Warhammer Underworlds tournament report - November 2024

Yesterday I went to my last tournament of the current edition of Warhammer Underworlds (1^st edition? Shadespire edition? Original Underworlds? I don’t feel like we’ve settled on a community name for it yet). It was a five game best-of-one, 25 player event in Redhill run by the Agents of Sigmar. I’ve been to several previous tournaments run by the Agents and they’re always well organised and fun events with a great group of people, so I had high expectations for the day. It was also very well timed, with the new edition of Underworlds due out next weekend it was great to have the chance to say farewell to the old edition in style with a tournament.

The tournament was Nemesis format, I ran Xandire’s Truthseekers with the Hungering Parasite rivals deck. Xandire’s are a four fighter Stormcast warband with three Stormcast and their bird friend. They all have quite different fighter stats, and their standout mechanic is that they inspire when one of them dies, and they all get a different reaction they can do on death. I played them a fair bit back in the Championship format days. Hungering Parasite is a deck focused around an upgrade called Bane of Heroes. Bane of Heroes starts on one of your fighters, it staggers them and everyone adjacent to them (stagger means that opposing fighters get to reroll an attack dice against you), they can’t be inspired, and at the end of the round it deals a damage to either the fighter with it or an adjacent fighter. This means it has potential to do a lot for you by giving you an accuracy boost and some ping damage, but can also backfire and hurt you if you mess it up.

The general plan is to start off with the Bane of Heroes on Dhoraz, my hardest hitting fighter and also the one who benefits the most from the accuracy boost it gives him, and then play very aggressively at the start of the game. I have a lot of healing in my deck – I think it is theoretically possible for me to heal 8 damage over the course of a game, though in practice it’s usually more like 3-4 – so if things work out I should be able to trade off well and do enough early damage to limit my opponent’s scoring/damage potential for the rest of the game. Then in the later game I can focus more on positioning to score objectives.

There are two things I want to avoid with this deck/warband combo:

•  I don’t want to end up with my last remaining fighter being Luxa Stormrider. Usually a Truthseekers deck is very happy for her to be the last surviving fighter, because when inspired she has an incredibly accurate range 4 attack which does a lot of work. But if I have to put the Bane of Heroes on her (which is very likely if she’s my last surviving fighter), she will be uninspired which makes her much less accurate and unlikely to do a lot. As you will see from the rest of this blog, I didn't do very well at avoiding this situation and she ended up being my last fighter in at least two games

• I don't want to play into the Rimelocked Relics rivals deck. Rimelocked Relics has a couple of cards which can give the Bane of Heroes the Rimelocked keyword, which can potentially take it take out of play either permanently or for short periods of time. That hurts my deck a lot, and limits my scoring potential as around half of my objectives rely on Bane of Heroes being in play. This is a result of one of the weird FAQs you sometimes get from Games Workshop, where the FAQ enforces the rule as written despite that fact that it was (probably) never planned to have that effect, rather than making a more sensible ruling to preserve balance/fun. Hungering Parasite is a very powerful deck and having something in the meta that is strong against it is probably a good thing, but I don’t like just how much Rimelocked can nerf Parasite without needing to work very hard for it.

In practice games my deck had been performing pretty well, so I was cautiously optimistic about my chances going into the day. I was hoping I’d be able to go 4-1, though I knew it would be a tough field so I wouldn’t be unhappy with a 3-2.

Game 1 vs Zoltan with Kainan’s Reapers/Voidcursed Thralls

Kainan’s Reapers are a 6 fighter warband with one big hard hitting fighter (Mir Kainan), and five smaller fighters with a range of different stats. Unlike some ‘big guy’ warbands the warband doesn’t necessarily have to revolve around Kainan, the others have potential to do a lot of work too depending on the playstyle and how the deck is built. I’ve played a fair bit against them, though not with my current deck, so I was confident I understood how they worked.

I ended up using the same deployment in all my games: Dhoraz up front, Xandire in the middle and Stormrider and the bird further back. Zoltan put Kainan near the middle and hid his second best fighter, Binar Khenta, near the back. I got an early kill with Dhoraz on Hakor, who in my experience is nearly always the one of the Reapers who dies first. My objectives came out in a good order so I got some early scoring in, and though I don’t think I killed another fighter round 1, I got a decent early lead and put a bit of damage on Kainan. I was helped by Kainan completely whiffing an attack into Dhoraz despite having some accuracy boosts.

Thanks to the Agents for letting me use their photos for the games when I forgot to take my own

In round 2 Kainan came good and took out Dhoraz, and I had to decide between focusing on Kainan and trying to take him down, or putting damage into the other fighters. I opted to mainly take out the others since Kainan had already attacked, and I thought that killing some of the others would do more to limit Zoltan’s scoring options. I did do some damage into Kainan though, and by the end of the round he was down to a point where one more attack would kill him.

