Games Workshop dropped a pile of freebies on us players last week, which included the warscrolls and fighter cards for 13 returning warbands. These warbands have all been recently released in the previous edition of Underworlds, so if you’ve been keeping up with the game in the last year or so, there’s a chance you have some of these models kicking around. You’re in luck because combined with these new (free) rules, they’re fully ready to take into this new edition of the game.
I’m going to take a look at all of these new fighter cards and accompanying warscrolls, plus share my first take of a deck for at least one of the warbands in each of the grand alliances. These will be first draft decks since I haven’t had a chance to take all of them out for a spin yet, but can at least serve as a starting point. If you want to check out the other grand alliances in this release, you can find those articles here:
Death Warbands
Destruction Warbands
Order Warbands
Chaos Warbands
Only receiving two warbands of fighters, Chaos has the slimmest pickings in this particular release. For any chaos fans, it’s at least a consolation knowing that because both the Embergard Core Box and one of the upcoming individually released warbands will also be Chaos, their total number of organized play legal warbands won’t be the lowest of the grand alliances (they’re actually tied for second most represented!).
So what warbands made the return so far? First up are Spiteclaw’s Swarm, some real OGs who are making their third debut in Underworlds (first in Shadespire, then in the Rivals of the Mirrored City). These rats return with their internal bickering among the leader and second-in-command alongside a recursion mechanic to represent just how unending the verminous swarm can be. They are accompanied by the Thricefold Discord who have only been on the scene relatively shortly, but also bring mechanics supporting their own interpersonal strife and the tempting nature of Slaanesh. Let’s look at each of these closer.
Classified by Games Workshop as a Strike warband, Spiteclaw’s Swarm should then allegedly be good at getting up close and brawling – but in a sneaky, underhanded, Skaven way. The warband consists of five fighters; two of these rats are going to be your leader and his lieutenant/rival and the remaining three are nameless minions here to fight and die. At the time of release, this warband looks like it has a couple of mistakes that I assume will be fixed when GW gets around to releasing an update – for instance, you can only raise minions but none of the fighters are marked as minions. Likewise Untimely Promotion keys off of Skritch being slain, but none of the fighter cards are labeled “Skritch” (yes, the leader’s full name is Skritch Spiteclaw but you shouldn’t need to read the lore fluff on the back of a warscroll to identify mechanics). I’m writing this assuming the three unnamed Skaven will wind up being minions.
Spiteclaw’s Swarm retains their inspiration mechanic from the previous edition with only slight wording changes to (hopefully) keep it relevant to future card releases. Any time a ploy picks one of your fighters, that fighter will inspire. Traditionally, this lead to stacking your ploy selection with enough cards that can serve the double function of inspiring your fighters while also giving a small upside whenever you opponent uses one of their own ploys that picks your own fighters. Due to the way the raise mechanic works in the current version of Underworlds, I don’t know if that’s going to be quite as important as it was before – it’s obviously good to inspire your fighters, but now any time a fighter is slain they become uninspired. Returning the Lurking, Hungering, and Festering Skaven will always bring them back uninspired and require another ploy to flip their fighter card. This feels like a steep investment unless you specifically need one of the stat boosts they get upon inspiring.
Speaking of raising, the Swarm core ability is how this warband pulls it off. If you’re new to Spiteclaw, note that you are placing a slain minion in any starting hex. It is not restricted to one of your own, so you can use this to deploy a raised fighter on your opponent’s side as well. With how balanced the starting hexes are distributed across the boards, this allows for a high degree of maneuverability when your rats gain reinforcements. Another thing to note is that “a friendly leader” is the one who performs this action – Spiteclaw himself is not called out, for good reason.
Scheming Pack is the first implementation of a recurring theme with this warband. The Skaven really want to outnumber their opponents in every engagement possible. Not only will this raise your accuracy, but Scheming Pack can also boost the damage of Spiteclaw and Krrk. It’s not amazing when they’re uninspired, but once inspired they’re both rolling three dice baseline and it also applies to their range 2 melee attack, not just the range 1 one.
Untimely Promotion is the reason why Swarm calls out a leader. If Spiteclaw dies, you can still raise your nameless minions because Krrk is now the greatest. Yes-yes. So far, this only affects two cards in the Underworlds card pool. One is Commanding Stride, a ploy found in both Blazing Assault and Pillage & Plunder which allows you to push your leader up to 3 hexes as long as they end in a starting hex. This is good for you! The other is the Blazing Assault surge objective Strike the Head that the opponent can score when they kill your leader. This is bad for you, because it’s two chances of them scoring it. Luckily, I don’t see this being too popular in Nemesis so it may only need to be considered in Rivals.
