Warcry: Red Harvest Review

Two mighty warbands clash beneath the shadows of enough scenery to fill an IKEA Kallax unit in the new Warcry: Red Harvest box. But who will be victorious: the spider-worshipping Tarantulous Brood or the brutal and barbaric Darkoath Savagers?

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Warcry: Red Harvest Review – Summary

Expensive though it may be, Red Harvest looks to be the next best thing to a Warcry boxed game that’s going to be available for the time being – which isn’t so bad, as it’s oozing with stuff to keep you busy.

Though it’s not technically a starter set, Red Harvest is a clever box, aimed at sucking in the new players and placating the experienced at the same time. It may not be as handholdy as an out-and-out starter set, but anyone with a working knowledge of tabletop games will be able to have a good time with Red Harvest, even if they are new to the Warcry system

Warcry: Red Harvest Review – Introduction

It feel like a while since we last saw any Warcry content. In fact, it’s been just shy of a year (as in really just shy – by a matter of days, it turns out) since we saw the release of Catacombs.

As former FauxHammer.com writer Ben very rightly pointed out in his Catacombs review, we don’t get Warcry “starter sets” anymore. But Warcry is a well-streamlined and surprisingly easy-to-grasp game, so boiling it down even further in the way that the Warhammer 40,000 and Age of Sigmar Starter Sets do for those games seems a little bit futile.

Why not combine a starter set with some new expansive content to keep both the new players and the veterans happy?

So, yes. Currently, this is the closest thing that exists to a Warcry starter set. Whilst it’s not branded as such, what makes it so great for beginners is that it comes with a very well-written and concise rulebook that we’ll have a closer look at in a little while. It might be a bit on the expensive side for anyone completely new to the hobby, but, as we shall see, it’s a great box with plenty in it to keep everyone busy.

Warcry: Red Harvest Review – Unboxing

The Warcry: Red Harvest box is a big ‘un.

Emblazoned with impressive artwork which shows someone who could well be the Barbarian from 1989’s HeroQuest squaring off with a three-armed aracnophile, this is one of those stand-out boxes people will want to display on their shelves.

Opening up the box, we’re greeted with all our new plastic.

There are 9 sprues in the Red Harvest box. Only two of these are dedicated to new models, one for each warband. Seven of them are for the terrain. Whilst we’re not quite to double figures like we have been for a few recent releases, this remains a lot of plastic – and a heavy amount of plastic too, given the amount of terrain in the box.

Beneath, as anyone who is familiar with these releases would expect to find, is a glossy card separator. On one side it sports the box art, and the other a white variant of the Warcry logo on a back background. Whilst either side of this separator would look great tacked up on a hobby room wall, its primary purpose is to keep the plastic sprues from scratching or puncturing any of the paper goods beneath, so don’t be surprised if it arrives damaged. If it does, then it has also probably fulfilled its purpose.

Finally, we have everything else: the book, the build guide, the board the tokens, and the cards, some of which are tucked away beneath cardboard separators at the bottom of the box.

Also, bases. There are two bags of bases in the Warcry: Red Harvest box, as well as a scattering of loose bases.

With the box open, let’s have a closer look at what’s inside.

Warcry: Red Harvest Review – Contents

There’s a lot of stuff in the Red Harvest box. Here’s a breakdown of what you get:

1 x Red Harvest book
10 x Darkoath Savagers warband. The warband includes:
- 1 x Slaughtermaster
- 1 x God-speaker
- 1 x Wrathtouched
- 2 x Proven
- 5 x Gloryseekers
13 x Tarantulos Brood warband. The warband includes:
- 1 x Broodmaster
- 2 x Doomweavers
- 7 x Broodkin
- 3 x Spider Swarms
A 28-piece set of scenery – including
- 1 x pit dredger
- 1 x varanite syphon
- 2x wooden structures
- 2x ladders
- 2x wooden gangways
- 12x modular sluice segments
- 6x spiked barricades
- 2x spiked gangways
A double-sided 22″ x 30″ folding gaming board
Tokens

Dice
Cards

I think we can all agree, that’s quite a hefty pile of goodies.

Clocking in at 23 figures and 28 chunks of scenery, you’re getting good value for your money on the plastic in this set alone.

But alongside two savage warbands intent on destroying each other and a heap of scenery comes an extremely healthy injection of new rules content, as well as all the other bits and bobs you need to take your Warcry games to the maximum.

Warcry: Red Harvest Review – Literature

Assembly instruction guide aside, there’s only one book in the Red Harvest box. The Red Harvest book is any player’s gateway to the world of Warcry, be they a newbie or a veteran.

Red Harvest Book

The Red Harvest book continues the pedigree of high-quality GW game guides.

