It's finally here! After 7 months of public playtests, Wyrdcry 1.0 is officially released. I'm not ruling out further tweaks to the warband balance as we get more games in, but the core rules feel like they're in a very good spot. The new combat system solved exactly what I wanted them to: making armour matter more, different weapons to shine in different situations, and shooting to be toned down.

This means that there's now a shiny new tab on the website with downloads for both the Rulebook and the Campaign book. Download and print them, my dear miscreants. If you find any errors, let me know and edit them with a sharpie. We might have to do a 1.1 in a few months (although you've done an amazing job with the proof-reading, big thanks to everyone involved)

Changelog​

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Starting a Battle​

• Small tweak - but search parties must now be deployed on the battlefield floor. Deploying Shoot 4 Marksmen on 3 story buildings was...nasty.

Actions​

• Movement

  • Don't fix what ain't broken. Vanilla Warcry climbing is back, and it feels good
  • Ladders no longer offer the double movement bonus. Climbing feels really fast as is and it's really easy to get your fighters up on platforms.
  • Rather than giving a climbing bonus, grappling hooks now lets your fighters end an activation while climbing, or rappel down for half the movement cost.

• New Weapon Rules for the attack action.

  • Brutal is a new weapon rule that directly negates the parry weapon rule.
  • Poisoned offers a damage over time effect that kicks in whenever a fighter is activated.

• Channel Magic

  • The Magical Calamity table now deal set amounts of damage, as using ability values felt too clunky.

• Wait Action

  • Fighters can no longer use two abilities by waiting. It's one ability, either in the fighter's first or second activation. This is partly to tune down Wizards (double gnaw-doom sucked) but also things like making two respite or strategize rolls. It feels better, trust me.

Reactions​

• Counter now uses the vanilla Warcry counter rules. As counter damage isn't negated by Armour, the vanilla rule will result in less damage overall to the attacker, and rolling multiple misses better represents the target hitting back.

Abilities​

• Wizards now have access to universal magical abilities, offering all Wizards some simple battle magic in addition to their faction lore.

Scenarios​

• We're back to carrying 1 wyrdstone token per fighter, sorry!
• In Escape, wyrdstone tokens must now be distributed evenly among the defenders search parties.
• Minor tweaks to Defend the Find (wyrdstone placement)
• Hidden Vault now uses objective markers rather than selecting terrain pieces as it's been a nightmare to apply the scenario to pre-built Mordheim boards. This also helps with hidden skaven not being able to reveal and search.

The Aftermath Sequence​

• I mean. Everything is new here. Download the Campaign Book and see for yourselves!
• That said, I've now run two 5-game campaigns and I'm really happy with the results
  • The lethality is still there, but the catch-up mechanics have done an adequate job of keeping games interesting. Being the underdog and getting to summon a Rat Ogre feels fucking fantastic.
  • There's way less swingy-ness in the income system and warbands stay relatively balanced.
  • That said, I'm hoping to introduce three-player battles soon that lets two underdogs gang up on the campaign leader.

Factions​

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• Clan Eshin

  • Nerfed Black-Clad Killers by forcing revealed fighters to be set up on the battlefield floor. Also removed bonus to Fight. Setting fighters up anywhere felt amazing (very Vermintide) but it was a very stacked ability.
  • The faction ability Murder-Stab is gone, and replaced by the trait Strength In Numbers. Flanking a target now also gives Eshin weapons the piercing 1 weapon rule.

• Possessed

  • Applied some of the new weapon rules to the Mutations in the mutation Table. The Scorpion Tail is now poisonous, and the Great Claw is brutal. Tentacles have been corrected to have the Whipcrack weapon rule (I guess it can still cause a whiplash? hehe.)
  • The Mutant wasn't properly displaying a line saying that you must roll once on the mutation table when recruiting them to the warband.

• The Undead

  • Ghouls are a bit weaker and have come down in price so that you can use them for scenario actions! Gory Feast now affects the active Ghoul as well!
  • The rotten fangs of the Dire Wolf now has the Piercing 1 weapon rule.

• Witch Hunters

  • No updates. Feels great on the table.

• Sisters of Sigmar

  • Sisters can now buy Prayer beads to re-roll failed Bravery tests (great for generating Wyrd Dice with prayer! Make #prayermeta happen!)

• Mercenaries

  • As you can now only Strategize once per battle round the Captain now generates Wyrd Dice on a 4+.
  • Increasing Armour on a faction that thrives on fighters wearing heavy armour was silly. Give Order now either gives you an offensive boost (Add 1 to fight or shoot) or bolsters morale (Add 1 to Bravery).

Welcome to the draft of the 0.9 playtest! Rather than replacing the current playtest, I want to give everyone a chance to review the changes. You'll be able to toggle between the stable 0.5 playtest and the draft in the main navigation. Unless anything major pops out, I'm planning to flipping the wiki over to the 0.9 playtest in about a week, at which point the Zine Rulebook will be updated with the wiki rules and made available for printing.

