Warhammer Underworlds - my reflections on Direchasm so far

I thought I’d do a quick blog on how I’m finding Season 4 of Warhammer Underworlds so far. I’ve been playing at least once a week via webcam since it came out in December, mainly using the Dread Pageant warband. I’ve not played in any tournaments, so these reflections are going to be based on experience from fairly casual play.

What do I like about it?

• The models are great. I really enjoyed painting the two starter set warbands, and the Ravagers are on my painting table at the moment. The warbands they’ve previewed all look good too, especially the vampire models. This isn’t a surprise, the quality of the models has always been a strength of the game, but I’m particularly enjoying the painting this season.
• The warband specific mechanics/playstyles are interesting. Each of the warbands released so far has felt quite technical, with either distinct mechanics (aetherquartz, desecration) or an inspire condition with interesting trade-offs (the Dread Pageant need to have 6 wound counters in play to inspire, which often means either choosing to kill off enemy fighters, or wounding your own). There’s an argument that this over-complicates the game, but personally I like it: it makes the warbands feel more unique, and adds interesting decisions.
• The rules feel a bit tighter. Games Workshop tightened up the rules writing a lot between seasons 2 and 3, so now that most of the cards from seasons 1 and 2 have rotated out, the cards are generally pretty good at specifying reaction windows and having clear wording. It’s not perfect, but it’s moving in the right direction.
•  I like the Primacy mechanic. I was worried when it was previewed that it would be an extra complication that wouldn’t add much, but at the moment I think it’s in a good place where it is impactful in games, but not to the point that it dominates deckbuilding too much.
• There are lots of warbands that I want to try out. The card rotation and the new Direchasm cards have meant a lot of changes to the meta, and I have a long list of warbands and decks I want to try out. I may never get round to trying a lot of them, but the game feels quite fresh at the moment, and I’m enjoying playing it a lot.

What don’t I like?

• The Mortis Relics and the ‘Voltron’ meta. A strong playstyle in underworlds at the moment is to focus on making one of your fighters very powerful, by stacking upgrades on them, particularly some upgrades called the Mortis Relics. It’s not a playstyle I particularly enjoy either running or playing against. It’s not come up a huge amount in my gaming group, but whenever I build a deck at the moment I have a nagging feeling that it would probably be better if I built it around the Mortis Relics. Hopefully at some stage we’ll see some more cards being added to the Forsaken and Restricted list to address this and encourage more varied deck building, or the meta will move on as other cards are released.
•  I feel like I’ve got worse at the game recently. It’s coming on for a year since I’ve been to a tournament, so all my knowledge of the competitive meta is coming from podcasts and blogs rather than from experience. Because I’m playing all my games with a relatively small gaming group, I’ve also been switching warbands more frequently than I normally would to keep things fresh and try not end up playing the same match-ups over and over. I’m enjoying casual play a lot, but I feel that I’m going to be behind the curve once organised play does eventually return.

Overall, I'm enjoying Direchasm a lot for casual gaming, but the lengthy gap without organised play has left me feeling a bit disconnected from the competitive meta. For the time being though, I'm going to focus on trying out some different decks and different warbands and hopefully continue to have fun with it.