While bones are their money, and their money is bones, not just any bone will do for this Flex warband. Thanatek’s tithe is on the hunt for ‘Truebone’, which is osseous matter infused with unusual purity. With some resource management, push tech, resurrection, and attacks from surprising angles, this warband may take a lot of skill to master, but those who do may be rewarded with a box full of cadavers and a pile of Glory.
Thank you to Games Workshop for providing the page with an advance copy of this product for review and content creation.
The Underworlds Underground Podcast also has an overview of the faction you can listen to here
Click here to see a Master List of all warbands in the game
Thanatek’s Tithe: The Lore
While we don’t know exactly who or what Thanatek is, he’s on a mission to collect the purest and most special bones out there; not just any old bone will do for his tithe. He’s either shaped some retainer constructs himself or borrowed those fancy caskets from somebody else to carry all the goods around and has a few reaper assassins in his employ to do the corpse-making for that bone collection. While I read Kainan’s Reapers as the more traditional militaristic and regimented Bonereapers archetype, Thanatek and Co seem more akin to eccentric collectors on a special mission (perhaps not even something the hierarchy needs him to do, just something he enjoys in his autonomous free time).
There are a few quotes from the warband on the cards in the newly revealed Nexus of Power deck that can give us insight into who they are as people:
- “The aesthetic curl of the femurs. The pleasing off-white hue. By the Great Necromancer, they even have an arcane resonance” – Thanatek AKA The Shyishian Psycho, upon observing Paul Allen’s exquisite business card
- “The prize was here, he could feel it in his bones” with a picture of Xar-Tamok who is obviously a funny guy
- “He did not fear death, for he had never known life. Yet as Tukhar slipped into the fog surrounding the Spitewood, he clutched his blade tighter”
- “Claim it all for the tithe” – Thanatek
Thanatek’s Tithe: The Warscroll
This is a crowded one, with lots to sift through. First off, you’ll be tracking, acquiring, and spending a resource, but you also have different effects and abilities based on your three different fighter types. Don’t stress if you struggle your first handful of games with this warband, since they’re pretty complex.
Inspire
In the power step – but only YOUR power step, you can pick a friendly fighter and spend a number of Cadaver tokens equal to their bounty to inspire them. Cheating ahead a bit, your leader benefits on defense from inspiring, so this timing doesn’t hurt them too much, but the other fighters only see advantages to attacks. This means your newly-inspired fighter will have to wait before being able to access their better profile, giving the opponent a chance to get away from them or eliminate them. This is probably good from a game-balance perspective, but might feel rough for the Tithe player on occasion.
As a surprise little side benefit – since raised fighters are worth zero bounty, you can inspire your raised fighters for the low, low cost of zero Cadaver tokens. You’ll need to be mindful of getting these Cadaver tokens for much of the warscroll, and how you do that is described below.
Morbid Retainers
After a friendly fighter’s successful attack, if the target is adjacent to any friendly Retainers, you collect a Cadaver token. A few important things to note here:
The target has to be adjacent to a Retainer after the attack. As far as I understand, that means they have to have survived it, since they’ll be removed from the battlefield once slain. I really hope this gets an FaQ or an errata, because it’s going to limit your ability to grab these Cadaver tokens if not. Also, they’re cadaver tokens- shouldn’t you be able to get them from the… slain cadaver? The silver lining is many of your fighters have 1 damage with crit grievous uninspired – you can always choose NOT to use the runemark to stay on 1 damage and prevent the death of your enemy if you’re looking to retain some cadaverous bits. Ideally this gets updated down the line to allow you to kill and gain tokens simultaneously, though.
The good news is you can drive a target back into adjacency with a Retainer and snag a token, even if they weren’t adjacent when the attack was made. It also says ‘Any retainers… gain 1 token’, so if you happen to have two retainers adjacent to the target you don’t get to pick up 2 tokens. Spread those bony boys out!
