Warhammer Underworlds Grand Clash report - February 2025

Yesterday I went to the first UK based Underworlds Grand Clash of the new edition, at Warhammer World. There were 124 players which was fantastic to see, a significant increase on the last few clashes of the old edition. I’m going to run through my games as usual in these event reports, and then briefly cover some stats from the clash at the end.

The main competitive format for the new edition is Nemesis, where you build a deck by combining any two of the six decks currently available (soon to be seven). You can then use that deck with any of the warbands allowed in matched play.

I chose to take Cyreni’s Razors, an Idoneth Deepkin warband consisting of three aelves and a squid. They’re the warband I’ve played most of my second edition games with, I think they have solid stats and I like that they allow quite a flexible playstyle. The four fighters all have four health and hit for two damage, so they’re reasonable interchangeable in terms of how you use them, and it’s not a big deal if any particular fighter dies. Their signature ability is ‘hammertide’, an ability you can only use if the leader is alive and hasn’t charged, which essentially draws a straight line in any direction and does one damage to the first enemy fighter touched. This means you have a source of very reliable ranged damage, which is very useful for scoring some objectives that involve having a certain number of damaged fighters. They’re solid against aggro warbands because they have enough health not to be easily one-shotted, and they do enough damage that they can kill stuff when they need to.

From left to right: Renglaith, Alathyr, Cyreni, Cephanyr. Don't worry if you can't tell Renglaith and Alathyr apart, no one else can either.

My deck combo was Emberstone Sentinels and Countdown to Cataclysm, which turned out to be the most popular deck pairing at the clash. Emberstone Sentinels is a take and hold deck, which is built around some big scoring end phase objectives for standing on treasure tokens. Countdown to Cataclysm is a very flexible deck which offers some decent surge objectives and some very easy to score end phase objectives, it pairs well with most other decks as many of its objectives can be scored without needing you adopt a particular game plan to do so. It includes a specific deck mechanic: a cataclysm tracker that increases when your fighters die or at the end of each round depending how many feature tokens your opponent is holding. There are then cards in the deck that get better or worse depending on the cataclysm value. For the most part they get better, but there’s one objective that gets harder to score as the cataclysm value increases.  

I’d been doing pretty well in practice games in the run-up to the clash, so I was cautiously optimistic that I would do ok and be able to go at least 3-3 over the six games.

Game 1 vs Sam with Zondara’s Gravebreakers, Pillage and Plunder/Wrack and Ruin

Zondara’s Gravebreakers are a five fighter warband that include three zombies who can be brought back when they die. That’s not great for me, because some of my objectives rely on having certain numbers of damaged or slain fighters, and fighters that have been raised don’t count here. The Pillage and Plunder deck is all about delving treasure tokens, so I knew Sam would be competing with me to stand on the treasure tokens. And Wrack and Ruin is a deck I don’t think I’ve ever played against before, so that was a bit of an unknown.

I had a poor starting hand of objectives, and only managed to score three glory in round 1, whereas Sam scored pretty solidly to take an early lead. In round 2 I had a hand full of surge objectives, which normally would be a good thing as I’d hope to be able to score them and then draw into some good end phases, but things didn’t go the way I’d hoped and again I didn’t score well. Sam had the opposite issue, he’d drawn a lot of big end phase cards but was struggling to score them. There was a key moment at the end of the round: Pillage and Plunder has a big scoring card called ‘Strip the Realm’ which you can score if your opponent isn’t holding any feature tokens. I knew Sam likely had this card, but had been distracted trying to kill Sam’s fighters, and only had one of my fighters on a token. Sam had one chance at the end of the round to attack him and knock him off: fortunately Sam was attacking with a zombie who only had a two swords attack, and he missed. So I got a bit lucky there.

Going into round 3 I still thought I was going to lose, the score was something like 7-11 to Sam and I wasn’t sure I would be able to catch up. But in round 3 everything went right for me: first Sam missed a six dice attack with Ferlain, his hardest hitting fighter, and then my dice came good and I picked up some glory and surge objectives from killing zombies. I then drew into a really strong hand of end phase objectives, scored seven glory in the final end phase, and won 18-12.

