Beginning Playing Hordes: A Solid First Unit, Warpborn Skinwalker

As I've brought up before, I started playing Hordes by purchasing the 2 player battle box which features a unit of heavy infantry for both factions. The Circle Orboros infantry is a full unit of Warpborn Skinwalkers, soldiers given a small amount of the Warpwolf elixir that creates the two huge Warpwolf beasts from my previous posts. The result is a awesome looking unit of werewolf soldiers that look great with the rest of the force.

How Warpborn Skinwalkers fit in Circle Orboros and play in Hordes

The story is that some druid overseers in the Circle will take volunteers from the Wolves of Orboros, the faction's standard human spear wielding grunt infantry, and give them a small amount of the elixir. The result allows the soldiers to transform into hulking, werewolf soldiers when the faction is in need of their support. The catch is that even while in human form, they become aggressive and confrontational, and generally screw up their life from before they took the elixir. But, these guys look awesome and are durable with 8 wounds each, which is not nearly as awesome as 8 40k wounds. They serve as a great front line for the teleportation tricks of the faction to move around because they can take a beating and have strong weapons with the reach ability so they can attack models 2" away from them. They form a nice threat bubble to move up the field around.

The unit unfortunately did face criticism when they were first released due to a functionally similar, and somewhat better, mercenary unit that the faction has access to. The Skinwalkers did everything and were similarly costed to a gatormen posse unit, but had less attacks and less abilities. Privateer Press addressed these concerns by boosting the Circle unit with a Unit Attachment so they wouldn't be overlooked. Basically, its the addition of a new leader of the unit that adds rules and abilities to the unit as well as another body. I'll go over the Warpborn Alpha in my next post.

A Little Warhammer 40k Comparison

For a sense of scale, here's a Skinwalker next to one of my now illegal Wolf Guard Terminators. What a pair they'd make! Let me know what you think of the unit in the comments below, or if you have any questions.