snake/cold-blooded assassin.
In Practice
I played them six times in prep for this article, so I’m by no means an expert. The Knives won 5 of those games but usually they weren’t blowouts, and the warband feels relatively strong but not overly so. I think you can do just fine with this team, and I’m not worried about them over-performing like I was when I reviewed Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz. Their one loss in 6 games came against Grymwatch, which, ya know, what can you do?
The biggest issue I ran into with the Knives was the uncontrollable nature of the Prophecy table, as expected. If you miss an attack, you don’t get to Prophesize, and that can add insult to injury after a missed attack which already feels bad. Sometimes I would get Foretold Wisdom, but already knew the next Objective card and wanted to keep it there, and the fighter who rolled it already was inspired – effectively a dead result. Sometimes I would Foretell Wisdom to open a round and couldn’t inspire anybody off of it – still a nice effect, but less powerful. More than once, I hit an attack to close a round and roll Foretold Slaughter or Foretold Protection – these effects expire at the end of the action phase and do not carry over to the next battle round, effectively becoming worthless. As a result, this team likes going first more than others might.
I also had a question that I submitted to the FAQ team – hopefully we will get some clarity soon. If you Foretell Protection and your opponent doesn’t attack next activation (if they take only a Move action or Focus, for example), you never used the reroll. Should you happen to Foretell Protection again, does it ‘stack’? Can you reroll two save dice if your fighter has become two dodge? The ability says “the next time you make a save roll”, so it definitely lasts multiple activations, but do they add up? I played it as yes a few times and no a few times, but it’s not clear.
Ultimately the warband is fine, but you’ll probably find yourself frustrated with a random and fickle mechanic that their inspiration is also locked behind. When the dice are kind, they’re going to feel great – you’ll hit for 2 (or even 3) damage, reroll your defense, put Annihilation at the bottom of your deck, and pretty happily play a death by 1000 cuts Strike game. When they don’t, you’ll be watching your 1 dodge fighters fold after missing a 1 damage attack and won’t have anything else in your warscroll to fall back on to salvage the mess you’re in.
In some of my later games I found the defensive reroll to be incredibly beneficial, especially for the opening prophecy roll. BA/CC seems like a strong pairing for them, and you’re not afraid to take Annihilation either.
Potential Pairings
Let’s face the facts – the warband’s toolkit is mostly locked behind making successful attacks. You’ll perform best with decks that want you to make attacks/slay enemies, and with a power deck that helps you accomplish that. Blazing Assault seems like a no-brainer in this regard. Countdown to Cataclysm, Reckless Fury, Realmstone Raiders, and to an extent Wrack and Ruin all fit the bill as well.
Outside of that, from a warscroll perspective, you’d initially think there’s no juice. The warband also does not have many other ‘special tools’ – no pushes, no movement economy, no pings, no real interactive things besides adding a potential melee Crit Grievous or a potential defensive reroll.
What they do have, however, is the ability to manipulate the Objective deck with Foretold Wisdom. This DRAMATICALLY increases their flexibility and power level with essentially any deck. Sure they don’t have the things that typically make Emberstone Sentinels feel appropriate, but what if you could cycle through your Objectives to see Supremacy earlier? What if you could take a peek at Slow Advance and say’ maybe later’ or ‘guess I’d better start moving over there’? Normally if you’re playing Pillage and Plunder and don’t have movement tricks or pushes, you feel behind. But if things aren’t looking great and you can spy ahead to know whether you’re about to draw into Broken Prospects and decide whether you’d like to change that? Things get a little easier. Even Edge of the Knife, which I wouldn’t recommend for a ‘Standard‘ 4-fighter Warband like Knives, has some play since you can more reliably chuck Trial of the Tempered to the end of the line, as well as other Tempered-specific Objectives until you have damage/Upgrades out on your fighters.
My 6 test games were two in Rivals format: once with Realmstone Raiders, once with Blazing Assault; four in Nemesis with BA/RF once and BA/CC three times. I can see reasonable paths to BA + Anything with this warband, RR with most things, and CC with most things. BA/CC or BA/RR seem like decent initial options until we see more of the meta shake out.
Wrap
The warband’s fighter stats are decent out of the gate, but the real secret sauce here is the ability to manipulate your Objective deck. You can expect a Knives of the Crone player to score Objectives more consistently across the game, especially once they’re practiced at the ability. They’re more likely to be able to draw into Surges earlier in the game as they dump their End Phases to the bottom and get them out of the way, and they’re more likely to score those End Phases in the third round. Cards that historically have been difficult to score in the early game will not deter a Knives of the Crone player as much, and I expect some of their glory ceiling to reflect that.
That said, their warscroll doesn’t give them any other very good tools, and the fighter stats aren’t probably enough to lean on in the absence of that deck manipulation/inspiration. If they don’t hit early attacks or are unlucky enough to not grab Foretold Wisdom when they do hit, they might crumple. Crit Grevious isn’t something to write home about, and a defensive reroll on 1-2 dodge might not tip the scales that hard – thought it has occasionally done wonders for me in practice games.
At this time, they look to me like a feast or famine warband that will shine with a good player at the helm, so long as the dice cooperate. You might lose scoring only 5-10 glory, or you might win with 20+. In my six games, the Knives were consistently in it and often comfortably ahead, so you’ll probably do just fine with them. They are really fun though, which is what actually matters!
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Thanks again to Games Workshop for providing me with this product so that I can produce this review content.
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