Prime
This model is available in one Prime Army, Grymkin. It can also be used in the Unlimited game mode. You can view the other Mk3 models that made it into a Legacy Army at this page.
Note that the rest of this page is about the model's Mark III rules.
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- "Claim the dead and stack the caskets. Save these sots from the maggots."
Creaking corpse carts called death knells follow behind the cursed hordes of the grymkin. The impish coachman rings its somber bell as a warning to all who would dare disrespect the dead, and its toll can be felt as a chill down to the marrow. The bodies stacked high on the cart contain power of an old and dark sort. These corpses fuel the nightmares and horrors of the grymkin while bolstering their ability to shrug off wounds that would fell mortal folk.
Basic Info
| Death Knell |
| Missing Info |
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| COST |
{{{cacost}}} |
| UNIT SIZE |
{{{casize}}} |
| FA |
{{{cafa}}} |
| Warcaster 0 |
| BASE |
Huge |
| SPD |
6 |
| STR |
6 |
| MAT |
6 |
| RAT |
N/A |
| M.A. |
N/A |
| DEF |
12 |
| ARM |
18 |
| CMD |
10 |
| ESSENCE |
{{{essence}}} |
| FOCUS |
N/A |
| FURY |
N/A |
| THRS |
N/A |
| HP |
22 |
| F. Field |
N/A |
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| WJP |
{{{wjp}}} |
| WBP |
{{{wbp}}} |
| IHP |
{{{ihp}}} |
| FA |
2 |
| UNIT SIZE |
N/A |
| COST |
11 |
| N/A |
| N/A |
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| N/A |
| Warcaster 1 |
| COST |
N/A |
| N/A |
Understanding
the Statblock |
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Battle Engine - All battle engines share the same special rules, most notably being immune to a bunch of stuff. Click here for the long version.
Abilities
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Cavalry
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Construct
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Pathfinder
- Bring Out Your Dead! - When an enemy living or undead model is destroyed while in this model's command range, this model gains the destroyed model's corpse token. When a friendly living model is destroyed by a continuous effect, an enemy attack, or collateral damage from an enemy attack while in this model's command range, this model gains the destroyed model's corpse token. This model can have up to five corpse tokens at any time.
- Death Feast - During its activation, this model can spend corpse tokens to remove d3 damage points for each token spent.
- Entropic Force - While within 5" of this model, enemy models lose Tough and cannot have damage removed from them.
- Finisher - This model gains an additional die on damage rolls against damaged models.
- Never Ending Pile - At the start of this model's activation, if it has no corpse tokens, it gains 1 corpse token.
- Special Delivery - Once per turn at any time during its activation, this model can remove any number of corpse tokens and place them on a friendly model with the ability to gain corpse tokens within 5˝ of it.
- Warmth of the Grave - While this model has one or more corpse tokens, friendly Faction models gain +2 ARM while within 4" of this model +1" for each corpse token on this model.
Weapons
- Death Knell - 2" reach, P+S 10 melee weapon
- Mount - 0.5" reach, POW 10 mount attack
Theme Forces
Thoughts on Death Knell
Death Knell in a nutshell
The Death Knell is a support battle engine that forms the backbone of any Grymkin brick list. It essentially has no offensive output, and you need to maximise its support abilities to get your "points worth".
It allows corpse tokens to move fluidly around the Grymkin army, from models that generate them (enemies, disposable allies) to models that need them (the grymkin beasts). It can be thought of as roughly analogous to the Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes.
Competitive Viability
As of August 2018, the Death Knell is considered extremely viable. Grymkin have good heavies, which become extremely good when you can control how they receive corpses. Patrick Dunford showed this off at Lock N Load 2018 to great effect, making sure that his defensive brick of heavies had corpses before his opponent was able to engage.
Oct '21 Update discussion
Some spicy cart changes! Cost reduction & increased CMD are really nice bonuses that make it much easier to play with the Death Knell. However the real meat is the addition of Never Ending Pile. Always having a corpse is a huge deal for the Death Knell, and by extension any of Grymkin's several models that care about having corpses. It means that +2 ARM aura is always present when you need it, and the cart can usually hand out a couple of corpses to Skin & Moans before the real engagement begins. Critically it also makes the DK no longer a dead model when playing into near pure Construct lists, such as Convergence or Exalted. Reliably having +2 ARM is going to have profound effects for Grymkin's tankier models, such as Piggybacks.
