New starter set Song of the Dormant is fantasy wargame Warcrow’s real v1 launch

If one good thing has come from the era of ‘early access’ videogames, it’s that gamers have a framework to understand that sometimes, a game gets better over time. Several games have managed to move from early access to full release in the last couple of years – 10th edition 40k getting those all important early errata, Fallout Factions sneakily gaining rules for a huge range of miniatures – and most recently Warcrow, which has come into its own with its latest starter set, Song of the Dormant.

Warcrow, and the fantasy world of Lindwurm, was in development behind the scenes at publisher Corvus Belli for almost a decade. The world’s first glimpse of it came in 2022 with the Kickstarter campaign for the dungeon crawler board game Warcrow Adventures, which came with the promise that a fantasy skirmish wargame was also in the works.

That means we’ve been able to track the factions, art styles, and prototype miniatures for Warcrow for a long time. When the wargame actually launched in 2024 only two factions were available as separate releases, the professional soldiers of the Hegemony of Embersig, and the fierce Orcs and Varank of the Northern Tribes.

The minis were sweet, as you’d expect from Corvus Belli, but if you wanted to field another faction you needed to raid the Warcrow Adventures box and expansions for minis.

Since then, however, CB has dropped three new armies. The Sÿennan are wood elves, cloaked in living leaves and inspired as much by Gaelic folklore as by Tolkien’s Lothlórien. Their standalone faction released in April.

And now the game’s second Battle Pack starter set, Song of the Dormant, launches the standalone minis for two more armies, the arcane Scions of Yaldabaoth and the knightly Feudom. Rumor has it that the dwarves of Mounthaven aren’t too far off…

June this year saw the game get an upgraded 1.5 version of the rules. This nailed a lot of the early teething problems with the system: among a log of other changes it made characters who aren’t attached to units a lot more survivable, and changed the magic system so that it’s both easier to use and less safe for the spellcaster.

Movement has been changed too, speeding the game up, getting the playtime down to less than sixty minutes. You can get a sense for the gameplay from this great Guerilla Miniature Games batrep:

Also appearing in June, Warcrow received a full tournament rules pack. Corvus Belli has an excellent track record with tournament rules – its older wargame, Infinity, has had continuous organised play for well over a decade – and these add much-needed variety to pick up games.

So where Warcrow’s first battle pack, Winds from the North, felt like a sneak peak, Song of the Dormant feels like the entry point to a wargame that has very much arrived. We have a separate article about the box set’s contents, and site editor Alex is working on a review which you’ll be able to check out sooner rather than later. I am a little bit jealous – I’m a big fan of the minis.

Song of the Dormant is listed on the Corvus Belli webstore already via this link, though pre-orders aren’t open yet.

You can sign up for an early access private sale for Song of the Dormant via this link, though you’ve got to hurry – the form closes on Thursday July 17, and the private sale weekend will be July 20 and 21.

If you’re intrigued by Warcrow, or already play, come and join fellow fans in the official Wargamer Discord community – we recently had the great pleasure to host an AMA with Warcrow’s Game Designer and Lorekeeper, Hoopoe, and Corvus Belli head of marketing Max Lattanzi, and you’ll find the recording in the Discord.