The warscroll also has three once-per-game abilities. They feel underwhelming to me, to be honest. None of them are bad and they will likely find a use in most games, but they’re not going to have a tremendous impact. First up is Skitter, which is a push with a handful of restrictions (another fighter adjacent to a fighter who used a core ability). Pushes are good, but the more limitations you tack onto them, the harder they are to take advantage of. Speaking of restrictions, the same ones apply to Justified Paranoia which reward a fighter with a guard token. This isn’t terrible considering 4 of your 5 fighters either start on or inspire to 2 dodge for their save, but it’s another fairly restrictive ability to try and set up. As a reminder, core abilities are any with the Underworlds skull icon. This includes the ones in the rulebook like move, charge, guard, and attack but also the warscroll ability swarm. Finally, an ability with a full sentence as a name, Out My Way, Fool-things! is a confusion (yay!) that can only be used on friendly fighters (… oh). If this could inspire your fighters, I’d be pretty high on it. Unfortunately, it isn’t a ploy so it can’t.
Onto our fighters. As ever, these rats are fast at a whopping 5 move each. The more circular nature of the new boards means there are fewer hidden corners to hide in, and these rats are going to be able to reach nearly anywhere with ease. They’re all on the lower side of the scale when it comes to durability, though – only Spiteclaw has 4 health and all the others are stuck at a measly 3. They can take a hit from any of the other weaker fighters out there, but anyone who is a true brawler or has some upgrades backing them up has the potential to one-shot these rats. Save values are pretty varied, but none hit the 2 shield break point where I start to consider a fighter reasonably tanky. That said, you do get two starting at 2 dodge (Spiteclaw and Lurking Skaven) and two more inspire to 2 dodge (Krrk and Festering Skaven), so guard tokens can do work in increasing their survivability.
For offensive profiles, Spiteclaw and Krrk have what feels like the standard profiles for leaders – R1/H2/D2 and R2/H2/D1 so you have your option of a harder hitting range 1 attack vs a longer reach, less damaging range 2 attack. When they inspire, the weapon profiles add one extra dice each to make them more accurate (and more likely to score that critical grievous when benefiting from Scheming Pack). These are decent fighter profiles and you essentially have two copies of your best fighter, which is helpful.
The minions… they sure can die and come back! Don’t expect to do a lot of killing with the Lurking, Hungering, and Festering Skaven unless they’re going into weakened targets and you can drum up some extra accuracy in the form of supports or power cards. In terms of the order you’d want to inspire them, Lurking Skaven gains a R3 attack (not a great one, but it’s there!) which could help score some objectives and Festering Skaven is the only one to have the potential to go up to 2 damage (with 3 sword, 1 damage, critical grievous). Hungering Skaven is so lackluster on the inspired side that I almost wonder if there’s a typo on their card. The only thing it gains is Brutal. This makes me think you’d want to include some solid weapon upgrades to replace these lackluster attack profiles, but keep in mind that when a fighter is slain you have to discard all their upgrades as well as uninspire them. There’s no bringing back a Skaven who has been decked out in all kinds of kill-murder gear anymore.
If I were to take this warband out for a spin, I think the first approach I would try would be less of a straightforward aggro style and more of a flexible mix of caring about feature tokens and making attacks. The Pillage & Plunder deck feels like a good basis here, since your rats can rocket out to treasure tokens to delve them with ease (and then die, but that’s what they’re for). P&P also has three “pick” ploys for inspiration purposes and some weapon and damage upgrades. I’d try pairing with Blazing Assault if you want to be a more aggressive side of flex, or Emberstone Sentinels if you want to be more focused on treasure tokens (but keep in mind you’ll want to not split up too much between the delve and treasure holding cards).
I love these weirdos. I’ve played about five games with them so far and plan to continue. The Thricefold Discord are a mastery warband. Each of the fighters have a distinct role within the warband and their warscroll backs them up with unique tools. Their leader, Vexmor, is a slothful bruiser that would rather be lazy than work up a sweat. Vashtiss is a flying, ranged threat who can project a large threat range. Lascivyr is a powerhouse missile with impressive flexibility and speed. Being only three fighters and at a below-average wound total, the warband can feel a little fragile at times but a skilled player can leverage them effectively in a variety of ways.
The Thricefold Discord love seeing each other fail, and that’s how their inspire mechanic works. If you make an attack and completely whiff you get the consolation prize of inspiring one of your fighters! Likewise, if you roll zero successes on a save or one of your fighters winds up biting the dust, you get another inspire. There’s no more enmity triangle where you want Vashtiss to fail to inspire Vexmor (or was it Lascivyr?) – now they all hate each other equally. Hooray!
Despite having the lowest health totals of the warband, both Vashtiss and Lascivyr can be deceptively tanky thanks to the Evasive ability. Whenever these two take any damage, not just from an attack, they have a 50% chance to reduce it by 1. This isn’t called out specifically here, but the rules state “characteristics cannot be reduced below 1 unless specified” and I am inclined to believe this also applies to damage. I’ve seen arguments that this would work on damage inflicted from ploys or other abilities, but I am dubious. Maybe GW will clarify at some point in the future. Regardless, this helps these 4 health fighters stick around a little longer than they would otherwise be expected to and it can also really play havoc with your opponent’s math.