Theme Force thoughts
The Death Knell is available to both Grymkin theme forces, and on a cursory glance it may appear to be more useful in Bump where friendly corpses are more abundant. However the Death Knell is almost always useless in the Bump theme, due to:
- Grymkin infantry are not resiliant. Buffing a terrible ARM stat to a mediocre ARM stat is not investing your points well.
- Dread Rots go up to ARM 16, Hollowmen and Murder Crows to ARM 14.
- There is one thing these numbers have in common - they are not critical "break points" in armor that dramatically change your survival rate.
- The Death Knell prefers to support beasts, and there aren't that many in the infantry-centric Bump theme.
- Three Grymkin infantry types have RFP effects that will deny corpses to the Death Knell, making offensive corpse collection surprisingly difficult.
- The Knell does not begin the game with a corpse in Bump, this opens you up to all kinds of counterplay that a Death Knell in Dark Menagerie simply does not have to face.
- Opponents can target models outside of corpse collection range first, and use clever use of RFP and non attacks such as Electro leap to deny corpses to the cart for as long as possible.
The Knell however does carve out a small niche for itself in one specific Bump build: Piggybacks. Some players have had good success with Knell + Piggybacks + The Heretic, but most players do not consider Piggybacks to be a very compelling option.
Combos & Synergies
- It synergises very strongly with the Cage Rager as it pushes their armor exceptionally high from the beginning of the match. They allow them to upkeep spells and threaten arcane vortex consistently. Make sure to be giving your cage ragers corpses in any match up where your opponent has key spells.
- The other strong synergy it has is the Skin & Moans. It allows it to have the best heavy beast statline in the game once fully loaded. Mat 7, P+S 19, DEF 13, ARM 21 is truly nuts. The Death Knell is the thing that makes this happen, shifting corpses to the Skin & Moans before they see combat. They thing support them by allowing them abuse Death Feast to heal a lot of damage. A Skin & Moans can activate, heal 3d3 (using all its corpses), then kill up to 6 models (7 with Child's Trump) and heal that many times, before the Knell refills its corpses back to 3. It turns a very efficient beast into a true monster.
- Grymkin has a few genuinely awful caster statlines - Notably three of the casters in faction are Arm 14, Heretic for his extra defensive buffs is only 15/15, and both Child and Old Witch have good armor but low defense. The Death Knell assists every single caster to become either respectable, or actually pretty good defensively.
- Almost every Grymkin beast has a generally good statline to stellar statline under the aura. Theres only a single beast that feels like its armor is only brought up "to where it should be" because of the existence of the aura which is the Frightmare.
Drawbacks & Downsides
- It has no offensive output. You may, on rare occasion make a decent impact attack or put some damage into something with its Finisher charge but it will never do much.
- 120mm bases are unwieldy and awkward at the best of times to position
- It fights for that "center of the board" position with Old Witch 3
- It can always be seen through clouds and over forests, as well as over your own models. This means its always going to be a charge target, always going to be a target for enemy guns. It's also got a big target on its back as its a key model.
- Without the Dark Menagerie theme list, it will be hard to have the ARM buff active for the initial engagement with the enemy.
Tricks & Tips
- Its mount is magic, don't forget about it against incorporeal solos who are trying to slow down scenario.
- Warmth of the Grave (the armor buff) is not a spell - blessed models cannot ignore it!
- Giving out corpses is "At any time during this models activation" meaning it can hand out corpses to a Grymkin heavy within 5" and then run into its new position
- Like the Skin & Moans it has Death Feast. If you are going to kill multiple enemy models in its collection range you can potentially just heal up to 5d3 and then collect those corpses to fill back up. Makes it hard to chip the Knell down as an opponent.
- Due to its large base, it has a surprisingly large aura when at max corpses. Leaving it full lets you spread out quite a lot.
- He has a decently sized bubble of anti-healing aura, which in addition to cancelling tough can foil things like Imperatus's revival, the ability of the Harbinger and Makeda to save warrior models, or Rapid Healing on everblight models. It also makes Self Sacrifice on Exemplar Errants unuseable because it just means two models die instead of one.
Other
Trivia
Other Grymkin models
Rules Clarifications
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Rules Clarification: : Magical Damage (Edit)
(Click Expand to read)
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* The "Damage Type: Magical" is not inherited by "secondary" damage from a weapon. That is, stuff like arcs (Electro Leap) or hazards (Scather). (Infernal Ruling)
- All spells have "Damage Type: Magical" (refer errata).
