Deck Guide: Khagra's Ravagers by Zack Newcome
Zack took Khagra's Ravagers to the World Championships of Warhammer (2024) and we reached out to see if he'd be willing to write up a deck guide for us. Readers can use this to gain some insights into how he built his deck and tips on playing it if you want to try it out for yourself.
Thanks Zack for sending this along!
-Jerod
The deck: Khagra's Ravagers with Emberstone Sentinels and Pillage & Plunder
What inspired you to pick this combination? What's the overarching play style? What is this deck/warband combo attempting to achieve?
I chose to pair Emberstone Sentinels and Pillage & Plunder for my pairing.
Emberstone Sentinels has most of your traditional hold objectives scoring package which includes several VERY easy to score surges. The power cards also include many nostalgic choices such as Side Step, Healing Potion, and my personal favorite Confusion. The upgrades also include several very good defensive buffs and some sprinkling of accuracy. This deck makes the perfect start for a good flexible take and hold battle plan.
Pillage & Plunder may seem like a strange choice given that Delving removes your desecration tokens, but this deck adds in several more easy to score surge objectives and an easy to score end phase to complete your 12 objectives. You only need to delve once. The power cards also added some more guard tech, another healing ploy, and more spicy upgrades.
My goal behind the deck was Survive. One of the big problems facing a Take and Hold warband is that once too many of your fighters die, you struggle to score a lot of your objectives. I found Khagra’s Ravagers after inspiration to be VERY hard to kill without Cleave even before you start adding upgrades to the mix. So I might as well lean into that fact by adding Sharp Reflexes for another defense dice on Cragan or Zarshia, Agile or a Save re-roll, and Impossibly Quick for a 2nd or 3rd save die. This enables you to discourage or encourage targets as well as providing a very solid chance to prevent damage or Stand Fast.
Guard tech is VERY important in this build, especially early in the game. You WANT at least Wary Delver or Settle In in your first hand. This allows you to protect your inspiration mechanic by being able to hold a desecrated treasure token so that your opponent can’t flip it. It also enables you to score Unassailable, Share the Load, Careful Survey early in the game.
Don’t be afraid to go on guard. If you don’t know what to do for an activation, instead of drawing a card that may or may not be useful, go on guard. Guard won me games and matches just from the fact that they couldn’t push me with an attack. It is a good option and an effective way to ensure you stay on that treasure token long enough to score you points.
I have written about these Desecration tokens, what are they for? Your inspiration mechanic is to have 2 objective tokens with Desecration tokens on them after the last Action Step. You gain a lot of inspiration. Razek gets a 4th wound and a 2nd save die, Khagra gains a range 2 attack, grievous, and a 2nd save, Cragan gets faster and more accurate, and Zarshia just gets more accurate. Having Desecration tokens on the board also allows you to use your once per game Warscroll ability to draw a number of cards equal to the number of Desecration tokens you have out. It also allows you to use a once per game push up to the number of Desecration tokens. I usually will try to get 3 treasure tokens desecrated, then draw my 3 cards. This is a great way of fishing for guard ploys, healing ploys, or save die upgrades.
Your third Warscroll ability is a very “know when to use it” ability. Once per game you can add an attack die if you are holding an objective or attacking someone on a treasure OR gain +1 save die if you are holding a treasure token. I will usually use this in the first round before all of my survival upgrades come out, especially if I have a card like Supremacy or Iron Grasp in my hand round 1.
What are the three objectives you want to see in your opening hand? Why?
Supremacy. 3 glory to add upgrades on during the end phase. Hold 2 treasure tokens. EASY.
Aggressive Defender. Attack while holding a treasure token. Zarshia has range 3.
Share the Load. Move onto a feature token while holding a feature token.
Iron Grasp. If you can’t have Supremacy, 2 glory for almost the same thing is really nice.
What are the three ploys you want to see in your opening hand? Why?
Settle In or Wary Delver. Guard is SUPER useful now, increases your likelihood of not getting hit and you can’t be driven off the objective.
Side Step. If you can get onto a treasure token without spending an action to do so, that’s great!
Healing Potion. If you get hit early, being able to heal up a little to force your opponent to swing a 3rd time to slay one of your fighters is ALWAYS a good thing.
What are the three upgrades you want to see in your opening hand? Why?
Impossibly Quick. It's a 1 glory upgrade that gives me another save die. When it breaks I can use the glory on something else.
Glory Seeker. Throwing this onto anyone except Khagra now gives you a 2nd fighter doing 3 damage.
Sharp Reflexes or Agile. More Saves or more chances of Saves is VERY important to your battle plan. The more attacks you defend, the more Actions your opponent has to spend trying to slay you.