We will see in a subsequent entry that you have the ability to push your retainers under some circumstances (and even after the damage part of an attack and not after the whole attack), so getting them adjacent may not be as hard as it seems at first glance. This is something you’ll probably want to work on, since you need Cadaver tokens to inspire but also for two of your other abilities as we will see soon.
Soul-Linked Constructs
This is arguably the most interesting ability on the warscroll. Your leader can make melee attacks from the position of your retainers rather than wherever they’re standing, which potentially is super cool! There are huge drawbacks as printed though.
Thanatek has to do so with their printed melee weapon which can’t be modified. Uninspired, that’s range 1, 3 swords, 1 damage, which would might call “Bad” and I would say “strictly worse than the Retainers’ own melee attacks”. If you put in the significant investment to inspire Thanatek that attack is range 1 3 swords 2 damage with cleave and ensnare, so there’s a use-case there but it’s not a hugely potent infinite-damage-output type of ability.
On page 17 of the Embergard Rulebook, ‘Modified’ is explained as anything that adds or subtracts a number or sets a number or symbol. So this means Thanatek can’t benefit from +1 dice like in Keen Eye, but also can’t be affected by minus dice effects enemies might apply like the Wurmspat. Runemarks are NOT modifiers per this page, but beware that Grievous’ effect is to modify damage, so you’ll have to avoid Great Strength on the leader. Otherwise, non-modifying effects like Accurate for a reroll or any other runemark that floats your boat are fair game.
What is most useful about it, however, is the interaction with cards. Say you have an upgrade on Thanatek (not an upgrade weapon) that can give him some advantages when attacking – now you can do this without having to charge him. Maybe you’re playing Hunting Grounds and the enemy won’t come to you – you can still score Lead By Example or other cards while Thanatek sits at home and attacks from the puppets. You can score several other objectives this way – consider that Thanatek is making the attack from the position of the Retainer, so that Retainer will be a flanking fighter. Pair this with the push ability we just covered, and you might get to make tons of flanked melee attacks from your leader while staying in a safe position.
For extra cuteness, I have been able to attack with Thanatek sitting on a Waystone hex. This gives him a reroll as the attacking fighter, even if his target is all the way across the board.
Elusive Mirages
An ability that has the potential to be incredibly powerful, Elusive Mirages lets your Reapers stand fast if they rolled any successes on defense, rather than needing more crits than the attacker. Even inspired, they only defend on one dodge, so without plus dice, cover, flanks, or rerolls, you only have a 1/3 chance to trigger this. That said, 1/3 of the time you can’t be pushed and will reduce damage, which is big. Those fighters have 3 health, so your opponent may feel obligated to dedicate a 4 damage attack or some overkill combo of 2 and 3 damage hits to feel confident in taking them down.
Spend your defensive upgrades on the reapers, or delve with them into cover, and you’ll be rewarded. Oh yeah, and as we’ll see down the line, potentially raise them and inspire them for free afterward.
Unwilling Donors
At the start of your opponent’s turn, if you leader is on the field, you can choose an enemy fighter to be “the possessor” of a particularly shiny bone you’d like to collect. That fighter remains the Possessor until the end of your next turn, so it’s still true even if they kill your leader that turn. After damage is dealt to the Possessor as part of an attack, you can Push each Retainer 1 hex closer to the Possessor. This notably happens in the middle of the attack sequence and therefore allows you a sneaky way to close the gap and get a Retainer adjacent to a target for Cadaver token purposes.
It’s not just for Cadaver tokens though! You can selectively use this to push toward the fighter, but that might let you sneak onto a token, get adjacency elsewhere, escape an edge hex, or any number of other things. You choose who the Possessor is each time your opponent starts a turn (provided your leader is alive) – the geometry of your Retainers and the chosen Possessor can be used in tons of creative ways by a crafty Tithe player. The opponent will have an action step to decide – do I run the Possessor away? Do I not charge with them after all? Do I charge into a weird spot to try and counterplay whatever trick they’re trying to pull with Unwilling Donors? An extra mind game can go a long way. Expect this ability to take lots of practice to do right, but once you have it down you can do wild things I’m sure.
