We come to the redheaded step-child of the digital releases, the Strike Warband known as the Skinnerkin. Last rendition, they were the literal worst warband in the game, and the only errata attention they saw made them appreciably worse. I wrote about it at huge length here if you’re into historical fiction. I made several recommendations to the rules team on how to fix them up, and to my genuine surprise they’ve refreshed the warband rather than toss it in the rotting meat pile where we all thought it was headed. Let’s dig in and see what GW did for our favorite kitchen crew, and if it got the seasoning right.
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.
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 Skinnerkin: Lore
Released as the very last warband of First Edition, the Skinnerkin came out in the Wintermaw core box. Members of the Flesh-Eater Courts – emaciated ghouls who are wracked with delusions that lead them to cannibalistic behavior veiled as chivalrous knightly deeds, these guys are actually the least-delusional FEC gang you can imagine. Ushoran, the Summerking, needs food for his feasting table, and he likes exotic delicacies. The Skinnerkin see themselves as the kitchen staff seeking perfect cuts of meat. In the Wintermaw and now in second edition, they seek to stock their larder for the next banquet.
Gristla Tenderhooke is the warband’s leader, and is a very experienced butcher and head chef. An exacting and demanding boss, she lashes her followers on to collect the prized haunches they’ll need, and often quotes her recipe books as mantras of precision in filleting, and selection of the tenderest cuts.
Young Master Kretch is one of Gristla’s two main apprentices, and enrues withering critique in his mission to gain experience and hopefully, the king’s favor. Seddrik the Chain is her other main apprentice, even less skilled na knowledgable than Kretch, and even has the audacity to criticize his betters. As such, he’s pretty far down the pecking order.
Flensemaster Pewdrig is a veteran of Gristla’s staff and is far older and more experienced. His primary duty is the preparation of felled kills, and preparation of meat for storage. Accompanying them is The Carnskyr, who Gristla claims is a visiting foreign envoy who muct be treated with the utmost respect and politeness. In truth, it is a slavering beast-thing that guards their larder.
The Skinnerkin: Warscroll
From the February 2026 Errata, the warscroll is updated as above. I’ll cover each change in their specific sections, but you now need to have 3 haunch at once to inspire and can’t spam healing as often. However, Carnskyr’s output is much more reliable now.
Inspire
From the February 2026 Errata, you need to be in possession of three haunches which will slow down your inspiration a bit
For those unfamiliar with this relatively un-played warband, you may wonder “what is Haunch?” Why, it’s the whole warscroll. Let’s see how we get them, then how we use them.
Prime Cuts
When eatin’ good in the neighborhood, it’s nice to have friends along. We now gain a haunch token when an enemy is slain if they were flanked or surrounded. This is nice because it gives us another way to generate haunch, and surprisingly even lets it happen if they are slain due to any reason rather than one of our fighters’ attacks. Consider bringing some pings along.
Otherwise, when a Chef (Gristla or Kretch) hits an attack (including with upgrades), you gain a haunch token. Anybody with the fillet ruemark can also grab you one when they hit.
Grasping Talons
From the February 2026 Errata, this ability has been updated to now do a damage and gather haunch on Crit and Hammer, and push a fighter on any other result. This means Carnskyr always does SOMETHING when he flies over an enemy, which is great, and increases your odds to do the thing you really wanted by ~50%. The last way to get yourself some meat for the larder is with Grasping Talons. When the Carnskyr moves (even as part of a charge action), he can fly over somebody. IF he does this, roll an attack dice – on a hammer or crit you inflict 1 damage and grab a haunch, otherwise you push the fighter 1 hex.
Still a gamble: you only have a 1/2 chance to get the effect you were hoping for, and a 1/2 chance to get nothing the other effect, and chances are you really preferred one of them in a given instance. That said a ping + haunch or a push can both be pretty nice, so you just have to hope lady luck in on your side.
Then we get to the meat – once per TURN (so 4 times per round), we spend haunch with one of the following:
1) Taste Test
Once a turn, you can toss a haunch after a fighter’s action to inspire a fighter (not necessarily the one who activated).
I suppose if you were desperate to inspire one of your non-chefs to get them to 2 dodge before the clap-back, you could do it. If you find yourself in the pitiable position of missing yet another attack, being down to one of your last fighters, and have no hope of getting to 3 haunch, you could at least inspire one with this ability.
From the February 2026 Errata, you can inspire any given fighter and not just the one who activated. This allows you to inspire somebody who hasn;t attacked yet and get access to their inspired profile for their attack later in the round, which is much more useful
2) This One Is Ruined, Fetch Me Another!
