The original Horde Mastery Warband is back as, well, a Horde Mastery Warband. One of my locals put it best when he said “this is almost like the only 2-fighter warband in the game” and “it’s as if your opponent is playing Underworlds, but you’re playing a different game entirely”, he said while wrecking my Tournament deck on zero practice right before Tacoma Open 2024.
Well it’s time to put those old quotes to the test. Does the Dentist Deintalos still dance to the beat of his own drum (the electric slide)? Are these guys going to have enormous activation efficiency and make the game take twice as long? Only one way to find out – check out this refreshed warscroll.
Thank you to Games Workshop for providing the page with an advance copy of this product for review and content creation.
Click here to see a Master List of all warbands in the game
The Exiled Dead: Lore
The Exiled Dead are a bunch of weirdos, led by a duo of ever weirder-os. Their leader is the Vampire Deintalos, whose views are so absurd and heretical that he went into self-imposed exile in Harrowdeep as he’s been experimenting with the Force Dynamic, a form of necromancy that is taboo among the very distinguished and honor-bound group of necromancers in this universe, I guess? Anyways he’s basically a Doctor Frankenstein who uses electricity and this mysterious Force Dynamic to raise sewn-together corpses rather than good, honest death magic. He’s also sewn his own mouth shut so he can’t drink blood like a vampire should, because like I said he’s weird as all-get-out. This makes him super gaunt and frail, yet he also has speaking lines. Go figure.
His apprentice, Prentice Marcov, plays the role of Igor. Dude is learning and kinda bad at it, so he’s only created one zombie minion, Regulus, who is like a classic zombie – but at least Regulus follows Marcov completely. The other four: Coyl, Bault, Vlash, and Ione, are more electrified and under Deintalos’ command. When working together like parts of a larger machine, electricity arcs between them and they can quickly drag down larger foes.
The Exiled Dead: Warscroll
Inspire
You minions (the lesser 5 of our 7-man team) will be inspired to start the game. They have uninspired sides of their cards of course. When they are slain, the core rules state you remove all tokens, break all upgrades, and uninspire the fighter. This warband can raise their slain minions (which we will get to later) – when they are raised, they will return to the field uninspired. Generally speaking, the minions are worse on their uninspired side, so even if they come back you still do get an advantage (and some bounty) for taking them down the first time.
The two necromancers both inspire if a friendly minion slays an enemy fighter. Kind of a big deal that they both do no matter which minion does the job!
Dynamic Enhancer
Conductive fighters refer to the four minions under Deintalos the leader’s command. If you conceptualize the warband as two pieces, you have the electric piece and the regular piece.
The electric minions move faster the more of them are out of action, presumably because they don’t have to share as much of the force dynamic. This may actually cause the Exiled Dead player to choose not to raise a minion at every opportunity, which I appreciate as somebody who is probably going to have to face them a bunch. It also opens up more play lines and decision points, which you want to see in a Mastery warband.
Overload
The electric minions’ printed attacks (not upgrades) have grievous against staggered enemies. 3 of the 4 have crit stagger on their inspired profiles, so if you trigger that with one of the fighters in the chain, the rest can switch to grievous. That’s nasty stuff and potentially lets you bring down elites in one activation. It also juices you up to counter Pillage and Plunder which is always nice.
Dynamic Surge
Electric fighters like when their enemy is staggered, but they actually get a reroll even if they’re not so long as they’re in a chain/bunch… ore should I say ‘arc’ around their target. Fighter one is adjacent to fighter two and they’re both adjacent to the attack target? That’s a reroll with flanked. If they’re already staggered? Well that’s two rerolls with flanked and grievous.
I hope you’re not too attached to your models, because they will be torn limb from limb like the zombie moves have shown us. Lord save me from what I’m going to do when I have to play 3 Exiled Dead matches in a row someday.
Puppeteer
All right, the non-electric wing of this albatross is referenced here. Marcov can use an action like normal such as charge or guard, but really he’s going to take the Puppeteer action 99% of the time. If he’s alive, he puppeteers, then he can either take any core action he’s eligible to use (and would have used anyway), but Regulus – his non electric minion – gets to do so too. So you could potentially have them both charge in the same action step, but they also don’t have to take the same action. You could guard with Marcov and attack with Regulus, move them both in different directions, the choice is yours.
The nice thing here is the caveat ‘that they are eligible to use’. A fighter with charge tokens cannot be chosen to charge. Does that mean he isn’t eligible to take that action? I want to believe that this means you cannot charge infinitely with Regulus. I also could be wrong since he isn’t the one being chosen to activate (Marcov is), but a fighter with charge tokens also cannot charge in most scenarios.
Alternatively, Marcov can puppeteer to raise a slain Regulus. All he does is stand still and bring Regulus back adjacent to him (who returns uninspired).
Danse Dynamic
We can dance if we want to We can leave your friends behind ‘Cause your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance Well, they’re no friends of mine
Here’s the other half of the two-fighter warband scheme. Deintalos controls the conductive minions, who have the previous handful of warscroll traits. If your leader has no move of charge tokens, he can pick either move or attack. All of the conductive minions then do that thing.
Notably, in a huge change from first edition – Deintalos DOES NOT do that thing too, as he is not a conductive fighter. He used to move or attack and the minions copied him. Now he has to spend his activation spinning his DJ turntable instead.
He does, howeverm, get to raise a slain conductive minion for free, and it has to go adjacent to him. If you picked move and all the conductive homies ran off away from Deintalos (since he’s not also moving), this new zombie will be left behind (as, after all, if they don’t dance, they’re no friends of mine). Those surviving conductive minions will have +1 or more move, too, so the minion ball is way easier to break up in second edition.