In the final round I killed Kainan on my first activation which left me in a very strong position. After that we traded off a bit, but I was still ahead on scoring and I didn’t think that Zoltan was likely to have a big third end phase of scoring given the board state. I ended up with the bird as my only surviving fighter while I think Zoltan had two of his left, the bird was the fastest and I knew I was ahead on glory, so I took the coward’s path of running away and making sure he couldn’t kill me. I ended up with a 17-14 win. It was a fun game, and Zoltan was a great opponent.

Game 2 vs Martin with Starblood Stalkers/Malevolent Masks

I’ve played Martin several times before at tournaments and knew that he was a very strong player, so I was nervous going into this one. The Starblood Stalkers are a six fighter warband, with a largely hold objective focused playstyle, but also one very hard hitting saurus fighter. Malevolent Masks is a deck that you tend not to see a lot, but it has some very strong objectives that can do a lot to boost early scoring and can also have a strong third end phase.

Round 1 was mixed fortunes, I missed some early attacks which allowed Martin to move his skinks onto objectives and inspire his warband, but his saurus missed his attack into Stormrider. I killed a couple of skinks to start whittling down the numbers and score some early objectives, while Martin’s deck bricked a bit and left him without good scoring opportunities. I went first into round 2 and was able to kill the saurus, which left me in a very strong position as I still had all my fighters alive, and I knew that without the saurus Martin would struggle to do a lot of damage. However, Martin’s deck started to come good, so I wasn't able to get as far ahead on scoring as I’d have liked.

Martin's warband were really nicely painted, including a converted Klac-Troq

In the third round Martin sneakily used a power card to teleport his leader to the other end of the board to get away from Dhoraz who I had thought was well positioned to take him out, and we had quite a tactical few turns of Martin trying to position his remaining fighters so that I couldn’t get near enough to do the last few wounds to them. I was just about able to do enough though, and I took out his last fighter with Bane of Heroes ping damage right at the end of the round. Despite almost all of my fighters being alive and all of Martin’s being out of action,  Martin had scored consistently during rounds 2 and 3, so it ended up being very close. I came out with a 16-14 win, putting me 2-0 for the day going into lunch.

Game 3 vs Marcin with Crimson Court/Breakneck Slaughter

The Crimson Court are a four fighter vampire warband, who generally play pretty aggressively. Breakneck Slaughter is also a pretty aggro deck that wants to throw fighters forward into the opponent’s territory, so I had a good idea what to expect.

 The game did not disappoint, and we had a very aggro round 1. I killed Gorath early on with Dhoraz, but then Marcin was able to take Dhoraz out, and also killed my bird after I (perhaps unwisely) charged it in to score a surge objective. I then took out Velas with the end of round ping damage from Bane of Heroes, so we both had half of our fighters dead by the end of the first round.

I borrowed the Agents' photo again, it was far too tense a game to remember to take pictures

Over the course of round 2 I was able to kill Ennias and Marcin killed Xandire, so going into the final round I only had Stormrider alive, and he only had Prince Duvalle. I think Stormrider was on full health or close to it, while Duvalle had one health left. However, Stormrider had Bane of Heroes and so was uninspired which makes her not very reliable, and Duvalle inspired is very accurate and he also had a few upgrades on him. The game essentially came down to who could get the kill first, since it was very close on glory and whoever had a fighter surviving at the end was likely to be able to score some end phase objectives to pull ahead. I think Marcin won the roll-off to go first and put two damage on Stormrider, putting her within one hit of dying. Stormrider had a chance to take Duvalle out but whiffed it, and Duvalle then got the kill on Stormrider. Marcin as expected scored some end phase glory to take a 21-17 win. This was a great game, I think we both played very well and our warbands were very well matched, and the scoring was very close throughout so it really was anyone’s game right up until the end.

Game 4 vs Dan with Scritch’s Swarm/Voidcursed Thralls

Spiteclaw’s Swarm are the skaven warband from the original Shadespire season, which were re-released with updated rules earlier this year. Their playstyle is based around expendable minions, who can be brought back when they die as long as the warband leader, Scritch, is still alive. I’ve known Dan since the early days of Underworlds and knew he was a big skaven fan, so it didn’t surprise me to see him repping this warband.

In round 1 I killed Krrk (the second best of the skaven) with Dhoraz early on, but Dhoraz then got taken out in return. I’d expected this to happen though, and it allowed me to move Bane of Heroes onto Xandire and score an objective for having my leader with Bane of Heroes in enemy territory, so I was broadly happy with how the first round went.

 I won the roll-off for round 2 and was faced with a dilemma: I had some very good power cards in hand which gave me potential to stack Xandire with enough damage to be able to one-shot Scritch, but I would have to let Dan take the first turn as I needed a power step to play all my buffs in. I took the gamble and fortunately Dan didn’t have anything up his sleeve that let him take out Xandire. I then put a bunch of upgrades on her, charged in, and took out Scritch. This wasn’t too risky a play – with Bane of Heroes on she is a super accurate fighter and I had a power card in hand that would have given me a second go at it if she’d messed it up the first time – but I definitely breathed a sigh of relief when the plan worked. With Scritch out of action the skaven have much less capacity to bring back minions, so I had the advantage, but Dan had a good deck that meant he was still able to score a fair bit. My objectives weren’t great for the board position, so I had to make decisions between taking out the remaining skaven or committing to trying to score my objective cards. As it turned out though I’d done enough to limit Dan’s scoring, and I saw out a 17-14 win.