You’ve rolled an attack and didn’t like the result. But wait! You can try again with a reroll of one single dice, if you have a haunch and haven’t used the grievous ability which we will get to next.
Rerolling only 1 die is a bit of a bummer, but you don’t have to have failed. Maybe you got a couple successes and just want to try for one more. Maybe you secured the hit and want to fish for a crit to get an overrun or something. It’s also usable for any attack, so if you’re going all in with something like Desperate Rage, Haymaker, etc you can up your odds.
3) The King Hungers!
We’ve had our appetizer and salad, and now it’s time for the main course: The King Hungers!
After you pick a melee weapon as part of an attack, discard a haunch and then you get Grievous for that attack. One of the biggest limitations on the Skinnerkin’s fighter cards is that everybody tops out at 1-2 damage, so if you have haunch to spend, we can finally bring that up to a more respectable 2-3 and, you know, Strike. It’s a bit of a bummer that this comes in the form of a Runemark, so you can’t also use cleave/ensnare Fillet, but I’ll take plus damage for these cannibals wherever I can get it.
A note of caution: you can only spend one haunch per turn. This is the first window in which you can spend it in a given turn, so if you pop this one to get grievous, you cannot spend another to reroll, heal, or inspire afterward.
4) Quick Nibble
At last, we come to our fourth course: desert. Who wouldn’t want a little foie gras Foie Gras Paté after a hard turn’s work?
From the February 2026 Errata, this ability now specifies that you can only do it in your opponent’s power step, thus preventing you from healing twice between their attack opportunities. While it’s often difficult to acquire that much haunch, this slows down their healing spam and will make them a little easier to kill for warbands without access to 3 damage.
In a power step, eat some haunch and heal a point of damage. This one is in the opponent’s power step, so you can use this and NOT be locked out of spending haunch in your subsequent turn. There’s no world in which you really are going to have buckets of haunch to spend on this, but if you did, this could be multiple heals per round. Useful for keeping your fighters ticking, denying enemy Objectives, you name it. Finger-lickin’ good.
The Skinnerkin: Fighter Cards
Gristla Tenderhooke
She’s your leader, she’s your workhorse, she’s a maniac. Gristla is your sturdiest fighter by a long margin, sporting 4 health and 1 shield. She’s also a Chef, so any time she hits, she’s generating a haunch for you. She starts on 3 swords and has crit fillet, so in the instances where she hits and rolls a crit (a little under half the time), you’ll grab 2 haunches.
You need those haunches. The king’s table needs them. Your success with this warband lives and dies with her. Inspired she goes to 4 swords and fillet without the crit requirement, so you’ll generate more reliably and can get to spending them with a quickness. She still is slow, and never exceeds 1 shield, so she’s a priority target for the Quick Nibble heal.
Young Master Kretch
Kretch is our other Chef. Canonically, I don’t get why Pewdrig can’t be one too, but it is what it is. Aside from Gristla, this is where most of your haunch is coming from. Kretch is also our other principal damage dealer but is regrettably a 3 health one dodge fighter so he has a tendency to go down early. Unfortunately, he is also worth 2 bounty, so it will hurt even more when he dies. Try to protect him when you can – he’s fast enough to be deployed a little safer if you aren’t planning a full throttle invasion assault.
He’s actually more accurate than Gristla (unless you can supply her with flanking fighters), though he’ll trigger the crit fillet less often with only two dice. Hitting on hammer though means he’s your better choice for spending haunch on This One Is Ruined, Fetch Me Another! to get a reroll. He’s also a prime candidate for The King Hungers! to reach the 3 damage this warband desperately needs.
Flensemaster Pewdrig
Mr. Pewdrig is a fun piece. He is also 1 dodge and 3 health, but at least only drops 1 bounty when he dies. He’s not a chef and doesn’t even have fillet, so he’s not getting much haunch for you outside of killing something that’s flanked or surrounded. What he does have instead is Crit Grievous on three swords, which bumps to flat grievous on 4 swords when he’s inspiured. Give him Hidden Aid, watch him hit and kill little guys, and scoop up some haunch for his efforts.
Additionally, he goes to two dodge inspired, so he has a little staying power as a lower priority target they’ll wish they dealt with when he was easier to hit. He’s not great by any means, but Pewdrig can be a dark horse MVP. If you were going to waste a haunch to inspire with Taste Test, this is probably your guy.
