Famine is a personal favorite cult of mine even if one I don't reach for all that often. Famine works to improve your threat ranges and the output of march charge and charge clash activations. The second tier benefit can be useful in a sustained combats as relentless blows does combine nicely with the already good attack volumes we bring but in general this is a cult that amplifies your ability to initiate combats more than sustain them.
Jumping into the benefits Tier 1 nets us Shock and +2" to movement on charges. Shock is a nice special rule and does a fair bit to amplify damage but the real winner here for me is the additional movement. For an already reasonably pacey faction that extra movement puts a lot of our regiments into cavalry threat ranges which can be very difficult to play around. Being able to reach out and touch opponents or guard objectives is very powerful in a scoring based game.
This combos very nicely with already fast units like Raptors that are now threatening largely whatever they want when you add on fluid formation shenanigans. Your normal march 6 regiments like Thunder Riders and Warbred are now threatening with the higher end of cavalry movement - Thunder Riders in particular already can march charge in for solid damage being able to get to 14" plus a rerollable d6 on the movement portion of that activation is very solid. You can also stack this with a skirmisher on Hunters or Blooded giving the infantry pretty surprising reach.
The Shock part of this is nice in that we have good volume so tend to get good benefit from hit buffs often pushing damage close to finishing off an extra stand vs leaving it on a couple of wounds. However, there is no stacking with shock so if you take a Chieftain as your warlord you wont really see much of this benefit. I'd say it's still worth playing Famine with the Chieftain supremacy as the movement and other benefits are still excellent.
Moving to the Tier 2 benefit this is the one that adds specifically to your clash. As mentioned already relentless blows is an above average buff to W'adrhun as you tend to already have good volumes. A minimum unit of raptors for example is rolling 15 attacks base with flurry potentially netting you quite a few extra hits here. Thunder Riders with a Thunder Chieftain also tend to be rolling a lot of attacks with rerolls. While this won't always kick on because it will require a clash action it is a sneaky good benefit for several units.
Tier 3 has one of the more interesting benefits available as it is a +2 impact attacks and glorious charge. The +1 clash on impact attacks from glorious charge does stack with shock allowing for a few of our regiments to get to Clash 5 on impact attacks and terrifying 1 is never bad as a little damage boost. The +2 impacts can range from meh if those are the only 2 you are getting to phenomenal on something like Thunder Riders that are now getting 6 good quality impacts per stand. As this benefit is +2 it does stack with the Death's Gaze banner allowing for 4 impacts to infantry regiments. That is potentially a future combo with Chosen of Famine depending on how they shake out.
As far as actually getting this on the table Fanatic Famine Thunder Riders are probably the regiment I would look to to getting value out of this. Their output is easily among the best if the game with the tier 3 on board and while expensive and relatively squishy compared to Cult of War Thunder Riders they can have a huge impact on the table state. It's a regiment that you'll need to use carefully but can be an absolute nightmare to account for as your opponent really can't let you get it into anything of value. A regiment of 4 Thunder Riders plus the Chieftain with Mantle will set you back over 500 points but will be outputting 30(!) impact attacks with brutal impact 2 and clash 5 and then another 10 auto hits from tramples into whatever remains of the regiment they charged. It's a massive amount of potential damage.
Cult of Famine, to me, is more like Cult of War where you'll want to build a list that wants to utilize what it does well rather than dropping any list into it the way you can basically do with Cult of Death. In the case of war that is usually taking the regiments available that already have decent defenses and wounds and pumping that up. In the case of Famine I think you actually still want to lean toward those picks. Because Famine doesn't really help your sustained clashes you want at least some of your army to be able to shoulder that. There are two general ideas I would learn toward with this cult.
The first is the fairly obvious Thunder Riders and Thunder Chieftain combo. That regiment takes the bonuses from Famine very well and becomes devastating on the March Charge. However, you'll still want to combine it with other options to provide durability. Cult of Famine Thunder Riders need to choose their targets well to avoid being a liability to counter attacks. This will often result in them starting the game in wider areas so you'll want something like Chosen of Conquest or a Tontorr to help hold the middle.
The second general idea would be to utilize the Matriarch Queen supremacy to amp up cheaper units like Blooded and use them as disposable missiles to take space and provide threat. This build will also want some decently bulky options to take advantage of the space the Blooded create and would be a good place to run a Scion on a Drum Beast. While I'm not super high on the Drummie this sort of list takes advantage of what it does well and you can also bring some Chosen to help threaten larger areas.
Cult of Famine provides some interesting tactically capabilities and is definitely worth exploring as you tinker with various list builds. The recent availability of more durable, elite options opens up possibilities that were previously difficult to utilize do to the difficulties W'adrhun had in maintaining space as a game went on. This shift in options opens up the lesser used Cults and enables a variety of different builds and combos. I hope that this article helps you consider ways to utilize the aggression that the Cult of Famine can play with in your games.
As Always Thanks for Reading