I forgot to take a photo until after the game, but here are Dan's skaven

Game 5 vs Callum with Zarbag’s Gitz/Rimelocked Relics

In game 5 the thing I didn’t want to happen happened and I came up against someone running Rimelocked Relics. I figured I couldn’t complain much having successfully avoided them for the rest of the day. Zarbag’s Gitz are a very fun nine fighter warband, they are fragile and can bleed a lot of glory but also have a lot of tricks up their sleeve. 

I went first and threw Dhoraz in against Snirk, the goblin fanatic, to try to take him out. Snirk has potential to be terrifying if he survives, so I was very happy when the dice were in my favour and I was able to remove a significant threat early on. Callum played the Gitz more aggressively than I had expected, and went all in trying to kill Dhoraz and Xandire with his squigs and the squig boss Drizgit. He killed Xandire, but I was able to throw quite a lot of healing at Dhoraz to keep him alive. At one point I took a risk and put Bane of Heroes onto one of Callum’s fighters, which is something I hardly ever do and in hindsight don’t think I should have done here either. I was trying to score a surge objective that requires Bane of Heroes to break, which happens when the fighter holding it is killed. I figured I’d do this by putting it on Callum’s squig and killing the squig, but then Xandire failed her attack into the squig and I was facing the prospect of Callum rather than me being able to choose where the end of round ping damage went. Fortunately, I was able to salvage things with my remaining fighters, and managed to kill the squig before the end of the round.

I think this photo is from the middle of round 2

The defining moment of round 1 however came when Callum played the card I was most scared of, a card called Frozen Solid that had the potential to give my Bane of Heroes the Rimelocked keyword and take it out of play for at least some of the game. Fortunately, the card relies on a dice roll, and Callum failed the roll. I was extremely relieved, as the game could well have gone differently if things had gone Callum’s way here.

During round 2 we traded off attacks, I think Callum killed the bird and Dhoraz, and I took out a fair few gitz.  However, I was pulling ahead on objectives, as Callum was more reliant than me on his fighters being on objective tokens to be able to score objective cards, and it was difficult for him to do that at the same time as trying to put damage onto my fighters.

I was definitely feeling the brain drain of five games of Underworlds at this point. Callum knew his deck very well and was playing quickly, and my deck has a ton of reactions and things that rely on precise timing, so I think I probably frustrated Callum a bit by having to ask him to wait while I checked my hand to make sure I hadn’t forgotten to do anything. But I didn’t want to ruin my day by making a daft mistake in the final game. I think I only ended up missing one thing I could have done and that didn’t end up being significant for the game state.

In the third round, I ended up with Stormrider as my last fighter facing off against three gitz archers, who are definitely the weaker members of the gitz warband. I had a choice between running her away or seeing if she could kill them before they killed her, I opted to fight it out and though I think she ended up on one health at the end of the round, she didn’t die and she did take out a couple of gitz. I came out with a 17-7 win, it felt a lot closer than that for much of the game though.

 Wrap-up

I ended up going 4-1 for the day, which I was very pleased with. My deck was extremely consistent, I scored seventeen glory in four of my games and sixteen glory in the other one! However, I didn’t have the glory scoring potential to compete with the strongest decks, and I ended up at the bottom of the 4-1s on glory difference, coming 5^th out of 25.

It was a very fun day, a lot of my regular Underworlds group made it to the event so it was great to see people, and also to catch up with people I’d met at previous tournaments. In the end I got a bit too focused on trying to win my last few games to really appreciate that I was probably playing my last few games of the edition, which was a shame – I had plans to use the ‘plunder’ mechanic for the last ever time and other stuff like that, but I didn’t think of it in the moment. It’s possible I might end up playing a friendly game or two later this week though, so maybe I’ll get another chance.

I really recommend the Agents of Sigmar events for anyone in the Redhill/London area looking for Underworlds tournaments: they’re fun, well organised and friendly, and usually (as with most Underworlds tournaments I’ve been to to be fair) there is a nice mix of some players running very strong decks and some players running warbands they enjoy to have a fun time. I feel like 90% of the people who read this blog are going to be people who were at the tournament or have attended previous ones so I’m probably preaching to the converted, but if you’ve not been to one before and are tempted, give it a go.

What’s next?

I’ve pre-ordered Embergard, the starter box for the new edition, so I should be getting that next week. I like the look of what I’ve seen of it so far and am excited to give it a go. At the time of writing we’ve only seen the rules for the starter set warbands so I’m really looking forward to seeing the rules for the existing warbands and seeing how the theme/spirit of the warbands has been translated into the new edition. I’ve no idea what warband I’ll end up playing, but there’s a Grand Clash at Warhammer World in February so I’ll be trying to pick a warband to take to that and get some decent practice in with.

Thanks for reading!