Vexmor also gets his own special rule here in Indolent. As mentioned before, Vexmor is a lazy dude and if he doesn’t have to move, he’ll reward you by gaining an extra attack dice and grievous on his attack. This is handy because, dang, he is inaccurate without some help. This really elevates the value of pushes and teleports (or at least the ones that don’t apply a move/charge token) because having access to a R2/D3 attack is pretty uncommon, and Vexmor can do this uninspired.
Wicked Slice has us bouncing back to Lascivyr and is a big reason why they’re such a threatening missile. This triggers off of “making an attack,” not “making a successful attack” so you’re always going to be able to get this one damage off when swinging with your assassin. It’s also not limited to once per game or round – this happens every single time Lascivyr makes an attack. Again, there’s a little ambiguity on what you’re measuring the “within 2 hexes” of for this ping. I’ve seen some folks say it’s within 2 hexes of your target and others say it’s within 2 hexes of Lascivyr. I am inclined to read it as the latter, but maybe GW will chime in eventually to make it less ambiguous.
Eldritch Enmity is a once-per-game push that feels so much better than Spiteclaw’s Skitter ability – it’s still a push with limitations, but the restrictions are looser and you can also push 2 fighters instead of 1. You can use this to push Vexmor into range with his spear, push Lascivyr a little closer to get off Wicked Slice, or push any of your fighters out of opposing threat range. Vashtiss’ speed, range, and fly is a good way to set this up to make sure you’re pushing in the directions you want.
The next once-per-game ability is Feuding, which allows you to juggle inspires among your fighters. This loses impact as the game goes on, so remember you have it early and use it at the first opportunity that it can come in handy. A potential use is if you completely whiff with Lascivyr on a charge and don’t want to leave them totally exposed, so you can “steal” the inspire off of one of the other two to get up to 2 dodge instead of 1. A niche use case is that it’s also particularly good against Cyreni and her ability to make you choose to either uninspire a fighter or let them draw cards – I just uninspired the fighter they chose, swapped the inspire back to them, and continued with my plan.
The final ability is one that I haven’t had much experience with because it just hasn’t come up – Vile Temptations allows you to break an enemy’s upgrade and replace it with one of your own. The ideal play would be breaking something vital like Great Fortitude (potentially killing the fighter in the process!) and giving them an upgrade that could situationally be a downgrade (like Utter Conviction or Visions of Ruin from the Countdown to Cataclysm deck). As more decks come out with more niche upgrades, this could become even more tempting. How on brand.
These daemons are all pretty different. The movement values count up with Vexmor on 3, Vashtiss on 4 (with flying), and Lascivyr being the missile at 5. Vexmor has the most health at 5, but no access to Evasive and stays on 1 save dice even inspired. Vashtiss and Lascivyr share defensive stats at 4 health and 1 dodge (inspiring to 2 dodge). In my experience so far, it’s felt like the Evasive fighters wind up being equally resilient to Vexmor.
Offensively, Vexmor’s attack is a joke until he inspires or benefits from Indolent (or both!). A 1 hammer attack is so inaccurate that you don’t want to be making that unless you have no other options or you’ve really stacked the deck in your favor. That said, with a range of 2 on his spear, you can usually deploy him to threaten a few treasure tokens without having to move. Pushing him into place (perhaps with Eldritch Enmity) can give him the nudge he needs to get into neutral territory or beyond and become a big pain, especially to the higher model count warbands where his 3 damage pokes can one shot fighters.
As fun as setting up Vexmor is, Lascivyr is the scalpel strapped to a rocket. R1/S3/D2 is a respectable uninspired statline, and jumping to H3 after inspiring makes their attacks even more reliable. Having 5 move on these new boards allows you to cover so much of the playing space. Wicked Slice can extend the threat range a little if you have a charge target in the right location, even. Speaking of Wicked Slice, what a reliable tool. Guaranteed damage regardless of dice outcomes is phenomenal, even with the rider that it can’t be done to a vulnerable fighter. Be careful not to overextend Lascivyr, or if you do make sure you have a way to boost their survivability – going on guard after inspiring to 2 dodge, for instance.
Vashtiss has been my maneuverable, positional piece primarily. Vexmor gets parked in the brawl zone, Lascivyr zips around to take out prime targets, and Vashtiss scoots around with an even more impressive threat range (4 move + 4 range when inspired) and can pull off a reliable turret impression. She even has flying to zip over other fighters and avoid stagger hexes (but can’t fly through blocked hexes) and, when inspired, has a respectable R2/H2/D2 whack with her staff in addition to the pew pew finger wiggling spells she can sling.
The deck I’ve played with the Thricefold Discord so far has been a Nemesis pairing of Blazing Assault and Countdown to Cataclysm. It’s primarily the strike deck and focuses on brawling, but has a few supporting pieces from the mastery deck. It isn’t perfect but I’ve tweaked it a little since its first showing, so I’m pretty happy with it for the most part. If you give it a try, let me know how it goes and what you’d change! The list is below, and can also be viewed on UnderworldsDB.
That’s it for the Chaos warbands from last week. Check out the coverage of the other grand alliances if you want to see what else was given free rules!
Death Warbands
Destruction Warbands
Order Warbands
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