Looking forward to hear your feedback on discord

Core Rules

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Core Principles​

• The Defense characteristic is gone and replaced by Armour. (also, see the overhauled Attack Action)
• A fighter that has any damage points allocated to them is considered to be wounded. This state is called upon by abilities such as Beastman rage and some vampiric abilities (it’s a nifty state for homebrew warbands too!).

Setting Up A Battle​

• Warcry style scenarios are back! Players generate a scenario by rolling up a deployment map, a victory condition, and a twist.

The Battle Round​

• Re-introduced the reserve phase, as the new deployment maps may have fighters arrive on subsequent battle rounds.

Actions​

• The Attack Action sequence has been completely overhauled.
  • Melee attack actions now compares the Fight characteristics of both combatants
  • Ranged attack actions compares the Shoot characteristic against a flat difficulty rating (with modifiers)
  • Wearing armour now provides a flat damage reduction instead of a bonus to Defense
  • Each weapon profile now has a real, tangible trade-off. Axes deals more damage on average, hammers are superior against armour and combining a sword and shield can even make a mook last longer in combat.
  • This also means that mixed weapon dual wielding is working properly
  • Diving Charge now confers a flat bonus to fight, rather than being an ability
• Channel Magic
  • The Magical Calamity table has been expanded to use 2d6 instead. Lethality has been toned down somewhat, there’s still a 50% chance of suffering damage, but the wizard only blows up when rolling snake eyes.

Reactions​

• Take Cover has changed name to Hunker Down and now increases the cover bonus during the attack.

Abilities​

• Onslaught is back to being a double, but for a single attack
• Respite is back to being a triple, but heals d3+3 damage points (tanks would be unkillable with armour and a double!)
• Rampage is toned down (free move is X")

Panic​

• Terrifying now only applies for Melee Attack actions (not Ranged Attack actions).

Scenarios​

• As mentioned before, players now randomize a scenario (like in WARcry!)
• Fighters can now carry multiple wyrdstone tokens (because Thralls keeps dropping them)

The Aftermath Sequence

Has been totally reworked. You'll now lick your wounds and send a search party into the city to look for treasure. Exploration can result in crashed whales, robbing treasure hunters or having a fighter join the black parade the cursed cavalcade.

There's also loot tables and magical items. I very much hope that you will enjoy them and I'm looking forward to hear more about your campaign experiences.

Factions

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Clan Eshin​

• New faction rule: Black-Clad Killers. You can set aside hidden Eshin fighters when splitting up your warband into search parties, and reveal them in later battle rounds.
• All fighters now have the Murder-Stab ability. Murder-stabbing someone in the same battle round as revealing your fighter reduces the target's Fight characteristic (stab-stab)
• The Assassin Adept has gained a new (old?) ability – Running Death. One with the shadows is now a [double]

Possessed​

• Mutants are now consumed by chaos on a stability roll of 9+ (as ordained by the changer of ways)
• The Mutation Table now uses a d66 to make it more chaotic (the shadowlord doesn’t care for probabilities)
  • The new dual-wielding rules has opened up the design space around Daemonic Weapons. Tentacles, Great Claws and Scorpion Tails now have unique weapon profiles.
• All fighters can use Glorious Death as a reaction to generate Wyrd Dice for their Magister
• You may now field up to two Possessed, and they're always marked for greatness
• The Darksoul has a new ability – Baleful Challenge, replacing Display of Brutality

The Undead​

• The Vampire was a hot mess. Ravenous / Empowered is out. Vampires can always make a free move action instead. Feed also generates Wyrd Dice.
• They’re also immortal and doesn’t roll on the injury table. Take them out of action however, and the warband starts wavering - and while an undead warband is wavering, all thralls suffer damage.
• Ghouls are no longer terrifying but gained a new ability (bloody feast)
• The Terrifying Howl of the Dire Wolf now tags enemy fighters when activated and prohibits tagged enemy fighters from making reactions.

Witch Hunters​

• Reworked the Zeal Table and its thresholds
• Sudden Accusation is now available to all fighters, so that Witch Hunters can save their actions to reload their new hard-hitting crossbows.
• Witch Hunters and their captains can now incite rabble to get their henchmen into the fray quicker. Also generates Zeal.
• Flagellant Self-Flagellation is now a budget onslaught rather than a free attack action
• The War Hound's Death Grip triggers on hit or crit (rather than only hits)

Sisters of Sigmar​

• Sisters can now pray while Waiting to generate Wyrd Dice (#prayermeta)
• The Augur has a more defined role: she can use Foresight to aid a fellow sister, or Doom her enemies.

Mercenaries​

• Strategize is now a double, generating Wyrd Dice on a 5+.