At 104 pages, it’s not as slender as some of its extended family, it has everything anyone could possibly need to kick-start their Warcry games.

The first 31 pages are dedicated to the background lore that has inspired the box set and showing off outstanding painted figures and battlescapes masterfully put together by GW’s ‘Eavy Metal team. If the pictures of painted models and the battlefields set up in the first third of this book don’t make you want to start painting your figures, then nothing will.

The final two-thirds of the Red Harvest book is all about getting you to play, and are divided up into several sections and a double-page spread dedicated to walking you through the best way of using the book is provided on page 32. All the new rules unique to this boxed game are divided into a number of sections, but most important is the clearly signposted core rules chapter. Any and all new players are recommended to begin here before getting into the nitty-gritty of the Red Harvest-specific rules minutiae.

The core reules chapter is laid out in an easy-to-read, straightforward format that explains the basic concepts, steps and general rules all players need to know to play a game of Warcry in its most basic form. From a guide on setting up a battle using the terrain, deployment, victory and twist decks, to walking players through the rattle round sequence, all the information players need is laid out in a clear and concise manner.

I must admit, having recently reviewed the Kill Team: Chalnath box, I do feel like over the last twelve months Games Workshop has really turned a corner with their books. I feel there’s been a shift towards making these books more beginner-friendly, even if the content they accompany is not necessarily aimed at complete beginners. This is great all the same, as it makes GW’s lines of historically notoriously complex games more accessible to any and all who would play them. People can jump on board with a game system at any time. Keep it up GW.

Warcry: Red Harvest Review – Wargear

The Red Harvest box is saturated in extra bits and pieces to help you make your gaming experience all the more exciting and unique. With all the tokens, cards, and other things you could possibly need to turn any tabletop into an ornate altar to the dice gods.

Double-Sided Game Board

In keeping with the magmatic, scorched earth theme so synonymous with the forces of Chaos, both sides of the game board, whilst printed with different fiery graphics, are ultimately similar in theme.

As ever, it’s a good surface to play on: thick, sturdy, and pre-cut with good edges to fold along, the gaming board will last far longer than any paper counterpart and will not crease. It’ll just make your battlefield that little bit more realistic and help your games be all the more immersive.

Tokens

There are five different types of tokens in the Red Harvest box, all of which are double-sided. In the image below from left to right, we have: damage tokens, special tokens, a single initiative token, activation and/or wait tokens, and objective and/or treasure tokens.

You’ll also be pleased to know that the Red Harvest box also comes with a couple of plastic baggies so you can keep your tokens together instead of having them rattle around loosely in the box when you aren’t using them.

GW make a good token. Arriving on a single perforated board, you need only push these out and you’re ready to go. The tokens require barely any pressure to release them from the board, so you’re unlikely to damage the finish on the tokens with rips or tears.

Dice and Range Rulers

Boring dice in a boxed game is a real pet peeve of mine.

Nothing says care and completion in a boxed game than having a good set of specially-designed, themed dice for the game. Just slinging a packet of standard black-and-white cubes feels like a bit of a cop-out: a “Yeah, we could’ve done better, but we couldn’t really be bothered.

So, that the Red Harvest dice are colour-themed brings a smile to my face.

Taking the black, red and yellow-brown colour palette of the box art, and creating dice to fit the theme is an easy way to just make the box feel a little bit more special. What’s more, is these are good, chunky dice as well

The range ruler is pretty standard GW fare: clear, printed plastic – anyone with a Mortal Realms or Imperium submission will have seen these plenty of times before. The graphics printed on the ruler, however, do look to have been modified to reflect the Warcry theme. It’s just another small thing that makes the box feel that little bit more special.

Cards

Red Harvest comes with plenty of cards for you to smother your tabletop with.

There are two faction ability cards – those are the things you can see at the back of the photo above covered in images of the two warbands’ fighters. On the other side of the cards, they have lists of the abilities each warband can use.

There’s a lot more going on in the deck of smaller cards, however. There are fighter cards, which act like datasheets or warscrolls for the warbands and are accompanied by divider cards. There are terrain cards, deployment cards, victory cards and also twist cards, all of which are designed to be used when constructing a battlefield. As such, players would draw random terrain, deployment, victory and twist cards from their respective desks, and these would determine how the game is set up and what conditions have to be met in order to be victorious.

Warcry: Red Harvest Review – Miniatures

Darkoath Savagers

In spite of there being quite a lot of bits to some of the Darkoath Savagers, I have to admit I did find them a surprisingly straightforward and easy build.

Most of the models come with various building options, with alternate heads or weapons, and there are a few additional daggers and axes that can be attached to those warriors you deem worthy once your builds are complete.

Warcry Red Harvest Review Savagers Leaders

There are also plenty of bits left on the sprue at the end for converters and kitbashers to shower over their other projects.