The Carnskyr
The beautiful boy is a haunch generator with Grasping Talons. It’s unreliable to be sure, but if you’re going to bother to activate him you’d better make sure to fly over a fighter while you’re at it. a decent use for the Carnsky is to charge over somebody and either ping them and pick up a haunch or drag them into a flanked position to increase your odds to hit. You could consider burning a haunch to give him grievous in that case if it could kill somebody, since you might just get that haunch back after the fact.
Another tasty sauce on Grasping Talons is that your 1/2 chance to displace a fighter can potentially be big if you go over a fighter in an important spot. They’re on a treasure token? Fly over them and maybe drag them away. Fail to drag them away and you can still drive them back with your charge. They’re on a Waystone hex? Pull them off and negate the reroll. They’re on your territory’s Aqua Ghyranis token? Get Out of My Larder!
Seddrik the Chain
Seddrik was the black sheep in V1, was the black sheep in the original V2 warscroll, and remains the black sheep now. He has no melee weapon, so he can’t access the warscroll grievous. He somehow, despite having a meat hook on a chain, doesn’t have grapple. He’s a fighter, and that’s about all we can say about him.
3 swords on a ranged attack with crit ensnare isn’t awful, it’s just not what we’d prefer with the rest of the warband’s gameplan.
In Practice
I played a single test game in Nemesis with Blazing Assault and Deadly Synergy. The Skinnerkin lost that game, but they kept it way closer than I had anticipated! Their accuracy is really helped by the United flank from the plot card in DS, and when an enemy is slain while flanked (which should be often in DS), I got to take some extra haunch. I used that haunch to really good effect and got four heals out across the game, a few rerolls, and a few grievous hits in. I may have been too pessimistic about the new warscroll, because while it’s not great per se, it is far, far better than what they were working with before this re-release.
Potential Pairings
Considering you have a real need for accuracy, it’s hard not to take Blazing Assault with this warband. Plus dice, flanking, extra grievous, health, rerolls, it’s all there. If you want haunch, you probably want BA. Countdown to Cataclysm gives you access to pings that can kill (and generate Haunch), a few attack action upgrades (you chefs can use for Haunch), pushes, and several other good tools for an otherwise weaker strike warband like this.
Wrack and Ruin can potentially give you rerolls and pushes that might help with haunch, as well as some direct damage to soften your targets up. The objectives are trash, but the built-in reroll from Raging Slayers is going to come in handy very, very often when playing for haunch. Finally, Hunting Grounds can be a decent choice for them and can prevent your need to throw soft fighters into your opponent’s battle line (plus provides you with Hidden Aid, which Skinnerkin really enjoys). Deadly Synergy worked better than expected and can help you generate haunch in more ways than one
Wrap
Overall, it feels like kind of a side-graded change, but at least it’s not an outright downgrade. We sort of have more accessible ways to spend haunch, but it’s somewhat harder to acquire without the access to Crit-fillet on every fighter. Losing the stand fast is also a huge bummer, and while Kretch did get more accurate, we still only have the ability to reach 3 damage if we use the once per round grievous option – which locks us out of heal, inspire, and rerolls for the round. We also don’t have the follow your nose ability to push after another fighter, so my old plan of token theft is gone, and any hope of playing flex is in the rearview mirror.
My test game gave me a huge sigh of relief though. Their haunch, while still somewhat challenging to get, was helped quite a bit from the ‘a flanked enemy is slain so you get a haunch’. I was pairing with Deadly Synergy, which may not be their best combo, but gave me pretty consistent flanked attacks, which not only helped their sword rolls hit, but also ensured my slain enemies went down with a haunch added to my stash. Then, I got to use them to grab rerolls on demand, add grievous, or even heal, which I did 4 times across the game. I will need more practice, but I’m not NEARLY as down on them after some live fire experience.
But I’m going to try and stay positive! Here’s what I do like:
- You can finally spend haunch more often. Things can be done once per turn, rather than once per round. This is how it was originally intended before unnecessary the pre-worlds nerf, and I’m glad they saw the light on this one.
- We have access to grievous, so if you forego Fillet on Kretch or Gristla you can finally get to 3 damage, which they badly needed.
- We have another way to generate haunch in the ‘something dies while flanked or surrounded’ caveat.
- The ability to heal, while maybe less good than Stand Fast, might be really useful in some scenarios.
- They didn’t dumpster my precious ghouls and I can continue playing with them forever!
That’s all folks! Tie on those dignified adult bib napkins, grab your rustiest fork, and chew on some haunch with me in the Spitewood.
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 
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