Hey everyone! This is a tiny update – I've squashed some bugs that slipped through the cracks for 0.5. You should now be able to build warbands and get games in without hitting anything gamebreaking.

Core RUles​

• I had to pull an emergency stop and revert the climbing rules, as the new rules were half-baked and RAW led to fighters being able to climb 12” in one Move action (by interacting with ladders and hooks). We’ll keep collecting feedback on the original climbing rules throughout the playtest and will explore more options.
• Several copy tweaks, removal of PDF page references, clarification of rules and other quality of life fixes

Faction Rules​

Possessed

• Mutants was missing the MUTANT keyword

Sisters of Sigmar

• Removed Bows from Sisters of Sigmar (added by mistake)

Clan Eshin

• Weeping Blades now come as a pair and has the Two-Handed weapon rule.
• Assassin Adept ability One With The Shadows was listed as a [Trait] and didn’t render on the wiki, now properly shown as a [Triple]
• Rephrasing of faction ability Hidden Advance to trigger in combat phase rather than battle round (combat phase was always the intent!)

That's all! Thank you for being awesome and keep dropping them hobby projects in ⁠minis and post your battle reports in ⁠battle-reports!

If you can read this, it means that you've successfully found your way to the 0.5 playtest! Welcome! This website is the most up-to-date version of Wyrdcry, and will be until the project is wrapped up and new PDF:s have been designed. Here, you will find everything you need to play a game of Wyrdcry, the first 6 factions, and the campaign rules. Soon, there will be a warband builder too!

So, what's new in 0.5?

The 1000gc warband limit​

Wyrdcry now uses a 1000gc warband limit, similar to vanilla warcry. The 0.4 playtest has been used to come up with new cost profiles for determining fighter and weapon costs, which will help as we're starting to playtest the final 4 warbands.

Rebalancing of Skaven and Mercenaries​

The playtests submitted during 0.4 indicated that Mercenaries were struggling hard into the Ratmen. To address this, we're doing a heavier nudge by making Mercenary henchmen cheaper, while making their Skaven counterparts more expensive. Armour are now cheaper all across the board, allowing you to gear up your tanks, and Champions have been given some new tools for when you find yourself outnumbered. You can read more about the new Mercenaries here.

New Warbands​

Based on the feedback you all provided, four new warbands are now available: The Sisters of Sigmar, Witch Hunters, The Undead, and The Cult of the Possessed. These are beta rules so expect some rough edges. The goal right now is to get them on the table and find out how broken/fun they are to play.

Weapon rebalancing and cost profile​

The cost profile for weapons has changed a bit, putting more weight on amount of attacks and actual damage output. Pierce has given way to Mighty, by suggestion of the community, to make combat calculations quicker. The second dagger is no longer free, which stops night runners from simply running two daggers for cheap.

New Warbands​

Based on the feedback of our project champions (and our smoking hot cost profiles), four new warbands are now available: The Sisters of Sigmar, Witch Hunters, The Undead, and The Cult of the Possessed. These are beta rules so expect some rough edges. The goal right now is to get them on the table and find out how broken/fun they are to play.

What's next?​

This is the biggest playtest to date, and I'm eager to see more people picking up the game and submitting their games on discord. With your help, I'm hoping to lock down the ruleset and create new PDF:s of the rulebook (and the factions sometime in June). Please keep an eye open on discord as I'm also planning on adding a lightweight warband builder in the near future.

First of all, I’d like to thank @everyone who’s joined the project over the past weekend. I had a goal of 20 downloads in the first day and instead we hit the itch.io download limit and had the page go dark for a few hours 😅

We’re now sitting at over 2000 unique downloads and 127 discord members! T'is insane!

How you can help right now​

For the 0.4 playtest the most valuable thing you can do is to play a game! If you’re feeling limited by only having two factions available, you can always use the mercenaries to proxy something else (deeply religious and huntsmen makes for a functioning witch hunter warband, for example).

Alternatively, simply filling in a warband roster and seeing if it feels fun/makes sense is a great way to contribute. If you have any rules questions, post them in ⁠rules-discussions and I’ll try to explain them (in the short term) and maybe iterate on their phrasing for the next playtest.


What’s next​

Before shipping the remaining four warbands I want to nail down a fighter cost profile by stress testing Skaven and Mercenaries. They’re will serve as a benchmark for everything that follows. The plan then looks something like this:

• End of march (ish): release of Witch Hunters, Sisters of Sigmar, Possessed and Undead. They will likely be busted going out, which leads us to:
• April/May: Community feedback and crunching numbers
• May?: Final points costs and tweaking of abilities, hopefully getting a first “properly” balanced edition out the door.

After that I’ve promised my spouse to take a break and build a playhouse. There will be a creator kit, with indesign templates, fonts and a points calculator app (with the aforementioned cost profile) so that anyone who wants to design their warband has the tools to do so. That's all for now! Go build some warbands!