Any other objectives, gambits, or upgrades of note?
Now for the secret tech. Switch Things Up.
This card is GREAT for Ravagers. Not only does it help you gain access to the Treasure token numbers you need to score Hold # or #, but it can also fuel your Desecration mechanic. You Desecrate tokens, so you can desecrate one. Then in the next power step switch the tokens around and Desecrate a 2nd token without moving. You can also gain access to more tokens to Desecrate in this way. If your opponent is trying to stop you from drawing cards or inspiring they will likely need to waste an action to go flip that token over. Ties are also VERY likely in 2nd edition given that most competitive decks will score 14-16 glory and each warband is worth the same amount of glory when slain. Switch Things Up can get you Treasure token 5 for maximum tie breaking effort.
The next single card I want to talk about is Confusion. This card allows you to take tokens away from other players. It allows you to switch two enemy fighter’s locations so you attack the one that you want. It is a VERY powerful card when used at the right time. Knowing when to play it and when to hold it is sometimes very hard, especially when you know your opponent has it in their deck as well.
Which board side and alignment (5s or 9s) do you prefer? How do you deploy?
In most matchups I actually prefer the 5s layout best. It allows me to load up one side of the board with objectives and my own fighters. This works especially well into horde warbands and warbands that also want to hold objectives. Ravagers hit much harder on average than most hold warbands, so if all of your fighters are holding in one area, that’s a lot of firepower to fend off a handful of goblins or a couple Stormcast. 5s also feels like a bigger board because of how wide it is. You can bait folks over to one side the flank to the other forcing them to use some activations to move towards you instead of charging.
Dangle the wizard. In nearly EVERY match I played at WCW I was asked why Zarshia was the most annoying fighter in my warband she shouldn’t be. Charge her onto the center treasure token and put her on guard. You almost have to hit her twice, if you miss more than that. She is the dangle bro. Make use of those couple of turns where she annoys your opponent by existing.
Razek is usually my guy that hangs back, ensures your inspiration. You don’t want him in the mix until after your inspiration has happened.
Cragan and Khagra are the tip of your sword. They are the ones that you invade with. I usually keep Khagra back in the first round then use Commanding Stride or Ravaging Advance to push deep. If you draw an early Careful Survey or you’re playing against someone running Reckless Fury, Cragan will be the guy I will charge in first as deep as you can get him. He’s usually my target for Great Strength or Glory Seeker as well. Sharp Reflexes is in the deck for him.
In 2nd edition 4 wounds feels pretty darn survivable as long as your opponent doesn’t have access to 3 damage right away. Don’t be afraid to use those wounds, you’ve got access to 2 healing cards. Go deep, take those treasure tokens away from the horde warbands and take some models off the board. Use those wounds to score your glory by standing in the right place on guard. If you don’t have to charge don’t, Hostile Takeover will just happen for you as a result.
What do you do to beat this deck?
Slay queen slay!
The best way to beat this deck is to slay the Ravagers before they have a chance to get those annoying save dice between you and victory. If you can get 1-2 fighters off the board in round 1 you’ve made a step in the right direction. Ravagers can get scoring on the board quickly, but tend to trickle off in round 2 and 3. If you slay their fighters quickly they are going to have a harder time scoring.
The other way to defeat them is to be in the way and be on guard. Ravagers will have a lot of ways to get onto those tokens and stay there. If you can get onto the tokens first and stay there with guard, defense bonus, or pushes it's going to be hard for the Ravagers to inspire, score, and get those Desecration tokens out for card draw and their push. Play smart though because they will likely have a lot of tricks up their sleeve.
New player rating? How easy is this deck to pick up and play?
Silver, and here’s why. You are trying to do 2-3 things at the same time with this deck. You’ve the tools to do it, but you are going to have to balance the urge to make attacks with the need to hold objectives for scoring. Sometimes it is going to be better to play slowly and smart instead of charging headlong into the fray. It is a balancing act between countering your opponent and scoring your own glory.
Part of my success with this deck was knowing what my opponent was trying to score and preventing it in such a way that I could score my own glory. Slaying fighters often takes a backseat to standing on a token or standing in your opponents zone so they have to charge backwards out of your zone to score their objectives. It takes some practice, but the number of save dice you are able to roll makes the deck feel pretty friendly to new players because you really do feel like you’ve got some armor on.
Not inspiring is PUNISHING for a new player though. It's pretty easy to achieve your inspiration mechanic, but if you fail to inspire it will likely mean that you just get steam rolled by your opponent trying to capitalize on the fact that Razek only has 3 wounds still and you’re only rolling one save die on all your fighters.
