Today we will continue our look back at warbands released prior to Spent Glory getting in on the preview action with another good beginner choice. One of my favorite warbands from first edition, these two incredibly loving sisters and their homeboys have marched into second edition as one of the few appropriately coded Take and Hold warbands available. Whether your goal is to capture treasure, pillage the field, or despoil everything in sight, this warband has the tools to #GetOnToken, #StayOnToken, and get rewarded for doing so. Let’s take a look at how these Warriors of Chaos Undivided have fared since the Embergard drop!
Click here to see a Master List of all warbands in the game
Khagra’s Ravagers: Lore
Right out of the gate, the lore card for this warband tells you they ‘dare damnation for immortality’ as they walk the path of chaos’ chosen. This is one of the coolest aspects of old Warhammer, in that to walk the path of chaos almost universally leads to ruin and casting into the pit of whatever god you’ve failed for eternity, but it just might lead to ascension and daemonhood. Hardcore.
Anyway, once upon a time there was this chaos sorcerer named Zarshia who led her little squad of warriors into the Direchasm, looking for ways to profane the realm and gain some glory, as all rational people do. The thing is, she led them into a cave-in and were trapped. Were it not for her sister, Khagra, they might have died down there like dogs. Instead, Khagra used her huge shield and absolutely yoked physique to muscle them out of there and said “you’ve failed, and I’m in charge now”. The boys agreed and she became Khagra the Usurper, and her sister became Zarshia Bittersoul, who definitely does not hold a grudge.
In the intervening time, they have traveled the length and breadth of the underworlds, slaughtering anybody who gets in the way of profaning the sacred sites they locate. Now they continue this trend, desecrating treasure tokens in Embergard, Spitewood, and beyond.
Khagra’s Ravagers: Warscroll
Before we get too deep into this analysis, I want to make a special shoutout to those who remember the warband from first edition. Back then, a desecrated token could not be held, making Khagra hard to play because you needed to get on tokens for desecrating, but then couldn’t score Hold cards. This is NO LONGER TRUE. Desecrated tokens can be held, Khagra can indeed score Supremacy, and the world rejoices. Don’t let the old way cloud your vision. This is a real Take and Hold warband now, and there’s really only a handful of those in this edition.
Inspire
After the last action step in a battle round, if there are 2+ desecrated treasure tokens, inspire all of your fighters. We will touch on what desecration is in a sec, but basically you’ll need to do this in a power step while you hold said treasure. Since this goes off after the last action step (NOT the last power step), you will not be able to satisfy the condition by desecrating in the final power step of a round. You also cannot satisfy the condition early, so even if you get to 2-3 desecrated tokens after your third activation, you opponent could potentially counterplay it.
There is ONLY one window per round to meet this: following the final action step in the round. You cannot be inspired before the end of round 1. If you don’t inspire in that step in round 1, you’ll need to wait all the way until the end of round 2 to inspire. As we will see later, you REALLY want to be inspired, so do everything you can to ensure it as the Ravagers player, and trust your opponents will do a lot to prevent it if they can. Both players need to be super aware of the timing window.
As a result, Khagra and pals actually prefer to go first if they get the choice of priority after the opening roll-off. This gives you more opportunities to get onto treasures and desecrate them uninterrupted, and gives their opponent one fewer power step in which to counterplay their inspiration. Usually a Take and Hold player will prefer going second to get the ‘last action’, but since you’ll be unable to desecrate after it in time to inspire, things are a little different for Khagra, at least until the team has managed the inspire. Feel free to go second in rounds 2 and 3, but for round one you’re probably hoping to go first.
Razed Realm
Here’s our primary way to Desecrate and thus power our inspiration and some of our abilities. In a power step, pick a treasure you’re holding and it’s desecrated. You can only do this once per power step, so if you find yourself holding two un-desecrated tokens simultaneously, you’ll have to pick which one you’re tagging this time.
The treasure token is considered desecrated until it is flipped. This means you can walk away and it stays that way, but if you or your opponent delves it, then it loses desecration status. It also would lose it if it’s flipped via a card such as Crumbling Mine from Pillage and Plunder, Seekers Strike from Xandire’s Truthseekers, or The Diviner ability from Starblood Stalkers.
However, a nifty little trick is that the token itself remains desecrated until it is flipped, not the position on the board it occupies, so if you should so happen to play Switch Things Up from Emberstone Sentinels you can send a Desecrated token elsewhere and yoink an un-desecrated token under your feet. Which you then desecrate. How’s that for foul sorcery?
