How to play Warhammer Underworlds: Embergard over webcam

During the pandemic, I wrote a blog post about how to play Warhammer Underworlds over webcam. Since then I still play most of my games over webcam, because my regular group are quite geographically dispersed and it works well for us. I know a lot of people play on Vassal or TTS, but I like being able to use the actual minis for the game. So here’s an updated post on how to play the new edition over webcam.

What do you need to play Warhammer Underworlds: Embergard over webcam?

• Everything you'd normally need to play Embergard - your own models, dice, tokens, board, and cards.
• Some spare models to proxy the opponent's warband. It's easier if you have the actual models for the warband they're playing, but you can make do with any models.
• A webcam, or a phone you can use for video.
• A reasonably reliable internet connection.
• A friendly opponent.

It's just about possible to play a game if only one of you has a camera feed, but it's much easier if you both do. 

Here's a picture of my set-up. You don't need a brilliant camera feed, as long as you can make out models and feature token placement, you'll be fine. I have a cheap webcam I use, but a phone camera propped up at one side of the board would work fine.

Different camera angles work fine as long as the whole board is visible.

How does it work?

Playing over webcam works much the same as playing face to face, except whenever either of you do something in the game, you both need to change the board state on your board set-up to reflect what's happened.

Set-up

 This is the trickiest bit, because until the treasure tokens are placed you don't have many reference points on the board to refer to when explaining what you are doing. So this will probably take a bit longer than it would in a face to face game.

The person who chooses the board side and orientation needs to explain how they are placing it, e.g.:

•          I’m picking the side with the blocked hexes
•          I’m turning it so that no man’s land is a full row across the middle
•          The corner with the patches of fire is to the back right of my territory

You should agree before placing feature tokens which player will handle randomising the treasure token numbers, and once all the feature tokens are placed and have been flipped over, that player should read out which token is which and the other player should rearrange theirs accordingly.

During the game

It's usually best to both describe a move you are making and move that piece on your boards, to help your opponent understand what you're doing. So you might move a model and say 'Zikkit is charging Yurik. He's moving four hexes to the starting hex next to him, in front of treasure token 3'.

Agree with your opponent at the start whether you are going to roll dice on camera or not. This can be tricky depending on your set up and how much space you have, in my weekly meet-ups we've tended not to bother requiring all dice rolls to be on camera. I'd suggest specifying how many dice you are rolling and what you need for success every time you roll, to avoid any misunderstandings.

If you have space, it can be useful to have your activation tokens, fighter cards and glory tokens visible on camera. If you don't have space it's not a big problem, but make sure you're both in agreement throughout on which activation it is, and confirm how much glory you each have regularly to make sure that you know who the underdog is.

For a casual game, I think it's easiest to manage your decks off camera, and just trust each other not to cheat. Obviously if you’re playing in some kind of competitive play context there may be different rules in play here. If you want, you could agree with your opponent to show each card on camera when it is scored or played. Be prepared to read out a card if your opponent asks what it does. It's harder to keep track of what upgrades your opponent's fighters have when playing remotely, so if there's a key upgrade you think your opponent might have forgotten about, speak up and remind them if you're in a situation where it might have an impact.

If at any point you notice a discrepancy between your board state and your opponent's, speak up and clarify it as soon as possible. It's usually pretty easy to keep them in sync, but occasional misunderstandings do happen. 

Meet-ups

For meet-ups where multiple games will be taking place, you'll either need to split into separate calls, or use a video call system that lets you split into separate rooms within one call. My group use Zoom, and split into different breakout rooms for games.

Final tips

• It takes a bit longer to play over webcam, because set up is more of a hassle, and you'll spend some time clarifying who has moved where. In the early stages of the new edition we’re finding that games of Embergard take around 90 minutes over webcam, I’m sure we’ll speed up as we get more familiar with the rules but I can’t see it getting to less than an hour per game.
• If you’re not very familiar with your opponent’s warband and you have access to their warscroll and fighter cards, it might be helpful to have them visible so that you can check their stats without needing to ask your opponent.
• The most important thing is clear communication, and being patient. Making sure you have the same board state at the end of each move, and that you both understand exactly what the other player is doing, will help prevent mistakes and bad feels.

Hopefully that's useful! Let me know in the comments if you have any questions, or any tips for successful webcam gaming.