It was great to start off with a win, but there was definitely a fair amount of luck involved! I think I did make some good decisions in round 3, particularly denying Sam some of his end phase scoring by positioning my fighters to block some the cards I suspected he probably had in hand. Sam was a great opponent and wasn’t at all salty about the sudden change in fortunes.

I forgot to take any photos during the game but here is Sam's very nicely painted warband

Game 2 vs Dan with Thundrik’s Profiteers, Emberstone Sentinels/Countdown to Cataclysm

Dan had the same deck pairing as me, which meant that throughout the game we both had a very good idea of what the other was trying to score. This ended up being a very close intense game, with a lot of difficult choices about whether to focus on maximising our own glory score or deny the opponent.

We both scored fairly poorly round 1, I ended up a bit ahead but not by much. But Dan had to discard some of his objectives, which potentially gave me a slight advantage as it meant that my glory ceiling was higher than his.

In round 2 Dan stacked Thundrik (his leader) with upgrades and took out Alathyr early on. I was in a tricky place where I needed to sit back on treasure tokens in my territory to score objectives, so I couldn’t focus much on trying to damage Dan’s fighters. I scored Supremacy for three glory, and went into round 2 a bit ahead.

In round 3 Thundrik made a big charge into my territory, and took out Cyreni. (Dan had included a lot of movement buffs in his deck to mitigate the duardin’s poor movement stats). I had a chance to take out one of Dan’s remaining fighters with an attack from Renglaith that would have scored me Overwhelming Force (a surge objective for an attack with four or more dice), but Renglaith whiffed it which was a big setback for me.

We both had a good idea of what cards the other had left, I knew (partly because Dan told me!) that he had a lot of big end phase scoring in hand, but I was ahead and had just about enough scoring in hand to sneak it. Dan decided that he needed to kill Renglaith to take the win, so he committed to a big attack with Khazgan into him, and the dice gods came down on Dan’s side and Renglaith died. That allowed Dan to catch up with me, and in the final end phase I scored four glory and he scored seven to take it 16-19. It was a fantastic game and very tense throughout.

I remembered to take an actual in-game photo! Here is Cephanyr facing off against Dan's Thundrik. Dan's warband were converted to be skaven rather than duardin.

Game 3 vs Alexander with Zondara’s Gravebreakers, Pillage and Plunder/Blazing Assault

After two very tense close games I was hoping for a slightly easier time of it in game 3, and fortunately this ended up being a reasonably straightforward win. Having already played against Zondara’s earlier in the event I was very up to speed with their abilities, though Alexander had a different deck pairing than my earlier opponent Sam.

I had a starting hand full of surge objectives which got me off to a good start with my scoring, though I didn’t do as well at scoring the end phase cards I then drew into. Alexander ended up with Zondara and Ferlain, his two best fighters, both on the left side of the board, which meant that he didn’t have much to threaten my fighters on the right side of the board, so I was able to lay claim to a couple of treasure tokens there and keep hold of them for most of the game which helped my scoring a lot. He put some damage on some of my fighters, but I have a lot of defensive upgrades in my deck that I was able to get out, so I was never in much danger of losing fighters.

In round 3 I drew some big scoring end phase cards that I was reasonably confident I’d be able to score, so I could afford to play pretty defensively and just stuck my fighters holding treasure tokens on guard so that they couldn’t be pushed off them. I ended up with a 16-8 win. Alexander was another great opponent and a pleasure to play against.

That left me 2-1 halfway through the day, which I was pretty happy with! I wasn’t in it to win it, but I felt I had a decent shot at going 4-2.

Another in-game photo, I'm on a roll. Here are a bunch of my fighters sitting on tokens. Alathyr is out of shot to the right hiding because she was nearly dead so I used Hidden Paths to run her out of danger.

Game 4 vs Jaroslaw with Gorechosen of Dromm, Countdown to Cataclysm/Blazing Assault.