Thank God. This ability is substantially toned down from the original version.
The Exiled Dead: Fighter Cards
Deintalos the Exile
This is a pretty potent profile for a one-glory leader. Range 2 and range 3 attacks, multiple runemarks, 2 hammers inspiring to 3, and even jumping to 2 shields. The way you beat this warband is by killing Deintalos as early as possible. You’ll have a tough time doing it if he’s 4 health 1 shield inspiring to 2.
It’s truly a blessing from the designers that he doesn’t get to run while the zombies block your path, or attack along with the zombies, so he’ll be more of a sitting duck than he used to be. If you can force him to move or charge to escape you, he also can no longer use Danse Dynamic – so if you’re an ED player, try to avoid that. Just use Marcov and Regulus as bodyguards or something.
It’s a good advantage for him that he has range 2 and range 3 so he’s more able to stand and swing without needing to charge, and therefore you can take some attacks with him and not lock ourself out of dancing afterward.
Prentice Marcov
This lil guy has actually had a bit of a glow-up. Immediate 2 dodge and 3 health is pretty solid, and two hammers for 1 with grievous inspires to a potential 3 damage. You’ll take 1-2 actions with him a round to pupeteer, so you’ll not be as worried about charging with him and locking him out of that. Then, if inspired, you’ll have a 2 hammers 3 damage missile in your back line to deal with Deintalos’ suitors.
Regulus
Hey, on the topic of that missile – you’ll get to activate Regulus at the same time. He starts inspired, so even if Marcov is not he’ll be trowing 2 hammers 2 damage with stagger. If that hits, you can even stay adjacent to the target and let Marcov’s follow-up attack have a flanking fighter and a staggered target. Absolutely nuts. Regulus remains a very good piece for this warband, and range 2 lets him do a lot of good stuff. He even keeps the 2 damage when uninspired.
Coyl
“Billy Big-Arm” as he’s affectionately known ’round these parts, he’s unique among the conductive minions because he does 2 damage even when uninspired. Should you end up doing a lil’ dancing while two minions are slain, I would recommend bringing this one back first.
Two swords is a bad profile even for a minion, or so you might think. But you’re wrong! This friend is probably going to have the target flanked or surrounded since his pack of zombies moves with him. Secondly, if he’s adjacent to one of them, he will also have a reroll. In the right positioning, you are rolling two dice, succeeding on 4/6 dice facings with a reroll.
If the target is staggered, that’s 2 dice with a 2/3 success rate and TWO rerolls, for THREE damage.
Note to Exiled Dead’s opponents – if you have to attack a minion, I know this one is scary, but Coyl might actually be the minion you LEAST want to kill. He comes back with the same 2 damage profile and only loses crit stagger. The other minions have a bigger dropoff in potency.
Bault
Bault, also known as Jazz Hands, is identical to Coyl when inspired. When uninspired however, he drops to 1 damage, slows down to 2 move, and has no runemark. He’s a good choice to take down first so there are less opportunities for him to give stagger and add grievous to his friends.
Vlash
This boy goes by the name ‘In da Club”. How a club gives you Cleave, I have no idea.
Vlash keeps his cleave uninspired, but does at least drop to 1 damage. If you’re a shields warband with low health, he’s maybe the one you want to kill first? I don’t know, this warband presents so many target priority problems.
Ione
Ione is identical to Bault in every way except she has a significantly cooler model.
Potential Pairings
Zamn Zaddy. This warband has a lot of choices. For the price of one action, you can get 2-4. In fantasy land, you just dance all round and get 4 times as many actions as your opponents do, so you can score buckets of objectives that require positions of fighters, occupying treasure, delving, rolling dice, you name it. They score with insane efficiency. This means they can pair with almost anything.
Pillage and Plunder has never been easier with 7 fighters, 5 of which revive for little to no effort, and can move potentially 4 fighters per action to get on many tokens and start delving like mad.
They have five raise-able minions who begin the game Tempered and can easily score you Edge of the Knife objectives.
Countdown to Cataclsym and Wrack and Ruin both give you pushes, stagger effects, and pings which this warband will revel in.
Deadly Synergy loves the idea of being able to gain and regain unity for no effort.
Really you can take any deck. Any deck. Insanity. The only ones I would shy away from are Reckless Fury and Raging Slayers since you won’t be charging nearly as often as you’d need to for their objectives.
Wrap
On one hand, AAHHHHH! Why the heck did they bring this warband back!? The balancing act is so difficult and they’re either going to be way too strong or way too weak since their action economy is a huge multiplier. On the other hand, they will be pretty strong against hordes, and especially delving hordes who stagger themselves, so they serve as a bit of a counter-meta pick in that sense which could introduce more variety in warband selection. Here’s hoping.
I expect this warband to be an immediate top meta threat even though Danse Dynamic is toned down from first edition, and maybe Puppeteer depending on an FAQ document. As a result, blitz aggro assassination warbands, especially those with teleport and/or flying will see a relative increase in power as they’re going to be the only things that can take down Deintalos and Marcos before things get out of hand.
Whether you’re re-enacting classic zombie films as the desperate heroes or the brainded (yet big-brained) undead, I hope you have fun Spending your Glory, and try not to flip the table (and consider bringing a chess clock!)
Be sure to check out Spent Glory’s other review articles here
Thanks again to Games Workshop for providing me with this product so that I can produce this review content.
Spent Glory 
Leave a comment