- This is inherited by "immediate" secondary damage (such as Eruption of Spines). (Infernal Ruling)
- and might be inherited by "lingering" secondary damage (see below).
- If a spell leaves a template in play that does damage to models that walk around in it, then:
- if it is not described as a hazard it will do magical damage to models that walk around in it. (Example: Razor Wall)
- if it is a hazard then it will not do magical damage to models that walk around in it. Instead, it does whatever damage type is specified by the spell description. (Example: Breath of Corruption).
- (Infernal Ruling)
- If a weapon/spell includes Magic Damage and another kind of elemental damage it will still damage Incorporeal models. Incorporeal models are not affected by the rule "if an attack does multiple types of damage and a model is immune to at least one it is immune to the entire attack."
The phrase "immune to non-magical damage" should be interpreted as "immune to damage that doesn't include Damage Type: Magical" (not interpreted as "has immunity to Corrosion and Electricity and Cold and etc.")
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Rules Clarification : Battle Engine (Edit)
- The main differences between battle engines and the other huge bases are:
- They can be placed, and they can move outside their Normal Movement (such as Dodge).
- They can benefit from Advance Deployment, Incorporeal, and Stealth.
- They can't make ranged attacks while in melee.
At least not by default; but many battle engines have Gun Platform, Dual Attack, or similar.
- Unlike Colossals and Gargantuans, your opponent can take control of your battle engine. There are very few such abilities that work on this model type, though.
- Being a huge-based model, a Battle Engine can never gain the DEF bonus from concealment ... but it can still have concealment and thereby trigger Prowl.
Huge Base (Edit)
- But this bonus doesn't apply to slams triggered by normal attacks (such as Critical Smite or the Hurricane's Thunder Charge ability).
Also, simply being on a huge base triggers a bunch of rules scattered throughout the rulebook, click to read them. [Show/Hide]
From the 2020.02 edition of the core rules (Edit)
- Fields of Fire
- Page 37 A huge-based model’s front arc is marked on its base. Its front arc is further divided into two 90° fields of fire. These fields of fire determine which models a huge-based model can target with its weapons, depending on the location of those weapons. Weapons located on a huge-based model’s left side (L) can be used to target only models in its left field of fire, and weapons located on its right side (R) can be used to target only models in its right field of fire. Weapons with locations “S,” “H,” or “—” can be used to target models in either field of fire. If any part of a model’s base is on the line separating the left and right fields of fire, the model is considered to be in both fields of fire.
- Concealment, Cover, LOS
- Page 49 Concealment & Cover - Huge-based models never gain the DEF bonuses from concealment or cover.
- Page 60 Clouds - Cloud effects do not block line of sight to huge-based models.
- Page 87 Forests - Forests do not block line of sight to huge-based models.
- Huge-Based models in melee
- Page 54 - Huge-based models never gain the Target in Melee DEF bonus.
- Page 65 - Combined Ranged Attacks cannot target a model in melee unless it has a huge base.
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Rules Clarification: : Cavalry (Edit)
(Click Expand to read)
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Mount Weapon
- Although the core rulebook specifies mount weapons have 0.5" range, this doesn't "overwrite" models that have a longer mount range listed on their card. (Infernal Ruling)
- Mount Weapons are melee weapons. (Infernal Ruling) This means:
- Mount Attacks can benefit from any buffs that affect "melee weapons" (such as Acidic Touch and Elasticity) or "melee attacks" (such as Battle Lust).
- Mount Weapons can be used to make free strikes.
- If the model doesn't have any regular melee weapon (such as the Gun Carriage) then it does have a melee range, can engage enemy models, and can make free strikes; anyway.
- Despite being a melee weapon, you cannot use a Mount's special attack on the same activation you charge. (Infernal Ruling)
- Exception: If you have Trampling Hooves, because that allows you to make charge attacks with your mount when you charge.
- Mount attacks will trigger "Melee attack" stuff like Battle Wizard.
- You can purchase additional attacks with your Mount Weapon. (Infernal Ruling)
Impact Attacks - Movement
- Impact Attacks "pause" your charge move, and as such don't normally trigger "ends an advance" abilities (such as Countercharge).
- The exception is if your Impact Attacks include your charge target, then you have to end the charge movement and turn to directly face the charge target before rolling any dice. In this case, stuff like Countercharge will get triggered before you get to roll your Impact Attacks.
- You cannot "pause" in an illegal position to carry out Impact Attacks. For instance: a Pathfinder cavalry model pausing halfway over an obstacle; a flying cavalry model pausing while it 'overlaps' other models; or any cavalry model pausing halfway through an Incorporeal model.