I hadn’t played against the Gorechosen yet this edition, I knew they’d been nerfed significantly following the World Championships where they were the dominant warband, but it turns out they’re still pretty good. They were a tough match-up for me for two reasons: firstly there are only three of them which makes it tricky to score my Wreckers objective (which requires the number of slain or damaged fighters to be higher than my Cataclysm value, so I can’t take my Cataclysm value above two if I’m going to score it in this match-up). Secondly they have a warband ability that can pull my fighters off treasure tokens, which combined with a card in the deck that can do the same meant it might be harder than usual for me to score some of my end phase objectives.

Jaroslaw outplayed me on treasure token placement, we ended up with three treasure tokens in my territory and one at the back of his. That made it really important for me to be contesting the treasure tokens in the middle of the board and in his territory, but I mostly failed at doing that during the game. I deployed very defensively to stop him being able to get a lot of round 1 charges into me, but it ended up leaving me with poor board control.

Round 1 went fine for me though, I scored Supremacy and some other stuff and didn’t lose anyone, so I took an early lead. In round 2 he took out Alathyr and I took out Herax, which was fine, but then he managed to deny my end phase scoring by pulling me off a treasure token in my territory.

I’d run Renglaith deep into his territory to hold the treasure token there, and Jaroslaw sent the Gorehulk back to deal with him. At this point I think I got overly focused on trying to take the Gorehulk out, and didn’t really think about the rest of my game plan. We both stacked our fighters with upgrades, I needed to do three damage to the Gorehulk to kill him so I equipped Renglaith with Desperate Rage, an upgrade that hits for three damage but does one damage back to you. Jaroslaw then got a couple of ping damage attacks off on Renglaith so that he had only one health left, so using Desperate Rage would kill him. I think I should have left it alone at this point and focused on other things, but I decided to go for it anyway, missed the attack, and Renglaith died in my activation and gave away two glory.

Jaroslaw managed to deny me some end phase scoring again, and took the win 17-13. He played it very well and deserved the win. I think this is probably the game over the course of the day where I feel like I made the most mistakes, I never felt like I had a good game plan for how I was going to maximise my scoring, and I’m pretty sure I over-invested in trying to take out the Gorehulk. I was little disappointed after this game to be 2-2 after four matches, and was very keen to get at least one more win.

Game 5 vs Robin with Jaws of Itzl, Emberstone Sentinels/Countdown to Cataclysm

In game 5 I played Robin, from the Agents of Sigmar You Tube channel. I’m a fan of the Agents (in fact I was wearing a t-shirt with Robin’s face on it), so I was very happy to get this match-up. I knew Robin would be a good opponent, and while I’d met him a number of times previously at tournaments I'm not sure we’d actually played each other before.

Robin was running Jaws of Itzl, one of the newest warbands that consists of three big saurus and one small base of lizards. Normally they’re run as an aggro warband, but Robin was running them with the same deck pairing as me, which is more focused on a take and hold style. The Jaws small fighter is only one wound so I had hopes of being able to pick them off with Hammertide, but Robin had choice of board and sensibly chose the side with blocked hexes and then hid them behind a blocked hex for the entire game.

In the first round he showed me why he was running the Jaws with the take and hold style: they have a warband ability that stops a fighter being pushed back, and he was able to use a card to give another fighter a guard token, so he very quickly ended up with two five wound fighters on treasure tokens that I had very little chance of shifting them off of. However, because his fighters were holding objectives they weren’t killing mine, so we ended up both scoring decently round 1, and I was able to put some damage onto So-Kar to soften him up for round 2.

In round 2 I was able to kill So-Kar and put some damage onto Ro-Tek, so I was whittling him down. The Jaws have an ability that can ping damage back at you from missed attacks, but my warband is quite accurate so I think I only triggered it once in the whole game, which prevented Robin from being able to inspire any of his fighters. Robin did take out Alathyr, but I outscored him so was ahead going into round 3.

In round 3 I killed Ro-Tek early, so Robin only had two fighters left. His leader was hitting for four damage, but didn’t have any accuracy buffs so was only on two hammer attacks, and most of my fighters were on two dice saves by this point. I had  fighters sitting on treasure tokens and I knew he was unlikely to be able to shift enough of them off, so I was able to take the time to cycle my objectives twice to draw into the big scoring end phase cards I needed, while Robin’s leader repeatedly rolled badly and failed to kill Cyreni. At the end of the game I got lucky and had Confusion (switch two adjacent fighters) in my hand, I knew Robin probably had it in his deck too but it turned out he’d not drawn it, so I was able to switch his leader off the central objective and deny him some scoring. It ended up a 17-9 win for me, though it felt much closer than that throughout.