One little wrinkle is that this can trigger off of the Retainer’s own attack – they both have range 2, so they can swing at the Possessor from 2 away, and as damage is dealt they can get a pseudo-duelist to close on them. Even if they don’t give you Cadaver token because you killed them or chose to drive them back, you can still take the push. You unfortunately do need to hit and do damage to trigger it, but remember you have the chance at some extra positional play through this route.
Endless Duty
It’s nice when a death warband gets a resurrection option. This one’s nicer because it doesn’t require your leader to be alive, nor does it take an action. Endless Duty allows you to, in YOUR power step (so after your action), spend any number of Cadaver tokens. For each you spend, roll an attack dice, and if you get any hammers or crits you get to bring a Mortis Reaper back on a starting hex in your territory. You can only use the ability once per round, even if the roll fails, so make sure you have the cadaver tokens to spare so you can drop 2-3 of these and make it more reliable.
If your opponent didn’t like your assassins before, they definitely won’t appreciate them being back, worth zero bounty, still able to stand fast, and inspiring for zero cadavers so they’re super accurate. They come back in your territory after your action, so there’s counterplay, but they also don’t have move or charge tokens so you can make use of the raised fighter too.
Raise mechanics are really hard to balance well. This one is complicated but seems about the right reward for the investment, though time will tell just how easy Cadaver tokens are to obtain (and of course, you’ll never roll the positive result when you most badly need your fighter to come back).
Necromantic Pulse
One more, almost there gang. Another ‘spend cadaver tokens’ ability, another in YOUR power step ability, and another dice roll to determine the effect. That said, it’s a pretty wild ability if it works for you.
Spend any number of cadaver tokens. For each enemy fighter adjacent to any friendly Retainers, you roll as many dice as tokens you spent. If any of those dice get a sword or crit (1/3 chance), you deal 1 damage to that fighter. Should you spend 3 tokens, you have a pretty good chance to get 1 damage out which can be done to finish a vulnerable fighter. If you should so happen to have five fighters adjacent to your two retainers, you can potentially roll multiple dice for all of them and possibly spit out tons of ping damage.
This of course is a fantasy, and you’ll often fail to get that 1/3 chance. In those circumstances, you stagger the enemy fighter in question as well as remove their guard tokens. While you probably wanted to deal damage, stripping a guard token can be pretty big in some situations. Staggering them to boot ain’t bad either, though again this happen in your power step so you can’t capitalize on that reroll right away.
You can only use this ability once per game, which is good because it’s gnarly. Think of the things you could do to hordes, especially following a smart use of Unwilling Donors to push into a surrounded position. Lawd Hammercy.
Thanatek’s Tithe: Fighter Cards
Thanatek
Boy howdy, the first thing to notice about this leader is he’s worth a whopping 3 bounty. With one shield and 4 health, he’s going to be a high priority target for elimination by aggro teams, so make sure you keep him safe! You’ll need him to make use of the Unwilling Donors ability which will be one of the keys to victory for most gameplans. When he inspires he jumps to 2 shields which will help, but considering he costs 3 cadaver tokens to inspire you may not be able to or feel it’s worthwhile.
Probably the most interesting thing about him is his ability to attack from his linked constructs, but there are downsides as discussed before. You’ll likely not make much use of this ability unless you have an Objective that necessitates it, a good upgrade (not a modifier) on Thanatek’s attacks, or have him inspired.
He only moves 3, but he can fly which is cute. He’s also got a ranged attack which, while not able to be used through the Retainers, is pretty accurate and can help set things up for other fighters considering it can stagger.
Tukhar
The more menacing-looking of the two Reapers, this one has a two hammers 1 damage crit grievous attack which is a little underwhelming, but considering he’s 1 bounty it’s a reasonable attack profile. The 4 move, 3 health, 1 dodge is all right too, especially considering the stand-fast Mirages ability. He/She/It inspires to have cleave, replacing crit grievous as the attack goes to flat 2 damage and gains a hammer. This is remarkably accurate against shield fighters and depending on your matchup they may be an early inspire.