Other than that, there’s very little to say about the Savagers. They’re a nice bunch of easy to put together models. The guide is good, the sprues are good, the build is good. Sure, when put side-by-side with a lot of other Chaos models, they might not seem quite as overtly chaotic, per se, but I really like the classic head-chopping barbarian look the Savagers have.

Tarantulous Brood

Once again, the Tarantulous Brood are a decent bunch of models to build. You don’t have quite the same level of customisation options as you do with the Savagers (there’s no head-swapping with the Brood, as each wears a hood or headpiece that’ll need to be attached to a specific body), but there are plenty of weapon options across the unit to make your mutant spider ninjas your own.

They’re a dynamic bunch, too. Each model has a great sense of movement about it; each is poised to strike in its own way. Aside from the larger models in the bunch, the majority are also very easy to put together, consisting of only a few straightforward components that need to be stuck together.

Often, this is just a head to a torso (which locks in place nicely due to hoods/headdresses), and a torso to some legs before attaching arms holding whatever weapons you choose.

The sculpts on the Brood are fantastic, and they’re definitely the more unique and original of the two warbands. There are some lovely details across the group that’ll have painters drooling, too.

Scenery

Holy cow, there’s a lot of scenery in this set.

The scenery in Red Harvest is very cleverly designed. With a myriad of pre-determined battlefields included in the card decks that come in the box, many of the pieces of scenery are designed to be used as part of a modular system along with many other parts of scenery, making the number of combinations you can assemble the scenery in near-limitless.

The majority of it is very easy to put together, too. I only had trouble assembling one piece of scenery: the pit dredger.

Those buckets, man. Those buckets.

So, the build guide has you assemble both “sides” of the dredger and add the buckets as more of less the last step (bar some panels that are neither here nor there). The buckets are designed to be sandwiched between the two sides to the dredger, but getting them into the small slots on each side of the dredger and getting them to stay put whilst you try and put the rest in is an infuriating task.

Whilst I only had an issue assembling one piece of scenery, I found my patience running out about halfway through the scenery build. There’s just so much of it, and whilst most of it is straightforward to put together, it isn’t necessarily very interesting to build. See, of the seven scenery sprues, four are duplicated, and these sprues are where you will find the wooden structures, pair of ladders, two wooden gangways, and dozen modular sluice segments. It’s an enormous amount of stuff to put together, and it’s just not that fun.

Still, once it’s all stuck together and you’re able to heave a sigh of relief and look at what you’ve assembled, it’s a seriously impressive set of stuff. If you’ve got the stamina to put it all together, you won’t be disappointed with the scenery you have at the end of the process.

Warcry: Red Harvest Review – Price and Availability

Red Harvest is the most expensive GW boxed game I’ve ever reviewed.

Clocking in at £130/$210USD/€160, it is a few bob more expensive than many of its similar predecessors which have tended to be priced at around the £125/$199USD/€155 mark. Whilst it’s not a huge price increase, it does make me wonder if this may perhaps be the new norm. Only time will tell.

Of course, as ever we always recommend checking out your local indie hangouts and hobby shops to see if they are able to offer you a couple of quid off. With these big boxed games, a 10%-20% discount does make a significant difference.

Warcry: Red Harvest Review – Final Thoughts

Pros	Cons
Beginner-friendly Good, clear rule book Excellent selection of cards and tokens Themed dice Unique miniatures Enormous scenery set Plastic baggies!	Expensive Scenery is great but very boring to build

This is a really impressive box.

There is a huge amount of stuff in here, and that it is designed to be accessible to anyone and everyone wins it a heap of plus points. It has everything for a beginner in it, along with all the new expansive content that tried and tested Warcry players will be all over.

Red Harvest has only one problem, and that is its price. Any box heaving with this much stuff is going to be expensive, but Red Harvest’s price runs the risk of alienating part of its audience. Red Harvest is in part still supposed to be a starter set of sorts, just as it is also supposed to be an expansion. Whilst Red Harvest does both of these things phenomenally well, its price places it well out of the reach of many would-be Warcriers.

To be honest, even some die-harders will be put off by the astronomical price of the box – which is more expensive than any GW boxed games I have previously reviewed, be it anything from starter set and battle box all the way up to new edition limited launch set.

But Red Harvest is designed to be the ultimate Warcry experience, no matter your ability. It gives you literally everything you could possibly need to get started with the game and then gives you a hefty shove to keep you going long into the future. It is your first starter for the Warcry game system and your first expansion rolled into one, with enough terrain to keep the battlefields of your 2,000 point games of Age of Sigmar looking realistic.

Is it expensive? Yes.

Is it worth it? Certainly.

★★★★