Ritual Desecration
Our more niche route to getting Desecrated treasure comes via Ritual Desecration. If you’re holding a treasure and slay something with an attack, you can react to desecrate the token you’re on. If you kill something holding a treasure, you can react to desecrate the treasure it was holding.
Generally you’ll be getting onto a treasure, desecrating it the power step way, and then probably staying there to lock in your inspiration, so in my experience this doesn’t come up very often. However it does have the great fact that this flavor of desecration happens in the action step. If you find yourself short on desecration headed into the final action step, this can potentially allow you to slay somebody and react to desecrate prior to the power step, beating the buzzer so to speak and getting to inspire without missing the window as you roll over into the power step.
Dark Approval
The number of Desecrated tokens on the board is really important for inspiration, but you’ll also be able to use that number to improve some abilities, such as Dark Approval. Once per game in the power step you can draw a number of cards equal to the number of desecrated tokens on the board. More cards are always welcome, and since most games you’ll get to 2-3 at some point you can see more of your deck earlier. Save this for a moment you really need new cards, or if you’re able to, wait for the opening of round 2 or 3 so that you can get your 5 from the end phase + however many more from this ability.
As a small aside, this ability does not reference who desecrated the tokens. In the case of a Khagra mirror match, you can potentially draw 5 power cards with this ability (but so can they).
The Eye of the Gods
Oh man what a sick name and sicker concept. “To court the gaze of the Dark Gods is perilous – but those who prove worthy are made mighty indeed”. They’re literally watching to see if you’re worth their favor, or if you’re bound for their scrap heap (which is the best outcome if you’ve drawn their attention but wasted their time). No pressure, Khagra. She’s such a boss.
Once per game, you can get either +1 defense when holding a treasure, or + 1 attack dice when targeting somebody on a treasure. This is not dependent on the number of desecration tokens on the board.
I typically save this for +1 defense so that I am more likely to survive, more likely to stand fast and continue to hold that treasure, and therefore maintain desecration/score a bunch of Take and Hold end phase cards. The +1 attack dice is really niche, and is best used if you are hoping to overrun onto a special token for desecration, but note it has to be Treasure side up. They also have to be holding it, so any Zarbag’s squigs that are extra bouncy or Exiled Dead Conductive Minions and occupying but not holding will not allow for that.
Ravaging Advance
The last ability on our warscroll is a push which you always like to see, but this one has some complications and extra power. Once per game, Ravaging Advance allows you to push a friendly fighter a number of hexes equal to how many desecrated tokens there are. This means you can potentially get a push 2-5 hexes?! Wild.
You do have to have your fighter end on a treasure token or adjacent to an enemy fighter, so you can’t go just anywhere. Mid-to-Late game though this can jump you onto a token right before end phase scoring, get you onto a token right before your last action to desecrate it, get onto a token while running away from an enemy who might kill you, get you adjacent to an enemy to use Confusion against, or get adjacent to make a surprise attack.
This ability is so strong. I often get antsy and use it early to try and secure desecration/inspiration in round 1, but if you manage to hold onto it you can do incredible things in rounds 2-3.
Khagra’s Ravagers: Fighter Cards
Khagra the Usurper
Khagra has a decent profile for a 2 bounty fighter uninspired, with 2 hammers for 2 damage, move 3, 4 health and 1 shield. She gets the awesome boost to 2 shields inspired, but also importantly gains grievous on her attack as well as a new attack profile with range 2 that also has grievous. She unfortunately stays on 2 hammers, but will benefit from + dice cards, flanks and rerolls, and can do lots of damage for you once inspired as well as become very hard to kill and be huge value for 2 bounty.
Zarshia Bittersoul
How the mighty have fallen! She clearly is NOT the leader. Zarshia is worth only 1 bounty and is a 1 dodge fighter even when inspired, but at least she has 4 health. Her range 2 and 3 attack profiles allow you to do some charging onto tokens and get to desecrating more reliably, but she won’t do much work for you until she’s inspired. At that time she’s quite accurate and gets stagger, making her a decent setup piece to tee up a target for your bigger hitters to strike down.
Dour Cragan
Our boy Slambo/Cragan has 3 swords and inspires to 4, but importantly also inspires to 4 move which makes him the best hustler you have on the team. Swords aren’t great, but higher dice numbers allow him a better chance to overrun and his 4 health can keep him alive a touch longer. As such, he’s a decent choice to risk early/midfield for token control and desecration prior to inspiration.