Sekhmor
Our other Mortis Reaper is identical to Tukhar, except that they gain Ensnare rather than Cleave when inspired. My assumption is this is because they forgot the right way to hold a sword, but they’re ready to chuck a magic grenade so… dodge this, buckaroo. A hyper-accurate 2 damage into dodgy hordes might make for a beautiful tool depending on what meta you’re playing into, and if you have the available cadaver tokens you might just resurrect them (then inspire for free) pretty often to make use of that.
Xar-Tamok
2 shields, 3 health, range 2, crit grievous on 3 swords, and all this for 1 bounty! While you’re going to feel obligated to put them in risky positions thanks to their Morbid Retainers ability, they have the stats to support it. They inspire to flat 2 damage which is nice but may not be worth the cadaver token cost in some situations.
Medeb-Ahk
This construct is identical to the last, except angrier somehow. In my practice games he’s the one who whiffed way more often, which might explain that balled fist.
Potential Pairings
More pushes mean more adjacency for your Retainers, so Blazing Assault, Countdown to Cataclysm, or Wrack and Ruin are all reasonable choices there. Since your assassins enjoy being in cover and you have some push ability, Pillage and Plunder has play. Nexus of Power is pretty interesting for everybody and this warband is no exception (note that your leader can’t benefit from the range extension though since his attacks can’t be modified).
Thanatek’s ability to attack through the constructs makes Hunting Grounds an interesting proposition, and the fact these attacks will be flanked when done like this means Deadly Synergy is a solid choice; the push on the warscroll and the ‘flanked or surrounded’ condition on many objectives help with this too. Plus, you can occasionally get a double push to re-unite with the Retainers.
Wanting to hit attacks but not necessarily kill things puts them in contention for a decent Realmstone Raiders warband, though it might be a tall ask. Emberstone Sentinels is another potential option; the warband has a couple tools that could make it useful (as well as great range 2+ options) but it isn’t a glove fit.
At the outset, you have a lot of Crit Grievous available to you, so Raging Slayers allowing you to force a crit result can markedly improve your damage output (though beware you can’t get cadaver tokens if you kill something)
In Practice
My first instinct was to play them with Blazing and Cataclysm with this deck for maximum push ability. I wanted to be able to get my retainers adjacent as often as possible to be able to collect cadaver tokens, since failing to get them would limit what I could do. My three test games were all wins; once into Blazing Wrack Hrothgorn (19-15), once into Emberstone Hunting Grounds Thundrik (19-10), and once into ES/HG Kurnoth’s Heralds (16-14). I learned a few lessons, the first of which is that 3 health and 2 shields is a crazy good defense profile for a one bounty fighter, so your retainers are actually quite good. Once inspired, your leader is a decent fighter, but I didn’t waste a lot of time with him before that, and your reapers are pretty solid pieces especially once inspired. I only got the chance to try out the ping/guard removal once (but missed), and I was able to successfully gamble on resurrecting the reapers twice, so my understanding of the warscroll might be a little limited in practice.
Long story short, I was happy to use cadaver tokens to inspire, and the warband is pretty survivable even if it doesn’t have marvelous damage output. I was pleasantly surprised at how well they performed, and they were much stronger than I gave them credit for, mostly supported on the backs of good fighter stats. My biggest problem came from being unable to get Cadaver tokens from slain enemies which happened more often than I liked – that said, I still won all three despite being starved for resource most games. The other biggest issue I encountered was remembering the timing of choosing the Truebone Possessor, then having that fighter no longer be in a useful spot relative to a Retainer. This might improve with more reps and practice, but there’s a skill floor you’ll need to navigate there.
Wrap
If I’m the Thanatek’s Tithe opponent, I’m killing those Retainers at my earliest opportunity. Taking out the leader before he inspires is a great choice too. Thanatek players are going to have to be a tricksy and flexible bunch, but that just means more skill curve and expression – failing that, you can always rely on solid stats. They’re fun, better than I thought, and cool sculpts. Give them a try!
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.
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