Impact Attacks - The attack(s)
- You resolve stuff that occurs "after the attack is resolved" (such as Battle Wizard) before continuing with your charge movement.
- If you have an ability that boosts your "first" melee attack (such as Stir the Blood), then only one attack will be boosted even though you're making multiple simultaneous attacks.
- If you choose to make any impact attacks, you make all attacks against all models in the Mount's melee range (even friendly models).(Infernal Ruling)
- Impact Attacks cannot be boosted, refer core rulebook.
- You cannot buy additional attacks while resolving Impact Attacks. Additional attacks can only be bought during your Combat Action, after resolving your initial melee attack(s) / special melee attack.
Impact Attacks - Other
- You cannot use "any time" abilities while resolving Impact Attacks. Because Impact Attacks occur during movement; and you can only use 'any time' abilities before moving or after moving, but not during movement. (Infernal Ruling)
- Exception: If your Impact targets include your charge target, then your movement has ended (refer rulebook, last paragraph of 'Impact Attacks') and thus you're fine to use "any time" abilities.
Cavalry unit
- If you have a unit of Cavalry, charge them and do impact attacks, remember you interrupt movement to do impacts, but you have to resolve all movements before doing any charge attacks. So for example it would go:
- Cavalry model A charges enemy X, and contacts model M. Stop and make impact attacks against M. Then continue movement to X.
- Cavalry model B charges enemy Y, and contacts model N. Stop and make impact attacks against N. Then continue movement to Y.
- Cavalry model C charges enemy Z, and contacts model O. Stop and make impact attacks against O. Then continue movement to Z.
- Resolve model A's charge attack vs X, B's vs Y, and C's vs Z. (This can be done in any order, as per normal)
Other interactions
- Cavalry model with no melee weapon
- If you have a Mount weapon but no regular Melee weapon (such as the Efaarit Scout), you can still declare a charge. (Locked thread)
- You can make Impact Attacks along the way.
- Once you get to the charge target, however, you can't make a melee attack against it. Because you can't use the mount weapon for a charge attack, due to the way the Cavalry rules are written. (Unless you have a rule like Trampling Hooves.)
- If you don't charge, the mount attack can be used as an initial melee attack.
- Countercharge & Cavalry ( Edit )
- A model with Countercharge and Cavalry can make Impact Attacks during the countercharge. (Refer "Charges Outside of Activation" in the rulebook).
- Warcaster/Warlock Cavalry ( Edit )
- Warcasters/Warlocks can't cast spells or use their feat while resolving Impact Attacks. Because Impact Attacks occur during movement - you can use spells or feat before moving, or after moving, but not during movement.
- Exception: If your Impact target(s) include your charge target, then your movement has ended (refer rulebook, last paragraph of 'Impact Attacks') and thus you're fine to use "any time" abilities before starting the Impact attacks.
- Flight on a Cavalry model (Edit)
- Although flyers can move over obstacles/models, and horses can pause to do impacts while charging, flying horses cannot make impact attacks while overlapping models/obstacles. You need to pause in a legal position.
- Gunfighter & Cavalry ( Edit )
- A cavalry model that charges then makes a Gunfighter attack will not gain a boosted charge attack roll, because a ranged attack is not a charge attack. (Infernal Ruling)
- You also won't gain a boosted charge damage roll, as per normal for a Gunfighter.
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Rules Clarification : Construct - None yet. (Edit)
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Rules Clarification : Bring Out Your Dead! (Edit)
- It can be a bit confusing, but "collateral damage from an enemy attack" is actually a thing even though "collateral damage is not considered to be from an attack". Best not to overthink it. (Infernal Ruling)
- This model needs to be the closest eligible model. It doesn't have the "regardless of proximity" wording like, say, Dark Fire does.
- You can collect corpses from friends that were killed by friendly "non-attack" damage, such as lighting them on fire or killing them with collateral damage.
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Rules Clarification : Death Feast (Edit)
- You roll a new d3 each time you spend a token.
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Restrictions on "Any Time" abilities ( Edit) [Show/Hide]
- "Any Time" abilities can be used at any time during a model/unit's activation, except:
- Before any compulsory forfeiture of movement/action. See step 2 of the activation sequence, appendix A.
- After the model with the "Any Time" ability has had their activation end "prematurely". By this I mean you resolved something which includes the phrase "its activation ends". Examples include:
- Running, failing a charge, or failing a slam.
