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 👍





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