The game in progress.

Game 6 vs Harry with The Emberwatch, Reckless Fury/Blazing Assault

I already knew Harry a bit from local tournaments. While it’s sometimes disappointing to go to big tournaments and be matched against someone from your local scene, by this point in the day I was pretty tired and low on social energy and happy to be playing someone I knew and was confident I'd have a fun game against.

The Emberwatch are a three person Stormcast warband, I’d not played against them much before, but Harry’s deck pairing suggested that he’d be playing them in a very aggro style. I wasn’t disappointed here: he got all three into my territory very quickly with various movement shenanigans, which allowed them to inspire quickly. I started the game with no objectives that relied on holding treasure tokens, so was able to focus on putting damage on Harry’s fighters, and I took out Yurik in round 1. Harry had terrible dice luck throughout this game which definitely hampered him, but he still able to score his objectives very consistently. In round 2 we both had big scoring end phases, I think I scored five glory and Harry scored six so we went into round 3 pretty much neck and neck.

In round 3 I killed Farasa early on (after using one of my warband abilities to uninspire her so she only had one save dice), and Harry killed Alathyr to take us down to only one fighter each: I had Renglaith and Harry had his leader Ardorn. Ardorn hadn’t taken much if any damage, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to kill him, so I stayed away from him on a treasure token and cycled objectives to get cards I could score. That meant I outscored Harry in the 3^rd end phase, and it ended up being a super close 20-19 win to me. It was a great game, and a really good way to end the event. I suspect Harry might have taken it had he had better dice early in the game, when he got very unlucky with a few missed attacks.

The board state at the end of the game: Ardorn had already charged so was unable to get close enough to do any significant damage to Renglaith.

That meant I ended up going 4-2 and finished in joint 22^nd place, which I was extremely happy with. I’m looking forward to trying some different warbands and decks out now that I don’t have a tournament to prep for for a while, so the Razors will be going back on the shelf for a bit while I play other things. In general I was very happy with how the warband and deck did though, I think the warband is well suited to the deck and I don’t think I’d make any changes to it if I were taking it to another event.

Overall I had a great day, all of my opponents were a pleasure to play against, and it was nice to catch up with other friends who were there.

Stats

This is the first big tournament that I’m aware of since the latest FAQ, so there was a lot of interest in what the meta would be like. I’ve compiled a few stats from the day.

I’ll leave detailed analysis of these to people with a better understanding of the game than I have, but I have a few thoughts.

• The warband breakdown looks really encouraging. The two newest warbands were the most  which is probably what you’d expect, in particular Jaws of Itzl were always going to be popular because people like dinosaurs and the models are amazing. But most warbands were represented – I think only five of those currently allowed in matched play weren’t taken – and apart from the spike for the Jaws there’s a reasonable spread. Definitely a big improvement on the world championships where a small number of warbands were dominant. 
• Countdown to Cataclysm comes out as the most popular deck, probably because it’s a very flexible deck and has some very easy to score end phase objectives. It was also noticeable more popular with the more successful players, with two thirds of players taking it finishing in the top half.I suspect we’ll see some changes and possibly some forsaken cards here, I hope though that that’s done in a fairly light touch way as I don’t think there’s a massive issue here. Forsaking ‘Spread Havoc’ an extremely easy to score two glory end phase objective, would be my suggested fix.
• Almost every possible deck pairing was taken, with the exception of Pillage and Plunder/Reckless Fury. While some were much more popular than others, this feels like quite a good sign that players are experimenting with different things and that there are mix of different playstyles in use.

Overall I feel like these stats suggest the game is in a pretty good place. While the Countdown to Cataclysm deck is probably a bit too strong there isn’t a single deck pairing that comes out as dominant, and over all 124 players there’s a really good mix of different things taken. There’s also a new warband and a new deck due out in a week, which should shake things up a bit. I'm excited to play more, and hope there will be another clash before too long.