- Abilities that include "then its activation ends" (such as Reposition and Teleport).
- In between declaring your charge target and making your charge movement. (Infernal Ruling)
- In between completing your charge movement and determining whether it was a successful charge. (Infernal Ruling)
- When you're in the middle of moving. (Note: Impact Attacks count as being in the middle of movement).
- When you're in the middle of an attack. Which also includes effects that occur "after the attack is resolved".
(Although the attack is "resolved" at Step 11, in terms of using an "Any Time" ability the attack is not "finished" until after Step 14. Refer to the first paragraph of Apdx A.)
- Your opponent interrupted your activation to trigger one of their own abilities (such as Countercharge).
- Warcasters/warlocks/etc can normally cast a spell or use their feat "At any time". However, there is a core rule saying they cannot do so on the same activation that they run. So, they are subject to all the same restrictions listed above, plus they can't cast/feat before running.
- Units: See below.
- In general you can use "Any Time" abilities while you're knocked down or stationary (except Spells and Feats which specify you can't).
- If you have a gun with a random ROF, you can use an "Any Time" ability inbetween rolling the number of shots and actually making the first attack. (Infernal Ruling)
- Units with "Any Time" abilities
- You cannot use an "Any Time" ability before issuing/receiving orders. See step 1 and 2 of the activation sequence, appendix A.
- A model in a unit can't use an "Any Time" ability after they run (Infernal Ruling) or fail a charge. Because that makes that specific model's activation to end even though the unit's activation is still ongoing, and you can't use abilities on models that are not active.
- You can use an "Any Time" ability before running, however.
- A model in a unit can't use an "Any Time" ability after anyone in the unit has begun a Reposition move. (Infernal Ruling)
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Rules Clarification : Entropic Force (Edit)
- Affected models can still remove damage from other models.
- Affected models can still trigger abilities that involve removing damage, and all other effects will be resolved. For instance:
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Rules Clarification : Finisher (Edit)
- Finisher is not tied to a specific weapon so it applies to all damage rolls, including power attacks.
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Rules Clarification : Never Ending Pile - None yet. (Edit)
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Rules Clarification : Special Delivery (Edit)
- It can place any number of tokens on one model. Not on as many models as it likes.
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Restrictions on "Any Time" abilities ( Edit) [Show/Hide]
- "Any Time" abilities can be used at any time during a model/unit's activation, except:
- Before any compulsory forfeiture of movement/action. See step 2 of the activation sequence, appendix A.
- After the model with the "Any Time" ability has had their activation end "prematurely". By this I mean you resolved something which includes the phrase "its activation ends". Examples include:
- Running, failing a charge, or failing a slam.
- Abilities that include "then its activation ends" (such as Reposition and Teleport).
- In between declaring your charge target and making your charge movement. (Infernal Ruling)
- In between completing your charge movement and determining whether it was a successful charge. (Infernal Ruling)
- When you're in the middle of moving. (Note: Impact Attacks count as being in the middle of movement).
- When you're in the middle of an attack. Which also includes effects that occur "after the attack is resolved".
(Although the attack is "resolved" at Step 11, in terms of using an "Any Time" ability the attack is not "finished" until after Step 14. Refer to the first paragraph of Apdx A.)
- Your opponent interrupted your activation to trigger one of their own abilities (such as Countercharge).
- Warcasters/warlocks/etc can normally cast a spell or use their feat "At any time". However, there is a core rule saying they cannot do so on the same activation that they run. So, they are subject to all the same restrictions listed above, plus they can't cast/feat before running.
- Units: See below.
- In general you can use "Any Time" abilities while you're knocked down or stationary (except Spells and Feats which specify you can't).
- If you have a gun with a random ROF, you can use an "Any Time" ability inbetween rolling the number of shots and actually making the first attack. (Infernal Ruling)
- Units with "Any Time" abilities
- You cannot use an "Any Time" ability before issuing/receiving orders. See step 1 and 2 of the activation sequence, appendix A.
- A model in a unit can't use an "Any Time" ability after they run (Infernal Ruling) or fail a charge. Because that makes that specific model's activation to end even though the unit's activation is still ongoing, and you can't use abilities on models that are not active.
- You can use an "Any Time" ability before running, however.
- A model in a unit can't use an "Any Time" ability after anyone in the unit has begun a Reposition move. (Infernal Ruling)
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Rules Clarification : Warmth of the Grave - None yet. (Edit)