Razek Godblessed
Razek is an interesting one and while they’ve never Errata’d his card, I’m still not entirely convinced it wasn’t a misprint. Razek begins with only 3 health, but inspires to 4. He also kicks up to 2 shields and gains cleave, so he’s a very good piece inspired but definitely fragile and a priority target when uninspired. Your keys to success will be keeping him safe and alive in the back until he’s inspired, but not too far back that he can’t help out in later rounds once he’s inspired.
If you’re playing against the Ravagers, you’ll want to kill this guy as quickly as possible in round 1 so that he’ll give you an easy 2 bounty and you won’t have to deal with him later.
Potential Pairings
The obvious first choice for this warband is Emberstone Sentinels. Their warscroll very much wants you to be standing on treasure and keeping it from being flipped so that desecration can remain intact, and ES helps with that. It also has a fun trick with Switch Things Up to spread desecrated tokens around (since when the token moves, the desecration marker moves with it) and has overlapping synergy with By The Numbers to double down on card draw.
Countdown to Cataclysm has historically been a great choice as well as it has Hold components Khagra enjoys like Set Explosives and Shocking Assault, and the deck helps out with both accuracy and defense while doing those positional/token type things.
Nexus of Power has a lot of potential, since it again asks you to be holding (or at least nearby) treasure tokens, gives you some defensive benefits as well as a few out of sequence moves and pushes to help out. When you’re holding a treasure and Covetous, you’ll also enjoy extending your range 1 attacks to range 2, which can be quite tasty once inspired.
Hunting Grounds is an option for them as their desecration mechanic helps encourage enemy players to cross into your territory to prevent inspiration, at which point plenty of the deck’s power turns on and you can get lots of aggro benefits while sitting on your home tokens. HG traditionally struggles when you can’t bait people to come into your home turf, but Khagra has an in-built incentive for opponents to engage on your terms.
Pillage and Plunder is a high-risk but high-reward option. While delving treasures will remove your desecration, a smart player can manage what tokens are flipped when to both get desecration and inspire but also manipulate tokens well with the deck and warscroll. It’s not easy, but I have seen it succeed.
You can potentially benefit from Raging Slayers though it’s more of a reach. The ability to turn a success into a crit really helps with your overrun potential, thus helping you dislodge enemies from tokens and can aid in your desecration gameplan, though you’ll need to be smart about when to enrage and when not to, as Poor Footing will bump you right back off of those tokens. Ravaging Advance will be something to steward carefully, and you’ll need to be careful to keep Khagra alive so she can score you lots of leader-centric stuff.
In Practice
Data from the Nemesis Statistics Project tell us that Khagra’s Cuddlebuddies have a 45.6% win rate across the entire edition through 450 recorded games. That’s within our goal of 45-55%, but remember that Hold was really bad at the start of the edition and hard aggro elites were incredibly overpowered against it. More recent evidence would probably have them performing a little better, though they haven’t had data submitted in large enough sample sizes to draw reasonable conclusions in the past few months. Please consider reporting your games to the stats project! It’s easy!
I personally have played this warband 8 times, going 5-3. All of my games have been Emberstone and something else, and they’ve done relatively well across all the pairings I have tried (save for one disastrous experiment with ES/RR into BACC Jaws). I have played against it 16 times and gone 12-4, but my glory differential average is 3.8 so they’re usually close games. Khagra can hang!
Most people perform best with ES/CC. Jesse did really well as LVO 2024 with this – note that the restricted list has made the deck invalid but it can be tweaked relatively easily. Jesse wrote up a deck guide and event recap here. Alessandro of Italy took them to a Top 8 finish at Worlds 2024 with a very similar build!
Some have done well with ES/PP, and it was even brought to the 2024 World Championships by Atlanta’s Finest Zach Newcome. Here’s a deck guide he wrote up for BattleMallet
Austria’s Benjamin B took this ES/Wrack deck to the WTC 2025
I managed to succeed with ES/NP in a few test games. I also had fun with and did surprisingly well with ES/RS despite it being “a bad deck pairing”, and it was a lot of fun to boot! Here’s a deck link, and here’s the review of the deck and its performance
Wrap
4-fighter Take and Hold is not a commonly represented playstyle in Second Edition of Warhammer Underworlds, but Kharga’s Ravagers are among the best suited to pull it off. If you like to stand on tokens, power up, and then get busy laying into those who oppose you, these aspiring champions will serve you well. They’re great for beginners and a fun puzzle for more experienced players and have some of the most awesome models the game has conceived. Now get out there and curse the realm with your vile rituals, and spend some glory while you’re at it!
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