Diving in to warhammer underworlds



As a hobbyist and gamer of over twenty years I like to take an interest in new games as they are released. When Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire came out a friend of mine (Nick) ran me and another mate (Josh) through a game with the starter - I thought it was cool and liked the deck building aspect but it didn't really grab me (could be that I got hammered using the Reavers!). Fast forward to the release of Nightvault and the look of the newer miniatures got me pretty excited. I did a lot of reading around and kept an eye on releases and then the friend who showed me Shadespire turned up with the Nightvault starter box, Zarbag's Gitz and the Eyes of the Nine! What a legend.

We made the models immediately and had a day of trying all the warbands out against each other. What a blast! The pace of the game was great coming from playing guild ball and warmachine I couldn't believe how fast we got through a full game even as beginners. The tactical depth built on intuitive basics and variety of scoring options from the objective cards made me realise how much scope the game has. Needless to say I was hooked and took on Zarbag and his merry band of mushroom loving buddies and Josh took on the Eyes of the Nine with a look to us both using the stormcast and nighthaunt to keep games varied. 

For the first couple of games we just used the cards that came in the faction boxes. I really enjoyed the way the grotz worked and how much variety there was in the warband. We agreed to take the neutral cards from the starter box and start to switch things up a little with deck building. I changed out some of the more difficult to score kill based objectives and upgrades in favour of more passive scoring and upgrades to keep my key models alive. In the only game I have played with this deck the dice absolutely deserted me and I made two successful attacks in the whole game... To make matters worse Josh upgraded Vortemis to the point where his ranged spell attack was instantly killing every model in my warband and proceeded to roll more crits than statistics would deem possible! Somehow the game ended only 14-10 to him but it felt like a total beating so I think the more passive objectives did the trick in keeping the glory ticking over even when everything went wrong.

My plan with this blog is to track my progress with the game including a variety of content including casual games, hobby and painting, deck ideas, events and general musings. I am hoping to get some friends to contribute from time to time too 👍





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Boards and Swords Hobbies Tournament 30.06.2019

Image
Another one-day event, this time at Boards and Sword in Derby which is a nice sized industrial estate based venue. The inclusive lunch was a Dominos pizza deliver which is pretty epic for a £15 event. Best Coast Pairings App was being used again and as a return user it was very smooth. There were 11 players which meant there was a bye each round which isn’t deal but hey ho. Having played my aggro Farstriders a great deal and having some really make or break moments due to dice rolls I had built a passive scoring and key based Gitz deck where no objectives required me to land attacks or make kills. I had only played the deck three times prior to the event but it had won each game fairly comfortably and tended to come back strong in the third end phase. It is worth mentioning that despite being a day after the release of Power Unbound the TO had decided not to allow it in the event. I took a ready built deck in the hopes of dropping a couple of new cards in but my budd
Read more

Cursebreakers vs Thorns of the Briar Queen 16.12.18

Image
My first game with the Cursebreakers! I really wanted to try these guys out as I was imagining them to be pretty much the opposite to my grots. I was going from the largest warband in the game to the smallest and from very little killing ability in a single activation to every model being more than capable of taking out my opponent’s fighters. I was up against Josh and the Thorns again but he had spent some time revising his deck rather than using the one straight from the box so I knew I was in for a tough fight. I had drawn extreme flank, conquest and sorcerous scouring so I deployed deep in my territory close to edge hexes to prevent my fighters getting bogged down early and try to force him into a couple of push activations with Varclav. His first activation was a push and I tried to empower Rastus for inspiration and failed. He went on guard with the everhanged and I tried for the empower inspiration and failed again! The everhanged charged in (scoring change of ta
Read more

Leodis Games Tournament 23.02.19

Image
Apologies for the lack of posts guys – I haven’t been getting as many games in as I wanted and need to get back on it with these blog posts! Last Saturday was a best of three tournament up at Leodis Games which (once you find it) is a decent little shop and gaming venue. There was a really great mix of warbands being played with Mollog, Magore, Zarbag, Fjul, Briar Queen, Theddra and Stormsire all in attendance. Total glory rather than glory differential was used as a second sorter which wasn’t ideal for my warband of choice as I think it favours high third end phase scorers such as objective and key based builds. The gaming area at Leodis Games I took the Chosen Axes to this event as I have been enjoying playing them and almost have them fully painted now too. I need to do some more work on the metals and an extra fine highlight on the hair and skin but they are getting there and I got some compliments on the scheme at the event. I had played the Mollog match up just once in t
Read more